Top U.S. regulator vows to defend net neutrality
Last Updated: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 | 2:22 PM ET
CBC News
Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, has vowed to defend net neutrality and to go after any company that violates it.
“One thing I would say, so that there is no confusion out there, is that this FCC will support net neutrality and will enforce any violation of net neutrality principles,” Genachowski told The Hill, a newspaper in Washington, D.C.
Net neutrality is generally the term applied to the fair treatment of internet services and websites by telecommunications service providers. Advocates of neutrality argue that service providers should not be allowed to indiscriminately provide better connections to one service or website over another.
Genachowski, a Democrat who was appointed to head up the FCC by President Obama about two months ago, said the regulator is working on a legal strategy to defend its open internet principles. The FCC is facing litigation from Comcast over penalties it imposed last year after finding the company guilty of violating net neutrality by blocking customers' usage of peer-to-peer software such as BitTorrent.
The FCC, under former Republican chairman Kevin Martin, last year ordered Comcast to abandon its practice and come up with a net-neutral management plan by the end of this year. The cable company says the FCC doesn't have the authority to make such demands.
In Canada, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission last year allowed Bell Canada to continue similar interference with peer-to-peer file-sharing. At the same time, the CRTC opened a public hearing into network management and neutrality, which took place earlier this summer. The regulator is set to announce its conclusions from those hearings this fall.
On both sides of the border, telecommunications companies have lobbied against net neutrality. They have said that rules and regulations on how they are allowed to manage their networks will degrade service for customers and impede their ability to innovate and invest.
Genachowski is likely to find support in the House of Representatives from Democrats John Markey and Anna Eshoo, who in July introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. The bill seeks to prevent service providers from doing anything that will "block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade the ability of any person to use an internet access service to access, use, send, post, receive, or offer any lawful content, application, or service through the internet."
Obama has also expressed support for keeping the internet, at least in the United States, free from interference from service providers.
In Canada, the Liberals, NDP and Green Party have all officially come out in support of net neutrality. The Conservatives have not yet expressed a position.
Genachowski, who helped Obama form his technology policy during last year's election campaign, told The Hill the FCC has the tools and authority it needs to enforce net neutrality.
“If we don’t, we will say so,” he said.
