[Publib] ALA Comments to FCC on Net Neutrality and Internet Management

[Bocher, Robert DPI]

FYI:

The ALA's Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) recently filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission on Internet Neutrality and Internet management practices.  The FCC invited comments based on complaints that Comcast was deliberately slowing the peer-to-peer transfer of large files.  (See http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-08-91A1.pdf.) The ALA/OITP comments highlighted these points:

--  Allowing Internet service providers to pick and choose which applications or content they will allow to pass through their networks is antithetical to the openness and level playing field upon which the Internet has thrived.
--  Libraries are content providers and the ALA has a direct, vested interest in ensuring that this content is not subject to discriminatory practices.
--  ALA is concerned that the actions of Comcast will be an open invitation for other providers likewise to discriminate against content or applications, thus making any change of providers a futile exercise in discrimination avoidance.

More information and a link to the actual ALA/OITP filing are in the February 15 ALA Dispatch at http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=371.

Just yesterday (2-25) at Harvard FCC Commissioner Michael Copps stated during an FCC hearing on broadband network management,  "The time has come for a specific enforceable principle of nondiscrimination. This principle should allow for reasonable network management, but make crystal clear that broadband network operators cannot shackle the promise of the Internet."

     -Bob Bocher, Co-chair OITP Telecommunications Subcommittee ________________________________
Bob Bocher, Technology Consultant
WI Dept. of Public Instruction
Division for Libraries, Technology and Community Learning
608-266-2127 - NEW EMAIL 1/08  robert.bocher at dpi.wi.gov