FCC Slaps Comcast On The Wrist, Because What The Hell Is “Lawful Traffic,” Anyhow?
After more than a year of hand-wringing and public outcry from users, Comcast (along with other big-box ISP’s like AT&T and Verizon) has finally received a stern rap on the knuckles from the FCC, who’ve ruled that ISPs are not allowed to block or slow lawful Web traffic. But in the vagaries of that ruling is enough murk to basically allow Comcast and others do basically do whatever the hell the want for another few years, until the FCC investigates more complaints of blockages and preferential treatment. Why? Because as soon as you see the phrase “lawful traffic,” you know there’s gonna be trouble. On one hand, we can agree about some things that would qualify as unlawful traffic: DoS attacks, child pornography, spamming and scamming and other universally despised crimes. But after that, you get into some super-vague stuff: Some would argue that bit-torrenting music is illegal; others would not. Same with sharity blogs that use download services like Mediafire or Rapidshare. And there’s probably hundreds of other “gray area” instances where “lawful traffic” could be debated and, with this ruling, Comcast may or may not be within its rights to block. So this decision basically does… nothing. Thanks, FCC. Glad to see that worked out for you.
