Vuze pitches into Comcast fray
p2pnet news | Freedom:- When Azureus launched its Zudeo content indexing site for finding and sharing large video files, it said it’d be partnering with 20 major, TV and film studios to provide free programs, p2pnet posted, going on:
“Its collaborators weren’t named at the time, but at least one of them has since ushered itself into the limelight – the BBC.”
Zudeo is now Vuze and Gilles BianRosa, the man who runs it, has thrown himself into the fast developing Comcast controversy.
Comcast has admitted it tampers with file sharing and Jon Hart says the actions amount to violations of federal computer fraud laws, user contracts and anti-fraudulent advertising statutes.
So he’s suing it.
Consumer groups and legal scholars have also entered the battle, demanding that the Federal Communications Commission stop Comcast from tampering with file sharing.
Now, in a document replete with glaring marketing prose and launched on Public Knowledge, BianRosa is petitioning the FCC to, “commence a rulemaking proceeding to determine the parameters of ‘reasonable network management’ by broadband network operators and to establish that such network management does not permit network operators to block, degrade, or unreasonably discriminate against lawful Internet applications, content or technologies.”
Vuze, says the document, is, “aware that at least one major broadband network operator, Comcast, is attempting deliberately to degrade and, at times, block content from Vuze and other Internet companies that use similar P2P technology”.
It continues >>>
VVuze believes that other broadband network operators are engaging in similar tactics. Such arbitrary discrimination against traffic carried on their networks runs counter to the Commission’s policy of ‘preserv[ing] and promot[ing] the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet.’ The deliberate degrading and blocking of content also calls into question whether consumers are effectively able to ‘access the lawful Internet content of their choice,’ ‘run applications and use services of their choice,’ and benefit fully from ‘competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers,’ again as required by Commission policy.
Comcast’s actions starkly raise the issue of whether broadband network operators should be permitted the unfettered discretion to restrict or block traffic carried on their networks and to censor legal content or discriminate against applications and services that they may perceive as competing with their offerings. The time is ripe for the Commission to act to foster an open Internet in the face of the growing power of network operators and their seeming willingness to ignore the essential elements of the Commission’s broadband policy and the imperatives of future innovation on the Internet.
Stay tuned.
(Thanks, Mel)
Also See:
p2pnet – BBC opts for Zudeo, December 20, 2006
suing it – Comcast sued for blocking file sharing, November 15, 2007
entered the battle – Leave file sharing alone, Comcast told, November 1, 2007
Public Knowledge – Public Knowledge Supports Vuze FCC Petition To Ban Internet Discrimination, November 15, 2007
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