FCC's Julius Genachowski just took out his mighty sword to kill internet providers' greed-driven traffic filtering, and the fat cats are already attacking. A Comcast fat cat named David L. Cohen, who of course is playing the FUD card.
Cohen is Comcast's executive vice-president for broadband. And of course, he believes that the FCC should get their hands off the internet. Because, you know, everything is perfectly fine now that private companies are controlling it, making sure to block or throttle down any traffic they want, like they did a few months ago. And these internet companies just want to keep doing this because—according to him—that's what benefits all of us, the consumers and companies trying to make free use of a vital infrastructure. One that should be neutral for everyone.
The Comcast VP gets the demagogical corpospeak award of the month with a headline that summarizes his article perfectly: "Does the internet need more regulation? FCC to decide". As in: "Oh, the big BAD government wants to regulate YOUR internet. Are you going to let them do that, your ignorant peasants you?" This comes from a guy who is working for Comcast. You know, the company that the FCC took to court because they were illegally throttling down bandwidth for certain internet applications.
So, does the internet need more regulation, Señor Cohen? Yes, it does. Regulation against you arbitrarily deciding to regulate the service we pay for. And so you and your pals in the communications and entertainment industries don't get all cozy and snuggly to take services or companies out of the network, just because you want to at any given point.
That's not regulation against consumers and companies. That's regulation to avoid that you keep doing whatever you want to in your own benefit, and against the interests of everyone else. [Comcast via Crunchgear]