Comcast

On Sunday the Washington Post reported that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was "leaning towards" not reclassifying broadband, which would mean that the FCC would not have the right to regulate the Internet. If Genachowski makes this decision ultimately it would mean that communities would have to depend on the goodwill of Comcast, Verizon and other Internet Service Providers to regulate themselves… good luck with that.

On Tuesday, a U.S. Appeals Court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission did not have the authority to order Comcast to stop blocking peer-to-peer sharing on the Internet in the name of network management. While the ruling seems small, it has big implications. The basic message is that the FCC cannot enforce Network Neutrality, which is the principle that our corporate Internet Service Providers cannot block content or treat different pieces of content differently. The concern is that without network neutrality in place, companies like Comcast and Verizon will decide what we see, hear and read on the Internet, in much the same way that Fox News (The New Corporation) and NBC (Viacom... soon to be Comcast) do with our TV.

On Thursday February 4, the Senate held hearings on the potential merger of Comcast and NBC Universal. During the hearings Senator Al Franken warned that we should be nervous about the companies that own our media and we should be particularly nervous when one company owns both the means to produce programs and the pipes that deliver those same programs. Senator Franken later went on to detail his dealings with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts regarding the merger, depicting either extreme dishonesty or incompetence.

On Tuesday, we officially learned that Comcast has challenged the City of Philadelphia's application to the federal government for stimulus funds to build broadband infrastructure for disenfranchised communities. This decision by Comcast exhibits the worst of corporate malfeasance and it must be challenged.