Court Ruled in Favor of Comcast

Court rules in favour of Comcast

Internet has grown with leaps and bounds over the years. It has in fact become a very large and important part of the business structure of many companies and world economies. Millions of people use Internet for various reasons ranging from its initial use of collection of information to more complex duties of designing machines and creating and sharing various ideas. E-commerce is a very high volume market now, with billions of dollars transferred all over the world.

ISP or internet service providers provide their users with the connection to access the internet. In the developed countries these are very large companies that control a major chunk of the traffic volume.

In 2008 Comcast, one of the major ISPs was forced into litigation against controlling the flow of traffic. This was seen as a land mark case because there are certain rules and features of the Internet which can be used for personal gain or even abuse. The rules which govern the Internet are not strict and there are people who agree or disagree with them on both sides. As a result of this case a pivotal point has been reached. Recently a court has ruled that the FCC or the federal communications commission cannot ask the company to deregulate its traffic regulation practices. This has been seen by many as a very important decision, since whoever controls the internet is essentially playing God. Hence the courts siding with Comcast seems to have brought up a very heated discussion.

There are numerous applications that operate on the internet. One of the most popular activities on the internet is downloading of files. Movies, music, pictures, software and many other things can be now downloaded. The software which is used for this is called a torrent client. The FCC had a specific issue with Comcast throttling the traffic of this program. This means in essence that they would control the traffic that originates through the use of the torrent client software. This issue was raised because current torrent software client requires a large network of online computers for this process to facilitate.

Hence by controlling the flow of traffic, the company is essentially controlling the operation of online computers. Comcast did not find this as infringement of any laws and appealed against the ruling. The court ruled in favour of Comcast saying that there cannot be any strict guidelines for the control of traffic on the internet. It is used by millions and they have the right to use what they paid for. Deregulation cannot be seen as a safe thing because manipulation of numbers and various other malpractices can occur.

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