Stanford to host FCC hearing Thursday on ‘net neutrality’
BY DAN STOBER
The Federal Communications Commission will be on campus Thursday to hold a hearing on "net neutrality," a contentious issue revolving around the power of major Internet providers such as Comcast and phone companies to influence the technical workings of the web.
The marathon meeting will run from noon to 7 p.m. in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. A large audience is expected, given the intense interest in the subject at Stanford and in Silicon Valley. The hearing is hosted by Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. Stanford experts will participate in panel discussions that will take place during the hearing.
The hearings will be webcast live by the FCC at http://www.fcc.gov/realaudio/.
The hearing at Stanford follows one at Harvard on the same subject in February. The discussion there focused on Comcast's actions in slowing down the Internet traffic of peer-to-peer sharing technologies such as BitTorrent. Comcast officials said the interference was a matter of network management, while critics argued that Comcast's actions, if not restricted, could give the company an advantage in the Internet movie market.
The Center for Internet and Society is a public interest technology law and policy program. It brings together scholars, academics, legislators, students, programmers, security researchers and scientists to study the interaction of new technologies and the law.
The founder and director of the center is law Professor Lawrence Lessig. Lauren Gelman is the executive director.