Leading Internet Companies Against Fast Lanes; Disapprove DPI

The Internet Association (see members) announced that it "submitted its comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging Commissioners to take strong and decisive action to guarantee an open Internet for the future. 

The Internet Association’s comments mark the first time that more than two dozen of the world’s most-recognizable and successful Internet companies have spoken with a unified voice on the issue of Net Neutrality. The Internet Association’s comments to the FCC (here) can be distilled into three key tenets necessary to secure and preserve an open Internet for the future:

1. Internet Users Should Get What They Want, When They Want It
     The Internet should be free from censorship, discrimination and anticompetitive behavior, protected by simple and enforceable rules that ensure a consumer’s equal access to the content they want.
     
2. Internet Users Should Get What They Pay For
   Broadband subscribers should get the bandwidth they are paying for – content should be treated equally, without degradations in speed or quality. No artificial slow lanes.
     
3. All Networks Should Have Equal Protection
   No matter how users choose to connect to the Internet, net neutrality rules should apply universally on both wireless and wireline networks.

In its comments, The Internet Association also expressed concern that broadband providers are discriminating among sources and types of Internet traffic in real-time, presenting a major problem for both consumers and content providers"

In its submission, the Association refers to DPI as the technology doing all those horrible things: "DPI allows broadband Internet access providers to examine an information packet during its end-to-end transmission process in record time. Essentially, it allows them to view the contents of the traffic that their customers send and receive. It also allows them to arbitrarily create, modify, or delete packets to delay, redirect, copy, or block content ..  While DPI has certain legitimate uses, it clearly can be used to intrude on Internet traffic. It can censor information packets. It can limit access to specific Internet applications. It can insert code into Internet traffic, and direct certain packets to be prioritized over others. Or it can direct the network to block certain content altogether. 

See "The Internet Association Comments on FCC Net Neutrality Proposal" - here.