Engineering Task Force, said among IETF volunteer members there is "no consensus on how to manage in elastic and elastic applications" and as a technical body not apolitical one it hasn't an opinion on public policy regarding the Internet.
The hearing drew diverse groups in support of net neutrality from Free Press, which in two years has collected 1.5 million signatures on its Save the Internet petition, to the Christian Coalition of America,the largest and most active conservative grassroots political organization in the U.S.
"We believe that organizations such as the Christian Coalition should be able to continue to use the Internet to communicate with our members and with a worldwide audience without a phone or a cable company snooping in on our communications and deciding whether to allow a particular communication to proceed, slow it down, block it, or offer to speed it up if the author pays extra to be in the 'fast lane'," said Michele Combs, vice president of communications of the CCA.
Three years ago the FCC established four principals supporting open Internet access but has not established any specific regulations.Meanwhile despite the Supreme Court confirming the FCC's right to regulate ISPs, Comcast has challenged the FCC's authority.
"We are here facing these problems because of a failure of FCC policy," said Larry Lessig, a Stanford Law School professor and founder of the Center for Internet and Society. "The F.C.C. has failed to make it absolutely clear that network owners, if they're building the Internet, have to make it absolutely open. Consumers are saying don't thread on me."
In remarks before the testimony, one of the FCC commissioners,Deborah Taylor Tate, said that she was encouraged by several steps Comcast and other network operators made after the Harvard Law School hearing last February.
"Technology and the marketplace seem to be responding to appropriate oversight mechanisms," Tate said. Her remarks were heckled by some in the audience.
Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, shot back accusing the FCC of "weak" management and said Comcast's recent actions to calm the net neutrality debate is not a change of heart by the ISP but "the magic of regulatory threat at work."
Jean Prewitt, president and chief executive officer of the Independent Film & Television Alliance, testified that"discrimination should not be an outcome of legitimate network management. While copyright issues are of critically important to our members, copyright concerns can't be the excuse to prevent access to the market. Don't use copyright laws to block usage. That will backfire for all of us."
During a two-hour public comment period at the end of hearing,dozens of speakers urged the FCC commissioners to protect network neutrality and free speech. Many pointed toward open access is crucial to minority groups being able to communicate and connect via the Internet and their speech would be curtailed with by tiered or pay to play Internet access proposed by some ISPs.
With consumer choices limited to one or two ISPs most locations,marketplace fails to provide a level playing field, said L. Peter Deutsch, a pioneering Xerox Palo Alto Research Center computer scientist.
"Comcast's actions to date have shown that they cannot be trusted to self regulate," Deutsch said.
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