FCC will bar Web firms from blocking file sharing

Chairman Kevin Martin said the FCC will adopt rules prohibiting Internet companies, like Comcast, from blocking file sharing. (Dennis Brack/Bloomberg News/File 2008)

WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission will adopt rules barring Internet service providers such as Comcast Corp. from interfering with their customers' ability to share videos and other online files.

A majority of the five-member commission has agreed the FCC can halt the practice, chairman Kevin Martin said yesterday. The agency has scheduled a Friday public hearing for a vote.

The agency also plans to censure Comcast, the largest US cable-television company, for interfering with customers using peer-to-peer file-sharing services, according to two people with knowledge of the plans. Comcast will be required to take corrective action and won't face a fine, one of the people said.

"We continue to assert that our network management practices were reasonable," Sena Fitzmaurice, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia-based company, said. Comcast has said it delays the transfer of some files when networks are congested to preserve service for other customers.

Martin on July 11 said Comcast had violated rules by hampering customers' transfer of big files such as movies, and he said he wanted to stop the practice.

Those voting to censure Comcast include Martin, a Republican, and both agency Democrats, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, according to two people who declined to be identified because decisions are confidential until published.

FCC commissioner Robert McDowell in a column in The Washington Post yesterday said engineers have collaborated to solve problems of Internet congestion. "If we chose regulation over collaboration, we will be setting a precedent by thrusting politicians and bureaucrats into engineering decisions," he wrote. "Let's stick with what works."

"This order would send a strong signal to the marketplace that arbitrarily interfering with users' online choices is not acceptable," Marvin Ammori, general counsel for Free Press, said.