At a Congressional hearing, Comcast executives said the company needs to filter some traffic to keep the flow of data constant on its networks — like blocking BitTorrent file-sharing, as it was caught doing last fall. Federal Communications Commission head Kevin Martin is having none of it. "I think it's important to understand that the commission is ready, willing and able to step in if necessary to correct any (unreasonable) practices that are ongoing today," he said today. Martin wants Internet service providers to be more "transparent." Network operators have the right to manage data traffic, but that "does not mean they can arbitrarily block access to particular applications or services," he added. Translation? If you're going to block file sharing, stop lying about it.

Contact information for this author is not available.