The Federal Communications Commision was founded in 1934 "For the purpose of
regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio
so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United
States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national
origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio
communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges" (47
U.S.C. § 151).

It is my opinion as a gainfully employed worker in the field of web development
that the recent comments filed in proceeding 17-60 amount to nothing less than
a total abdication of the founding purpose of the commision. The FCC exists in
order to provide *all people of the United States* access to communication
service, and now it proposes to just stand by the wayside as businesses exploit
natural monopolies at whim? You do not serve the interests of the corporations
of the United States, Mr. Chairman, you serve the interests of the people.

At its core, the Internet transmits a series of binary 1s and 0s across a wire
from one machine to another. The relevant parties in this exchange are the
requesting machine (the end user), the providing machine (the server), and the
pipe between the two (the internet service provider). The arguments laid out by
the commission in paragraph 27 of proceeding 17-60 disingeniuosly conflate the
roles of the ISP and the providing server - they are *not* one and the same.
None of the information capabilities in question (generating, acquiring,
storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available)
are satisified by ISPs in isolation; the servers utilize the service to offer
said capabilities to end users.

The arguments made in paragraph 29 are similarly disingenious. There is a
functional difference between the physical points where information is stored
or transmitted, and the abstract "virtual" location intended by the user. To
extend the ever popular "information highway" metaphor, I may leave my home in
Boston with the intention of going to Los Angeles. I do not have a preset list
of points I will hit during the drive; that depends on the congestion of the
road network as a drive through various cities, the state of the roads, or any
number of other factors. This does not change the fact that I am still
travelling between points I specified. This is no different than my saying I
want to send some bits to Google, a well-known virtual endpoint.

In closing, I believe the commision is currently attempting to dismantle the
common sense regulation of the Internet as a common carrier for no reason other
than to grant enormous natural monopolies to ISPs. Enabling the rent-seeking
behaviors this will inevitably lead to is inherently opposed to the founding
charter of this commission, and represents a total dereliction of its duties.

Bits are bits, and data is data. ISPs simply transmit them. Net neutrality is
vital for ensuring the availability of world-wide communication to the people
of this country. Please do not proceed with dismantling it.