Comcast 'on trial' at FCC hearing Monday

The great debate over Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent and perhaps other P2P apps leaves cyberspace and enters the real world as a full panel of the Federal Communications Commission heads to Harvard for a public hearing on the issue. The FCC recently released the agenda (PDF) for the meeting, which includes a tech demo by Vuze Inc., which filed a petition with the FCC against Comcast, and two panel discussions, one on policy and one on technology. The policy panel features Marvin Ammori, general counsel for Free Press, Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler, Comcast XVP David Cohen, Verizon XVP Tom Tauke, Columbia Law professor Tim Wu and Christopher Yoo of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The afternoon technology session feature Daniel Weitzner, director of MIT's Decentralized Information Group, network architect Richard Bennett, MIT research scientist David Clark, BitTorrent CTO Eric Klinker, MediaLab professor David Reed, and Scott Smyers, a Sony senior VP for network and systems architecture. Cnet's Anne Broache quotes Tim Wu:

"What we're going to see on Monday is a trial of the Internet," said Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu who has written extensively in favor of Net neutrality regulations and is slated to speak on a panel Monday. "Comcast is in the docket, accused of crimes against the public interest, and we'll see how well they are able to defend themselves."