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Major League Baseball takes a swing at the FCC's fast lane internet proposal

Major League Baseball takes a swing at the FCC's fast lane internet proposal

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Do you know who's not a fan of the Federal Communication Commission's proposal to let internet service providers offer different speeds to online services? Major League Baseball. In a letter to the FCC last week, the league's digital group argued that the most recent open internet proposal could do more harm than good to consumers and upstart businesses, and likened the move to "rolling the dice."

"Fast lanes would serve only one purpose: for Broadband ISPs to receive an economic windfall," the league wrote in a letter to the FCC last week. "American consumers would be worse off as the costs of fast lanes are passed along to them in new fees or charges where there were none, or higher fees or charges where they existed." It went on say that the changes would make it more difficult for "start-up entrepreneurs and innovators" that want to build things.

"Fast lanes would serve only one purpose."

The MLB's take on the matter carries weight given how much streaming it does. The group notes that it handles the live video streaming of its own games, as well as distribution for more than 25,000 live events every year. It also joins Netflix, which argued last week that "no rules would be better than rules legalizing discrimination on the internet," along with a large group of technology companies that have condemned the move, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others.

MLB's comments are one of hundreds of thousands that were submitted during the FCC's 60-day window for the public to respond to its controversial net neutrality proposal. The deadline, which last week, came after a three day extension following outages to the FCC's site. The public now has another three weeks to reply to comments left by others.