Fighting Comcast’s duality brutality.

    A new piece of legislation, "The Internet Preservation Act of 2008", has been introduced to support Net Neutrality. Although the bill itself is rather general and narrow in scope, if passed, it will have severe repercussions to internet providers (read Comcast) which throttle or block certain types of traffic.

    As US Congressman Edward J. Markey stated: "Internet freedom generally embodies the notion that consumers and content providers should be free to send, receive, access and use the lawful applications, content, and services of their choice on broadband networks, possess the effective right to attach and use non-harmful devices to use in conjunction with their broadband services, and that content providers not be subjected to unreasonably discriminatory practices by broadband network providers.". Trying to translate it from politicospeak, he states “Comcast bugger off”.

    As you may have heard, Comcast is screwing with their customers internet use by throttling bit torrent traffic, starting some nine months ago. Of course Comcast denied doing this even after the entire world had already verified it to be true. But then again, big corporations don’t have to be truthful; they just have to make money. In the meantime Comcast is the target of a class action lawsuit as well as an investigation by the FCC. As a result, Comcast recently updated its terms of service to better correspond with how they were actually screwing their customer’s.

    In the meantime however, the internet community in itself is still unclear if Net Neutrality is a good thing or not. Some say that Net Neutered would stifle content providers abilities to innovate, upgrade and improve their services as well as slowing acceptance of new technologies by customers. The opposition says exactly the same; that ISP’s will be unable to innovate, upgrade and improve their networks.

    It seems to me the truth is, as usual, somewhere in the middle, and it is best to leave well enough alone. Except Comcast of course.