According to Ars Technica, yesterday the FCC ordered Comcast to stop slowing down the Internet traffic of users who use excessive file-sharing (P2P) software. Instead, Comcast will slow down the Internet service of all users who use a lot of traffic, regardless of the content. Other ISP’s will probably follow Comcast’s lead.
Basically, this order means that users who are anonymously sharing software and movies using file-sharing software (the vast majority of which is pirated and illegal) must be treated the same as users who are doing things such as video chat, telecommuting, and other applications that rely on real-time communications. While not all P2P traffic is illegitimate, surely real-time applications should be given a lower priority than file-sharing. Either way – ISP’s have the right to decide how to best route traffic on their networks. Yet no law was necessary – just another politically-motivated decree from some nameless bureaucrat.
Score yet another victory for anti-corporate hysteria and the egalitarian ideology which is destroying capitalism and the rule of law in the name of “neutrality.”
comcast actually ended up just capping the bandwidth not slowing anyone else down. Piracy is wrong and it would be fine if they could discern between pirated and legal packets and slow down the fledgling jack sparrows of the web but the difficulty stands with legal content distributed over file sharing networks (rarity Ill concede but not extinct!). Also prioritizing doesn’t work because priority depends on circumstance. I could be skyping up a friend sitting next to me for fun while someone trying to pull down an important time sensitive document remotely from their computer experiences dog slow speeds. Thoughts?