One of the ISP companies that has been up to its neck in covert throttling has strangely anounced a p2p "bill of rights"
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080415-comcast-to-spearhead-creation-of-p2p-bill-of-rights.htmlComcast has just announced its plan to lead an industry partnership in the creation of a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" that would apply both to users and to ISPs. Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas tells Ars that the cable giant is already prepared to argue for a protocol agnostic approach to network management, an increase in upstream capacity to help alleviate congestion, and more transparency about its network management practices. If Comcast can get the ISP community on board with such proposals, more power to them, but we'll refrain from judgment until we see who's invited to sit around the table.
Comcast hopes to round up a gaggle of "industry experts, other ISPs and P2P companies, content providers and others" to help draft the document later this year. That list notably leaves out consumer advocacy groups like Free Press, Public Knowledge, and the EFF, so we asked Comcast whether they would be invited.
"We're thinking more about industry," we were told. "P2P companies, ISPs, academics."
This has all the signs of yet another assault on filesharing, lets keep our eyes open and be ready to protest if they decide that the consumers voice is of little relevance to their plans, after all this is the same company that recently went up against the FCC and is now trying hard to avoid FCC regulation of network neutrality (including throttling).
