Comcast blocks torrents, Lotus for the greater good; Skype next?
So far Comcast is shutting down IBM Lotus uploads and bittorrents. A U.S. ISP arrogantly deciding they know better than their paying customers which bits deserve standard treatment and which should be punished. Discriminating based on the content of those bits. They call it "network management" or "traffic shaping" for the good of the network. Rogers in Canada throttled traffic almost two years' ago. China does this every day; Skype Journal is still blocked in China. Censorship by any other name...
Skype could be next. Nothing in law or contract keeps Comcast from disrupting your communication based on your content. For all we know, Comcast does this now.
What to do about this? David Isen says a Net Neutrality law is not enough.
If, instead, we had a law that said, "Network operators must not have a financial interest in any of the content carried by that network," we could be assured that any network operator's network management would be for the sole purpose of running the network. Such a law would keep government out of the network management business. Enforcement would be via financial audit. Such a law is called Structural Separation.
Professor Susan Crawford calls for Weinbergerian Delamination:
What's the solution? Structural separation. You’re either a plain-vanilla transport company serving all comers, or you’re something else competing for our attention. But this mixture, this hybrid of apparent-communication plus editorial control, is unacceptable.
Proof that Comcast's behavior is evil? The pimps for laisse faire at the Technology Liberation Front don't seem to mind it.

