The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today voted to stop Comcast from blocking legal file-sharing activities on its network as a violation of the FCC's net neutrality principles.

The fact that the FCC felt they had sufficient grounds to hold Comcast accountable shows how egregious the violation was, as the FCC's principles are weak and it has given itself limited enforcement capacity.

It is unclear at this time if Comcast will be fined, but at the very least they must stop blocking peer-to-peer traffic and disclose the methods it uses for "network management."

Comcast recently released new "terms of service" which clearly spell out their intention to censor free speech.  Anything that a reasonable person would consider indecent has the potential of being blocked. 

The company also stated that their network is not good enough to hold space for all the activity that their customers need, therefore they plan to "delay" access for peer-to-peer applications during the most congested times.

With the Internet out there without protection from the telecoms, these corporations have carved out their spaces and made competition and innovation moot.  Remember, these are the reasons set out there for deregulation in the first place.  Without competition and innovation, there is no reason for the telecoms to improve their networks, even enough to provide their customers with basic access.

Comcast's new terms of service: A recipe for discrimination

The Associated Press today broke a story proving that Comcast is not following Net Neutrality principles.

This case is specifically with a file sharing program called BitTorrent. If you are using BitTorrent, this is what happens if you are a Comcast subscriber, "Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer -- it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: "Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye.""

But why? And what else are they doing this to?

Without Net Neutrality laws, they could give preferential treatment to emails from one political viewpoint over another, certain websites wouldn't load as fast as others, and they could shut down access altogether to sites they don't like or don't pay them enough.

This latest revelation proves they are willing and able to do it.

How well are a Comcast employee's nap, censorship, and Net Neutrality related?

Very closely, it turns out.

Earlier this month, ABC's Nightline did a segment on abuse of consumers by large corporations, featuring a video of a Comcast employee who fell asleep on a customer's couch while he was supposed to be making repairs.  The segment also showed anti-Comcast websites and reported that Comcast hires people to monitor such sites, as Timothy Karr reports on SavetheInternet.com.

However, when the Nightline episode appeared on Comcast's video-on-demand service, the "sleepy technician" video and the remarks critical of Comcast had mysteriously disappeared.

Compare the original Nightline version with Comcast's version.

Last year, Portland's city council passed the first municipal Voter-Owned Elections law. The city's big corporate players responded by spending almost $350K collecting petition signatures in an attempt to place a repeal before voters on the May 06 ballot. The supporters of the repeal effort make up a who's who of Portland corporate interests: Portland Business Alliance, Qwest, Portland General Electric, Comcast, etc.

And it now looks like they've failed!