Comcast ruling begins to clarify neutrality argument - a little

The ruling should influence thinking in Europe and the rest of the world around the boundaries between traffic management and user punishment  -  a live concern in Europe with theTelecom Package appearing to clear the way for national governments to allow traffic throttling to be used as a sanction against illegal file sharing.

The FCC judgement followed a long list of complaints from users claiming Comcast was interfering with their peer-to-peer traffic flows, especially BitTorrents and that they, er, shouldn't do it. Could they stop? The FCC considered the matter and came up with a judgement.

The verbals are worth a quote or two. “We find that it was unreasonable for Comcast to discriminate against particular Internet applications, including BitTorrent," said FCC chairman Kevin Martin. "While Comcast claimed its intent was to manage congestion, the evidence told a different story,” said Kev (we like him), who went on to unpack a new version of the post office analogy we're quite fond of on the 'Throttle the Package" campaign. He said it was like “the post office opening your mail, deciding they didn't want to bother delivering it, and hiding that fact by sending it back to you stamped 'address unknown - return to sender.'"

Comcast was given 30 days to disclose the details of its "discriminatory network practises" to the Commission and to submit a compliance plan describing how it plans to stop the practises by year-end.

The decision came as a surprise to many in the US (and us) who had expected something more muted, or even a decision which went the other way and exoneratedComcast. To that end there will be noisy appeals after which many expect a second decision to modify or overturn the first.

But even if the fat lady is still in her dressing room doing vocal exercises, we think the decision as articulated by Kev has crystallised some important principles.

First, it teases apart the technical and the commercial and makes it clear that players need to be sure they can show they're doing the former and not the latter - this is good. Secondly it highlights the importance of being clear about what you're doing and then telling people.