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FCC formally rules Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent was illegal

Federal regulators voted 3-2 on Friday to declare that Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic last year was unlawful, marking the first time that any U.S. broadband provider has ever been found to violate Net neutrality rules.

Apparently Comcast was mad at all those people who were sharing all those huge music and video files with a million of their closest friends using peer to peer software that can't be shut down as easily as Napster does. These people use way more of the internet than you or I updating this blog, yet they pay the same amount every month. "Excessive", Comcast called it, without defining what that meant. So Comcast had to either put in a whole lot more bandwidth, or make everyone suffer for these "file sharers", who are probably sharing files illegally anyway. They came up with a third option - slow down the file sharers while keeping "regular" traffic untouched. Which, I suppose may be a good way to do it, AS LONG AS YOU TELL US YOU'RE DOING IT BEFORE WE SIGN THE DOTTED LINE!

Net neutrality says that people should be able to use any application over the internet. Which is fine, I agree with that. However, these applications start to cause problems when they use up a whole lot of bandwidth. Because someone is sharing files, viewing videos etc. either my internet slows down or I have to pay more because my ISP has to invest more to increase bandwidth. Is that fair? Well, probably not. But we have the same problem with public goods, like the roads, or public transit, the police - I'm guessing on some of those you come out ahead, on others you don't. Overall you might even out. So I suppose I should be all for paying more if it means that I'll be able to use whatever application or device that may be invented in the future.

So, Comcast was trying to make a particular application unusable, because it (probably) cut into their profits, and so it was found illegal. However...

It (also) is likely to be challenged in court. In 2006, Congress rejected five different bills that would have handed the FCC the power to police Net neutrality violations; the FCC has acknowledged that its own Net neutrality principles "are not enforceable"; the Supreme Court has previously ruled that the FCC has no power to regulate "unless and until Congress confers power upon it."

So they made a ruling, but it is unenforceable. So why make it? How can Comcast violate rules that don't really exist yet?

In the meantime, I believe Comcast is coming up with a limit of traffic every month, above which their users would be charged for excessive traffic. The problem is that in most cases, Comcast is a monopoly. We need competition. We need to start our own ISP. Who's with me?