They may not like to publicly admit it, but cable company executives realize that this looming threat is real, even if it's not overwhelming just yet. That's why they've taken a series of defensive measures to ensure they they don't get left in the dust. Lately, it's the iPad and tablets in general that are serving as big cable's next battleground for the attention of consumers.

This week, Showtime joined its premium cable channel competitor in this space by launching its Showtime Anytime app for the iPad. The application offers access to the channel's library of original content but, again, you need to be signed up for Verizon FiOS or AT&T's U-Verse to access it.

Cable behemoth Comcast has wasted no time expanding its online and mobile offerings under its XFinity brand (formerly Fancast). Most recently, the company launched a pilot program for something called AnyPlay, which will let subscribers stream live TV to their iPad or Motorola Xoom tablet. This enables people to tune in from anywhere in their home, even if somebody else in the household is currently watching a different program on the bigger screen. This is something the company started testing out last year in an effort to one-up online streaming sites like Hulu and Netflix.

Offerings like this make a cable subscription much more convenient and worthwhile to certain consumers, despite its rising prices and the existence of a host of Web-only content alternatives. For now cable companies retain the upper hand, with millions of subscribers and increasingly aggressive innovation designed to help it avoid the fate of other pre-Web media industries. Whether these efforts succeed in the long run remains to be seen. If not, there's always money to be made in selling access to the Internet itself.

If you happened to see the movie Star Trek VI (the last one with the original TV cast) when it premiered in theaters in 1991, perhaps there may have been a moment (or a dozen) when something occurred to you: You didn't have to dislike or even fail to appreciate these actors on-screen to realize, yep, there's a reason why this is - and should be - their last performance in this venue.

For most of the keynote, Ballmer was seated across a patio table from American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, both trying nervously to generate banter like two cars trying to jump start each other in an Alaska snowstorm. It was clear that Seacrest hadn't read much about the material before showing up on stage, as he was constantly searching for the location of his cues. TV people expect their cues to come from teleprompters, at eye level; public speakers look down toward monitors showing PowerPoint slides.

"We have a chance in the next year to really raise our game, our product line, to the next level, across phones, PCs, tablets, TV, the Xbox," opened Ballmer. "And really the heart and soul of that will be our kinda featured attraction tonight, our new Metro user interface."

Not since 1995 has the layout of an operating system been considered the keynote attraction at an electronics conference. Metro is the overall style of layout being applied to new apps for Windows Phone, Windows 8, and now Xbox 360. "I think people will be kind of impressed at how it lights everything up."

Seacrest thought that was a cue for something. It wasn't, so he searched for some sense of direction. Finding none at eye-level, he quickly ad-libbed: "When you said, 'Metro,' you looked at me in a strange way... Is it the jacket, the sweater, or the combination?" Ballmer got the joke, and then feigned laughter, which is about the second most painful thing you can witness Ballmer ever doing.

Even for a company that may yet have some irons in the fire, it was hard to watch this company stretch things out for time. There were truly painful moments, reminiscent of sitting through an infomercial for Time-Life Music, with some '50s legend of the stage now running on fumes, filling an hour reminding you about how excited he was and how great the past used to be.

It's no secret that stage show producers plant folks in the audience to help applaud at the right moments and generate enthusiasm (I've sat next to a few). This year, when the applause came from about eight people in response to the arrival on-stage of the Windows Phone part of the presentation, the groans from the rest of the crowd drowned them out.

Then Seacrest, who truly is a stranger to quiet crowds, tried to jump in and save the day, as though this were a Vegas lounge act and it was bombing. Holding out his hand in their direction as if to invite them to stand, he said, "The design team over here."

"We definitely took a different approach than everybody else," Ballmer then explained, "and I think we've got a unique and beneficial experience. All these phones these days, they all make calls, they connect to the Internet, they e-mail, social networks, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah," he added in what has come to be heralded as Ballmer's typically dismissive attitude toward market categories where his company is not the leader.

"If you take a look at it, the other phones make the sea of icons, the sea of applications, the kind of view of the world. What we've really done with Windows Phone, I think, is have a better way by putting your people, the people who are important to you, whether it's dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions in somebody's case, I might think," the CEO added, trying to hand off to Seacrest. There was a train of thought there that would have been oh, so welcome at CES 2009, when Microsoft had a prototype concept but opted instead to hold those cards close to its chest, and tout Windows Mobile instead.

When Ballmer moved to the topic of Windows 8, the old syndrome continued to rear its ugly head: starting a new train of thought, building a metaphor, and then finding himself descending into a list of things popping into his head that, impulsively, he could not then ignore.

"Of course, things change - that's the essence of this industry," he replied to Seacrest at one point. "In some senses, maybe the only two things that are constant: Number one, things change. And number two, people don't want to compromise on what they have today. They want the best of what they have and the best of what they want. Nobody wanted to give up anything they had on their desktop, for example, when the world moved to notebooks. It's a wonderful thing. The Windows PCs evolved - it was a programming machine, it was a productivity machine, a music machine, a video machine, an Internet machine. But we don't give up anything."

This evening, we saw the first sign of later builds of Windows 8 running on "Intel-inspired" ultrabooks, than the Developer's Preview that premiered last fall in Anaheim. The green background tone of the Metro-style Start menu has been muted to more of a teal, and multiple saved bookmarks in IE10 are now multi-colored. Besides these factors, there was not much noticeable difference.

Easily the most painful moment of the evening came, sadly, from a gospel choir that had been hired to improvise wonderful, joyful sounds based on tweets that were being streamed in over the speakers' monitors below stage. It wasn't painful for the music; the voices were actually good. Some of the tweets they were singing were selected refrains of excitement from viewers looking forward to the upcoming Xbox-related announcements.

And here they were: The arrival of the Metro-style interface for selecting programming choices (which some Xbox players are already doing). This was followed by a preview of a Metro-style programming guide for Verizon FiOS, which will soon also be tailored for Comcast subscribers (who know they'll still have to subscribe to Comcast's HD STBs whether they use Xboxes instead or not).

And a live demonstration of a little girl who was obviously a few years graduated from Sesame Street, using the Kinect tool to toss imaginary coconuts into Grover's cardboard box.

Not all of these are bad things - certainly I would have seriously considered this Kinect app for my daughter had it been made available a decade earlier. It's just that the first rule of public speaking is "Know Your Audience," and this amalgam of software-related events, most of which we've already seen, speaks to a vastly different audience than the one assembled here in Las Vegas. The audience is doing the types of things that Ballmer describes as "blah-blah-blah-blah-blah." There was a disconnect this year, a clear sign that Microsoft has moved one way and CES another. Rather than prolong the agony, perhaps it's best to just say it's time, and move on.

True to its word, Comcast has indeed backed off from throttling Bit Torrent traffic, as new data from Measurement Lab demonstrates. Three years ago, the company interfered with about half of all Bit Torrent traffic on its networks. Today, that number is down to 3%.

This type of network traffic management is apparently much more common in Canada, where most major ISPs do it, sometimes blocking as much as 78% of the traffic, which is far more than Comcast was ever caught doing. In Britain, things are a bit more mixed. BT Group throttled about 27% of Bit Torrent traffic, while another big ISP, BSkyB, only blocked 3% of it.

ISPs in France and Sweden allow their customers to exchange files via Bit Torrent without limitations.

The compete data set, complete with interactive charts is available for your curious perusal here.

By 2016, the number of households that do not subscribe to a traditional pay TV service will triple from what it is today. All told, 9 million households won't have cable, Magnaglobal predicts. Of those, about 4 million are what we'd call cord cutters; people who once subscribed to cable but canceled it in favor of accessing television content via the Internet using a set top box or computer hooked up to their TV sets.

The number of people who never signed up for cable is expected to double - to 5 million, from 2.5 million today - by 2016, according to the report. Meanwhile, growth of DVR ownership is expected to slow down, as the devices become less necessary in light of stream-anytime Web content sitting waiting in people's video queues.

The cable industry, having seen this coming, is preparing its own preemptive strikes. Comcast and Verizon are rumored to be bringing cable subcriptions to Microsoft's XBox 360, a gaming console that effectively doubles as a set-top box. Comcast has rolled out its own Web TV initiative called "TV Anywhere" that lets paying subscribers watch content from a variety of devices. They also bought a giant content company, just in case.

Photo by Windell Oskay

Specifically, Comcast and Verizon are talking with Microsoft about the possibility of including cable subscriptions via the Xbox 360, according to a report from Digiday. The tech giant's gaming console, which already streams content from sources like Netflix, Hulu Plus and others, could in effect become a cable box if Microsoft manages to strike a deal ahead of its upcoming release of Xbox TV.

For its part, Apple has famously described its set-top box as "a hobby" but is widely rumored to be working on producing an Internet-connected HDTV set, which may hit the market as early as next year. Smaller companies like Roku and Boxee have found enthusiastic niche audiences for their set-top boxes, but nothing approaching mainstream adoption and not without content-related issues of their own.

With over 53 million units on the market worldwide, the Xbox has a far bigger reach than all four of those Web-only devices combined. By enabling consumers to subscribe to cable from Xboxes, Comcast and Verizon would help make the the device much more attractive to consumers, who may be less likely to cut the cord if the cable experience is made easily available from the same device they use to stream Internet video, play games and so much else.

Comcast has been aggressive in its attempts to thwart the disruptive challenge the Internet poses to its traditional business model. Inclusion on Xbox gaming consoles makes sense as part of the company's "TV Everywhere" model, which is designed to keep its offerings desirable in the eyes of consumers, who are increasingly expecting the ability to watch content at any time, on any device. The cable giant has also invested heavily in everything from hardware to content.

Do you think Comcast and other cable companies will hang onto subscribers by adapting like this or are they pretty much doomed? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Comcast is one of the first cable companies to meaningfully compete in the content market, instead of being a "dumb pipe" operator. Comcast's desire to be in the content business became apparent with its massive take over of NBC Universal approved last year. In terms of content monetization against the other operators like Verizon, AT&T or Time Warner, Comcast is now ahead of the curve.

This move was not unexpected. NBC now has its own dedicated streaming application, just like ABC does with its ABC Player. The intrigue becomes apparent when you look at the XFinity streaming app in the context of Hulu Plus, which is reportedly looking to sell and has a number of possible suitors. Per its agreement with federal regulators when the NBC Universal takeover was granted, Comcast does not have a seat on Hulu's board and has no say in decisions that happen at the company. It is unlikely that the Federal Trade Commission would allow Comcast to buy Hulu outright from the other network partners (Fox and ABC), so coming up with a robust streaming application of its own makes a lot of sense.

"Because of Hulu and Netflix, Comcast has been incredibly agile for a $60 billion company," said Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental.

For its part, Elemental is a company on the rise. It has been developing its IP-streaming product for years and is gaining steam in the era of the iPad. See the infographic to the right to see how closely correlated Elemental's growth is to that of the iPad.

Instead of being a CPU-intensive video processor, Elemental is primarily GPU (graphic processor unit) in its video processing, which makes it a lot more scalable than competitors that rely on CPU. Its technology allows content to be streamed across almost any device and over almost any bit-rate, making it very versatile and flexible. With the rise of IP content-streaming devices (like an actual Apple TV or Internet connected TVs), Elemental is only going to keep growing.

Comcast is also a partner in the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem consortium that is developing UltraViolet, the digital rights management solution kicked off by the networks and studios. Elemental is not a partner in DECE but it is following UltraViolet closely and will be able to conform to the standards (Common File Format) that UltraViolet is creating.

The question for Comcast is whether or not users will flock to the XFinity app like they have with Hulu and Netflix or even the ABC Player or HBO Go. This type of application was precisely what Comcast had in mind when it rebranded Comcast cable and Internet service to XFinity several years ago.

Customer trials of the new service will begin in "the coming months," but no exact date was given for the service's wider launch, only that more details will be made available "later this year."

Comcast users who sign up for the Skype service will be able to make both audio and video calls from their TV, even while watching a TV show at the same time. They will be able to accept incoming calls during a TV show, too, with help from Caller ID.

To use Skype via the TV, an HDTV will be required, plus a broadband connection, an adapter box, a high-quality HD video camera and a specially designed remote control. This remote will allow customers to text on Skype as well as control their television. Everything but the TV will be provided by Comcast, but the price for this Skype kit has not yet been determined.

Customers will also be able to switch from the TV to compatible mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) and back, the companies state.

This collaboration is a first of its kind for Skype, which has not yet had a partnership with a TV provider in the U.S., but it's not the first time Skype has been made available on the big screen. The company's website lists a number of compatible TVs from partners who offer Skype built-in to the sets themselves.

The new addition of Skype to the TV won't impact Comcast's own phone service, it seems, as the company is planning to disable the Skype feature that lets users call actual phone numbers ("Skype out"). Instead, according to reports, Comcast will bundle a limited version of Skype plus its own phone service to the adapter it provides customers, with plans starting at $20 and up. This feature will not be available at launch, however.

Last month, Microsoft agreed to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion. Under that deal, Microsoft plans to bring Skype to a number of new outlets, too, including TVs by way of the Xbox 360, plus Windows Phone, Lync, Outlook and other Windows devices and communities.

When giants walk, all others be wary. Comcast's goal is to bring live television to any device that can access the Internet. Its test will be available to MIT students who will be able to watch video on any device this fall. Is this what consumers have been waiting for? Who better to do it than a cable company with a giant infrastructure and content distribution broadcast rights?

Yet, according to The Wall Street Journal, Comcast will not make wholesale changes to the way it delivers television content, at least at first. Television over IP "would eventually be added to its existing suite of services; it will continue to offer its traditional cable service for the foreseeable future."

Cresting The Wave Of Internet Television

Comcast is not the first to get into television over IP, but the ability to watch all live television from any device would be a big step. Verizon FiOS, Time Warner, DirecTV, AT&T U-Verse and Cablevision Systems (CSC) all use IP to deliver video. WSJ points out that the ability to deliver television through the Internet is only part of the equation: distribution rights for programs over new and varying technologies clouds the scope of existing contracts and what can be seen, where, when and how. Will Comcast be able to show all of its television offerings live or will the content owners block some or all of their offerings?

Digital rights and distribution timing have been a problem for Netflix and Hulu. Netflix needs to license the content to be able to stream it and content owners are not entirely willing to just hand it to them cheap. The owners of Hulu include the major broadcast networks - Fox, NBC (owned by Comcast) and ABC and at this point new shows appear on service 24 hours after debuting and then only with a limited catalogue of previous shows.

Specifically, he Tweeted that he's going to Tweet. At 8 PM EST tonight. Presumably about why he left his show so abruptly. Was it because of the Comcast/NBC merger the day before? Was it not that at all, but rather longer-running tensions between the star and management? We'll be able to hear it directly from the horse's mouth in just over 5 hours. In 140 character chunks.

None of these are huge news in and of themselves, but together they paint a picture of dramatic change. Change away from a past where huge audiences sat passively and consumed a small quantity of time-restricted, highly-produced streams of content, delivered through a limited number of distribution channels that were secured by conglomerates at great cost. The days in which there was just one media game in town are fading fast, pushed into history one Tweet at a time.

Now we live in a different world, a post-Cold War information age. Power used to hinge in large part over who had the biggest bomb stockpile. In the future it may be a question of whose voice and content gets delivered through the tubes. If this deal goes through, the many tubes that belong to Comcast will have a vested interest in getting NBC content to customers fast. Other content, not as much. Into that breach may come legislation. The openness of the Web will be hotly debated.

They excerpt the following from the public statement of the one dissenter in the four to one FCC vote to approve the deal, senior Democratic commissioner, Michael J. Copps.

"[It] confers too much power in one company's hands...The Comcast-NBCU joint venture opens the door to the cable-ization of the open Internet. The potential for walled gardens, toll booths, content prioritization, access fees to reach end users, and a stake in the heart of independent content production is now very real."

The FCC has imposed a list of conditions on the deal that are intended to prevent that from happening, as well as compensate society for our trouble through steps like providing increased connectivity to underserved communities and more Spanish language programming. It seems like an interesting admission that this deal is risky for the interests of the rest of us that these kinds of conditions are included!

What do you think about the Telecom Industrial Complex buying the old peacock?

Eliason was named Senior Director in National Customer Operations at Comcast just one year ago and has only been at Comcast at all for less than 3 years. Stardom can be built up fast in the young world of social media, however, and as a widely studied ground-breaker Eliason could likely now get a job at almost any company in the world. A specific but unnamed opportunity to do social media work in the financial services industry, where Eliason has worked for years before, is next on his agenda, according to his blog post on the Comcast site.

If you tweet about problems with Comcast, someone responds. Quickly. And they stick with you. It's not just because you're special though, or even just because they are. The Comcast customer service team uses the latest and greatest social media CRM (customer relationship management) software, behind the scenes.

We described that technology in detail in April 2009, (This Machine Eats Tweets: The System Behind @Comcast and Others) at a time when the field of social media CRM was less widely adopted and discussed.

Eliason and his team built an incredible amount of goodwill and industry admiration through their customer service work on Twitter. @ComcastCares will long be a case study taught in schools. Comcast hasn't traditionally been a much-loved company and Eliason really made an impact on the public's perception. (Was his resignation motivated by having been one-upped by the Old Spice guy this week and needing to do something new to regain his crown? Imagine if that were the case!)

Can Eliason do something as marvelous in financial services? That's no small challenge, and his next gig won't be the first of its kind in the same way. It will, however, be interesting to watch.

Starting today, you can follow Frank Eliason on his new Twitter account, @FrankEliason.

I discerned three important nuggets from Roberts:

• Comcast will continue to invest in higher-bandwidth connections into homes.
• Comcast will invest in content more aggressively.
• Comcast will officially launch Hulu-competing Fancast.com by the year's end.

The first two points make a ton a sense. The third point is... well, miscalculated.

I am convinced Brian Roberts understands the challenges ahead. This is why Comcast and Time Warner (which also clearly "gets" it) have been aggressively pursuing a "TV Everywhere" model, which promises to give their subscribers exactly what they want: anytime, anywhere access to any TV content. They have to do this to keep their customer bases.

But in a TV Everywhere world, the role of the multi-system operator is diminished. Your cable or satellite TV provider will no longer be your only (legal) means of watching the current episode of HBO's Entourage. In a TV Everywhere world, Entourage will be available on literally thousands of websites and mobile apps, as long as you can authenticate yourself as a paying cable or satellite subscriber with the HBO package.

In this world, the value of Comcast as a content distributor is eroded. Comcast risks becoming a "dumb pipe," providing little more than bandwidth. To avoid that fate, Comcast recognizes that it needs to move upstream and own or control the content itself. This is why it will buy NBC in the next few months.

Moving upstream and investing in content is a smart move for Comcast.

Moving downstream and competing with Hulu via Fancast.com is a bad move. Here's why:

• Hulu already has a huge lead, having aggressively grown its audience for more than a year now.
• Hulu would be the ideal launching pad for TV Everywhere, because of its mega-loyal and passionate audience.
• Comcast is about to own a third of Hulu. Ad revenue from Hulu will ultimately end up back in Comcast's coffers.
• In a TV Everywhere world, thousands of websites will likely present the same TV content as Fancast.com. It will be a terribly crowded space, with a ton of noise. The sites that perform best will be the ones that create the best user experience for viewing TV content.
• Comcast has a poor track record with UI and user experience design. Need I compare more than Comcast DVR's UI to TiVo's UI?
• Strong consumer brands drive website traffic. Comcast has a horrendous consumer brand. Comcast users generally do not like being Comcast users.
• Comcast's interest is in the broadest distribution of TV content, not exclusive distribution. Locking up certain content for Fancast.com alone would be a mistake. Consumers would see it as a violation of their rights, akin to the Net Neutrality debate.

Comcast can survive (and perhaps prosper) through the death of cable-based TV, if it makes smart strategic decisions. That means focusing on where it provides the most value in the TV supply chain: Internet connectivity and content investment. Creating a content website that competes with its distributors is not a smart move.

Comcast should pull the plug on Fancast.com or simply use it as a TV Everywhere authentication testing site.

Guest author: Mike Berkley served as CEO of SplashCast Media from 2006 to 2009, pioneering the concept of social TV in partnership with Hulu. Berkley is currently involved in the TV Everywhere initiative, consults on product strategy for online media companies, and maintains the TV News Stream blog covering all things related to online premium video.

Authentication

Now, Comcast and Time Warner are about to start a trial with about 5,000 cable customers that would give these households access to TV programs on the web. Of course, the real test here is not whether the cable companies can deliver online TV over their networks, but whether they can figure out a good way to 'authenticate' households that have a cable subscription.

Spin: More Choice for Customers

As Om Malik points out, this also opens up the door for possible anti-trust proceedings against the large media companies that are involved here. For now, it looks like Comcast and Time Warner will be working together on this project (Time Warner uses the name TV Everywhere, Comcast calls its system "OnDemand Online"). In this limited first test, Comcast will carry some programming from Time Warner's TNT and TBS networks.

As expected, the cable companies are spinning this as an innovative agreement that will bring "customers exponentially more free content, more choice and more HD programming online as well as on TV." In reality, of course, this project is simply a way for the cable companies and networks to protect their revenue streams.

There is, however, also some truth to the cable companies' claims. A lot of cable networks do not put any of their content on the Internet, as the networks don't want to jeopardize the lucrative income stream they currently receive from the cable companies.

Hulu, the Elephant in the Room also Wants to Play

As of now, free TV programming online isn't going to go away anytime soon, but as PaidContent reports, Hulu, the most visible online TV site, is also looking into subscription models and the executives there might not be averse to joining the cable companies' authentication schemes. At some point in the future then, your cable subscription might determine which shows you can watch on Hulu and similar online TV sites.

Comcast's announcement tries to put this limit into context. According to Comcast, 250GB amount to:

• 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
• 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
• 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
• uploading 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)

It's interesting that, judging from this, Comcast seems to add up uploads (photos) and downloads to get to these 250GB, making it an even smaller number - especially for those who upload large numbers of photos or videos, and, of course, for those who share a lot of files on Bittorrent. In Comcast's defense, the cap is agnostic to what service you use to burn up those gigabytes.

But Not if You Are a Power User

Comcast also cites that the median monthly usage be customer is 2-3GB a month. While some commentators have thought that this number is too low, we don't think it really is. For most broadband customers, broadband is simply always-on Internet. They don't necessarily make use of al the services available to them.

The problem here, however, is that the more advanced users also tend to use an exponentially larger amount of data. A standard movie might clock in at 2GB, but an HD movie can take easily take up more than 10GB.

It's All About Video

Also, these kind of limits are bound to stifle innovation in the streaming video business - and not even necessarily because people will start running out of bandwidth, but because there will always be a little voice that will keep nagging Comcast's users that they might be hitting the data cap if they download that movie.

We have to admit, though, that 250GB are a pretty high cap and, as Larry Dignan points out, it sure beats having metered Internet access. However, looking into the future, 250GB might be nothing once more people start using more data-intensive applications.

Will it be the end of the Internet as we know it, especially once other ISPs start announcing similar caps? Probably not - but it might just put a damper on the Internet we had envisioned for the future.

Flickr image courtesy of dmuth

BitTorrent accounts for a substantial percentage of traffic on the internet and some people believe it causes unfair slowdowns for web users doing anything else online. Many other people argue that ISPs have an obligation to treat all internet traffic equally regardless of content. This is a key battle in the Network Neutrality debate.

Comcast voluntarily stopped throttling in March, but today's FCC decision is important FCC Chair Kevin Martin says so that "consumers deserve to know that the commitment is backed up by legal enforcement." Martin, a Republican, is believed by some to be taking an out-of-charecter populist stance on the matter because he's preparing to run for a position in the US House of Representatives.

EFF Releases "Switzerland"

The Electronic Frontier Foundation today released software called "Switzerland" (as in, the neutral country) that can be used by consumers to test our networks for ISP interference.

The EFF explains:

"Switzerland is an open source, command-line software tool designed to detect the modification or injection of packets of data by ISPs. Switzerland detects changes made by software tools believed to be in use by ISPs such as Sandvine and AudibleMagic, advertising systems like FairEagle, and various censorship systems. Although currently intended for use by technically sophisticated Internet users, development plans aim to make the tool increasingly easy to use."

We'll keep our eyes peeled for a version of the tool that doesn't require using the command line, though every network in the land can now assume that it has users tech-savvy enough to be monitoring its behavior.

This quote from the EFF release puts things into context:

"The sad truth is that the FCC is ill-equipped to detect ISPs interfering with your Internet connection," said Fred von Lohmann, EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney. "It's up to concerned Internet users to investigate possible network neutrality violations, and EFF's Switzerland software is designed to help with that effort. Comcast isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, ISP to meddle surreptitiously with its subscribers' Internet communications for its own benefit."

What Do You Think?

The FCC's ruling was narrowly decided, through a 3 to 2 vote. Do you think ISPs have a legitimate interest in favoring some web traffic over others? On one hand, a future where big players get preferential treatment could cause a major slowdown in innovation. Startups and unknown application providers could be prevented from leveraging maximum bandwidth to offer new types of services to consumers. The most common example given is that YouTube may have struggled to make online video so common if they were discriminated against in their earliest days.

On the other hand, people downloading long lists of huge media files over common networks could be seen as an onerous drain on the "bandwidth commons." Slowing down an entire neighborhood's web use because you want to get the entire archives of some TV show is arguably pretty anti-social behavior.

Discussion above hasn't touched on legal matters, but for many people that's a big part of this debate as well. The US Congress, for example, voted this morning to require US colleges receiving federal funding to make commercial music purchasing services available to students online and filter traffic to deter P2P music sharing. The music industry says thank you! Some scientists using P2P on college campuses to transfer large files used in academic research, on the other hand, probably don't appreciate it as much. (That's probably not going on over the same networks, but the point is that there are very legitimate and important uses for P2P as well.)

We'd love to get our readers' thoughts on these questions - and for those of you able to put Switzerland to use, let us know if your ISP appears to be doing the same kinds of shady things that Comcast was slapped for today. These are going to be very big issues for the near-term future of the web.

Photo: Im in ur Internets by Jason Walton