The public drubbing Comcast has received for interfering with BitTorrent uploads may not have been enough to stop other ISPs from doing the very same thing. The Associated Press reported today that a new study by the Max Planck institute found that Cox, a major cable operator, appeared to have taken a page from Comcast and was sending reset packets to disconnect BitTorrent uploaders. Of the 151 computers on Cox's network that ran the institute's test, 82 were blocked (you can read about the methodology here). That's 54%. The only other U.S. ISP to have such a high percentage of blocked uploads was Comcast, where 62% of the 788 hosts were blocked, the AP reported.

The cable industry and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin have both opposed bills to mandate Net neutrality, yet they hardly sounded like allies at a Senate hearing Tuesday. Of course, Martin and the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. haven't agreed on much during his tenure. But the split over Net neutrality on display yesterday reflects a fundamental difference over what Internet providers are obligated to give their customers. The NCTA argues that Job No. 1 is fighting congestion. Martin, on the other hand, puts a top priority on preserving liberty -- not just for consumers, but also but for commercial users as well. That puts him on a collision course with cable and DSL providers, setting up a battle over what the FCC has the power to do.

Was it really just a few months ago that Comcast was surreptitiously interfering with BitTorrent uploads? How quickly things change. Late last month Comcast, the country's leading cable operator, announced that it was collaborating with BitTorrent Inc. on "protocol agnostic" ways to manage the network. In other words, no more techniques that eased congestion by cracking down on file-sharers. Today, it declared that it was developing a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" with Pando Networks, a tech company whose optimized file-sharing techniques reduce the amount of bandwidth used. Not surprisingly, the latest announcement was greeted with reserved enthusiasm from Net neutrality advocates, who aren't persuaded that Comcast's thinking has changed along with its tune.

The ink was still drying on Comcast's press release this morning announcing a collaboration with BitTorrent Inc. on the touchy subject of network management when various groups for and against Net neutrality regulations started weighing in. The ones opposed to such rules typically said the collaboration proved government action was unnecessary; the ones who favored them argued that Comcast acted only because the FCC had launched an investigation into the cable company's interference with BitTorrent traffic.

BitTorrent President Ashwin Navin was asked his views on the need for neutrality rules this afternoon, but he refused to take the bait. Speaking at the Technology Policy Summit conference in Hollywood, Navin noted that Comcast wasn't the only ISP using that particular technique to interfere with BitTorrent uploads. "I feel good about our relationship with Comcast," he said. "The FCC has several other ISPs that it needs to be vigilent about.... It would be appropriate, responsible for the FCC to do what it needs to do to make sure the U.S. is a leader in broadband, not only in broadband technology but also broadband regulation."

The speech MPAA chief Dan Glickman gave last week at ShoWest is like the gift that keeps on giving. In case you missed my two earlier posts on this topic, Glickman declared the MPAA's unambiguous opposition to Net neutrality regulations. Among other things, he warned that such rules would "impede our ability to respond to consumers in innovative ways" and interfere with ISPs' anti-piracy efforts. Today the Digital Freedom Campaign -- a lobbying group backed by the Consumer Electronics Assn., several consumer advocates and other groups that often oppose Hollywood on copyright issues -- issued a statement inviting Glickman to take the same deregulatory approach to the rest of the MPAA's policy agenda in Washington. The studios, after all, have a history of pressing Congress and the FCC for regulations that would impede hardware and software makers' ability to respond to consumers in innovative ways, particularly when copyrighted programming was involved. For example, the "broadcast flag" rules sought by Hollywood would require home networks to include government-approved content-protection technology, and its approach to closing the "analog hole" would dictate how long a TiVo could store some of the programs it recorded. Here's the money graf from Digital Freedom spokeswoman Maura Corbett:

We suspect the big studios are rolling the Trojan Horse of “copyright enforcement” to Congress to protect their business models from openness offered by the Internet. But for now, let’s take them at their word – given MPAA’s newfound aversion “government regulation”, we eagerly look forward to them standing down on broadcast flag legislation, the analog hole bill, and other initiatives to restrict consumers and limit new technologies.

Don't hold your breath, Maura!

MPAA chief Dan Glickman doesn't speak for the movie industry, technically. His clients are the MPAA's dues-paying members, the major Hollywood studios. And the interests of those studios -- all owned by giant conglomerates -- don't necessarily align with their smaller brethren, just as the RIAA often parts ways on policy matters with the indie labels. A good illustration of this is a letter to Glickman released today by Jean Prewitt, president of the Independent Film and Television Alliance. She blasted Glickman for coming out against Net neutrality regulations earlier this week in a speech to theater owners. You can download the letter here, or just check out the money line:

The issue is not whether the government should regulate the Internet but whether there will be effective oversight to prevent a handful of corporate giants from imposing their own version of private regulation to the public's detriment.

Not that the indies particularly mind the use of government regulatory power: last year IFTA called on the FCC to require networks to devote at least 25% of their programming lineups to shows from unaffiliated producers (Download here). Nevertheless, independent studios have a clear interest in Net neutrality rules that would prevent larger players from buying preferential treatment for their websites and online services, particularly with the opportunities dimming on cable, satellite and broadcast TV for smaller programmers. As Prewitt put it, "Allowing the Internet to become the exclusive province of a small number of large companies would inevitably harm the future of independent art and commerce."

If Glickman releases a reply, I'll update this post to include it.

Verizon, a leading provider of broadband services in the U.S., is the belle of the blogs today thanks to its work with a p2p trade group on a technology to speed p2p downloads. The technique, developed by researchers from Yale and the University of Washington, enables p2p software and broadband networks to work together to select the most efficient way to deliver a requested file.

For ISPs, this "P4P" approach offers a way to cut the amount of bandwidth hoovered by file-sharing applications -- in particular, the costly bandwidth between the ISP's local network and the rest of the Internet. That's because it would help downloaders obtain as much as possible from the shortest possible electronic paths.

MPAA chief Dan Glickman made it official today: Hollywood will fight Net neutrality regulations being considered by Congress and the FCC. Glickman's comments, which were in his annual "state of the industry" speech at ShoWest, weren't exactly surprising, given that the MPAA had urged the FCC last year not to adopt neutrality rules that would hurt anti-piracy efforts. Today, though, the nuance was gone. Said Glickman:

Government regulation of the Internet would impede our ability to respond to consumers in innovative ways, and it would impair the ability of broadband providers to address the serious and rampant piracy problems occurring over their networks today.

The explosive growth of Internet use in the 1990s stemmed in part from the arrival of the World Wide Web, but also from the shift from pay-per-minute to all-you-can-eat pricing from Internet service providers. One of the leaders in that shift was America Online, which quickly became the dominant provider of dial-up Internet access. Now, AOL's parent, Time Warner, is flirting with a return to usage-based pricing as a way to reduce congestion on its cable-modem service. It could be a welcome development for consumers but not necessarily for content providers, particularly those offering video through the Web.

Earlier this week, the online video service Vuze filed a petition asking the FCC to codify its 2005 policy statement into rules governing how ISPs may treat the data passing through their networks. It was motivated in no small measure by reports that Comcast was surreptitiously interfering with some types of online traffic in the interests of managing its network. In particular, Comcast was interdicting some types of file-sharing, including BitTorrent, which Vuze uses to deliver its content partners' videos.

I'll be writing more about this next week, either for the blog or the paper, but I thought I'd pass on a couple of observations by Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa. The Comcast episode has often been characterized as having something to do with fighting piracy, because the vast majority of content that passes through file-sharing networks is bootlegged. But what's really at issue here, BianRosa said, is the architecture of the Net, which is ill-suited to the task of transmitting high-resolution video.

Comcast is one of a number of ISPs trying to rein in file-sharing, BianRosa said, and their traffic-management efforts don't discriminate between pirated and legitimate transmissions. Instead, they simply throttle applications that consume a lot of bandwidth (i.e., peer-to-peer networks). The catch is that those applications are also some of the most efficient ways to deliver what Internet users increasingly demand, namely, multimedia experiences. Programs such as BitTorrent are particularly well suited to moving big files around because they can use all the bandwidth available to a downloader, not just what's available at the source. But ISPs design their businesses around the assumption that customers don't use all the bandwidth they're paying for, at least not all the time. They can assign the same capacity to multiple people. That approach starts to break down when customers use BitTorrent to download huge files -- whether it be a licensed high-def program from Vuze or a bootlegged movie -- for hours on end.

"We really understand that problem," BianRosa said. "What we’re trying to say here is, there’s no point fighting where the Internet is going." Now that the public has acquired a taste for rich audio and video content online, it's not turning back. That's why BianRosa wants the FCC to require ISPs to manage their networks transparently, rather than using comparatively blunt tools to interdict traffic secretly. He also wants ISPs, content providers and distributors such as Vuze to work together on the capacity challenges that high-resolution video presents, rather than playing a "cat-and-mouse game" over file-sharing. Vuze and similarly oriented file-sharing firms (e.g., BitTorrent Inc.) could become the entertainment industry's best anti-piracy allies, using file sharing to generate revenue for studios instead of cease-and-desist letters or lawsuits. But they can't play that role if ISPs like Comcast take a binary approach to network management, interfering with BitTorrent traffic indiscriminately to keep their pipelines clear.

I guess this is the entertainment industry's vision of the future: ISPs that interdict file-sharing. Bravo to the AP's Peter Svensson for a troubling bit of investigation that produced two pieces today, one on Comcast's practice of sending bogus reset messages to p2p users in the act of uploading, and a sidebar suggesting how Comcast was doing it.

In a prominent nod to one of the festival's lead sponsors, the logo for this year's Lollapalooza concerts in Chicago includes the tag line, "delivered by AT&T." But Sunday's headliner Pearl Jam complained that AT&T delivered less than the band's full performance during its Lollapalooza webcast. The powerhouse telco turned off the audio during the song "Daughter" while singer Eddie Vedder was railing against President George Bush. That bit of censorship -- which AT&T says was a mistake -- gave a bit of fuel to the forces arguing for "Net neutrality" regulations.