Certainly, requiring Comcast (CMCSA) to disclose more information about its traffic management practices seems a mere slap on the wrist for a company that deliberately interfered with BitTorrent traffic in violation of Internet openness principles. But Comcast, which wants a court to reverse and vacate the FCC decision, feels even it was too much.

“The order is unlawful because it enforced mere policy–not any provision of federal law–against Comcast,” the company said in a brief filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this week. “The commission’s action was procedurally improper and violated bedrock principles of fair notice…the FCC erred in enforcing mere policy…and this court can and should dispose of this case on that ground alone.”

In other words, since the FCC’s Network neutrality principles haven’t yet been codified, Comcast can’t be held accountable for violating them. The FCC, of course, disagrees. In a filing of its own, it wrote, “[FCC] determinations were lawful and reasonable….Congress created the FCC for cases such as this one.”

Indeed. And while it’s true that those Net neutrality principles Comcast ran afoul of aren’t yet official rules, they clearly will be soon.

And by many accounts, Windows 7 is poised to do just that. Unlike Vista, it was completed on time. And unlike Vista, early reviews have been positive.

“Even in beta form, with some features incomplete or imperfect, Windows 7 is, in my view, much better than Vista, whose sluggishness, annoying nag screens, and incompatibilities have caused many users to shun it,” Walt Mossberg said of the OS back in January. “It’s also a serious competitor, in features and ease of use, for Apple’s current Leopard operating system.”

So Microsoft (MSFT) has good reason to be proud of this release-to-manufacturing, or RTM, milestone. There’s a lot riding on Windows. And the company seems to be very much on point as it brings the newest version to market.

“Today’s release is the result of hard work and collaboration with our partners in the industry to make Windows 7 a success,” wrote Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc in a post to the Windows 7 Team Blog. “We delivered Windows 7 with a predictable feature set on a predictable timetable that allowed OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to focus on value and differentiation for their customers. We continue to be overwhelmed at the community’s response to Windows 7 and it has been an extremely rewarding experience to witness. We hope the enthusiasm will continue to grow even more as our partners build amazing experiences with their products and Windows 7.”

Ironically, this particular build of Windows 7–Build 7600.16385–which Microsoft designated as RTM, was leaked to the Internet nearly a week ago and has been available for download via BitTorrent ever since.

Broader issues? Like reasonable network-management practices? The responsibility to deliver traffic fairly? Service disclosures? The sort of issues that might figure prominently in a “P2P Bill of Rights?”

Guess not.

Anyway, Comcast has already scrapped its policy of deliberately slowing some traffic flowing over BitTorrent and other P2P networks, so there’s really no need for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin to bust its chops anymore. As Mitch Bowling, Comcast’s senior vice president and general manger of its Internet service, told the New York Times, Comcast’s new policy is to slow traffic based on usage pattern, not application. “[Our new technique] will be based purely on individual consumption by consumers,” Bowling said. “Anything in addition to that is outside the scope of what our network management goal is.”

So the company plans to throttle traffic to the customers that use the most bandwidth. Hmmm. I wonder who those might be? The folks who use the Internet for email and Web browsing or those who use it for downloading digital media?

Back in February the cable company claimed it was perfectly reasonable for it to throttle or degrade the performance of peer-to-peer file-sharing services on its broadband network. But when Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin suggested the agency was mulling action against it, Comcast had a moment of clarity. In March, it said it would work with BitTorrent to develop P2P-friendly network capacity-management techniques. And today it announced plans for an industry-wide effort to create a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”

The document–which is to be created with the help of other Internet service providers, P2P companies and content providers–would specify how ISPs should manage P2P applications running on their networks and how consumers should use them. Said Tony Werner, Comcast Cable’s Chief Technology Officer, “By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content.”

And by announcing its plans to create this framework right before the FCC hearing on its P2P-throttling techniques to be held at Stanford (in Palo Alto, Calif.) Thursday, Comcast is hoping the agency won’t take action against it for violating its Net neutrality rules.

At the time, Napster had some 20 million users worldwide and was essentially the de-facto file-sharing standard. Had the RIAA labels agreed to the alliance, they might have turned peer-to-peer distribution into a new and powerful business model, one with low distribution and marketing costs and a fast developing user base. But they didn’t. They chose another route.

Big mistake. Along came Gnutella. And increased broadband penetration and cheaper storage. Along came Kazaa. And then came BitTorrent. And, well, look at the industry now.

Given such history, it’s difficult to look at the recording industry’s plan to have a monthly fee added to consumers’ internet-service bills and not shake your head in wonderment.

Portfolio.com reports that Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s Warner Music Group (TWX) has indeed hired veteran industry consultant Jim Griffin (no relation to Peter, right?) to quarterback a plan under which consumers pay an Internet-access surcharge of $5 a month for the collective right to freely share music. Those fees would be pooled and divvied up among artists and their labels.

“Ideally, music will feel free,” says Griffin. “Even if you pay a flat fee for it, at the moment you use it there are no financial considerations. It’s already been paid for.”

Ah- charge everyone for all music. So it is Monetization Without Representation. OK. But what gives the music industry the right to tax all broadband users because it suspects some of them might illegally share its content? And if the music industry deserves that right, then doesn’t the film industry deserve it as well? And the publishing industry? And any other industry that might benefit from such a tax?

As David Barrett, engineering manager for peer-to-peer networks at Web content-delivery giant Akamai (AKAM), notes Griffin’s plan is problematic. And desperate.

Said Barrett:, “It’s too late to charge people for what they’re already getting for free. This is just taxation of a basic, universal service that already exists, for the benefit a distant power that actively harasses the people being taxed without offering them any meaningful representation.”

After a prolonged, and quite nasty, legal battle with the MPAA, TorrentSpy is shutting down. “The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile,” reads a statement posted to the site’s front page by founder Justin Bunnell. “We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves… [W]e now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users–permanent shutdown.”

It’s a Comcastic day for BitTorrent. This morning the cable provider, under fire for degrading the performance of the peer-to-peer file-sharing service on its broadband network, announced plans to develop better ways to manage peer-to-peer traffic. To that end, Comcast (CMCSA) will work with BitTorrent to develop a network capacity-management technique that is protocol agnostic.

Said Tony Werner, Comcast’s chief technology officer, “This new architecture would enable many new and emerging applications and will be based upon an open, nondiscriminatory framework that could interface with or support multiple technologies. We believe that P2P technology has matured as an enabler for legal content distribution, so we need to have an architecture that can support it with techniques that work over all networks.”

Of course you do. You just didn’t realize it until FCC Chairman Kevin Martin pointed it out, right?

Anyway, like most such corporately altruistic pledges, this one has the potential to do more good than bad–or more bad than good. “… We must recognize that these are two commercial entities whose goals are, in the end, to make sure that their networks and technologies are as profitable as possible,” writes Public Knowledge’s Jef Pearlman. “One can conceive of a world where an ISP and an application developer band together to make a proprietary system in which sanctioned application data gets preferred treatment, the ISP gets greater control of the application running on your computer, and both companies are happy in the exact situation we want to prevent. Time will tell what this partnership actually means.”

The Federal Communications Commission isn’t buying Comcast’s (CMCSA) argument that throttling or degrading the performance of the peer-to-peer file-sharing service BitTorrent on its broadband network is a necessary traffic-management technique.

Speaking at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he’s considering taking action against the cable operator for violating the agency’s network-neutrality principles. Seems Martin was troubled by Comcast’s dissembling around the BitTorrent issue, not to mention its efforts to pack an FCC hearing on Net neutrality with its own employees.

“A hallmark of what should be seen as a reasonable business practice is certainly whether or not the people engaging in that practice are willing to describe it publicly,” said Martin, adding that the incident offered the commission a good opportunity to establish a precedent for future cases of this kind. “I have said in the past the commission is ready, willing and able to take action on individual complaints,” he said. “I think that is what we are going to end up doing, and I think that will end up setting an important precedent going forward: that we are willing to address individual complaints when they come in.”

We compete with Comcast with delivery of content over the Internet. What we have here is a horse race and in this contest, Comcast owns the race track, in fact, the only track in town. They also own a horse. We are being told they are only slowing down our horse by a few seconds.”

–Gilles BianRosa, CEO of video provider Vuze

The network-management hearing at Harvard University this morning is turning out to be something of a comcastrophe for Comcast (CMCSA). Called before the Federal Communications Commission today to explain why it has been “throttling” or limiting BitTorrent traffic on its network, Comcast was criticized out of the gate for the practice.

Seems some folks don’t buy the company’s claim that throttling is necessary to prevent file-sharing traffic from consuming too much bandwidth. And others–specifically, advocates of Net neutrality–feel it’s outright discriminatory. “The Internet is as much mine and yours as it is Verizon’s and AT&T’s and Comcast’s,” said U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) in his opening remarks to the commission. “The commission should be wary of the need of a significant network management position. Perhaps if we had competition, this wouldn’t be such an issue.”Such intercession into a user’s access to the Internet should not result in … the transformation of BitTorrent into BitTrickle. That’s a problematic result … whether it is purposeful or purely circumstantial.”

Comcast, for its part, insists results like those described by Markey aren’t problematic at all, but necessary. The company must “shape” file-sharing traffic to ease the strain on its network. “Independent research has shown that it takes as few as 15 active BitTorrent users uploading content in a particular geographic area to create congestion sufficient to degrade the experience of the hundreds of other users in that area,” David L. Cohen, an executive vice president of Comcast, explained in written testimony. “Bandwidth-intensive activities not only degrade other less-intense uses, but also significantly interfere with thousands of Internet companies’ businesses. Far from managing our network in a discriminatory way to benefit our own offerings–other than managing our network to make our high-speed Internet service faster and better–our limited network-management practices ensure that everyone else’s applications and services, even those that may compete with our services and use P2P protocols, work.”

Earlier this year, the British Phonographic Industry suggested that the British government pass “three strikes” legislation that would require Internet service providers to terminate the accounts of casual file-sharers. And now the government seems to have taken it to heart. This morning it said ISPs have until April of 2009 to curb illegal downloads of music and films occurring on their networks before they are slapped with legal sanctions. Said Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, “Let me make it absolutely clear: This is a change of tone from the government. It’s definitely serious legislative intent.”

Britain’s ISPs are, as one would imagine, a bit put off by the idea of being used as entertainment-industry heavies. “Using BitTorrent isn’t illegal,” said an Internet Service Providers Association rep. “We prefer to go with self-regulation because it’s generally seen to be more nimble than legislation.”

But as the BPI notes, with self-regulation comes litigation. Given the option of lawsuit or loss of connectivity, what would the average music pirate choose? “The three-strike process is far better then landing someone with a great big lawsuit,” says Matt Phillips of the BPI. “Surveys we’ve done suggest that 70% of consumers would stop sharing on their connection if they knew it was being done illicitly. And it’s got to be better than taking them to court, where they’ll face a legal bill of at least £3,000.”