Comcast demand for fees to pass through content could bring down web audio, vidoeo services

News is breaking this morning via blogs like Radio Survivor and the Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN) that Comcast has allegedly demanded fees of providers of video content to pass that content on to its Internet customers.

The chief accuser is supposedly Level 3 Communications, who provides the bandwidth and pass-through services for Netflix, which has grown wildly in the last year or two, so much so that  it is now on a large number of consumer devices such as game consoles, DVD players, and even TVs.  It will be on Google TV and other Internet TV interfaces that are either out there or that have yet to be invented.  It can be accessed via desktop computers as well. 

Another big video provider this could affect is Youtube.   Youtube  serves up two billion videos a day to US users according to a statement at a conference aired on C-SPAN about how social media is helping in emergency situations, such as the Haiti earthquake.

This even has implications for Pandora and other audio services, even though they take up less bandwidth than most video providers do.  It could bring down many web video and audio services were this permitted to stand.

The FCC will take up Net Neutrality, and put the Internet under Section 706 of the Communications Act of 1934, but since this was so late in the process I could not get this news into the comments, but in talking with the FCC about the story, I was able to get an email address and sent the link to it to them.  This may tip the matter in favor of Net Neutrality, it is controversial, but never should have been. 

All this began when a consumer filed comments in November 2007 about Comcat sending false 'download failed' messages.  If clicked on, it caused the download to stop.  The matter was Bittorrent files, some of which are legit as companies like Disney, etc., use that format to send files down to the user, who decodes them with another piece of software to be used on the device he intended it for.  It is considered more efficient than some other methods, and possibly lossless as well.

So everyone needs to stand up to Comcast or any other provider who attempts to throttle what they can see or not see.  Charging fees of content providers who already have to pay fees to be online and send stuff out anyway is discriminatory under Federal laws anyway, and would put the economy at risk.  It could trigger another dot-com bust, which was one of the contributing factors to the 1999-2002  recession, even before the 9/11 attacks, the 9/11 attacks only aggravated the situation further.

Best to discuss this matter with your congressman, we cannot allow the double-charging of content providers for their content, and risk a major economic disaster, by failing to ensure net neutrality among all providers.  It could affect everyone adversely in the end, and throw our technological progress back many years if it is not enacted into settled law.