Read the goddamned article that you linked to and not just the random blogs analyzing the article. The internet-whargarbling-nerds are being dog-whistled by giant corporations by using the following phrases: 'net neutrality', 'open internet', 'toll booth'. None of those issues are at play here.

This entire thing has to do with a contract dispute between two giant companies (both of which happen to have ISPs as part of their corporate holdings). Prior to Level 3 becoming a backend ISP to Netflix, they had an agreement with Comcast to share bandwidth in a roughly equitable manner. When they became a backend ISP for Netflix and all of a sudden their bandwidth needs jumped by a great deal. Comcast said, "woah there, buddy. we're no longer sharing; you're using more than you're giving. you need to pay for the difference between these two values." That's not net neutrality.

There are two statements at odds here in this article, one from Comcast:

"Comcast on Monday rebuffed the notion that the new fees were related to Netflix by saying that the type of traffic distributed by Level 3 was irrelevant. Joe Waz, a senior vice president at Comcast, says it has had a peering agreement with Level 3 to swap traffic fairly evenly. Now Level 3 is sharply increasing its traffic, he said, while resisting a commercial agreement to pay for that."

and one from Level 3:

"“With this action, Comcast demonstrates the risk of a ‘closed’ Internet, where a retail broadband Internet access provider decides whether and how their subscribers interact with content,” Thomas C. Stortz, the chief legal officer for Level 3, said in a statement Monday."

Thanks, Graham. I didn't understand 85% of that, but I do understand the basic unfairness for Comcast, and I'm a little puzzled by this bogeyman fear that Internet providers will block access to high-bandwidth competitors.

In the universe I live in, if Comcast pulls something like that, I just switch to another provider who won't, and Comcast won't get another nickle from me. I'd be worried if Comcast had a real or virtual monopoly on home broadband, but they don't, and I recognize that I don't have some unlimited "right" to comprehensive broadband, anyway - that's like a cable subscriber arguing that he should have free access to all the premium channels: it just doesn't work that way.

The gross, entitled attitude of consumers in this country pisses me off yet again. What thought more defines (or dooms) our nation than "we deserve access to everything we want for next to nothing?"

FTA: "If nothing else, the dispute demonstrates that consumers have little, if any, idea how convoluted it can be to transmit video to a computer or mobile phone."

How the fuck does a monetary dispute between two megacorps demonstrate that, exactly?

Thanks for the much-needed clarification, Graham. I'm seeing a lot of smoke but no fire here.

Yay Graham!

Despising Comcast is a time-tested Internet tradition, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let some pesky facts get in my way. For any internet-whargarbling-nerd worth his Bawls, this story is just another bullet point amidst dozens justifying Comcast's position as Worst Company in America 2010.

HuffPo is going nuts over this story. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr…

I choose to side with Graham.

Someone has to pay to deliver all that content. Your fixed $50/month doesn't cover it. There's a reason that dedicated lines (e.g., T3) cost a lot more than a consumer connection.

Netflix is showering L3 with cash, and L3 is throwing its weight around telling Comcast to pay for the privilege of delivering Netflix to its customers. According to peering agreement standards that have been used for years, since L3 is sending more data to Comcast than Comcast is to L3, L3 owes Comcast a portion of the money that Netflix is paying.

It's a fool who thinks a service provider who becomes a major content owner won't try to prioritize their content over another. And in some locations, there's little if any competition.

@ SPK: As of 2000, 8/10 Americans live in urban areas, where there is intense market competition for home cable and broadband services.

It would take another fool to say the incentives weren't there for Company A to do what Company B or C won't, in order to grab market share.

I understand that. I'm just saying that being a service provider AND content owner could be a bad idea. Not 20 minutes from Portland you will find one and only one broadband provider. It's not exactly BFE.

@SPK: I completely agree with you about the intrinsic evilness of a totalitarian vertical integration of media creation and delivery. It is antithetical to democracy and freedom. I fully believe that ISPs should be ran as public utilities and not be subject to profit driven motives.

@ Graham, I'll agree with the end of that. I don't think it's antithetical etc (since it's basically a luxury good still), but we're at the point where internet service is (or should be) considered a suitable subject for a public utility.

So how did governments go about expropriating the original, private holders of all the current public utilities?