Let's face it, Internet is not neutral

Comcast recently surprised users when it cut off Internet access to those it considers "bandwidth hogs." So here we go again, how strong is the link between net neutrality and digital piracy. Of course, it all depends on what side of the net neutrality debate one is on. The Comcast cut-off could be viewed as proof that ISPs have too much power or that ISPs really do need to protect their networks from abuse.

On the one hand, Comcast has a responsibility to provide customers with a superior experience and to address any excessive usage issues that may impact that experience. Apparently some people were downloading or sending the equivalent of 13 million e-mail messages or 256,000 photos a month, that's a lot of data! Either these people are huge spammers or they must be downloading tons of movies and songs, most likely illegal. While it's true that legal downloading of music and movies is on the rise, illegal downloading by digital pirates still consumes much bandwidth.

On the other hand, people claim that if you are blocked or removed then it is not Net neutral. The big problem here is that regular consumer bandwidth was not originally designed for commercial use or peer-to-peer applications running 24 hours a day. So my question is, to what extent are supporters of net neutrality also supporting piracy and illegal downloads?

Network neutrality sounds really nice, but it is a failed ideological theory. In the real world, the net is not neutral. Some Web site operators spend more than others to make their sites more appealing to consumers and, in the music industry, some songs will now be sold for a decidedly non-neutral price. Take the Apple example, which announced that it will start selling DRM-free songs for US$1.29 which will be of higher audio quality than the other 99-cent, DRM-encoded songs sold through iTunes. Technically, that is not network neutrality.

Of course, Net neutrality legislation won't pass this year, but at least it is expected that Congress will revisit the subject. They should keep in mind that it's difficult for ISPs to manage their networks and perhaps bandwidth hogs should not be able to download whatever they want all the time.