PC World – Business Center: Comcast Sets its Sights on Peer to Peer Apps

Comcast, one of the leading providers of broadband cable Internet access in the U.S, has your rights at heart. Of course, exactly what rights you have remains to be seen. But Comcast plans to let you know, just as soon as it’s decided what they are.
That was the gist of Comcast and Pando Networks’ joint announcement yesterday, calling for a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.” But skeptics worry that such a plan is likely to be light on the rights, heavy on the responsibilities

This is the next step for the telecom companies.  In order to increase profit margins, the telephone companies are now going to start taking away what you thought were your digital rights and then re-sell them to you at a discount.  Yea, sure, the discount is still going to be more than you are paying for now but at least you’ll be getting a “discount”!

The funny part is that they are going to sell this whole bait-and-switch routine as if they are doing you a favor.  The really funny part is their argument that the government protecting the rights of people to use bandwidth for their speech how they see fit is now called “government interference”, while the concept of telecoms themselves deciding which packets get delivered by the dumptrucks is actually a service people want.

Because we all know that you should give AT&T a call before uploading that video of Cheney rimming Rumsfeld.  And we all know that they never censor anything….

The controversy surrounding AT&T’s alleged censorship of a Pearl Jam Lollapalooza show that AT&T webcast as part of its Blue Room series continues, despite AT&T’s Statement that Eddie Vedder’s anti-Bush lyrics were excised from the show footage by a third-party webcasting service provider.

SavetheInternet agrees with Pearl Jam that the situation could indicate how AT&T might act if net neutrality laws are not passed, and posted the footage on YouTube:

[note the part you can’t hear in the first version]

 Update: here’s the unedited version, as shot by a fan:

(update via futureofmusiccoalition)

 [source of censored songs]