Regardless of the fact that Comcast is currently under investigation by the FCC for sticking an unauthorised oar into the traffic stream of its file-sharing subscribers, the American Internet Service Provider (ISP) has said it wants to create a helpful “Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” for those connected to the oft-contentious practice.
Leading ISP Comcast seeks to create Bill of Rights to cover P2P practice. Credit: Comcast.
The appearance of any such document would outline best practices for ISPs to better deal with file-share traffic, which is an online upload and download method used to transfer data between users.
For the most part, the growing popularity of file share delivery (also known as peer-to-peer or P2P) has been criticised for enabling the illegal sharing of copyrighted media such as music and movies, as well as placing significant amounts of strain on ISP networks.
However, certain peer-to-peer companies are now using the transfer method as a cheap and legal way to carry media, which has likely played a significant part in Comcast offering up a way of treating all file-sharing traffic equally rather than singling out and blocking certain portions of it.
“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,” explained Tony Werner, Comcast’s chief technology officer (CTO) in an Associated Press report.
From a consumer perspective, Comcast offers that a Bill of Rights would also provide clarification in terms of the control P2P users have over the file-sharing software they install, including increased knowledge of exactly how many system resources P2P applications are using.
According to Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas, the proposed Bill of Rights is “another example of how we can work with the industry to solve these issues rather than getting the government involved.”
Douglas added that the attempted application of governmental regulation on file-sharing will simply not be able to maintain pace with the advances of technology.
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