So the FCC may force telcos and cable operators to “disclose” what they do with their customers’ traffic, whether they slow it down, as in the case of torrenting, or speed it up, as in the case of “premium access”. They already do this, mind you. It’s just that the FCC is going to force them to disclose that they do it.

Yawn.

I hope this doesn’t bring us closer to legislation. Point is, if Joe Customer gets pissed at his service provider because of such tactics, he’ll just leave that service provider. The market solves the problem. Too conservative an approach, you say?

What about all these people bandying about terms like ‘discrimination’ to evoke feelings of humanism in this matter? We’re talking about packets, here, not lives. There is no civil rights movement in the telecom industry, just a bunch of (ingenius and deserving) startups teaming with Google to prevent Bell and Warner from bluffing their admittedly very heavy upper hand and making things sticky for a few years while the Internet access market, dominated by the few and privileged, corrects itself and the SpeakEasy-type service providers rediscover the niche of “no-frills-no-penalties” access.
But the startups have got to know resorting to such cheap linguistics tactics is about as low as you can get. We’re not talking about discrimination on the basis of race or creed (things that actually matter). No, we’re talking about discrimination on the basis of acceptable use, and, yes, abuse. The access providers are well within their moral boundaries to massage traffic to suit their profit needs. And if their customers get pissed off about it, well, those customers will just leave.