Comcast Cohen-cidence? I Think Not

Comcast veep and "uber-lobbyist" David Cohen provided a saber-rattling editorial to The Mercury News reminding the pro-Net Neutrality ilk that the sky's not really falling without regulation. But if there is legislation passed to protect it, they can expect people to die, kids to be exposed to porn, the Internet industry to crash, and Bill Murray's prophecy of cats and dogs living together to be fulfilled. Well, maybe not that last one. The mass hysteria by Verizon. They must be working from the same playbook. His column provided nothing new to the debate, amounting to a regurgitation of telco/cable hyperbolic talking points designed to ensure a network of "40 times the cost. The real "ploy" is to charge both sides at every step of the way, in every market possible. "a broadband provider might want to help bring health care into under-served rural areas with, for instance, real-time consultative video for complicated medical procedures. But network neutrality proponents would outlaw that advance unless the same network capacity be given to them, for free, to prop up their own commercial endeavors. "Similarly, a child-friendly-content zone that packages parent-approved bandwidth-intensive games with educational tools and learning communities could also be vetoed by Internet companies that demand the right to hog the same amount of bandwidth, at no cost to them, for their own parochial designs." What was that you said about the sky falling? So Net Neutrality will kill country folk and expose kids to porn and rob them of their education all because the Internet giants are bandwidth greedy? Is "the broadband marketplace is in its infancy. No one can tell you exactly what our business model will be in three, five or 10 years from now." It's in its infancy because the telecommunications industry