Comcast, Pando to Work With Industry on P2P Bill of Rights

Once the bill is completed, each individual company will be able to choose whether or not it will abide by the rules the bill sets forth. Lafferty said the DCIA will facilitate the adoption process by taking the bill to each of its about 120 member companies for consideration, then taking it to the broader industry and other organizations and groups.

Possible Inclusions
Currently, there are no specific rules or best practices to be included in the bill, but Pando CEO Robert Levitan said there are several core principles that he believes should be included. According to him, the bill should mandate that all P2P programs must be virus- and spyware-free and that all such programs must be able to be turned off and uninstalled completely.

Douglas agreed, adding that the working group should discuss a way to help customers distinguish between legal and illegal content. He said the ISP is looking forward to discussing the bill with the other companies in the working group so it can form better relationships with them that benefit its users.

"We want to work with the content providers and all the software providers so we deliver the best content to our customers so they can use all the tools that are out there."

Potential Impact
Lafferty hopes that the bill will have an impact on the problem of network congestion. He said the working group discussion will allow ISPs and P2P companies to gain a better understanding of what each is doing to address the issue, which in turn will lead to the development of better technologies and practices.

"They’ll have a better of understanding of what they’re doing to address network congestion and, hopefully, be able to respond to that with improved technology that will work better and avoid network congestion on the part of the application provider," he said.

He also said that piracy should not be held up as the main cause of network congestion. He said that even if piracy could be stopped immediately, network traffic would still be just as high because a legitimate operation would then be installed in its place.

"I think what we’re seeing is a more profound revolution, a societal revolution, to use the internet to distribute rich media content, and the appetite is clearly there," he said. "The consumers have voted with their mouse clicks, and now it’s up to the industry to catch up with business models and approaches that satisfy that need as officially as possible."

Still, Levitan said that in order for P2P to become a legitimate business, it must be supported by ISPs and content owners. He said the bill of rights would allow that to happen, thus advancing P2P.