Personally, I am both amused and confused on this one. The very idea of Comcast, the champions of packet shaping and P2P blocking, now acting as if they are genuinely interested in the fate of P2P leaves me with a really bad taste in my mouth I am afraid.

So who will be part of this latest Comcast lead effort? Well logically considering it is to be a Bill Of Rights for P2P usage, one might surmise that consumer groups would be part of this process. Comcast’s thoughts on that? “We’re thinking more about industry,” according to Ars Technica.

What is also interesting is how Comcast appears to believe that by having major ISPs deciding what is “Okay” vs what we the users deem to be, is much better than more government regulation. Well, while I am never one for more government interference and hand holding, it does not appear that the ISPs here in the states are able to do anything worthwhile for their users without some sort of third party intervention. So whether this be the FCC, Santa Claus or Chuck Noris swinging an old external dial-up modem, at some point here, someone needs to knock Comcast off of their throne. Because despite how pleasant their words may be, this company choosing what content is deemed acceptable is really not something I would want them deciding. Remember, there are are podcasts, Linux distros among other legal to download content that is distributed over P2P in one fashion or another. Yet somehow I suspect simply not using Comcast will be a way to protect oneself from their “helping hand” much longer, especially once their sales pitch begins making its way around to other ISPs.