Comcast Quits P2P Bill of Rights Project

The DCIA’s P2P Media Summit (held yesterday in L.A) that we were telling you about in recent news is already echoing its first polemics. Quite surprisingly Comcast SVP Rich Woundy announced with this occasion that his company is withdrawing from leading the P2P Bill of Rights. The company will focus on its joining a recently formed working group of the Distributed Computing Industry Association whose main objective is to define best practices for the P2P industry.

According to NewTeeVee DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty revealed that the best practices working group is currently recruiting new members, having the first meeting planned for May 20 in New York along with the Streaming Media East conference. Supposedly, part of the group will be ISPs and P2P companies, many of which are involved in creating the P4P protocol.

MPAA COO and President Bob Pisano took on a rather clear-cut tone at the DCIA’s Summit saying to the P2P companies in the audience - “You cannot be neutral in this fight” and calling for support on the P2P traffic on ISP’s networks issue.

As expected the MPAA has once again expressed its anti-Net Neutrality view, saying that to successfully fight piracy, ISPs would really require the ability to control traffic on a protocol and even a file-by-file basis.

However as Comcast’s BitTorrent filtering was brought to the table once again, most ISPs pledged to a fair, non-interfering policy in the future, something that Hollywood was not quite happy about. To the DCIA this little fissure could mean a waste of endeavor and hopes.

Left hanging the DCIA is redirecting its efforts to engage in a more extensive dialogue with ISPs, P2P companies and rights holders, but that may prove just as difficult according to some statements from movie industry execs.