Nowhere does it say that torrents are blocked because of illegal content. The AT&T terms of service that are quoted in the article mention "certain uses that cause extreme network capacity issues" as a reason. Given that torrents are often huge, and that wireless networks usually are not as fast as wired ones yet, that does not seem completely unreasonable.

Of course, it does mean that I cannot download, say, a Linux ISO via torrent... now that is throwing out the baby with the bath water.

(That said, AT&T did stop offering Usenet last year, supposedly because there was too much illegal content.)

>that wireless networks usually are not as fast as wired ones yet, that does not seem completely unreasonable.

But it is completely unreasonable. If they don't have enough bandwidth, they can sell me a plan with a limit - then _I_ will decide what to use that plan for (including, but not limited too, porn, terrorist activities and peer to peer filesharing).

What the providers wont admit is that they are selling a commodity, which (in the area of wireless communication) is completely fungible -- therefore they get to charge no more than commodity prices, while everybody else gets to get rich of their services.

Yes. But ISPs are blocking or throttling to oblivion, not prioritizing packets. BitTorrent has a proposed protocol addressing this and it was not embraced by the telcos, in particular Comcast who said was going to be working on that.

This proposal if sponsored by FCC or US Congress would give carte blanche to the telcos to do whatever they want on wireless, in particular 3G/4G. Google is not representative of the users (present or future) of those services.

It's a complete non-sequitur to charge more money for tiered service and claim it's because of piracy.

Most of the people on the highway on my way to work are speeding. That doesn't mean the government should allow different cars to go different speeds depending how much the manufacturer pays.

Who is down-voting this comment? lowenskind didn't break HNs rules and disagreement shouldn't be expressed by down-voting. This site's etiquette would be a reply with a counter-argument.

If you join any community, try to learn its rules first. And don't hide behind the anonymity of down-voting.

Edit 1: rephrasing.

Edit 2: lowenskind comment was in the negative side when I wrote this, requiring at least 2 down-voting accounts.

It is no less reasonable than accusing Google of having "betrayed … everyone" by still fighting harder for network neutrality than anyone else but not doing it in the exact way that you'd prefer. There's no real counterargument to be made against what basically amounts to unsubstantiated smack talk.