The difference is that it's the actual web sites making that decision. ISPs aren't blocking ESPN, but rather ESPN is making the deliberate choice to only allow access to their web site from certain ISPs. This is dumb, I think, and annoying, but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. Where you start having problems is when your ISP, who you are supposedly paying for access to the entire internet, starts blocking certain sites because you haven't paid extra.

Comcast wasn't blocking or rate limiting Netflix (in this scenario) - they had over utilized circuits with Cogent, who is a transit-provider that sells cut-rate transit of lower quality (and much lower cost) than other transit providers.

They score well on transit degree.

http://as-rank.caida.org/?mode0=as-ranking&n=10&ranksort=4

http://www.caida.org/research/topology/as_core_network/

I got better and more reliable service from Cogent than I ever got from the likes of Level3, and having both been a Comcast customer AND seen the inside of Comcast, I don't know in what universe it could be called "quality".

I thought most did this due to licensing and 'blackouts' by the leagues. Although I'm not sure if this is correct for ESPN.

You don't have to pay extra for those services though. They come with your cable subscription.

My cable subscription is "Internet". I do not have a cable television subscription, and have no desire to have one; even back when Comcast was offering cable TV for $1 added to the Internet price and seemed shocked that I wouldn't want it...I replied, "I don't have a TV. WTF would I do with it?"

For a business...it was $300 cheaper to install Comcast with TV than without as of Oct 2013. I pay $2/month for TV but got free install and I can cancel TV in a year. It seems to me they need another mouth to feed.

Maybe I'm missing something but why would it be cheaper for Comcast to include TV?

It probably means that some mid-level manager at Comcast is catching heat from the home office for letting their TV numbers slip.

At least once a month for the past couple of years, Comcast sends me some junk mail begging for an "Account Review," in which they would add triple-play service to my business Internet account in exchange for a discount on all three. Those letters go in the trash on general principles.

You do pay extra. Your cable company passes along the cost of ESPN subscription to you, regardless of whether or not you want it.

You have to pay extra for a vestigial cable TV subscription because your broadband subscription isn't sufficient to access websites on the internet. Or you have to switch from a perfectly good ISP to an ISP that cooperates with the cable TV mafia.