• Associated Press, Friday, November 2, 2007 11 AM

Consumer organizations, it seems, are more concerned with their Web-surfing freedom than seeing too many ads. A coalition of legal scholars and watchdog groups on Thursday filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission over Internet service provider Comcast's admitted interference with subscribers' file-sharing.

The AP report points out that this becomes "the first real test" of the FCC's stance on so-called "Net Neutrality"--or the idea that all ISPs treat Web traffic equally, regardless of how much bandwidth a given site requires. Nothing has been passed that makes Net Neutrality a law, although the FCC has said it supports the concept.

The coalition's complaint follows the admission last month that Comcast had purposely slowed the traffic on its network between file-sharers using BitTorrent. The AP performed a test for the report, and found that it took ten minutes to get a request for an upload processed. Comcast defended its decision, saying the small number of file-sharers is enough to slow down its network, and that interfering with BitTorrent traffic helps improve the Internet experience for the rest of its subscribers.

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