THE US FCC is promising to kick the butt of ISPs who try to stop P2P with secret traffic management plans.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he was ready to spank the bottom of errant ISPs who secretly favor certain types of data traffic, like Web surfing, over others, like file sharing. This was the method championed by Comcast at a recent hearing.

However Martin said that the complaints that Comcast had generated with its actions underscored the need to enforce the FCC's current broad principles intended to promote so-called "Net neutrality."

He warned that the FCC was ready to step in if ISPs carried on that sort of lark.

While he accepted that ISPs should be allowed to take reasonable steps to make efficient use of their networks, Martin said that management policies must be disclosed.

Punters needed to know what the ISPs were up too so they could configure their own applications and systems properly.

So in otherwords it is OK to throttle the Interweb so long as you tell punters you are doing it. µ

LINQ