The usually reliable Wall Street Journal editorial page seems to be carrying water for Comcast in the net neutrality issue. I could agree that there are problems with some versions of the net neutrality rhetoric, but that’s not what the WSJ discusses. Instead it defends Comcast’s behavior wrt its throttling of BitTorrent, saying it comes under the terms of “reasonable network management techniques.” But if what Comcast was doing was reasonable management, why did it lie about about what it was doing and what it was selling to its customers? (I’m still irritated about the way it lied to me and to others of its customers about what it was doing wrt blocking port 25.)
In addition to defending Comcast, the WSJ attacks Google. But if the WSJ wants to attack Google on net neutrality, maybe it would do better to point out that Google itself has been far from neutral in carrying traffic. It blocks traffic on behalf of the Chinese government, and at home it refuses to sell pro-life ads that have a religious connection. Just as Comcast did, it tells lies about what it’s doing, saying it doesn’t sell ads that mix “abortion and religion-related content.” But the Christian Institute, which is suing Google, points out that that’s not true at all. It sells pro-abortion ads that have religion-related content. It’s only the so-called “pro-life” side that it censors.
Net neutrality, indeed.