If nothing much happens as a result of this incident, that can be read as a valid market outcome as well — that customers don’t place much importance on such tempests in teapots. I suspect that 99% of customers value their Comcast service based on whether they can do email and YouTube, and what their monthly bill looks like.

The PR argument is a valid market mechanism as well. I suspect this will prove to be the most potent, and that Comcast will quietly refine their policies to avoid these blowups.

For example, the Sony rootkit debacle was only discovered by accident (by a highly trained computer expert) after being in use for around a year. Based on what I have been reading, Comcast is only one of many companies that have been “caught”. If you expose many companies doing bad stuff on a consistent bases, one would logically assume (especially if you are a Vulcan) that something is not working correctly. However, when Verizon was “caught” Sonia Arrison was quick to write “Verizon switch is proof that Net neutrality legislation is not needed” (Sept. 28, 2007). Based on this psychedelic logic it would seem that the more criminals you catch, the less you need in the way of laws. And by the way lets not demand that they change their criminal behavior since the free market by some mysterious mechanism will. The simple fact that the corporate dishonor role continues to expand seems to be a demonstration (if you believe in hard evidence) that the market forces cannot be relied on to improve corporate behavior.

The world’s a bit more complex, as it’s possible to upgrade them to higher service level – but that runs right into tiering service issue.