[crucini]

While I don't have a good grasp on the larger issue, I hope we can protect small players from being squeezed. In my limited understanding, there are really two separate things here: Comcast vs Youtube and Comcast vs startup. As I understand it, Comcast gets mad that they have to invest in infrastructure so people can watch Youtube. They think Youtube is free-riding on their infrastructure. Comcast is envious of Youtube's profits and eyeballs. So Comcast wants to squeeze money out of Youtube. A battle between giants.

The other issue is that small sites including startups could get throttled almost incidentally in this war. They don't use much bandwidth, being small, but if Comcast enacts some "bizdev" process where it takes six months of negotiations to get into the fast lane, any deal below $1M is probably not worth their time.

This is how cell phone software worked before the iPhone - get permission before you can develop (IIRC). If we end up with fast-lane preferential pricing, it should really be available to the smallest players. Ideally it should be free, but the Apple app store model would work - $99/year for fast lane access until your bandwidth is really significant. But would the individual have to pay $99 to every major ISP out there?