Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner did not attend a net neutrality hearing Thursday at Stanford University, even though they were invited. Thus the FCC hearing has allowed advocacy groups to plead for enforcing net neutrality principles and demand that ISPs treat all users and traffic equally.

“Consumers have come to expect and will continue to demand the open and neutral character that has always been the hallmark of the Internet,” said FCC commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein.

The Commission is currently examining several petitions and complaints according to which “broadband providers have intentionally and secretly degraded applications in a way that undermines the open and interconnected character of the Internet,” Adelstein continued.

Among the advocacy groups was also the Christian Coalition of America. Its vice president, Michele Combs, has asked the FCC to enforce the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally without regard to the source or subject matter, a statement which drew some of the loudest applause at Stanford.

“Consumers must be completely informed about the exact nature of the service they are purchasing,” said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Among those who dissented from the general view that net neutrality is a must was songwriter Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America. He sang the same old tune that piracy has dealt a huge blow to the music industry.

Meanwhile, although absent from the hearing, Comcast has taken another step to contain damage after coming under heavy fire for its interference with peer-to-peer traffic last year. Comcast Corporation and Pando Networks, Inc. announced in a joint statement that they will lead an industry-wide effort to create a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” (BRR) for peer-to-peer (P2P) users and Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

March 27, Comcast announced the restructuring of Internet traffic management, thus handling all data equally and objectively. It also launched collaboration with BitTorrent. The two companies have been working together on ways to improve BitTorrent applications for the Comcast network, which, with more than 24 million subscribers, is the largest cable TV and Internet provider in the U.S.

A simple test by the AP last October has found that Comcast appeared to interfere with the BitTorrent traffic in ways which poses ethics questions and also probably costs the company a lot of money. Specifically, instead of throttling BitTorrent traffic, the company appears to create spoof peers which interfere with the normal peer-to-peer transfers and significantly slow down or even kill some downloads. Furthermore, their test has shown that Comcast appeared to "impersonate" existing peers to divert packets.