The industry news mavens over at TorrentFreak continue to drop jaws, this time with a story on Virgin Media's new outspoken CEO Neil Berkett. The man has made no secret of his lust for money and disdain for flowers and candy by literally scoffing at the very concept of net neutrality, a concept saying all data carried over the internet should be treated the same, leaving no preference to higher-paying websites or corporations. In an interview with Television magazine, Berkett called this idea "a load of bollocks" (and then proceeded to gut the stuffing from a teddy bear).
Instead, he was proud to announce that Virgin had already begun to speed up traffic for specific, deep-pocketed "media providers," who likely also supply him his nightly glass of lamb's blood. According to the article, Virgin Media boasts 3.5 million users countrywide -- a number that is likely rising rapidly -- and due to high volume traffic can't support the stress of all the added bandwidth. The very public slap in the face is highly disheartening to evil, heartless users of file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent, which makes large-sized transfers as easy as a couple of clicks.
To them, Berkett says "phooey," but he decided to cast his net a little wider and call out the BBC as well. With his cross-hairs on their popular iPlayer service, the seething CEO lashed out at all public broadcasters, noting that if they did not pay a higher premium for speedier service, they would be designated to "bus lanes." This process, known as throttling, has recently come to worldwide attention when it became clear that mega-giant ISP Comcast had been throttling many of its users when it noticed high-volume activity, with no inquiry into the legality of the bandwidth being used. Still, as Virgin Media has made clear, you pay for a service and they dictate how you use it.