Internet service provider Comcast is considering instituting a 250-gigabyte monthly cap on downloads, according an anonymous source cited by BroadbandReports.com. Users would be allowed one month over the cap in a year. Any month after that, and the customer would be charged $15 for each 10GB in excess. No cap is expected for uploads. Cranky RSS guru Dave Winer, who admits to downloading an astronomical 450GB a month, would end up with a regular $300 surcharge on his Comcast bill.

Belgian activist Tania Derveaux is making an offer to virgins: Join her campaign to prevent Internet service providers from favoring some websites with better bandwidth, and she'll have sex with you. The virgin must be "able to provide sufficient evidence that clearly shows he has been defending net neutrality." The bad news: Derveaux is just a attention whore. Her past hoaxes include a promise to give 40,000 blow jobs in return for getting elected to Belgium's senate, and a still-ongoing suicide countdown. Still, we appreciate Derveaux's postmodern sensibilities. Check out the "General Requirements and Rules of Conduct," for her "Don't stay a virgin campaign," copied below. My favorite part: "Tania is not responsible for any genital injury that the applicant may suffer." After you read it, you may conclude that it's easier to build your own network than complain about how Comcast and AT&T run theirs.

The prospect of having the Internet suddenly disappear, leaving us in a wasteland of masturbating to our own lame imaginations, isn't just the basis for a hilarious South Park episode. It's coming! So says one biased goon for the horrible, horrible AT&T. "U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010. Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded."

Young San Jose resident Alex Polvi presented the least informed, but probably most typical argument for net neutrality in his public comment featured in this video clip from the rescheduled network neutrality hearings hosted by the FCC at Stanford today. But hey, even if he said "Internet" more than a dozen times, he didn't say "marketplace of ideas" or "fascism," like many of the other commenters. The people who should be most worried about the complex debate aren't free speech advocates or corporations, however, but big pharma. Listening to arguments for and against were a more powerful soporific than Ambien. Highlights from the seven hour session after the jump.

Superlawyer Lawrence Lessig won't have Comcast to kick around at the FCC hearing on network neutrality — the principle that broadband providers can't discriminate against certain kinds of Internet traffic — being held at Stanford tomorrow. The event was only scheduled after Comcast paid chumps to fill chairs at an earlier hearing at Harvard in an obvious effort to squelch debate. With Comcast working with BitTorrent and just today joining with legal file-sharing startup Pando to work on a "bill of rights" for file sharers and ISPs, the company is trying to make voluntary moves in an effort to stave off involuntary regulation. I was planning on attending, if only because it promised to be an entertaining nerdfight — now, I'm not so sure. Since public hearings are supposedly democracy in action, you tell me if I should bother buying a Caltrain ticket.

Valleywag is of course known for its dead-on accuracy, so our predictions for 2008 need no introduction. Inside, my 25 predictions (made without inside information) cover the futures of Facebook, Google, Digg, YouTube, Twitter, the Wall Street Journal, Apple, Yahoo, Gawker Media, AOL, Dell, LOLcats, the president, and more.

Check out this screenshot of how Rogers, a large Canadian broadband provider, modified the Google homepage for subscribers. It's sure to get advocates for network neutrality — the notion that Internet service providers should not discriminate between websites — all riled up. Sure, they'll say, the ISP only inserted a public service message to its users this time, but what's to stop Rogers from inserting a banner ad, or limiting Google bandwidth to give its partner, Yahoo, an edge? After the jump, a closeup of the controversial message.

So you want to keep the Internet neutral and outside the realm of private interests, eh? Well in that case, good luck raising the $137 billion needed by 2010. Because that's how much the Nemertes Research Group says needs to be invested in new Internet capacity to keep the Internet from crashing under the weight of new video and other Web content over the next two years. Goddamn YouTube and blogs!

Comcast has gotten a bitch-slap from Congressman Rick Boucher. Quick recap: Users said Comcast was screwing up file-sharing downloads via BitTorrent but no one believed them. Then the Associated Press did their own report, trying to download the Bible but failing. Comcast blundered through a denial, calling the wire report "web gossip." And it might get sued. All that and a pissed-off Congressman too? Not a good week for Philadelphia's cable guys.

"We all want the same thing. We are kind of new in this, and we all want the Internet to flourish and grow rapidly. We come at it from infrastructure and we are plowing a ton of money. We are learning how to work together. Don't regulate until there is a problem... The rules get dorked up and nobody will invest in these businesses... If somebody steps out of line they need to be slapped but don't mess with the business model." — AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit on government regulation of the Internet. [Between The Lines]

• The Internet for Dummies

Takeaway: The Senate Commerce Committee ran a pro-big-media marketing campaign disguised as a "bipartisan poll." The message is obvious: the committee is in bed with telcos and Net Neutrality is dead.

Thanks, Comcast, for pushing the cause of Net Neutrality! The Internet provider just made headlines by blocking e-mail from an old-school web community. It's just the latest effort by Comcast to be so awful at delivering an uninhibited Internet that lawmakers will have to pass a Net Neutrality law just to shut consumers up. Among Comcast's exploits:

Net Neutrality proponents discovered a new way to fight for their cause: beating the enemy into submission with the most painful music video in Internet history.

There's one more reason, in addition to the money-bleeding, the lack of a buyer, and all the other reasons listed yesterday, that YouTube is dying: Net Neutrality is over.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Sergey Brin!

Say goodbye to cheap bandwidth! Yesterday, the telecom companies shot down the net neutrality provisions that Internet giants hoped for. A former FCC chief of staff says no telecom bill this year is likely to include these provisions, which would prevent the companies running the Internet's cable and DSL connections from charging sites for the full bandwidth use everyone currently enjoys.

New York Times, 28 May 2006, on saving the democratic medium of the Internet:

Geez, YouTube, you get a little too hammered last night? As of post time, the Net's most popular video sharing site, has a major hangover. Site's down, and so were embedded videos, until recently.