Been reading the news last week? Once you got past all the news on the California wildfires, maybe you saw a few pieces on various ISPs doing exactly what they said they would never do: be the arbiter of what content they were passing to consumers.

First was actually further back, in late September. Did you read about the "isolated incident" where Verizon Wireless denied a request by Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, to use its mobile network for a sign-up text messaging program.

Next came news that AT&T reportedly changed a service agreement that previously included language permitting the company to cancel accounts of Internet users who disparage the company. Nice.

Then this week I read how Comcast Corp. was interfering with file sharing by some of its Internet subscribers. After denying it, Mitch Bowling, senior vice president of Comcast Online Services, admitted: "During periods of heavy peer-to-peer congestion, which can degrade the experience for all customers, we use several network management technologies that, when necessary, enable us to delay - not block - some peer-to-peer traffic. However, the peer-to-peer transaction will eventually be completed as requested." The AP found instances in some areas of the country where traffic was blocked or delayed significantly.

Is this the end of it? Not my a long shot. Have you heard of Sandvine? They claim to have "eight of the top 20 broadband service providers in the US" as customers. What pray tell do they do for their customers? They help big ISP's profitably manage their Internet traffic. How does an ISP improve the profit? Maybe by reducing bandwidth expenses? Turns out that the software can also forge TCP RST packets that cause Internet connections to drop - a technique regularly used in mainland China. Just what we need. Our ISPs breaking connections when they see us connect to a site they don't approve of or when we use too much bandwidth.