The cable giant and peer-to-peer innovator whose conflict triggered a renewed debate over net neutrality have announced that they will work together now, or at least adjust some of their rhetoric. Comcast and BitTorrent issued a press release this morning promising "a collaborative effort with one another and with the broader Internet and ISP community to more effectively address issues associated with rich media content and network capacity management."

It's unclear what impact this news will have on the Federal Communications Commission's investigation of what Comcast calls its 'network management practices' and critics call crude efforts to block or significantly slow down P2P use. Today Comcast promised that by the end of this year it will move to a capacity management system that is "protocol agnostic." This phrase, may suggest to the literal minded that Comcast would like to believe in Internet protocols, but needs to see some evidence that they exist first. Those hoping for a more precise definition could be disappointed by Comcast Chief Technology Officer Tony Werner's definition of the term. "This means that we will have to rapidly reconfigure our network management systems," the press release quotes Werner as saying, "but the outcome will be a traffic management technique that is more appropriate for today's emerging Internet trends."

BitTorrent matched this vagueness by assuring the public that it has kinder feelings now for Comcast's past ISP behavior. "While we think there were other management techniques that could have been deployed," declared Eric Klinker, BitTorrent's CTO, "we understand why Comcast and other ISPs adopted the approach that they did initially." Klinker added that he is pleased that "Comcast understands these changing traffic patterns and wants to collaborate with us to migrate to techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent."

The two groups say that they will work with each other, other ISPs and technology companies, and with the Internet Engineering Task Force "to explore and develop a new distribution architecture" for rich content delivery. BitTorrent President Ashwin Navin promises that they will publish their work in open forums.

Obviously this news will have an impact on the debate over to what extent the FCC should establish clear net neutrality based guidelines over ISP management. The most outspoken advocates of what they call a "light regulatory touch" on the Commission have already hailed today's announcement. FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate praised the agreement. "I have consistently favored competition and market forces rather than government regulation across all platforms and especially in this dynamic, highly-technical marketplace," she declared this morning. Ditto for her fellow Republican Robert M. McDowell. "As I have said for a long time," McDowell said yet again, "it is precisely this kind of private sector solution that has been the bedrock of Internet governance since its inception. Government mandates cannot possibly contemplate the myriad complexities and nuances of the Internet market place."

Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein took a more skeptical stance, declaring that the Commission "will need to learn more details about the recent agreement between BitTorrent and Comcast, but it is encouraging that broadband providers are listening to the chorus of consumer calls for open and neutral broadband Internet access."

The Comcast/BitTorrent press release also assures the public that both parties are discussing the creation of a friendly environment for "legal" P2P use, Comcast CFO Werner declaring that P2P protocols have "matured as an enabler for legal content distribution." The FCC's Tate added in her press statement that she wants "all interested parties to redouble their efforts to address the growing problem of illegal content distribution, from pirated movies and music, to online child pornography, as well as the issue of child online safety." How will Comcast do this without content filtering? Not very clear.