In a little covered court decision last week, Judge James Zagel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois sided with Comcast in a case brought by e360Insight, saying the cable company acted in good faith in trying to block what it deemed was spam from reaching subscribers.

We’re struck by the similarities between the arguments made by the plaintiff (characterized as a “spammer” in the judges ruling) and the folks over at Save the Internet. What with all those nasty words like, “manage,” “block,” and “filter” you’d think Save the Internet would be laying siege to the courthouse…but alas, all is quiet.

This episode has us here at Hands Off wondering, since Save the Internet believes all bits are equal, when will they launch their campaign to defend the “rights” of spammers?

Amid all the stats coming out of last week’s IDC Security Forum in New York, the most depressing is probably this: 90 percent of all email is now spam or has some mixture of viruses, Trojan Horses, or other malware.

Sad to say, but when it comes to online security, the U.S. is lagging. Symantec concluded as much in March when it issued a report ranking countries by the proportion of malicious activity originating from their networks. The United States had the highest proportion of malicious activity, with 31 percent. China was a distant second, with 10 percent and Germany third, with 7 percent.

The sole ray of hope from the IDC conference is the increasing success of integrating network-based security measures. These can measure traffic spikes that are often the telltale signs of denial-of-service attacks, botnets, and other problems, and then take action to prevent this harm from spreading to consumers.

And net neutrality? Well, remember that if net neutrality becomes law, a company pushing malicious software would gain new legal standing to bring a lawsuit if an Internet service provider “discriminates” against it by filtering or blocking its programs.

That well could inevitably hamper efforts to combat evolving security problems – with net users becoming the ultimate losers.

As a practical matter, think of online security this way: Your anti-virus software is the online version of a deadbolt lock on your front door. Your Internet service provider is like the cops on the street.

Net neutrality effectively takes away the cops on the street, leaving you with only your front door deadbolt. Feel safer?

A headline in a Washington trade publication said it all:

“Passions are sure to run high with reintroduction of Net neutrality legislation.”

(Source: Warren’s Washington Internet Daily)

As the old lawyer’s saying goes, when the facts are against you, pound on the law. When the law’s against you, pound on the facts. And when both are against you, pound on the table.

So before passions run high, let’s recap a few facts about today’s Internet:

• Annual percent increase in Internet traffic (2005-06) – 60 percent

• Average number of spam emails sent per day (October 2006) – 61 billion

• Percent increase from October 2005 – 100 percent

• Percent of 2006 VOIP calls judged to have “unacceptable quality” – 19 percent

• U.S. world ranking in broadband access – 16th

• Percent of major Internet carriers that abide by the FCC’s nondiscrimination principles – 100 percent

The list could go on, but the point for Net users is that online quality is dropping as traffic surges and deployment remains slow. Neutrality regulations not only won’t help, they’ll just make things worse.

So Cisco just picked up IronPort for a cool $830 million. IronPort operates a system it modestly calls “the world’s largest email and Web threat detection network and database.” Basically, it’s a blacklist that helps keep out the Internet’s known bad guys.

Why care? Take a look:

• Worldwide spam increased from 31 billion daily messages in October 2005 to 61 billion per day in October 2006.

• The average spam size has grown from 8.9KB to 13KB, a 46% increase.

• Bandwidth used by spam increased from 275 terabytes per day to 819 terabytes per day, an increase of nearly 200%.

(Source: IronPort survey, November 15, 2006)

All this points to two obvious conclusions. First, spam is placing a growing stress on the Internet. Second, unless you love those pitches for Viagra, the notion that “all Internet content is equal” makes about as much sense that pitch you just got for a penny stock that’s about to return 300% next week.

From today’s Washington Post:

“Unfortunately, congressional initiatives aimed at preserving the best of the old Internet threaten to stifle the emergence of the new one.”Network neutrality is supposed to promote continuing Internet innovation by restricting the ability of network owners to give certain traffic priority based on the content or application being carried or on the sender’s willingness to pay. The problem is that these restrictions would prohibit practices that could increase the value of the Internet for customers.”

Few people understand the Internet better than Carnegie Mellon Prof. and “Godfather of the Internet” David Farber. And Michael Katz was Chief Economist at the FCC during the Clinton Administration.

So when these two team up to tell the world that Net neutrality regulations would hurt efforts to curb “viruses, worms, denial-of-service attacks and zombie computers,” prudent lawmakers ought to take notice. The Dynamic Duo point other problems with neutrality regulation:

“When traffic surges beyond the ability of the network to carry it, something is going to be delayed. When choosing what gets delayed, it makes sense to allow a network to favor traffic from, say, a patient’s heart monitor over traffic delivering a music download.”

This op-ed is so good there’s no reason for additional commentary. Check it out.

Check out the blog Kung Fu Quip and this incisive explanation of the facts behind net neutrality:

The proponents will tell you that net neutrality has always been - based on a law that applied to 40% of the broadband connections carried by DSL lines. It never applied to cable - which accounts for about 60% of the broadband connections. So NN was never “the founding principle”. It was a hindrance to DSL, and the lack of it allowed cable to arrive on the scene and steal the market (well, that and the fact that cable had faster lines and a $100 billion network investment to make it better).

These are facts the advocates of Dorgan-Snowe and their Internet allies have no answer for. They’ve never even tried. Kung Fu Quip also delivers more pointed questions with Shaolin style:

Net Neutrality argues those pipes should just sit there and let e-mail spam duke it out with YouTube to see who gets there first.

Read the whole thing.