A hardware problem in Comcast's Boston-area Internet network got dozens of local cable-modem surfers steamed, according to Bostonist. Google and YouTube were among the sites temporarily blocked. The outage was no big deal, but what provoked major howls was Comcast's do-nothing, blame-everyone customer support. Phone reps blamed users' Firefox Web browsers, telling them to switch to Internet Explorer, or said Google was at fault for the problem. Others told Gmail users to use Comcast email instead. Another rep told Bostonist that Comcast wouldn't do anything to fix the problem until a "critical number of calls" came through. Comcast did finally fess up that it was at fault, blaming a server for the incident.

But that raises a good question: If this kind of blockage can happen by accident, imagine what Comcast could do intentionally to block other websites. There's been a lot of debate about "net neutrality" - the idea that Internet service providers shouldn't favor one set of websites over another, and this outage highlights the problem. And it also raises the possibility of a more passive-aggressive kind of discrimination: By steering customers to its own websites and placing the blame on others instead of addressing its own network-connection problems, is Comcast unfairly undermining its Internet rivals?