Just weeks after announcements of an agreement with BitTorrent and an end to its policy of “data discrimination,” Comcast unfolded plans for a peer-to-peer “Bill of Rights” together with content-delivery firm Pando Networks. The two also announced plans to meet with a number of other ISPs, as well as other P2P firms and industry experts, to draw up specific rules clarifying how users can use P2P applications, and how ISPs can manage that use without overwhelming their networks.

Specifically, the “Bill of Rights” seeks to define what kind of control ISPs have to manage P2P data travelling over their networks, with the outcome set to find agreed-upon industry practices.

The announcement comes amidst what seems to be a general panic amongst ISPs, many of which claim to be overwhelmed by P2P traffic. With traffic surveys reporting figures that are literally all over the place – depending on the survey, P2P traffic comprises of anywhere from 25% to 90% of all internet traffic globally – many ISPs chose to implement systems to control and manage P2P traffic flow.

Last year, Comcast was called out by the Associated Press and forum users at DSLReports.com, who found the company using an aggressive form of traffic management that actively prevented or delayed users’ P2P activity. After the resulting FCC fiasco, late last month Comcast promised to stop the practice, announcing plans to work with BitTorrent, Inc. to make P2P more efficient.

Comcast says it will deploy a test installation of Pando’s Network Aware technology on Comcast’ s fiber-optic backend, in order to better gauge and analyze P2P traffic. Pando says it will conduct similar tests with several other ISPs as well, and while it didn’t give specific names it did say that testing would cover cable, DSL, fiber, and wireless internet providers.

“We hope to get other industry experts, ISPs and P2P companies together this spring and publish the 'P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities' later this year,” said Comcast CTO Tony Werner.

Pando CEO Robert Levitan said he hopes to share the gleamed data with ISPs and the P2P community, in order to “learn how to more efficiently deliver digital content.”

While the announcement gathered heavy support from trade groups like the Distributed Computing Industry Association, which represents P2P and social-networking companies, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a number of advocacy groups expressed discontent.

“Slick press releases by a dishonest would-be gatekeeper do nothing to protect consumers,” said Marvin Ammori, who serves as the general counsel for media-reform group Free Press. A P2P Bill of Rights works against progress towards true network neutrality, the need of which “remains urgent.” Comcast’s announcement is “little more than the fox telling the farmer, 'I'll guard the henhouse, you can go home.' And that's all the attention it deserves,” he said.

“The The FCC should do its job to uphold the existing bill of rights for consumers and should do so quickly.”

Gigi Sohn, co-founder and president of advocacy group Public Knowledge, called a Comcast-Pando deal “ludicrous,” before noting that Comcast should solve its other problems before it “starts pretending to solve the problems of the internet that it helped to cause.”