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With all this talk of Comcast and Canadian Internet service providers throttling file-sharing connections, serial entrepreneur and twinkle-toes Mark Cuban has decided, in big, bold letters, that ISPs should "BLOCK P2P NOW." Although he's not a Comcast subscriber, he supports its crusade to rid the Internet of "P2P freeloaders" because he doesn't want them eating up all his bandwidth. (As does Valleywag. Don't like it? Lay your own cable, pikers. Cuban is a billionaire from selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo, and could actually afford to take our advice.) But we're curious why he's suddenly decided he has a problem with peer-to-peer software.

When he says "freeloaders," he's talking about companies (like Joost or Skype) that rely on peer-to-peer distribution for bandwidth. But as Ars Technica points out, Cuban was happy to finance P2P file-sharing client Grokster's legal defense. He also invested in peer-to-peer file-distribution startup Red Swoosh, and profited when it was acquired by Akamai. His new complaints probably have more to do with the library of high-definition TV content he's building through HDnet and his other ventures — and the fact that he needs to cozy up to Comcast for distribution, both online and in its HD lineup.