To be honest, I'm not actually sure what QOS even has to do with the initial post in this thread; wouldn't a dedicated private ethernet network between the ECC machines and the EBS machines (assuming it's possible within Amazon's network structure) have worked, assuming that their switches are configured to only allow communication between ECC and EBS (forbid ECC - ECC traffic)? Your commentary about how this would deprioritize other traffic wouldn't then be quite right; it would be a dedicated network, with no cost to any external sites. It would obviously give EBS an "unfair" advantage over anybody who wants to provide an ECC block storage solution to compete with EBS, but honestly, is that a concern? Nobody's demanding that all internet hosts (end-user included) have the same bandwidth to all other hosts. It's just artificial crippling of services that are bad, not some things having advantages over others.

QoS on the general web doesn't seem likely, as you point out. Prioritization based on which services can afford to pay off all the nation's ISPs seems like a really bad idea though. As a service provider, I don't want to have to pay kickbacks to every ISP in the country (world?) to ensure that no unfortunate accidents befall my traffic. Much more personally, though, as a human, I'm sick of being sold as a product. I don't watch commercial TV because I'm not a product to be sold to advertisers. Similarly, I'm not a product for Comcast to sell to google; that's how they see me, but it's not how I see myself. And, I get pissed off when people see me that way :)