Leave file sharing alone, Comcast told
p2pnet news | P2P:- Consumer groups and legal scholars today formally asked the Federal Communications Commission to stop Comcast from tampering with file sharing.
“Two of the groups are also asking the FCC to fine Comcast $195,000 for every affected subscriber,” says Associated Press, continuing:
The petitions will be the first real test of the FCC’s stance on “Net Neutrality,” the principle that Internet traffic be treated equally by carriers. The agency has a policy supporting the concept but its position hasn’t been tested in a real-world case.
The long-standing industry practice of treating Internet traffic more or less equally has started to fray. In tests spanning several states, The Associated Press found that Comcast hindered file sharing by subscribers who used BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing program. The findings, first reported Oct. 19, confirmed claims by users who also noticed interference with other file-sharing applications.
Comcast says it hasn’t actually been blocking file sharing: it’s merely delaying it a tad.
But the subject has become so sensitive the company is said to be threatening to fire staff who talk about it to reporters.
Moreover, its denials denials notwithstanding, Comcast is deliberately and knowingly impeding attempts by some of its high-speed Internet customers to share files online, said Associated Press in an earlier story.
Following the AP revelations, “we’ve been running our own tests” and, “Comcast is forging TCP RST packets which cause connections to drop (a technique also used by Internet censorship systems in China),” said the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Seth Schoen.
“In response to the filings, David Cohen, an executive vice president at Comcast, said that the FCC’s policies recognize that ISPs need to manage the traffic on their networks,” says AP, also pointing out:
If other ISPs follow in Comcast’s footsteps, file sharing would essentially crawl to a halt. While the technology is a popular way to illegally share copyright movies and music, legal uses are proliferating, particularly in movie distribution.
Free Press and another group, Public Knowledge, are separately filing a formal complaint that asks the FCC to demand a
“forfeiture” from Comcast of $195,000 per affected subscriber, says the story, adding:
“The complaint includes affidavits from three Comcast subscribers who say they have been affected by Comcast’s interference. The complaint asks the FCC to determine the total number of affected subscribers.”
Also See:
Associated Press – Groups Seek Stop to Comcast Net Meddling, November 1, 2007
fire staff – Comcast threatens staff in P2P scandal, October 29, 2007
Associated Press – Comcast blocks some Internet traffic, October 19, 2007
cause connections to drop – Comcast impedes hi-speed file sharing, October 20, 2007
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November 2nd, 2007 at 5:14 am
I don’t know if they will win, but I hope they do! This can affect more than just comcast or filesharing. What is to stop them from censoring other thingsthey don’t like??
An ISP MUST be neutral. Or else risk alienating it’s subsrcibers.
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:39 am
Sorry I don’t agree.
Comcast should change the contracts with the subscribers and make those that download more than the set amount of bandwidth pay for it.
Also, I don’t think they are breaking any laws.
All ISP place higher priority to different services such as email and web.
What they should have done was set a per modem cap. like 200 kbps limit on Bittorrent.
That would be alright to me.
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:11 am
“If other ISPs follow in Comcast’s footsteps, file sharing would essentially crawl to a halt.”
Did he actualy say that??
ffs… yes screw all new new prospering video streaming services using bittorrent, not to mention all the corperate and organisations (around the globe) and the ones spreading their work on bitttorrent and using it for their many and different operations..
Comcast are idiots! seriously..
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:12 am
Comcast should lose. They claimed to sell an internet connection to consumers and then sabotaged it.
November 3rd, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Comcast also increased latency and the number of discarted packet in order to favorise their one VOIP service against the competitions. This is causing video stream to sometime stop or even the IE browser to freeze. For exemple in our case the Quality factor is arround 80% this mean 20% packet are lost! This also mean that when comcast advertize 8mb/s speed you actually get only 6.4mb/s. Beside the neasured speed is rarly 8mb/s. It is most of the time below that and soemtime as low as 1.6mb/s. Sometime it is zero because we lose service for hours at a time specially at night.
Frankly I had enought with Comcast and I am going to ditch all my comcast services, switch my TV to satellite and my Internet to DSL. Enought is enought!
November 3rd, 2007 at 7:26 pm
“Comcast should change the contracts with the subscribers and make those that download more than the set amount of bandwidth pay for it.”
When they offer Unlimited, then that is what it means, Unlimited. If they would start limiting, they need to advertise that they limit the amount you can download/upload in a given month. If they do that, they know they will lose customers, and that is why they are doing everything in secret.
November 3rd, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Comcast has had to be the worst company I have ever had to deal with in existence. Support is pretty much non-existent or not helpful because they don’t no what the hell the company they represent does, they have pretty much screwed me over with a business line that is only 20 GB a month instead of the Unlimited I was promised, lastly, they’re the only provider out here besides dial-up and I have been wondering which is worse. Crippling file sharing, which is what I now use because it’s so much cheaper for our business than to pay for hosting and a server, is an incredibly stupid thing to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if Comcast’s stock dropped 10% in the next few weeks because of its stupidity. Anyways, I’m probably going to work up a deal with a private contractor if possible. There goes another Comcast customer, one that gave them at least $100 a month for a few measly MBs.
November 4th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I agree, Comcast is going to end up losing a lot of business because their dealings with this situation. For months I couldn’t figure out why I would lose connection. I would lose connection 2 or 3 times a day and I would have to reboot the modem to get it going again. I use bittorrent to download the newer versions of linux, which is the best way to do it, plus some other misc. items. I mostly play mmorpg and its just frustrating to lose connection when your in a middle of a raid. I couldn’t take it any more, so I switched to DSL. Maybe I lost some speed, but, nothing really I’m to worried about. Plus, the upside of it is, DSL is so much cheaper than Comcast I’m actually saving money and never lose my connection. Point is, don’t mess with peoples connection, especially if they are paying a lot for it, for most of us, there are other ISP’s for us to go to.
November 4th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
There is a choice among DSL providers.
There is often NOT a choice among cable providers.
Comcast has a monopoly not only over your cable Internet but your ability to watch TV. After 2/2009 you need to subscribe to your local cable monopoly or buy a $40 converter as the public broadcast airwaves are being taken away for public safety.
Heaven forbid anyone watch a half hour of anything without spending a third of that time being force-fed the latest from the latest of peppy business/marketing majors.
November 5th, 2007 at 11:20 am
I have a relative that works as an engineer for Comcast. I’ll agree ‘in principle’ with some posters, but I still hate hearing people talk out of their backsides with no knowledge of the technology, policies, or management directives that Comcast employees must deal with. Everyone has an opinion, it is too bad that most are not informed opinions.
1. Each neighborhood is supplied with ’shared bandwidth’ up to the first router. If one peron in the neighborhood is using 90% of the available bandwidth doing p2p transfers, that leaves dozens of homes to share the last 10% for everything else. There does happen to be a limited amount of bandwidth, the ‘unlimited’ marketing term notwithstanding. Think about it. No more fast World of Warcraft raids. No more Gaia Online trading. No more streaming YouTube videos. It is all slowed to a crawl by ONE person in your area. THAT is what’s not fair.
2. The agreement you signed (or verbally agreed to) SPECIFICALLY states that you can not run a server. Period. By serving out files via p2p you are running a server, no matter how you might want to spin that fact. Turn off the upload portion (the sharing) and you are fine. However, then YOUR p2p downloads are throttled by YOUR p2p application so it’s a tradeoff.
3. Upgrade to a Business Account (and pay for that upgrade every month) and Comcast will happily allow you to run a server. THEN you have standing to complain if they begin to throttle your p2p traffic. However, my money is on the fact that they probably won’t. There is dedicated hardware in the network control areas that knows if you are a priority customer and it can bypass certain traffic types…
So, stop pissing in your milk over this. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with it. I don’t want MY Internet enjoyment suffering because some kid in the neighborhood is 24×7 sharing songs and movies. Use IRC instead.
November 5th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
“Upgrade to a Business Account (and pay for that upgrade every month)”
So you would sell me unlimited bandwidth and then tell me I have to upgrade? Can you guess what my response would be?
December 31st, 2007 at 11:40 pm
I agree with both of you. Robert, you’re totally right about the false advertising. If they told me, 200 gigs a month, at least I’d know. As for the above poster with “inside” info, as far as cable goes, I agree as well. If someone is being a bandwidth whore then thats not fair. I didn’t know the cable system is first come first serve on the chain, though. What bugs me is DSL providers that are doing the same thing.
I use Eastlink Cable myself and haven’t had much of a problem. No throttling as far as I can tell. Some days I get awesome downloads, others are average. I’ve never had a bad connection day. So I can’t complain. As I see it, cable is a gamble, but DSL is a guaranteed download rate (but usually slower than cable).