Comcast P2P ‘Bill of Rights’ No! Really!
p2pnet news | Freedom:- The sheer arrogance of Comcast has reached unbelievable extremes.
First, it gets caught trying to heavily shackle bandwidth customers have paid for in good faith, then it denies having done so, and when that doesn’t work, tries to pretend its traffic shaping is the ultimate benefit of consumers, then it announces a deal with BitTorrent under which by year’s end (a nice, long time in the future) throttling will cease —- except “during peak periods”
In other words, it’ll be no business as usual for certain customers at certain times.
As networking and protocol expert Robb Topolski summed it up, “Comcast and BitTorrent seems to have solved world hunger - and I’d love nothing more than to be optimistic about it.
“But I cannot be. As they say on Slashdot - show video, or it didn’t happen. This deal is treachery, relies on how much we can trust the word of Comcast, and leaves the public interests out in the cold.”
Now Comcast has taken it a mind-boggling stage further.
What’s America’s largest, and most devious, provider up to this time?
upTopoloski goes on >>>
It takes a special kind of arrogance for a company that sells Internet Access to team up with another company that sells Content Delivery and together decide what rights and responsibilities that the world’s Internet users should have.
As in its earlier “deal” with BitTorrent, Inc., Comcast’s announcement today doesn’t change any of the facts it faces: in 2006, it assured Congress that network neutrality laws were not necessary, saying it would not “deny, delay, or degrade” its customers in order to deal with traffic congestion.
Within a year it was caught secretly doing exactly that! Even after a long string of deceptive and deflective statements and tactics, Comcast continues to degrade their traffic today.
As was the case in the BitTorrent “deal,” neither Comcast Corporation nor Pando Networks represents the millions of customers and other members of the Internet community who were impacted when Comcast secretly launched its anti-P2P attack.
Today’s announcement comes less than 48 hours from the US Federal Communication Committee’s public hearing at Stanford University<http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-281501A1.pdf>.
There, the FCC is scheduled to hear from two panels of experts followed by two hours of public testimony on the Comcast incident specifically as well as similar industry practices in general.
No doubt we will soon see Comcast and Pando Networking executives start to explain why today’s “deal” signals that Network Neutrality regulation is not needed in the Broadband Marketplace.”
Topolksi will be at the FCC hearing.
So stay tuned.
solved world hunger - Comcast deals with BitTorrent, April 15, 2008
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April 15th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
You have the right to be throttled. You have the right to buy lots of bandwidth but never get to use it. You have the right to be called a criminal. And you have the right, no the duty, to like it!
April 15th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
so, Comcast is not a good ‘net citizen, nobody argues that. They got caught being bad so they’re throwing stuff out there so they can avoid the FCC’s hammer. They need to keep up this sustained PR ’cause once they’re on the FCC’s radar it’ll be a long time before they’re off and they need some substantive results that don’t make them look like the utter asses they look like now. This means that they’ll have to sit at the same table as Pando and other people with a stake in the P2P game and deal, this also means that they’re in a weak negotiating position and real guarantees can be gotten.
Would ‘net neutrality be great? Absolutely. But instead of viewing the BoR as a trade-off for some perfect goal, it’s better to view it as the first step in guaranteeing a better internet. Pando isn’t the perfect P2P representative but they have money riding on P2P data delivery so they’re not going to bend to Comcast’s whims. What’s needed is more participation by parties on both sides of the fence. This means that instead of decrying this announcement you should be encouraging every group with some stake in P2P to join it and come together to create a legitimate set of guidelines.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Once again, nobody at this “table” is representing the users … not to mention that the table is made of balsa wood and Comcast is using Pando merely for PR purposes.
(Note: Pando and most of the the P4P model benefits technically do not work any better in a Cable-Internet environment because the packets still have to travel upward through DOCSIS — which is more evidence that this Emporer is wearing no clothes.)
April 15th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
“You have the right to be throttled. You have the right to buy lots of bandwidth but never get to use it. You have the right to be called a criminal. And you have the right, no the duty, to like it!”
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THESE RIGHTS AS I HAVE EXPLAINED THEM TO YOU? (Says police officer now working for comcast….right before he handcuffs you… because you didn’t agree!)
Don’t laugh, it is not as far from reality as you may think.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:45 am
I wonder if Comcast will hire people to fill the seats and keep normal people out of the meeting, like they did last time?
April 16th, 2008 at 3:07 am
If it works as well as the USA’s bill of rights/constitution has done under the Bush administration, I’d say we have nothing to fear. Nothing to fear at all. It’s only a virtual piece of paper and doesn’t count for anyone above 36 IQ..
The real problem is the monopoly.
If Comcast has competition in most if not all areas, they would not dare implement guff like this without a holistic mandate encompassing all ISP’s at once.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:18 am
This is great news for China and the axis of evil.
Ah.
The progress.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:01 am
They must be related to Netspace in Melbourne Australia. We take it all, you lose suckers.