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Comcast Confirmed as Discriminating Against FileSharing Traffic
An anonymous reader writes "Comcast has been singled out as discriminating against filesharing traffic in quantitative tests conducted by the Associated Press. MSNBC's coverage of the discovery is quite even-handed. The site notes that while illegal content trading is a common use of the technology, Bittorrent is emerging as an effective medium for transferring 'weighty' legal content as well. 'Comcast's technology kicks in, though not consistently, when one BitTorrent user attempts to share a complete file with another user. Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer -- it comes from Comcast.'" This is confirmation of anecdotal evidence presented by Comcast users back in August.
...noticing problems downloading the patches on Comcast?
Just wondering since WoW uses Bittorrent to distribute its patches (one example of a very legitimate use).
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
They're basically doing this with a "man in the middle" attack by sending false messages to both parties in the communication, pretending to be the other. This is why all net traffic needs to be encrypted and signed.
Now maybe the "net neutrality isn't important because we can trust giant corporations not to screw their customers crowd" will shut up. Of course, the people getting paid to lobby or keep those bills out of Congress won't change their mind, but maybe regular people will. And that's a step in the right direction.
This story does make me wish I was not boycotting Comcast already though, so I could boycott it for this.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Comcast isn't a "common carrier". Also, their cable, their rules, don't like it, ditch Comcast. Now, IANAL, but maybe your argument would apply to DSL, being over the phone lines and all.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
If one wishes to find a legitimate example of bittorrent sharing of legitimate files, one need look no further than the largest MMORPG on the market - World of Warcraft. Patches are automatically (assuming the user doesn't disable the feature) downloaded using bittorrent. And Blizzard is more than aware of and approving of this, given that they programmed the feature. Needless to say, I think any internet service provider who disrupts a consumer's legitimate use of their internet connection is a service provider that doesn't deserve the consumer's money...
This is a very common misconception.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
In my experience, bittorrent transfers are much faster on my Comcast connection when I choose to encrypt them. That suggests to me that Comcast is indeed throttling normal bittorrent traffic.
I've posted this before, but it's pertinent and bears repeating, it's not just P2P traffic that Comcast is filtering. A sysadmin I know has been blogging on Comcast filtering corporate e-mail traffic as well.
http://kkanarski.blogspot.com/2007/09/comcast-filtering-lotus-notes-update.html
After Comcast loses all their customers to DSL, will they complain about [whatever DSL company]'s unfair monopoly advantage?
From wikipedia: "Internet Service Providers generally wish to avoid being classified as a "common carrier" and, so far, have managed to do so. Before 1996, such classification could be helpful in defending a monopolistic position, but the main focus of policy has been on competition, so "common carrier" status has little value for ISPs, while carrying obligations they would rather avoid. The key FCC Order on this point is: IN RE FEDERAL-STATE JOINT BOARD ON UNIVERSAL SERVICE, 13 FCC Rcd. 11501 (1998), which holds that ISP service (both "retail" and backbone) is an "information service" (not subject to common carrier obligations) rather than a "telecommunications service" (which might be classified as "common carriage")."
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
When I read the words "discriminating against" I assumed that Comcast was simply giving higher priority to non-bittorrent traffic. Given what they are doing, I think "interfering with" would be better language. This isn't just a passive downgrading. This is active blocking.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Set your bittorrent client to only use encrypted traffic. It fixes comcast's little red wagon fast.
Almost all up to date bittorrent clients support this.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
make them somewhat responsible for what content is on their network?
"Hello, RIAA. I have reason to believe Comcast is allowing illegal music trafficking to occur."
It's Comcastic!
"I wish to God these calculations would have been made by steam." -Charles Babbage
But we now have the "Hammer" method. Boycott the bastards, no matter what the cost.
Then when the people we use as an alternative to Comcast start to mess with us, just
DROP them too.
Simple market response.
Comcast is in many different cities - each office running independently of all others. Which offices are blocking bittorrent? I use it all the time, on Comcast, without any trouble. I have more issues at work (with traffic shaping junk) than Comcast. So, I do not see how this is a company-wide problem. It may be something only used in problematic areas.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
This is the worst Internet injustice since the last thing that had Slashdot's panties in a wad. And that one was so horrible that everyone forgot about it.
It's not the legality that Comcast takes issue with, it's the use of bandwidth. You're not supposed to actually use the bandwidth you buy, you see.
Their commercials make sense on a whole new level now.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Actually two of them:
1. What hardware/software would carriers have to use to do this?
2. Can it be defeated?
Fwiw, Rogers cable in Canada is rumored to be doing the same thing (and perhaps more). Michael Geist talks about this on his blog: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1859/
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Comcast would be well within their rights to drop or deprioritize bittorrent packets, but it's not at all clear that sending TCP reset segments with forged source IP addresses is kosher.
If all traffic flowed through a Comcast-controlled proxy that was disclosed, there probably wouldn't be a problem, but Comcast is actually forging source addresses on both sides with the effect of concealing their actions and fooling the parties on each end into terminating their connections at (what they believe to be) each other's legitimate request.
I imagine this method of traffic limiting could be litigated sooner or later since it affects customers who are not party to the RST-inserting carrier's TOS.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
It likely is illegal.
Just because it is their network DOES not give them the right to FORGE IP packets to look as if they come from elsewhere.
That would be like a courier service forging documents from 2 people wanting to communicate saying "Stop sending documents" if they didn't want them to talk. They'd never do something that stupid, and if they did, they couldn't get out of charges by saying they were only forging documents through their service.
Forgery is illegal. Someone who had a forged RST packet sent in their name should have forgery charges pressed and sue for impersonation.
A technical defense is to block RST packets. Probably not hard to do under Linux, and likely trivial.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
What is surprising is that they RST on anything going over TCP from any of their customers to another of their customers. It is not just P2P. Lotus notes gets whacked in a similar manner and so on. Cable Internet Engineering at its best.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
If I remember correctly, Comcast says that something like 1% of the user base causes 15% of the bandwidth, etc. Therefore, they throttle the thing that takes up the most bandwidth (torrents), in the name of helping out all the other users.
However, I would love to see stats on what percentage of their users actually use bittorrent. Until someone can prove that more than 1% use it, they can use that argument and 85% of people will shout"Yeah, more bandwidth for me, screw those pirates", without realizing the legitimate torrent uses (such as linux distro rollouts, patches as mentioned before, media defender email leaks, etc).
At leas the media is finally catching on, but until we get people to realizing that it is a slippery slope that affects them, there will not be enough uproar to stop them.
So, if we could only get our hands on how many people use it... we might be able to make some noise. Until then, the average joe will say "So What?"
Yes, but sending fraudulent messages could be against the law, which is what they're doing here.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
OK, now, let's suppose that I live in the U.S. (thank God I don't), that I've never illegally downloaded music (just for the sake of the argument), and that by the vicissitudes of fate, I happen to live in a zone monopolized by Comcast (again, thank God I don't).
Now, let's say I got sick tired of Windows (because just yesterday my legitimate-but-illegally-cracked due-to-legalized-limit-of-3-reinstalls-max copy of Windows, downloaded an update without notifying me! Only when I was about to shut down it told me), and I want to try out Gutsy Gibbon.
How am I supposed to download it, if Comcast thinks I'm stealing (and who the heck do they think they are, judge dredd?) pirated music? Oh, right, I'll mask my communications and encrypt all traffic, which is seen as evil and pro-terrorist by the current administration. What's next, sending me to Guantanamo for encrypting my LEGITIMATE traffic and demanding some LEGITIMATE privacy?
Sometimes I read the RIAA's arguments and I think I can figure out what they're saying behind us: "Oh, yeah, 'downloading Linux' (nudge) yeah, right... (smirk) 'legitimate traffic' (nudge), heh heh."
The problem with this thinking is that: a) Linux userbase (and those curious to download) has increased tremendously since Ubuntu came out. It's not the 1% it was a few years ago. At last I'm starting to believe that Linux is arriving to the Desktop. b) they do NOT respect the minorities. Even if it's only 1% of the population, ISPs should ensure that they get the traffic they PAID FOR. c) Where do I file for authorization to use bittorrent? Do I need a Linux certificate to demonstrate I'm not a music pirate, now? d) And what about free independent music? e) If they're only going to allow HTTP usage, I'd appreciate if at least they were F***ING SINCERE about it, k?
<rant>
That said, I wonder how they put their noses in bittorrent communication and at the same time they DON'T SHUT THE DAMN SMTP PORT used by the millions of zombified computers sending me spam! At least we have proved that they can, now!
</rant>
Whew, that felt good.
If you run bittorrent, your PC acts as both a client and a server. Running a server on your residential comcast account is a violation of the terms of service. Cutting that connection is neither discrimination nor abandonment of network neutrality; its simple contract enforcement.
This is not new. The prohibition against running servers on residential accounts has been around since the dialup days. What is new is that they're targetting the application instead of cancelling or forcibly upgrading the account.
If you don't like it, pay the extra bucks and upgrade to the hobbyist / small business account. If you pay for an account which permits you to run a server and they still interfere, then you have a real complaint.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Could Comcast be found guilty of fraud law or violating some computer usage law because of this?
On one hand, they're deliberately pretending to be the person you're communicating with (fraud?). On the other they're deliberately degrading performance of a person's internet connection (vaguely DOS-ish), a person one who isn't necessarily their customer.
Thoughts?
Question everything
I work for a VoIP provider and of all our customers, only the people using Comcast have voice brake-up. All other broadband including myself (charter) have perfect quality. It's sad when we get blamed for this when in fact its not our problem. I was on the phone with Comcast many times over just to get them to clear the problem up so my sister could have good VoIP quality. It still has problems here and there but at least its good now for the most part.
BTW, This has gotten worse ever since Comcast started offering VoIP.
One copy of a Linux distro requires at least 700MB. Which is equivalent to 150 downloaded MP3's. This traffic is definitely NOT a minority.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So, since, as it appears, they are sending spoofed packets ... Couldn't you claim unauthorized access to your PC, impersonation of another person, and forgery of information ... or something along those lines. Its certainly illegal to pretend to be someone else as a person, maybe not in and of itself, but as soon as you do something to harm one of the parties involved (thinking identity theft).
I just can't believe that somewhere along the lines there hasn't been a law made that makes spoofing illegal, they are claiming to be someone/something else to which you have agreed to communicate with.
Of course, if its not actually sending packets as if they came from the peer, then its a different story.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
It's not in their best interest for Comcast to interfere with BitTorrent activity, nor is it within their rights.
As a Comcast BitTorrent user, Comcast is impersonating me by sending RST (reset packets) as me.
They are deceiving the computers I am connected to by forging the source of the RST packets, saying they come from me.
I have suffered damages where I can't share files via BitTorrent, though I've paid for the privilege of exchanging data on the internet. Shouldn't I be entitled to relief and punitive damages? Indeed, shouldn't all Comcast BitTorrent users?
Isn't disruption of computer use and/or services and/or networks criminal in the US? My communication with non-Comcast networks is being disrupted!
Computers on the internet aren't just clients, they must also be servers. Today's internet could not exist without this model; Blizzard could't distribute WoW patches, Joost couldn't work, video games couldn't work.
I imagine Comcast would say that the ToS would prohibit server activities, but as the reader sees, if server activities were prohibited, Comcast would eliminate most of the reasons for internet use and they'd lose their internet service revenue stream.
Since they usually operate under exclusive franchises dished out by local governments, it's not as simple as "ditching" them. It's not possible for anybody else to install a cable to create any kind of competition. If you're lucky, you might have DSL, but a duopoly is rarely much better than a monopoly.
what goes around, comes around as a hammer.
Read radical news here
In their (partial) defense, their business model is probably something like:
- Offer a huge bandwidth that most people won't use
- Some will use it, costing us more than we charge, but that's overwhelmed by increased business by people who want the bandwidth from the ad while not actually using it
But then this happens:
- Whoops! File sharing is a Killer App that many people are using.
- On average we are now losing money.
Of course, the proper course of action is to alter their contracts (after the current ones expire) to charge more money for more use, perhaps in various rates. Yes, that will drive people to other companies who don't do this...who will also lose money.
Let the market figure it out.
Anyway, wouldn't generating fake signals to alter the operation of your applications be illegal? That's above and beyond throttling or blocking (gray enough as it is.)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"Ditch Comcast" is a lovely sentiment that has little to do with the world in which we live. For a lot of us, that means ditching internet service, as our only other option is to have our data transported through the tubes by invisible magic bit-fairies.
I am a Comcast customer not because I like Comcast, but because they bought out Time Warner in my city. I was a Time Warner customer not because I liked Time Warner (Though they certainly are better than Comcast), but because I DID ditch Qwest DSL for having the shittiest reliability and service I have ever encountered. I would tell you my Qwest story in detail, but it would take me all day and several pages. Suffice it to say that I will never, NEVER be a customer of Qwest again.
So that's it for me. Qwest or Comcast. Some f*cking choice. At least until the invisible magic bit-fairies decide to expand into my market.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
Nope. This has been discussed ad nauseum already, but Comcast (and Sandvine, which they are in all likelihood using) isn't looking at the actual data, it's looking at the overall pattern of traffic. It is still going to send RST packets, regardless of whether or not your connections are encrypted.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
Except for the fact that vast tracts of the good ol' US are exactly like he's describing. As soon as you move out of a major metropolitan area, your options start to get extremely limited.
... if Comcast is essentially attempting to disable Bitorrent, are they by any chance either violating or subverting one or more RFCs? Substitute the proper term for 'violating', that was the strongest word I could come up with quickly.
I recall that in the Early Days of the Internet, not abiding by the RFCs would get you in hot water. Especially screwing up with SMTP would do it, but even bad behaviour due to your incompetence would get your T-1 unclocked, and it would take a few calls to the powers that be to assure them that you found someone who knew what they were doing and that problem wouldn't occur again. At least not for a while.
My point is, perhaps it's time for the other Internet providers to consider requiring Comcast to not mess with traffic in this way, or sanction Comcast.
Sanctions could be as graduated as throttling at the NAPs, degrading Comcast traffic, even disconnects.
Some providers have a stake in this. If the legal Bitorrent users (WoW for instance) get a crossed hair over this, why would they not ask their providers to pressure Comcast into stopping this?
Ultimately, this may be Comcast clinging to their ToS and 'server' restrictions, and that would mean Comcast users won't be sharing out Bitorrent files. Bummer.
Another wrinkle, I wonder if Comcast sends forged RSTs to Comcast users sharing with *other* Comcast users. Intranetwork traffic shouldn't 'cost' so much for Comcast.
My theory is simple - Imagine if ISPs started throttling or denying traffic from Akamai, because of the volume... What a mess. And while Bitorrent is used for all sorts of purposes, so is SMTP. So if they think the illegal use of Bitorrent is sufficient excuse for them to deny it, why don't they throttle/deny SMTP, since simple spam is bad enough, but the emails of worms/trojans/scams also are objectionable. even arguably illegal. And certainly harmful, to users and the Internet. Maybe even Comcast.
Of course, that's not the point. Comcast is trying to avoid costs due to the volume of Bitorrent traffic that leaves them paying for NAP ports, lines to other ISPs, and routers/switches to manage all this.
In other words, they are trying to control costs by controlling usage.
One of the reasons I got out of the business pre-2000. Couldn't make a profit with my business model. Network costs were too high.
Well, another option is to surcharge high-volume users. Or charge more to afford to provide the service ostensibly advertised.
It's not often I can be happy to have Cox Cable. My Qwest DSL before just sucked, but the traffic got through.
Good luck. My bet is the best avenue is a class-action over either false advertising or Magnuson-Moss.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'm well within the Chicago metropolitan area, and have exactly his options.
AT&T has tried to sneak in some fiber into the area (Project Lightspeed), but continues to run into problems with deals local governments sign with Comcast. Namely, a $300k fee that villages charge new service providers and the requirement that telecom companies provide some sort of local service (i.e., local government access channels). AT&T says they're a utility and shouldn't have to pay that fee.
If Motorola's WiMAX manages to do something, they may be an option in the mid-term future. I'm not holding my breath.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Oh, yeah, I'm a whole thirty miles out of downtown Chicago. Holy cow, I must be plowin' fields n' chawin' tobbacky! GIT ON THE TRACTOR, MA! WE'S A-GOIN' TO SEE THEM THAR CITY FOLK!
Having my choice of two equally horrid alternatives somehow gives me no comfort.
As I mentioned, DSL is an option here. Qwest owns the lines. And I already employed the suggested vote-with-your-dollars strategy because they suck. So what would you have me do? Keep switching back and forth between them every month? And by the way, DSL requires doing business with Qwest because they own the phone lines, so the dial-up option doesn't change anything.
My point is that you act as though its a free and open market and gee-golly if someone doesn't like how they do business we can just find another provider -- and that's bull. Two providers does not add up to consumer freedom of choice. It's not helpful to excuse a company's bad policies by noting that one can "freely choose" equivalent or worse options. You're saying that because Comcast is still the more palatable of two rotten providers, whatever level of service they provide must be okay then, right?
Great. And if I don't like eating dirt, I can always eat shit instead or just go hungry. Lucky me.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
Before I get started, please don't take it as siding with Comcast, not even in a "playing the devil's advocate" kind of way. I'm just going to explain how it works. The morality of it, or of acting against it, well, you can decide for yourself. I'm not going to tell you what to think.
1. The pricing model for ISP's was based on the idea that the provider of that content paid for the bandwidth. That's why you can get a flat rate, in a nutshell. If someone put a 1 MB file on their site and you downloaded it, the site would pay for that MB. Each and every single MB you downloaded, would be an MB that someone else paid for.
Then the ISPs and backbone would split the loot according to who pushed what over whose lines.
And that worked remarkably well, while the Internet meant mostly HTTP. (Well, except emails, but those too used to be smaller and fewer.)
Enter P2P, and now there's a lot of data being transferred between the users, with noone paying for it. If I download a WoW patch from Tom, Dick and Harry -- the WoW patch downloader being a modified BitTorrent client -- we're all on flat rate, so noone pays. Every 1 MB I download is 1 MB that Blizzard didn't pay for. Worse yet, it's actually a bit more data transferred than 1 MB coming over HTTP.
"Legal" BitTorrent transfers tend to fall in that category. Someone thought he's smart if he, basically, cheats the ISPs of the bandwidth price. Instead of putting the file on a site and paying for the bandwidth, now he leaves it to a bunch of users that the ISP can't figure out how to bill for it.
Simply put, that price model is breaking down. And all the king's horses and all the king's men... err, I mean the ISPs, can't figure out how to put it back together again.
2. To make things work, paying for the receiving end too was based on oversell and... well, a self-throttling sharing scheme.
Let's say you're a really small ISP and have a 1 Gbit/s connection to the backbone and 1000 users. You sold each a 6 mbit/s connection. Now as long as most of them aren't downloading full time, they might even actually get 6 MBit/s. But in the worst case scenario, if each has one download going at the same time, they end up splitting your backbone connection evenly and getting 1 Mbit each. They'll grumble, but live with it.
What BitTorrent does, though, is best described as "not playing nice" in that sense. It will keep opening more and more and more connections until it fully saturates those 6 Mbit/s, everyone else be damned.
In the same scenario, just 150 users with BitTorrent are enough to gobble up almost 900 MBit/s out of your total 1000 MBit/s, and squeeze everyone else in the remaining 100. That's 15% of the users, using 90% of the bandwidth. And if you get 20% of them on BitTorrent, God help you, because those alone are already trying to use more bandwidth than you have total, and if bandwidth was air everyone else would be blue in the face like a Smurf.
Now again, I'm not saying that Comcast and the gang are doing the right thing there. I'm just saying what their problem is. You can take it as an example of a problem their own massive oversell created, if it makes you feel any better.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
but that can be done by the user at their end, if they want to. it doesnt have to be a universal policy enforced by the ISP. what if, today, i dont care if my calls get dropped because i really want this torrent to finish ASAP?
#Replace 6883 with you BT port
BT_PORT=6883
#Flush the filters
iptables -F
#Apply new filters
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
#Comcast BitTorrent seeding block workaround
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
#BitTorrent
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited IPFW #Replace bt port with your actual port number
ipfw add deny tcp from any to any {bt port} in tcpflags rst
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
and while its FTTN architecture is severely inferior to Verizon FIOS's FTTH, it might expand the territory AT&T is able to provide high-speed Internet service to. AT&T is sending in techs from Michigan to help deal with the 200,000+ installations already on order. If you see any big new metal boxes sitting on concrete pads in your neighborhood, they might be U-verse nodes.
U-verse's "Elite" Internet tier is 6M/1M. Slower downloads than Comcrap but faster uploads and only $40/mo, or $30/mo if you also subscribe to TV.
U-verse TV is problematic though, and they try to force you to sign up for it (you can drop it later, I did). Standard def TV looks great but HDTV is the most craptastic transcode I've ever seen, and you can only tune 1 HDTV channel at a time. Comcast looks dramatically better, let alone over-the-air.
It's a crying shame AT&T won't let me use the entire 27Mbps pipe for Internet. My RG is syncing with my node at 70Mbps+ but AT&T wants a "consistent" marketing message so they won't let me use it.
Anyhow, Bittorrent is working great here while people still on Comcast are complaining.
Rumor has it that the real reason AT&T isn't building FTTH is because local governments are demanding bribes such as the one you describe. I thought that they were just making up excuses but now I'm not so sure.
Of course, the proper course of action is to alter their contracts (after the current ones expire) to charge more money for more use, perhaps in various rates. Yes, that will drive people to other companies who don't do this...who will also lose money.
:D
Let the market figure it out.
Your kidding right? The market doesn't have a chance when it's only ONE company (thus a monopoly) available in your area. Sure there is DSL here and there competing against Comcast. The issue is without an infrastructure in place, you can't select another vendor. It's their way or the high way.
SB 66 in utah for instance is a good example of closing a free market. For several years we've been hearing of all the great things the company was going to do for us. They sorta kept their promise. And now they are terminating people for using the service paid for.
With a free market, Comcast would't have the number of customers they do here. I haven't met anyone who says they love Comcast compared to other services. They only have the one and no other's available. Like having only one Pizza shop. They are the best right? Nobody compares to Joe Blow's Pizza Shop? Right
I'm taking next thursday off to sit in the audience of the subcommittee. I'm very curious what decisions they are planning on making and hope for an opportunity to speak during the citizens comment period. Hopefully SB 66 stays dead and Utopia will be allowed to expand. 17 Cities are investigating whether they should join it. If SB 66 is revived, it will kill the free market in their area.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Enter P2P, and now there's a lot of data being transferred between the users, with noone paying for it. ... we're all on flat rate, so noone pays. Every 1 MB I download is 1 MB that Blizzard didn't pay for.
But somebody somewhere is uploading that data that's being downloaded. It's not magically coming from nowhere. If the trick is that the cost of bandwidth is supposed to be shouldered by the uploaders, then it's shouldered by the uploaders, and it doesn't matter if it's being downloaded by p2pers or anything.
Which you vaguely get at later in your reply, but this sort of comment is nonsense: "Legal" BitTorrent transfers tend to fall in that category. Someone thought he's smart if he, basically, cheats the ISPs of the bandwidth price. Instead of putting the file on a site and paying for the bandwidth, now he leaves it to a bunch of users that the ISP can't figure out how to bill for it. Nobody posting legal files thinks anything like they're "cheating"! Even if your theory is true, nobody out there knows it, so how could they think they're cheating? They think they're 'spreading the load' somehow. They're using 'available bandwidth' that's not being used for anything.
Then you say:
2. To make things work, paying for the receiving end too was based on oversell and... well, a self-throttling sharing scheme.
Ok then. If all download bandwidth requires corresponding upload bandwidth, and p2p uses "average users'" upload bandwidth, and upload bandwidth for "average users" was oversold... then that means your argument ends up being "broadband vendors oversold bandwidth"! (Just that it's upload bandwidth, not download bandwidth like everyone thinks.)
But this all hinges on a rather bizarre claim about how bandwidth is sold (by upload bandwidth only) that does things like ignore people in the middle... it may be true but your presentation is so sloppy that it doesn't seem trustworthy at all.
You can take it as an example of a problem their own massive oversell created, if it makes you feel any better.
Yeah, gee, I think I'll do that, since that's what your argument boils down to.
I've had people get into arguments saying it's MTU or someother issue with P2P, but I've been just going on emperical data and personal observations. My internet connection to Cox ONLY becomes spotty (at best) when I fire up ANY version of a P2P software. I can go months without rebooting my PC, Router, and Cable modem, but the moment I fire up LimeWire it drops to slow performance and often locks up within 5 minutes. Rebooting the cable mode can instantly fix it. Dont run Limewire? It'll go back to normal. Run Limewire after rebooting? Back to slow performance and a reboot it right around the corner. Again, I've tried different types of P2P, so I'm not buying any breakdown in the TCP/IP stack (MTU problems, etc). It's almost as if they drop my IP lease because I still see traffic but nothing works. Their "stop communicating" message would also make sense.
Somebody used the word "fraud". That word is not a synonym for "lying". For there to be fraud, you have to be causing somebody a material loss. Do undelivered packets count as a "material loss"? IANAL, but I'm sceptical.
It might still be true that Comcast is breaking the law somehow. There might be some communications law or regulation that forbids providers from this kind of manipulation of their customers' traffic. But it's not as obvious as you're claiming.And it's certainly stupid. But only because there are easier ways to tell your customers that you can't carry their shipment. If, for example, FedEx caught you shipping plant seeds or pornography or human body parts (all on their forbidden list), they'd probably just return the shipment to you. But if they did deliver a nasty note to your recipient, what law would they be breaking?
Of course, if they refused to return your property, they'd be committing theft. But is an IP packet "property"? Well, if it is, they can always email you back all the IP packets it didn't deliver....
- On average we are now losing money.
This is a common misconception some people seem to have. Not following an avenue or course of action that would result in increased profits is NOT THE SAME as losing money. It's making less money. Losing money would be having to spend more than you made, and we both know that's not what's happening. It's a typical "investor class" mentality to look at not making money the same as actually losing money. There's something to be said for making a little less money, but also offering a better service. Human decency is what I'd call it. Poor business sense might be what someone else calls it. Go figure.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
Maybe. One thing I am certain about however is that Comcast is courting a tragedy of the commons. As more high volume internet traffic has to resort to obfuscation, it will become more difficult to apply accurate traffic shaping where it is really useful. What do you do when everything looks like IPSEC and SSL or - God forbid - streaming video?