Slashdot Mirror
Comcast May Face Lawsuits Over BitTorrent Filtering
An anonymous reader writes "It's been widely reported that Comcast is engaged in a sneaky form of Internet filtering. The company is terminating its customers' BitTorrent sessions by sending misleading data onto the network. The end result is that instead of targeting key heavy users, Comcast is instead engaged in an all out war against P2P protocols. In an interview with CNET, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann states that Comcast is 'throwing a spanner in the works of the Internet, hoping that this will somehow reduce bandwidth usage overall.' Other lawyers seem to have smelled blood, and are circling in the water. Lohmann reveals that '[The EFF has] already been contacted by attorneys who are considering legal action against Comcast.' Could Comcast be facing a class-action?"
Personally I hope they do get sued. While I do think our society is overly litigous, and Comcast does have the right to modify traffic on the network they own, I don't think they have the right to lie or mislead about it. And isn't this the same Comcast who had the unlimited plan with bandwidth caps?
..... If an actual lawyer could comment on the possibility of any sort of lawsuit. While the article does reference this, it isn't clear if this could be done on a federal scale. That leaves the whole issue of a potential class action lawsuit up in the air IMHO.
Having said that, I hope it scares the crap out of Comcast (and any other ISP dumb enough to try this).
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Right, because nobody downloads Linux distros?
Comcast has 1.) advertised full-function internet service 2.) contracted with municipalities to provide that service to residents. Sending out spoofed packets to disrupt users internet usage simply isn't reasonable behavior for a company claiming to provide internet service.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
1) Lawyers file class action lawsuit that says P2P traffic is being blocked.
2) Comcast rebuttal says that all the traffic is illegal.
3) RIAA, the Business Software Alliance, say, "oh ho, you can figure out that this traffic is illegal.. why are you allowing it at all?"
4) Comcast agrees to halt all "illegal" traffic, winning the 1st lawsuit, after being joined by RIAA and co, and they agree to drop their lawsuits against Comcast.
5) P2P is dead, killed by ISPs that follow comcast's lead.
This is my sig.
I think this was a pretty underhanded move by Comcast, and the conspiracy theorists among us can probably find the RIAA behind the move. I don't think it's right.
Having said that...
Remember when the Green Card Lottery spam first went out? Everyone was up in arms about it, threats and lawsuits were coming from all sides...sound familiar? And that stopped the spam problem dead in it's tracks, right?
Same thing here. This is just the first volley. They're testing the waters. In 5 years it'll be commonplace for the ISP to disrupt/block/delay traffic as they see fit.
I hope I'm wrong. Smells like censorship to me.
World of Warcraft users who are trying to get the latest patch, for example?
Lawyers walk away with millions. Subscribers gets five dollars off their next bill. Comcast pass the cost to their subscribers. The douche bag decision makers in comcast are still employed, moving onto their next (evil) scheme. There is ZERO accountability here. Now if we start talking about PRISON term or heavy financial fines for the said douche...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
and could choose to sign up with a service that doesn't do so
Lucky.While I agree with you, I believe the larger issue (and why it's actually getting news) is that Comcast is intentionally killing Bittorrent traffic -- not just blocking ports, not just monitoring certain illegal sites, but killing the way the protocol works. And it's doing so indiscriminately.
So even though the majority of Bittorrent traffic is based on infringing copyright, it's also used for the majority portion of Linux ISO distribution. It's also used by a few game companies and other, very legitimate, purposes. If Comcast simply put out a press release saying "Due to our infrastructure, we are blocking all Bittorrent usage," there would likely be no problem. Instead, they're claiming they're not doing anything, or perhaps they're doing something, or they are definitely doing something but not really, or it's just like a "busy signal" on a telephone, and they're allowing people to download but not upload (which kills Bittorrent).
Instead they're lying, and trying to kill even legitimate torrents (without saying they're killing them). I'm not at all surprised that they're doing it -- the upload speeds on Comcast's network are laughable. But it's the avoidance and lying that gets me. Come out and say "We are actively blocking Bittorrent activity on our network." Otherwise, you're just misleading your customers.
"Frankly, I would prefer that my ISP have some sort of QoS so that my bulk traffic is at a lower priority than VoIP. Wouldn't you???"
No. I do not want my data traffic to be lower priority than someone else's VOIP. I don't use VOIP, I HAVE PHONE SERVICE. When I first heard of VOIP in 1996 I thought it was a bad idea, and I think it's worse now.