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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?"
One should hope so. See, here's the deal.
If I were on Comcast's Internet service, I would be paying for the ability to communicate with other people to accomplish various legal tasks. And if there is anything to learn in the past few days immediately following the release of Gutsy Gibbon, with Ubuntu.com completely hosed as far as I can tell, there are legitimate, much-needed, legal ways to use peer-to-peer services. If this isn't the fundamental reason for signing up with an Internet Service Provider, to be able to communicate with other computers, what is?
If they had told me up front that they would be resetting peer-to-peer connections, I might be mad, but at least I'd know it up front and could choose to sign up with a service that doesn't do so. If these were technical problems that forced their actions as a resolution, then I might agree that taking necessary action to restore service is a Good Thing. If there really were no legitimate uses for peer-to-peer networks, as the RIAA and MPAA would have everyone believe, then I would still disagree, but at least I would understand.
As it is, though, none of those things are true. Comcast is still denying that they are deliberately causing connections to fail, in spite of the incontrovertible proof that has been offered, and that only after Comcast said nothing at all to their customers for... well... we don't know how long. As it is, it's not in response to connections being down, it was planned out and implemented while nothing was broken in response to some hypothetical situation that might arise. In fact, in having problems with Lotus Notes, Comcast has actually broken something else that was working before in order to fix a problem that didn't exist to begin with!
In short, if I were on Comcast's Internet service, I would be paying them to deliver network packets, that's all. At best, Comcast has engaged in an egregious breach of contract by deliberately interfering with my ability to get packets from A to B. At worst, they are guilty of deliberately and secretly impersonating someone they're not, and if I'm not mistaken, that's a crime. They might be lucky if they can get out of this with just a class action lawsuit.
I'm not on Comcast's Internet service, thank goodness, although I am on AT&T's, and believe me, it's not much better. All of this stupidity just makes me long even more for more competition in this space for something else to come along. I never that I'd see the day when, "We won't interfere with your Internet connection!" would actually become a selling point, yet here we are.
If I can indulge in a bit of tinfoil-hattishness, it really makes me wonder. The RIAA and MPAA are a huge media creation conglomerate. As mentioned, they hate, HATE, HATE peer-to-peer software, even with all of its legitimate uses. As some of you may know, Comcast is more than just an Internet service provider, they also happen to be the largest media provider company, and they're facing increased competition from telcos and satellite providers. Who wants to bet that Comcast has been either paid off or offered sweet deals on media content in trade for pushing the RIAA's and MPAA's agenda of controlling what applications can and can't be used on the Internet?
Something to think about...
that broke the internet's back for me. I've already ordered DSL service to replace my current Comcast connection. As soon as it is up and running I'm taking both my cable box and my modem back personally, and explaining that the reason I am cancelling is due to Comcast's complete disregard for customer service in that they constantly lie to their customers about having "unlimited" service as well as messing around with packets they ought not be messing around with.
Not everyone is so lucky, I read so many posts in other threads saying that Comcast is their only option for broadband. Hopefully that will change for them. I have a friend in a rural area who was able to sign up for sprint wireless broadband, because comcast wont run their cable 20 feet across the road to his house. The only issue with the sprint connection is it is not incredibly reliable, but for the most part his link stays up while he is using it.
UnFair thee well, Comcast...
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
On your BitTorrent client.
I turned it on yesterday and am getting unheard of download speeds: over a 1000 kB/sec. in some cases. I've never seen speeds that high. I use Comcast. And my uploads are getting better so my ratio doesn't ban me from my favorite site.
(Just for linux iso's of course.)