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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?"
All you have to do is show that they are blocking 100% completely legal traffic on the Internet. Not 90% legal or 99% legal or "has substantial non-infringing use" - none of these are going to stand up to the light of day with a jury.
The problem is that if you want to ding Comcast for blocking it you are going to need to show that in no way could they ever be held liable for not blocking it. With decisions about contributing to infringement coming down in the last year, I'd say an ISP would be incredibly stupid for not blocking traffic that they could clearly be held liable for. You better believe Comcast will use this as a defensive strategy. In today's climate their attorneys have likely advised that not blocking it could be construed as a assisting in infringement.
So while technically it helps management of the network it also eliminates one more thing that could create a liability for them. Win - win for Comcast, lose-lose for the customer.
The decision that nobody owns anything you cannot hold in your hand is the only way out of this. I don't think it is going to come because it would mean the virtual bankruptcy of the US. We don't make "stuff" anymore, we make "intellectual property".
Will this make people respect copyright? Heck no. You can't prosecute people on the Internet, you can't track them down and you just barely can sue them - only if they are stupid about it.