Congressman Tells Comcast, Hands Off BitTorrent

An anonymous reader writes "Just a few months back, the Net Neutrality debate was all but dead. Luckily for fans of a free Internet, the telcos are their own worst enemies. Recent stories involving Verizon Wireless blocking pro-choice groups, AT&T censoring Pearl Jam's anti-war comments from a streaming concert, and most recently, Comcast finally admitting to using anti-BitTorrent filters. The Net Neutrality debate would appear to be alive and kicking, with Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) being the first politician to make a public statement sharply criticizing Comcast's actions."

Comments

Comcast seems to be fast

[Technician]

Am I the first to notice that Comcast may have removed the filter? Last night I started the Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon DVD download. I thought it would be done this morning, but I noticed the network switch still blinking like crazy. I logged in and checked the status. The download is done. I checked the upload status...

1286 K uploaded at a rate of 20KB/s. This is the first time in weeks I have seen upload speeds better than 0.0 KB/s and a transfered size larger than 0.1 KB. Since I am finally able to help spread Ubuntu, I'll let it run all day. Maybe I'll be able to upload more than I download for a change. Seeing any upload traffic after a completed download is highly unusual on Comcast lately.

Too late for Comcast

[Space cowboy]

At least, from my perspective. I'm not a huge user of P2P, my ire is more directed at the violation of the principles that founded this 'internets' thing. If we let company-interests direct the future development of the internet, we may as well give up now.

What *did* annoy me, after the decision was taken, was that my difficulties with ichat over the last few months seem to be similarly down to Comcast policies.

I use iChat a lot to keep in touch with my family (all of whom have Macs, and 4-way video-conferencing can be pretty cool). There's several thousand miles between us, so this is one of the few ways we can actually see each other without major travel.

Until a few months ago, it all worked great. Now, I get less than a minute of great picture, and then everything breaks up. I was putting it down to transatlantic bandwidth issues, but then I tried it from work, and (lo and behold) had no problems whatsoever.

I pay (not for long, now though, the T1 arrives in 2 weeks) for the most bandwidth Comcast offer, and I cannot believe I average even 1% of that bandwidth. To have them limit me when I *do* want to use it, as a deliberate *general* policy of theirs, is infuriating. All I can do is cancel the service, and hope others do too. Eventually, hopefully, they'll get the message. Not everyone can cancel due to the monopoly they hold in some areas, but perhaps enough can to make a difference.

Now a T1 used to be a lot of bandwidth, but it's not so much any more (1.5Mbit/sec is pretty poor by advertised-bandwidth standards). I'm willing to trade off the small time-periods I actually can use that advertised bandwidth for the reliability of always having the smaller amount - it may not work for everyone, but it works for me :)

And so, Comcast lose another ~$200/month. Hopefully part of a trend, because won't anyone think of the network ? [grin]

Simon.

Isn't it strange...

[teutonic_leech]

... that we actually cheer when a politician we put into office for once stands up and protects our [fill in civic right of your choice]? I mean, when did things go so bad? (rhetorical question) It's sad that we all have gotten used to a status quo where our elected leaders work hand in hand with big business and constantly screw us over. I don't care what political affiliation you have - just take a step back and look what's going on in our country. I do feel very strongly about net neutrality but must also concede that it might be the least of our problem right now. Nevertheless, it is one of thousands of important issues that needs to be addressed and coming next election day we all should do our part and 'kick the bums out' (not my quote - start hearing that very frequently on Hardball recently). Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I'm trying to make a point here, which is that we need to take a step back and rebuilt our democracy - it's ridiculous that we continue to desperately grasp for a few breadcrumbs from an administration that's blatantly in bed with big business.

Simple soulation

[Anon-Admin]

There is a simple solution,

If Comcast, Verizon, AT&T or anyone else blocks any content for any reason, they are (from that point on) legally liable for all remaining content. This is because the have made an effort to control the content crossing there service and by default must agree that all remaining content is acceptable.

Then remind there legal department that it means "If you keep it up, we will hold you responsible for all the remaining content including but not limited to all the child porn, child predators, etc."

In other words, they have violated the common carrier clause and thus are not protected from prosecution!

Where is a lawyer when you need one?

Re:Sigh

[Dash Hash]

If Comcast were only throttling BitTorrent traffic, I would not have so much an issue with it (so long as the throttled speeds were decent enough to serve ISOs and WoW updates).

Unfortunately, it is not about throttling, it is about killing entirely. When every attempt to connect is killed, you are not delaying traffic, you are stopping it entirely. But that is only one issue on the table with Comcast and its anti-BitTorrent activities, and quite frankly, it is a minor issue compared to the other.

More important to me, and hopefully to everybody else, is that Comcast is killing BitTorrent traffic by spoofing the users, and not always its own users. They are pretending to be their customers and the people they connect with, whether or not the people they are connected with are Comcast customers, to send the reset packets.

I don't know about you, but quite frankly, having /any/ company masquerade as its users is frightening.
With a massive company such as Comcast faking its identity, it is out-and-out mortifying.

Throttling would be one thing. Killing by falsifying oneself as the customers they represent is another entirely.