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Senators Call For Hearing On Carrier Content Blocking
HangingChad writes "Two Senators on Friday called for a congressional hearing to investigate reports that phone and cable companies are unfairly stifling communications over the Internet and on cell phones. Now that the Senate is getting into the act, Comcast will probably want to come up with some new talking points as their old ones were leaked."
Comcast will probably want to come up with some new talking points as their old ones were leaked.
Well, leaks happen when your whole infrastructure is nothing but a series of tubes.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The Senate is going concerned about bitorrent? Im surprised they understand the implications, or care about them..
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Shouldn't market forces be allowed to decide whether
or not the public wants their internet and mobile
communications blocked or censored?
btw I know that in some areas carriers have a total
monopoly over internet access, but still...
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
The telco execs can lie to congress all day long and they won't get so much as a slap on the wrist for it.
For the same reason, congress ultimately won't do anything about the telcos and cable companies blocking content -- they're paid (bribed, in various forms, most of which are almost certainly not on the record) not to.
Not only are they paid not to by the telcos, they're paid not to by the RIAA, MPAA, and the media corporations. That latter is especially important because without the support of the media, you will not win an election campaign, period.
Big corporations rule the U.S. these days, and there's no stopping it now. There's no way to, even including violent revolution. We're way past the point of no return. And it's not just the U.S., either, but most of the rest of the world as well.
Historically, totalitarianism of one form or another has been by far the preferred form of government, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of the people who have ever lived have lived under it. The experiment with freedom in the world is tiny in comparison.
Well, it was nice while it lasted. I'm going to miss it.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
anyone calling himself HangingChad should know that no significant policy changes in telecommunications - or anything else, for that matter - are going to come out of Congress until after next year's Presidential elections.
going to hurt Comcast in negative publicity, not to mention anyone else caught running that evil Sandswine equipment.. time to start shorting SAND...
you just signed a multi year agreement to get that "great service"
I like to call Comcast, Fraudcast. When I had service with them I took me six months to get a bill that was for the service that I originally ordered. Each month I would explain that I didn't order/want/get/use the extra services they were charging me for (like digital cable). Each month they would assure me that they had fixed the billing problems and my next bill would be correct. Rinse and repeat for six months. To top it off, when I moved and switched to DSL (no problems with verizon billing in over a year) they send my account to a collection agency when they owed me money. I also seemed to have very frequent network outages too. Don't know if that was a first generation attempt to reduce peoples bandwidth usage. My own experience using Fraudcast is that they throttled anything I did that required any bandwidth what so ever. I would start with a very high download rate and about 30 sec in always get cut back to something stupid like 8 kbs. I wasn't even on Bit torrent when that happened. Just my 2 cents.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I think it is import to distinguish between what we just don't like and what is actually illegal- i.e. unconstitutional.
For example, I just posted something on Apple's support forums about distaste for the fact that they chose not to include Java 6 in Leopard. They deleted the entire thread. I don't like it and I think ti sucks. BUT- it isn't illegal. They own the support forum! They can delete whatever the hell they want. This has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment. The 1st Amedement doesn't grant you the right to speak freely in someone else's property. It doesn't even grant you the right to enter their property.
I believe content blocking/filtering/etc is the same type thing. Some ISP will pop up who uses this as marketing material. They'll market themselves as the ones who "don't block anything."
When I'm unsure as to whether something is good or bad, as an American I reach my answer by asking, "What would the Founding Fathers say?"
I know in this case, they'd be completely against censorship of any form. Censorship and content blocking are unacceptable, especially in a nation like the United States, where free expression forms the basis of the national identity.
Although they're not necessarily bound by the Constitution, the carriers, as American companies, should still try their hardest to abide by and uphold those ideals.
How does GP get flagged troll? He asked a serious question: "Why not let market forces decide?"
Heck, he even answered his own question by noting that in some cases the carrier had a monopoly, which of course spoils the functioning of a market.
That's hardly a troll
IMHO, someone is modding down an opinion just because he doesn't agree with it.
ISPs, fiber owners have built the lines with PUBLIC funding, on PUBLIC property. they DO NOT own the lines. it is totally illegal. they have no controlling rights as to public's usage. if they had built them with their OWN money on the land THEY owned, it would be legal. it is not as such.
Read radical news here
can work completely outside the federal government and vote to dissolve the entire nation, then reconvene and hammer something else out. That's right, they can legally fire their entire bloated and crooked beyond repair federal ass and start from scratch with 50 sovereign individual nation states. A few states allegedly can't secede-the civil war proved they will kill you.(I think you can legally, but it isn't addressed per se in the Constitution, this ambiguity lead in part to the civil war) But legally, a super majority can dissolve. And if the feds try to intervene, their leaders can be arrested under impeachment articles. then these bogus traitorous (yes, traitorous, selling us off to overseas land for short term mega profits) multinational corporations would have to tow the line state by state by state, making it much harder to bribe off the entire ex-nation.
I'm all for it, because I agree 100%, the federal government is broken beyond any possible chance of "fixing"
.
The Chinese Carriers block content too but they are also the government. How come we can complain about them blocking content but if we block content it is ok. This is why I think comcast needs to stop(also so I can get my share ratio back in line :P)
I call them Comcastaway, Comcastoff, or ComcastdownintothedepthsofHades ... in any event they're a schlock outfit. I used to have a 4 mbit/sec symmetric connection under @Home, and that was damn near ten years ago. Truly useful broadband, in fact. AT&T Broadband took it over and cut me back to 1.5 mbit/sec with a 30 kbit/sec backchannel. Things are much better though, under Comcast. Now I have an asymmetric connection with "no server" restrictions (hah! as if if 80 kbits/sec makes for much of a server), hidden bandwidth caps and now the bastards are deliberately forging TCP headers and corrupting legitimate traffic.
Pathetic.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
FTA: Our source says, "It is definitely being covered under tight wraps. Why else would they go through with all this if they didn't have anything to hide?"
Corollary: "They're definitely not talking. Why wouldn't they talk to the police if they have nothing to hide?"
At this point, they know that anything they say can improve their current situation, so they say nothing to protect themselves from more bad publicity. Seems like this is pretty standard fare for any company?
I like to call them Bombast. Alphabetically it's very close and it fits the character of the telcoms.
Technically, murder-suicide does not violate the golden rule.
So a government sanctioned monopoly ( or at least a monopoly the government doesn't hive a shit about trying to break up ) can be allowed to control communications, while simultaneously being obliged to provide information to the government under "National Security" concerns? IANAL but surely the way things works ( or at least were intended to work ) in the US is that the courts are to uphold the rights of the people even when a violation of those rights is not a violation according to the letter of the constitution, provided it goes against its spirit? I can see where this is going, if the government fails to uphold your rights, you can take their flesh, but not as much as a drop of blood.
Do you REALLY want a situation where the government isn't allowed to limit your freedom of speech, but it is perfectly acceptable to sit idle by and watch a big company in a monopoly position do it instead?
Wasn't it just a short while ago that these same people tossed aside net-neutrality? Either this is a huge double standard, or the people in control really have no idea whatsoever how the Internet works.
Gees, talk about missing the obvious: Concast.
Maybe not
I have a business, we use Comcast at home. My business has 2 SMTP servers out on the net, but Comcast blocks outbound port 25 under the guise of limiting spammers. They encourage usage of their SMTP servers, but we routinely send pictures with our emails because we are in the construction business. Comcast simply times out sending large files (5-10Mb). Thus, my business is adversely affected. Complaints have been met with silence. I finally SSH tunneled out to a server to send email. I find that inappropriate at best, down right criminal at worst. Why does Comcast get to decide what SMTP I utilize? I pay for access, not filtered access, to the internet. Utilizing my paid for business servers should not be arbitrarily barred. Bit Torrent is just the tip of the iceberg. We have corporate masters that we must adhere to their version of the net. Please allow true competition in broad band. Comcast just stinks and they are my only option. No DSL or FIOS in my county because the county commissioners have a kickback arrangement with Comcast. Verizon won't touch Frederick County, MD.
My business has 2 SMTP servers out on the net, but Comcast blocks outbound port 25 under the guise of limiting spammers. They encourage usage of their SMTP servers, but we routinely send pictures with our emails because we are in the construction business. Comcast simply times out sending large files (5-10Mb). Thus, my business is adversely affected. Complaints have been met with silence.
I'm guessing since you have your own mail server, you can configure it to accept mail on the submission port, 587. Just a thought...
It may, in some sense, be literally true, but Cocmast's statement amount to little more than Equivocation.Keep in mind we impeached a President over the same kind of equivocation, for an issue far less material then Comcast's one.
Which is part of the reason why everyone's so mad - Comcast has been caught with the cigar in the dame, its time for them to come clean (which they should have done even before they were caught).
And as I will be moving into a new home and setting up high-speed service, there is no way in hell I'm going with Comcast. I just downloaded the new OpenSuse images using BitTorrent over Comcast and it was slow as a pig. I can personally attest to the fact that something was throttling my packets and these latest revelations fit.
I will be going back to DSL with Qwest. Maybe the peak speeds aren't quite as high as cable, but at least they are consistently high. I never noticed any monkey business with my data before. While I wait for the house to finsh, though, I'm connecting through Comcast. Thankfully it isn't my connection.
I will be happy to get my DSL and satellite back. Cable stinks - or at least Comcast stinks.
You should be asking, "Have you stopped blocking BitTorrent?" (like the old "Have you stopped beating your wife" question).
Have gnu, will travel.
Do it either at the router, or if its a linux box, use the preroute rules. On my server to help my poor clients who insist on using AOL as their carrier. I use port 26.
I am also having bandwidth problems with Comcast. I live in the general area of the lady with the hammer and here's what happens: My connection will be absolutely fine so long as I do not upstream any significant amound of data. But when I do, almost all of my upstream gets cut off (about 95%-99% packetloss) for about 30 seconds, then resumes for a few minutes, rinse and repeat. This affects all my traffic, not just torrents. It is particularly agravating in FPS games as I end up frozen in place and everyone gets a free shots at my head. I thought it was all my traffic, up and down. But, I found I can still recieve streamed data requested before the interuption.
http://www.go2linux.org/iptables-port-26-redirection-accept-email-on-another-port
and another
http://forum.ensim.com/archive/index.php?t-8228.html
"Shouldn't market forces be allowed to decide [you meant 'reveal', as the customers themselves 'decide'] whether or not the public...?"
It might be nice, philosophically, for a "free" market to do its thing. You failed to type "free" in front of "market", and seem to have forgotten that only a "free" market could create an optimal system.
"btw I know that in some [actually most, in the USA at least] areas carriers haev a total monopoly over internet access, but still..."
Hmm, perhaps you DID remember that the market would have to be free. How can you justify that "but still..." on the end? You acknowledge that your plan wouldn't work, and still whine that you want it anyway?
Free markets do not optimally solve every human problem (and are sometimes highly sub-optimal). Free markets are typically, but not generally, good at creating optimal economic and similar efficiency. They even seldom trample into humanity's nebulous concept of immorality. But free markets are just Act Utilitarianism; good at optimizing and rational decision making, but a horrendous moral philosophy. Following either leads to universally recognized injustice. I think that's the wall you ran into, but "but still" shows you're clinging stubbornly to something you like even when you realize it leads to untenable results.
If this is a truly free market, then it has led to this situation where there is no elasticity between price and demand, and the ISPs' profits are no longer constrained by market forces. If this is not a totally free market; totally free markets have performed optimally and equitably when they've been fully implemented. But in this case, the "almost free" market has created effective monopoly, as you noted.
It boggles my mind to see people cling to ideas they themselves think won't work. The free market should indeed be applied everywhere it is optimal, but it should NOT be applied where it leads to perverse outcomes. Consumers are getting screwed and have no recourse. You suggest that is justifiable because you like the idea of free markets? I like the idea too; I almost _never_ find myself on this side of a debate involving free markets. Extreme attitudes like yours are what give free market economics and libertarianism (little 'l') a bad name.
no alternate ports in their plan. The other provider is checking to see if they can accommodate. I am going to have to setup my own server to circumvent Comcast. I shouldn't have to resort to such measures.
If they break the agreement sue them. Unfortunately this doesn't work if there's a clause in the agreement that they can change it at any time. I have ComCast delivering services now but when I signed up, with Earthlink, it was Time Warner and I don't recall any such clause.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Wow, you live in Fredneck? I used to live in Rockville, about 35 years ago. It was a bit different then ... we were a tiny little town in the middle of a plain.
... just give me the damn pipe and don't you worry about what I use it for, because it's none of your goddamn business. I also have no interest in using Comcast's email services (for oh-so-many reasons) so I switched to using No-IP.com's alternate port SMTP. Works great, inexpensive, and would probably solve your problem. I still poll Comcast's POP3 mailbox just to receive any notifications and whatnot, but I haven't sent or received any mail through Comcast for years. I also found a Web site hosting company that allows me to point their system's MX records directly at my in-house mail server. No polling! Damn fast too. I've been on the phone with someone in the process of sending me a message, and as soon as they click SEND it pops into my inbox.
Yeah, I agree
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This reply is not so much directed at you as the doctrine of free market. Many people bring forth the argument that the free market can solve all the problems the plague the economic interactions of humanity. However, one thing that most people don't pay attention to is that caveat emptor (buyer beware) is only possible when the buyer is fully aware of the product or service they are purchasing. Since big corporations tend to keep as much of their business behind closed doors as possible, and indeed often blatantly falsify their goods, then the buyer can not make a truly informed decision and thus the hand of big government must be put to use to ensure that the populace is not taken unfair advantage of. I am all for getting rid of big government, but only so long as any provider must be completely transparent with respect to their actions in providing me with services or goods.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
My question is this:
If Comcast is blocking, throttling, or in some other way denying traffic, don't they lose their common carrier status? And wouldn't this open them up to lawsuits? After all if they are able to slow X traffic, why can't they stop illegal music/movie/software/etc. downloads?
If you were a copyright holder, and you suspected that individuals were copying your works over the Comcast network - who is throttling specific traffic - wouldn't you sue to get them to stop the flow of traffic containing your works? Why doesn't this action open them up to legal action from the litigious-happy RIAA and others?
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
I did. They say they're not limiting customer access to BitTorrent, but they are. That's not 100-percent truth, in my book.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
How about Concast? I do like your initiative in coining a more descriptive name for them.
I recently downloaded the Gutsy Gibbon iso file -- biggish file. It took days at something like 3.5 kB/s! I have been seeding at something similar (4 connections active = 12 kB/s). I'm using Azureus for Mac - don't ask! Anyway, when I started boosting the speed to 20 or even more kB/s, suddenly the connections started timing out. I could watch an individual connection running at a hot hot hot 6.5 or 9.2, see the software send choke for fairness, then send unchoke and resume. The peers looked fine. But then after 20 minutes or so, there would be a timeout, and I noted that my DSL modem was no longer working (had to unplug and replug to get a new IP address, to get DNS). If I don't start Azureus, it's fine.
I conclude that Verizon is up to no good. This is new -- I used to seed software all the time.
Verzion already blocks the ability of their users to
make full use of their phones by crippling bluetooth
and other methods which would allow users full
access to the file systems of their purchased devices.
They close the device software market, by refusing to
allow even certified software to be placed on handsets,
unless it is sold through their catalogs. Users should be
allowed to choose the email, browser, etc of their choice.
please type the word in this image: compete
True. However, did the telco's pay people whose property they crossed for access in a free market manner, or was it a government taking for the common good? If the state said, "we'll let you charge anything you want with any term of service you want, but anyone who did not give permission to use their land can give notice, and, if you have not reached an agreement with them in 30 days, pull your cable out of the ground and sell it as scrap," would the telcos take the deal?
Comcasturbate?
If you want business service at home you should pay for and acquire business service, either that or vote with your feet. I don't have a lot of sympathy for a construction company running their business over a residential cable connection or even a business connection with clearly defined limits then complaining about those limits. It's very easy and not terribly expensive to acquire a real business connection with an SLA and guaranteed open network access. It's silly complaining like YOURS that raises the noise level to the point that real issues like network neutrality are lost in the noise. In summary, your issue is EASILY solved by paying for a real business connection, that you don't only exhibits how you run your business in an unprofessional way.
If the Senate debates this, call your senator and make yoru point clear. This is how democracy works. While you are at it, call or e-mail your favorite candidate as well and also include the one of the other party that you think might have a chance. Ask them to take a clear position on this issue (of Net Neutrality).
Also, talk to your local elected people in town. Ultimately, the town has to contract with any service running wires through town and they can attach the conditions to it they want. Right now towns focus on money for local TV access and community (administrative) networks. Bring up the topic and make them aware how important it is to get real Internet access and not filtered, blocked, throttled, shaped, capped, tampered with service. Which by the way includes spam filtering, port blocking, asymetric line characteristics for non copper wires, forced e-mail relaying, and more. Raise awareness at the local level, what the Internet really could be if we the people demand it. And also make it clear what the competition in that market really is. A monopoly or a duopoly is not real market competition. The market is what I as an individual consumer can access, not the aggregate of all consumers in the state, country, or world. In my town, I have more choices in Nail Salons, Dog groomers, Liquor stores, Men's Barbers or Car Washes than I have in Broadband Internet access.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
sending large files (5-10Mb).
Well, there's your problem. Email isn't supposed to be used to ship around multi-megabyte files. Stop doing that, dumbass. Seriously. Set up a damn web server and post the images there. If you're worried about security, set up usernames and passwords. Regardless, email is the wrong tool for the job.
Meanwhile, I actually applaud Comcast blocking outbound port 25. Spam is a problem at the best of times, and those kinds of measures can actually do something about the problem, given a large amount of spam comes from zombie PCs running on regular, residential internet connections (I used to run an SMTP server of my own, and I just routed my email through my ISP's server... never had a problem).
Each month they would assure me that they had fixed the billing problems and my next bill would be correct. Rinse and repeat for six months. To top it off, when I moved and switched to DSL (no problems with verizon billing in over a year) they send my account to a collection agency when they owed me money. I also seemed to have very frequent network outages too. Don't know if that was a first generation attempt to reduce peoples bandwidth usage.
I hear stories like this frequently. It's sad that people have to put up with this garbage. And even worse, I hear talk about the free market will decide over and over again as if it's something that's actually working. But when you have a monopoly (or duopoly if you are lucky) and the government allows it month after month to continue, what on earth are they expecting the "free market" to do about it? It's no like you can choose another provider over Comcast that's better...
Spoke with Rep Craig Frank in the Utah State Capital. Same thing going on there. They are shielding Comcast from the Free Market. If given options, people generally would not stick with them. It's Concastic!!!
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com