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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 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.
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Fine by me. As long as Comcast and company are open and clear about what they're doing. That's the sort of industry regulation I'm in favor of -- require it to be very clear to consumers exactly what service they're buying, and require the provider to actually provide the service as advertised. If, with all parties aware of what's happening, Comcast wants to sell a bittorrent-limiting service, and customers want to buy it, then more power to them.
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.
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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."
I think somebody explained if they can turn off bittorrent, they can selectively limit (or spy on) anything they want to. Many congress critters might not understand internet, but they understand the idea of open communications and what it means even if companies are starting with "bad guy". This could go either way though. On one hand it could put a stop to things like private cell only SMS and web as well as blocking services on DSL or Cable like bittorrent. On the other hand, it could be the "foot in the door" for regulations... the RIAA could step in and get a regulation for dangerous pirates and then it quietly becomes 100% legal and consumers argue about the details. That's how these big companies work, they know how to get a small concession as law and parlay that into making what they want "official" mandate for whatever they want to do. If somebody explains "net neutrality" as "reading your email" while transferring it then congress might get the hint. Bittorrent is a bad choice to argue about because it's more like bait to allow filtering than fight 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.
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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.
However, given barriers to entry (last-milers don't have to open their infrastructure to competition), it is far from being a free, open market.
If this were a little ISP with a totally privately-owned infrastructure, I'd agree with you.
It's not, its' a huge one, with monopoly-like size and operating on concessions and right-of-ways granted by the people in order to let them to operate their business for the benefit of all.
They aren't just blocking, or censoring.. they are actively forging traffic to appear as if it is something it is not in order to trick software into not functioning as the end users expect it to.
If you don't want your customers running bittorrent, put it in the contract and ban it. If you don't want them using over X bandwidht, put it in the contract. That's fair play (maybe)
What's definitely NOT fair play is lying about it to your customers, then sneakily killing connections and then lying about it.
For the same reason, your phone company cannot refuse to send your calls to another phone just because it doesn't approve of the content.
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).
You should be asking, "Have you stopped blocking BitTorrent?" (like the old "Have you stopped beating your wife" question).
Have gnu, will travel.
If Comcast is selling " x megabits down and y kilobits upload", I DO NOT agree that they can do what they are doing, which is deliberately and deceptively killing specific uploads. It ought to be illegal - it is interfering with interstate commerce, or it is deliberate interference and disruption to an existing business relationship, or with an existing contractual relationship, that exists between whoever is sitting at the two peers. Especially since there ARE commercial, LEGAL, file transfers that take place using bittorrent, and they purchased Comcast's service for that purpose (among others). I think the bittorrent folks need to come up with a revision to their software that includes, in the datastream, a peer-to-peer message, properly encrypted, that tells the other peer, in effect: "this stream IS continuing, it has NOT been terminated, regardless of what you may receive to the contrary - any status message you receive that is NOT properly authenticated through encryption is bogus, so continue the transfer".
This is too much like Douglas Adams' "...they were in the bottom drawer of a locked filing cabinet, stuck upside-down, in a disused toilet with a sign on the door saying 'BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD!...'"
Companies are more than willing to display advertising promoting a product in 10000 point, red, bold font while putting the nasties in Swahili 1.5 point italics semi-transparent ink on the back page of the ad.
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