Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Sued Over P2P Blocking
CRISTAROL writes "Comcast has been sued by a California resident for blocking BitTorrent and other traffic. 'John Hart describes himself as a Comcast customer who has seen performance hits when using "Blocked Applications" targeted by Comcast's traffic management application, Sandvine. In his complaint, Hart says that Comcast severely limits "the speed of certain internet applications such as peer-to-peer file sharing and lotus notes [sic]." Comcast accomplishes this by "transmitting unauthorized hidden messages" to the PCs of those using the applications.' The lawsuit comes on the heels of an FCC complaint over the same issue."
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
The article was blocked just a few seconds ago. COINCIDENCE? hmm?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Maybe comcast will start delivering what people paid for.
The real problem here isn't just that Comcast is doing the filtering. Who knows -- maybe it's really OK under their EULA and the law (which I doubt). But the most painful part of the problem to consumers is that the Comcast government-granted monopoly on the cable lines means that lots of consumers have no other alternative.
I think the antitrust laws might have something to say here, although it's a bit of a stretch. In any case, how can we codify the fact that providers with effective monopoly status should have an additional burden of service to their customers? I do wonder if this is bigger than limited net neutrality legislation.
--
Educational microcontroller kits for a digital generation.
I'm not suggesting that this is the correct solution to the problem, but the thing you are describing is a "telecommunications common carrier", and extending that status to Internet access seems to be what you want.
-Peter
You'd be correct in doubting it. IANAL, but:
It would seem to be that 1) Comcast has a scheme to make money (by having less in bandwidth costs), and 2) they fraudulently transmit interrupt signals to accomplish this.
Really, they should be prosecuted in criminal court, not sued in civil court.
So you can get a coupon for two free months of Comcast internet service while Comcast continues to block legitimate traffic? Class action lawsuits are worse than no lawsuit at all.
Going through legal channels is important, but until this makes its way through the courts (which could take a while), I don't think Comcast users are completely helpless.
What we really need is some clever client-side programming. A p2p client (or standard) that does some clever encryption, sends data hidden through other streams, etc. I'm not a network programming guru, but it seems like these programs can (or should) keep a step ahead of whatever recognition software that gets through the approval process for comcast servers.
- Demosthenes
cynicsreport.com
It will be an open and shut case all right - in favor of Comcast. This guy has no legal claim upon which relief can be granted, which is the language the judge will use while throwing it out of court. You can't just sue someone because you're pissed off, you have to have some basis in law for the claim. As much as I hate Comcast, there's no law saying they can't filter stuff on their network.
I don't think Comcast is throttling BitTorrent in the interest of stopping piracy - I think they're just throttling it because it's stressing their network too much. The don't care whether it's legitimate traffic or not, they just want to unclog their network a bit. As such, they're still a common carrier, because they're not discriminating based on the nature of the information being transmitted.
Last night I was uploading a file to mediafire.com at about 450kbps and 3 minutes into the upload session my internet connection was cut off. So I had to restart my cable modem. Then I reconnected and went back on mediafire, tried again... same thing happened. I reconnected the modem, then I tried one last time; my internet was cut off till the next day (today). I can only express disgust for Comcast if I was disconnected for uploading a file I needed for work. I didn't call Comcast because I hate being put on hold, but I probably should have verified if it was really them that cut me off. It's just weird that it happened 3 times during an upload session which used some bandwidth.
they don't do any of that now, whats your point?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Actually no, it's not that simple.
If Comcast were simply prioritizing packets, that would be one thing. However, the contention is they are spoofing packets back to the clients. Think of it this way, you type in a web address and get back an error message saying the host wasn't available and that error was being generated *by the carrier*, and not the actual website. In that case, the carrier is impersonating the destination and returning false information.
Comcast claims they are not doing this, although some critics have claimed they have irrefutable proof that they are in fact doing that.
As always, the devil is in the details.
Do the users of comcast have a limited amount of bandwidth usage per account and do these 'hidden' messages count towards this bandwidth usuage? I think these are important questions as it would result in the customer being charged for a service they did not receive.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
While not directly affected by Comcast's filtering policy, I for one hope this guy wins and sets a legal precedent on which other lawsuits against ISPs/OSPs can be based. As a student currently attending The University of Akron who resides on campus, I look forward to the day when EFF or ACLU pursues action against The University of Akron for violating student's rights in the same manner that Comcast has violated the rights of their customers. Shown here are some logs highlighted to show some of the filtering that is being done to students residing on campus. Not only is The University of Akron filtering Bittorrent traffic but also HTTPS, SSH, VPN, IMAP, NTP, and as well as many others that I may have missed. This filtering is not only intrusive to students that require secure access to remote resources, but is also counter productive to new innovation. I am appalled by the actions this, and many other, public institutions have taken towards the treatment of students and their rights online. For reference, the 130.101.239.250 address shown in the logs is that of my server. It is on 24 hours a day so feel free port scan it if you like. I suspect you won't be able to determine which ports are open due to all inbound traffic being blocked by the University as well.
"Think about what the Internet would be like if ISPs couldn't block customers for spamming, spreading worms, DoS attacks, etc."
We don't have to think about it, buddy...we live it.
"Blocking customers" is a useless exercise that only gives the appearance of doing anything. It's easy for spammers to get new accounts, or activate more zombie PCs.
Throttling the network is fine to accomplish QoS goals.
Comcast, however, is forging RST packets. They're taking the traffic and altering the content of it.
No legitimate QoS solution does this. Delay the content, fine. Slow the transmission rate of the content, fine.
Discard the traffic and generate a forged reply? Not fine.
.sig: Now legally binding!
If I use my home phone in an abusive manner, I can lose my service. A simple example would be if I bought a home phone line and send out robo-calls advertising.
Also, phone companies offer restricted numbers, unlisted numbers, and the like. It's possible to set up an account that only accepts calls from specific numbers. This doesn't interefer with their common carrier status. Presumably ISP's could work in exactly the same way.
I am Canadian though, so things could be different south of the border.
"The only alternative is DSL and we all know what thats like..."
Reliable?
Stable? (No "slowdowns")
Cap free?
No restrictions on running server?
Yeah I know. Who would want DSL. It's like have the real internet.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
No, both are important.
Your job as an officer or executive of a company is to maximize shareholder value while obeying the law and business ethics. All of these things are supposed to be done. It's in a company's best financial interests to take care of their customers because that's where revenue comes from. If your customers abandon you because of your shady dealings or you lose millions of dollars in a lawsuit or the government steps in to micromanage your business, then the shareholders are going to be quite upset.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I use P2P for transferring Linux ISOs. And nothing else.
Wow, are you bought and paid for? Looking at the homepage and sig.., Bill.. is that you?
P2P != stealing in such a broad sense.
Many companies these days use P2P such as bittorrent to distribute files, free games, Enemy Territory, True Combat Elite, et cetera can be had via bittorrent. No stealing, all legal. This is not even to mention to sharing of Linux and other free, public domain files that can be spread freely.
Go crawl back into your perfect little hole.
So does that mean WOW using a P2P torrent setup for game updates is stealing? Under your definition, most legal activity under there is stealing. So that means using a legal service that I paid for is illegal? I'm really not following your logic here. Oh wait, maybe because there isn't any?
There is no reason a corporation could not be locked up. It is simply a matter of judges and juries being willing. They are certainly able.
Don't feed the trolls.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sandvine is a local company here in Waterloo, Ontario. It has been a high flyer and a media/investor darling of late.
The local newspaper had an article , which I blogged about a few days ago, on Sandvine's technology and how it is involved in the Comcast debacle.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
And Lotus Notes? That's blocked too- is that stealing?
OSx86 FTW
You are going to find that this applies to the expectations of what the court considers to be "an ordinary person". This is a pretty common standard and it eliminates lots of fringe stuff.
A while back Toyota ran an advertisement about how low their prices were and specifically used the phrase "for a song". Someone wrote a song, performed it in the dealership and asked for their car. Now please. I believe that guy actually got a car but the courts cut the rest of the claims off pretty quickly using the concept that an ordinary person would not be misled by this.
Now try to convince a court that whatever Comcast is advertising that this extends to what you specifically want to use their service for and how they are preventing you from doing so. You are very likely to find out that your fringe case doesn't mean they have violated the law.
Can Comcast block spam? I mean, I'm just wondering. Because it seems like the end result of this line of argument is to give spammers a precedent that says "You must deliver our spam."
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
They want to know how much they can get away with. Stopping them now will be much better than fighting with them later!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Except that Bittorrent is a very widely-used protocol. The fact that World of Warcraft alone uses it puts that in the realm of "the ordinary person". Said ordinary person doesn't have to specifically know they're using the protocol; if Comcast were screwing with HTTP, they would be messing with a protocol widely used by ordinary people despite the fact that most web surfers don't have the first clue what it is. We're not talking about Gopher here.
This is in addition to the fact that this mythical "ordinary person" has a reasonable expectation that when (s)he is promised high-speed downloads, that this will occur regardless of the specific technical means used for the download, and that the ISP will not take steps to deliberately interfere with this. One would also presume that the ordinary person would not expect his or her ISP to be deliberately committing what amounts to a denial-of-service attack against its customers by forging packets.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
With all due respect, that's not really accurate. I wrote a 'Net Neutrality For Dummies' column in our local weekly, so I won't repeat myself unnecessarily. Suffice it to say that nobody minds having traffic rules. What we don't want is to have traffic rules that get selectively enforced according to the whims of a given Internet provider.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Well, when they get 100% of the money for all the services they claim to provide, they better back it up by providing 100% service for all the services they contracted to provide me.
Because, if they don't i can sue them for False Advertising, Mis-representation of merchandise involved, delibrate intent to defraud, and a raft of state laws.
Its simple and legal. Use the same arguments they use to make you pay.
Non-Emotional, robotic motions to legal recourse.
What it does it matter to them, if i use torrent to download SG-Atlantis or a Linux distro.
They can't claim to police my activities in the same way Walmart can't question a buyer of handguns in its Keene, NH store just because its store clerk felt like it.
If i were the person who sues comcast, i would send out a subpoena demanding ALL emails relating to this PLUS pull network administrators on oath to say it.
I bet Comcast would settle before going to court.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Phone companies can still stop telemarketers, phone threats, war dialers, fraudulent marketing, and other forms of phone abuse. They don't really want to, but they can. Especially if they are using obscene amounts of resources like spammers and DOSers do. I don't think being a common carrier would present a problem for this type of stuff. Worst-case it would require some laws to clarify (or some dumb spammer to actually sue an ISP).
And BTW, judging from most Slashdot posters, everyone does want ISPs to be common carriers.
[sarcasm]
... because some people have done illegal things that way.[/sarcasm]
While we're at it we need to block all internet video and picture viewing
Pictures on the intarwebs = porn
Everyone else who tries to download jpegs is just trying to get porn. Oh yeah, and there's no possible way to use a web browser without being a criminal, you're making copies of copyrighted content on your own computer in RAM, on the Screen and in your cache and index therefore we should block every kind of internet transfer other than emails and IMs because copying stuff that you wouldn't buy anyway hurts artists! Everyone knows this. It would be in your best interest if you just weren't allowed to use the web or ssh or
I know that I was kinda rambling there, but I'm so tired of people who think that P2P is about stealing. I download FREE music (as in speech and beer) over p2p, linux ISOs because I know that guys putting out distros have to PAY for their bandwidth and mine is pretty much unlimited, I'm sorry to all of the artists that I killed by downloading the latest openSuSE dvd. I hope that they're families will one day find it in their hearts to forgive me
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
I'm glad they modded you funny, 'cause I almost laughed myself off my chair reading your post. Seriously, do you think 'downloaders' are hoarding tonnes of cash that they would otherwise have spent on software? I mean, if they didn't pirate software, they would just not have the software. If they didn't pirate music, they'd just not have music. They wouldn't go out and buy it, no matter what you do. In most cases, my guess is these people just don't have the disposable income to pay for music and games over and above the hardware they bought.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
The "make believe world" I live in is called "Central California". In this fantasy land, the local telco is called "At&T (aka, SBC)". In this fake ISP's ToS, there is are no restrictions on running servers, and there are no bandwidth caps. Back when I used to participate in pretend live music trading at a pretend website called etree, I would push 100GB per month for months on end and never had an issue.
I'm sorry if DSL is crap in your area. It's not in mine.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Stealing sanity, one database at a time.
We all know that only terorists use linux, and only pirates use p2p. If you download linux via bittorent you must be a terorist-pirate. Allahu-Akbar-Yarr!
Actually, I don't want any rules outside a standard RFC implementation. I want nothing of mine blocked, filtered, scanned, or anything.
I don't know how many times I had had an application break or a server stop responding properly because SBC or TimeWarner decided to block some port in an effort to slow some worm or virus. They then give you the run around when asking what happened to the port. Nobody knows and claims it must be something wrong with your equipment so you end up checking everything again to finally find out that they blocked something and it took a day or two for them to get the memo to the people that answer the damn phones. That or they incorrectly flag some traffic as malicious with their filtering software and "clean" it, resulting in a corrupt DBF file set or incomplete transactions.
It would be a different story if they gave you the ability to opt out first but historically we haven't found out about anything until something is down for half a work day or corrupt or some other situation that causes a bunch of headaches. We pay for the internet, not some cut up representation of it. We should get everything we pay for.
Ok, those in the know feel free to point out errors and omissions in this BUT:
Wouldn't it be in Comcast's better interest to allow p2p on their own controlled network? As opposed to the apparent blanket "slowdown" that they've effected, it seems to me that it would make much more sense to only bottleneck at the routers that are at the fringe and connecting to other networks. It seem to me that every byte they can keep "in house" is significantly cheaper than the bytes that have to be passed off. And this applies to the entire speed limiting bit.
Think of it like this. If Comcast subscribers can share amongst themselves the latest Fedora 8 distro between each other, with no speed restrictions, isn't it cheaper than having us all pulling that same multi-gig image across multiple networks?
My torrents are completely legal because they're posted with the permission of the copyright holder - me.
When I was using an Eastlink cable modem in Nova Scotia, Canada, the ISP blocked me from downloading my own torrents, so I wasn't able to verify that they were working!
I think everyone who offers legal torrents, especially non-profit Open Source and Free Software organizations who provide installation isos via BitTorrent, should band together to defeat the blocking of BitTorrent downloads.
Is there a way we could file a class-action lawsuit?
Request your free CD of my piano music.
the veil of incorporation can be pierced at any time if it is believed that a member or members of the board have personally acted illegally.
If this were not the case anyone planning a crime would incorporate...
"Allahu-Akbar-Yarr!"
Whoaaa!! Watch it with the stereotypes, pal!! You should be more careful than that!! Pirates haven't said "Yarr!" in centuries!
So what happens if I decide to be a moron for a moment and accidentally rate your comment down instead of up, like I intended?
Do I have to buy you a pizza or something?
Oh, I see...I just post this comment and undo my mistake. That's nice.
If you would still like a pizza, just let me know.
Fool. Change your filter from -1 to 0.
He made this same argument in another story about Comcast and stopped replying to posts when people asked him to name a few ISPs that do this.
While I'm sure there are small remote ISPs that NAT their customers by default (and by remote I mean remote... think Alaskan wilderness), it's not even close to being a standard practice in the United States and the number of people affected by it are so small that it hardly bears mentioning.
A few people have claimed that AOL does it. They didn't used to (over a decade ago I had them... always had globally valid IPs when I went outside of AOL and used internet apps), but it might have changed for all I know. In any case, I'd hardly call AOL an "ISP".
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.