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FCC To investigate Comcast Bittorrent Meddling
An anonymous reader writes "FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday that the commission will investigate complaints that Comcast actively interferes with Internet traffic as its subscribers try to share files online. A coalition of consumer groups and legal scholars asked the agency in November to stop Comcast from discriminating against certain types of data and to fine Comcast $195,000 for every affected subscriber. While known for months in tech circles, the issue wasn't given broad attention until an Associated Press report last year, in which reporters tested and verified the data blocking."
I can't believe people around here still believe that they can blame government corruption and stupidity on Republicans. Since the democrats have taken back congress if anything congress has gotten worse on these issues. Where before we would have bills sponsored by a bunch of republicans with maybe a few democrats, and a bunch of democrats opposing it just because they hate republicans, now we have bunches of democrats sponsoring some of the most blatantly stupid and corrupt bills I have ever seen, and bunches of republicans backing them.
did you read what i said at all? It has nothing to do with the article alone, I was bringing attention to the fact that Kevin Martin is stepping up to the plate on more than one front. Investigating this at ALL requires a fair bit of expense, and the fact that hes authorizing it is interesting in the first place.
But then again, i know its way too much to expect slashdot readers to think at all >70% these days.
Get off the kneejerk bandwagons and think for yourselves people.
Ice Cream has no bones.
It stopped being just "their network" when they signed agreements with local governments for access to public rights-of-way.
I agree that if you are hosting anything you really need to be using a 'business class connection', if you are using a connection for work or for anything critical you need a 'business class connection', not for the transfer rates (it seems the lowest tiers at the business level are no different from ADSL/DSL connections) but for the SLA that (should) accompany such a connection*.
In return however the ISP should provide the service being paid for. If you are paying £X for X 'Speed' with 'unlimited downloads', then that should be what you get, whether by simply browsing the web, watching on-line video, listening to on-line radio or seeding the latest Debian ISO's as a torrent (I'm seeding the whole lot at the moment because I feel I should use the bandwidth I have...).
Peer-to-peer traffic is not client-server traffic, and it is normally non commercial, and as to whether it is legitimate content being passed is not a concern of the ISP anyway (do they block spam, viral or malicious code, libellous comments? No. If there are terms and conditions attached to a service those should be clear (that way a customer can make an informed choice), there is nothing wrong with an ISP preventing end users from running a given type of server or use the connection in a certain way, but it must be clear when the user signs up.
Lastly, it is up to the Linux distributions how they distribute their ISO's, Bittorrent is perfect for this even if other methods are available and have been (and are) used, so your comment relating to how Linux should b distributed is slightly valid, but unfair and short sighted, especially given that those organisations providing Linux distributions are not all corporations so splitting the load is sensible. Bittorrent *is* used by people who wish to transfer material in breach of copyright because it is fast, practical and can be fairly anonymous but that is not its sole purpose and it is just as easy to use other methods to distribute that material as it would be to use alternate methods to distribute Linux.
People who distribute material in breach of copyright law should be punished to the full extent of the law (even if the law in question is at this point fairly insane), they are aware of the penalty's and still take the risk of doing it, but there is no good reason to ban a whole slew of technologies because they can be used to facilitate distribution. By that logic any uncontrolled storage medium that allows itself to be written to, and any uncontrolled method of data transmission should be banned, we would end up with computers that have similar multimedia capabilities as TV's (without PVR's/DVD players etc..) and radios (without a tape/MD deck), with the added benefit of having to pay for everything on a PAYG basis.
*Any Slasdhotters that have ever worked in technical support for an ISP will be familiar with calls from customers on the cheapest residential deals demanding their connection be fixed because their business relies on it, whilst simultaneously threatening lawsuits...
PS, not sure if the parent was intended as flamebait so I assumed not, and sorry for losing the plot halfway through.
Given the recent stories related to chairman Kevin Martin, one has to wonder if this is fitting a suddenoutbreakofcommonsense or just that cable companies havent kept up their "lobbying" efforts or stepped on some toes.
I sincerely hope its the former, but i'm cynical enough to expect the latter.
Myself, given how much the current administration is in the pocket of large businesses, I have to wonder if this is a hearing to consider making said content screwovers mandatory for all ISPs.
But the cable companies market it as if it were.
They chose to use the term unlimited usage, and if they don't want to offer unlimited access, they should change their TOS.
There's nothing criminal or unethical about expecting a company to provide what it has promised. Some of us would be quite willing to pay, say, only $10 per month for a 1.3 Mbs connection, even if it came with a 5 GB/month transfer cap. But the cable companies won't do that. Instead, you have to buy their unlimited plan, and pay for bandwidth that you don't even use.
And the cable company will happily resell your unused bandwidth to others. It's called capacity planning, and they use statistical analysis to figure out the bandwidth that most people will actually use. Problem is, they have a financial interest in fully utilizing their equipment, i.e., buying only as much as needed. Which, when their estimates are wrong, results in lousy service for customers. Your problem is not that you are paying for someone else's bandwidth, but rather, that the cable company is making you pay for bandwidth they don't expect you to use.
Your torrent-hosting neighbor is simply using all of the bandwidth for which he paid. He's not using yours. (That is, unless he's owned your box, but that's a different thread entirely...)
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Even though the RIAA/MPAA probably has something to do with this (if they can buy congress they can buy just about any other thing) but I think that it is that Comcast wants to advertise really high download speeds without having the network to back it up. If they block P2P traffic they take out much of the traffic and can keep the *whatever MB/s* they advertise without having to spend extra money to get the network. I don't doubt that this could be an easy front to appeal to the RIAA and the like but I think it is more of "lets try to get the highest MB/s we can on as cheap of a network we can get" more than anything else.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
No you don't. The FCC has really done nothing other to get us into this mess. First they protected monopolies to "help innovation", these government protected monopolies such as Comcast began to charge outrageous amounts for cable/internet. Whenever a local ISP/Cable company started up they were either absorbed into a huge corporation, charge nearly the same rates for sub-par service or quickly went bankrupt. It is only in the last 3-4 years that independent ISPs/cable companies have begun to pop up and even then they are usually nothing more then an arm of a super-corporation. When the government is involved, individuals always, always, always lose. Perhaps it is different in Canada but here in the US, the only thing government does when it comes to technology is maybe reversing their previous mistakes.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
to fine Comcast $195,000 for every affected subscriber
*sigh* Well, I guess I can expect my cable fees to go up again. I wonder if this will be called a "Federal cost recovery fee" as a line item on my bill.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
okay so lets do a car analogy you pay $Station for "unlimited Gas" @ $2000 a month
and you are told single car only now what $station doesn't know is you drive a SUV
and you drive a lot so you are clicking what would be $90.00 bills almost daily so
instead of asking you to switch to a larger plan or tell you that you getting to much
they start dropping the octane on your gas to say 30 octane (from the 87 you are supposed to get)
or they always seem to have problems with the pump you are at.
For a Gas station these would be suicide (and in the octane case a felony) why is it okay for ISPs?
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
"Honestly I'm kinda wondering about Martin. He'd way too...wishy-washy. I kind of get the feeling that he may be more likely to have a personal issue against the CableCo's, or is trying to cause them more trouble to help the telco's get into the market. Now... the whole bittorrent thing.. Kinda hard to ignore it. It's pretty obvious after the AP story that something is fishy, and if he didn't do something he'd be a lot harder pressed to explain his actions. Besides... it's another reason to go after the Cable companies.. and comcast in general."
I think "wishy-washy" is generous. In my opinion he's not "wishy-washy", he's an administration corporate servant. The only reason that he's said he will investigate is that he thinks that will show the public that he is following his job description...minimally. If you think that his investigation will find that Comcast consumers have been denied their rights then think again. The quote I saw in another article today stated quite specifically that he knows and feels that providers have the right to "manage their traffic". I can just about guarantee that the FCC will find that "in the interests of all users, those sharing files (even if legitimate) must have their traffic delayed in order to provide the best service to all users". He won't even think about exploring the fact that providers over-promise services and should instead upgrade their infrastructure to provide those services as promised versus putting the brakes on traffic that might compromise overall end user satisfaction. What a crock.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Actually, Cable was a created monopoly, the only differences in who and where resides on who controlled the medium at the time they came to town. Typically, this has been the local governments and they created the monopoly in exchange for coverage in areas that wouldn't be profitable.
This role has shifted somewhat to the state and feds but can still be controlled by the local governments to some degree.
You know, I am also a comcast subscriber. I have all but taken the last steps (sniffers on both ends and then wading through a few meg of traffic) to prove they are screwing with my ssh connections too. I pay for unlimited high speed access, and yet... they kill my ssh sessions all the time.
In fact, I can reliably see ssh sessions last for a while in text mode, and then die within seconds of using a port forward to throw back vnc from my workstation at work. Text mode ones die too, but they last longer.
The kicker though, if I move ssh to another port, I can work for hours.
I have a workaround, but you know, I kinda feel like I am getting screwed as a consumer. I am seriously considering just going back to speakeasy because I always felt I could at least trust them to deliver the service I am paying for.
Honestly once I decide who to replace them with, I plan to utterly boycott comcast, cable etc. However I guess if the fcc is investigating for this, my grievence isn't too far removed. Should I be capturing sniffer logs and contacting the FCC?
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Awhile back a big brewhaha went down with my local cable company and they scheduled a hearing with the government oversight committee. A FCC type local commission that governed the cable company monopoly.
I tuned in 10 minutes late but watched the hearing. for 40 minutes I watched 5 cable company executives on the bench defend their actions against accusations from the committee.
What I messed in the first 10 minutes were the introductions. I was wrong. The accuations were coming from the consumers. The five on the bench were the commission. There are certain epiphanies in life that just stick.
I have zero faith this FCC "investigation" will result in anything but new laws that forbid the consumer from exposing proprietary company practices with stiff fines and jail sentances for bloggers, etc. who expose company secrets. Maybe a new law making packet sniffing illegal. They'll figure something out.
-[d]-