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Comcast Sued Again over P2P Throttling
Dr. Eggman writes "Ars Technica brings us news of a disgruntled Washington D.C. Comcast customer who has filed a lawsuit against Comcast over claims of false advertising. The complaint seeks punitive damages, class-action status, and attorneys' fees. The customer claims Comcast advertised 'unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications that the Internet has to offer.' We discussed a similar lawsuit brought against Comcast by a Californian customer back in November, as well as the FCC investigation into Comcast's practices. While Comcast confirmed reception of the new lawsuit, they declined to comment on it directly. Spokesman Charlie Douglas was quoted saying, 'To be clear, Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services, and no one has demonstrated otherwise.'"
Their spokesman gets an A for confusing the issue.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...they just throttle them into oblivion.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
There are plenty of legitmate uses for bit torrent. Blizzard uses it to distribute patches, and vuze uses it to distribute liscensed content.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
... You'd think by now, instead of fighting all of these legal battles, they'd stop the throttling, instead of opening themselves to more costly law suits.
You're arguing with Comcast about the words they used to describe their service? Do you know how that works in the UK?
Unlimited 1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.
4. (ISP Def. only) Confined within limits; restricted or circumscribed: a limited space; limited resources.)
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
And that constitutes how many percent points of total torrent traffic?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
==> There are plenty of legitmate uses for bit torrent. Blizzard uses it to distribute patches, and vuze uses it to distribute liscensed content.
Yeah yeah, them are few and far between. p2p is mainly used for pirating and violating copyright law. ISP should kill it completely
I can't tell if this is flamebait or not, so I'll be good and reply instead of modding.
As long as it's over 0%, the percentage doesn't matter. The point is, they're supposed to be a common carrier and route the damn packets. Customers and services that customers pay to use rely on ISPs adhering to standards. And please, don't make Comcast out to be some great defender of the Copyright. They're only doing this to save their stockholders money- nothing more.
Besides, piracy existed (and still does) well before the Torrent protocol. HTTP, IRC, SMTP, and FTP are all still used to transfer files in violation of copyright. Should Comcast throttle these indiscriminately as well? Where do you draw the line?
Servers. Last I checked.. hosting your own email, telnet, httpd servers (I'm sure there are others - seems like it's most of the well known ports (1023)) wasn't doable using standard ports - both against TOS and directly dropped into /dev/null. If a judge won't understand/take into consideration the difference between throttling and blocking, I don't give them leeway regarding the loss of needing standard ports.
up to 1023.. forgot to do < manually
Everyone uses this argument as reasoning for why Comcast *SHOULDN'T* throttle bit torrent traffic, but the large majority of bit torrent traffic is illegitimate to begin with. As someone said before, how much of a percentage of bit torrent traffic is legal? (Not that I agree with it), but this is really the crux of the matter. As long as they can fall back on the arguement that they are trying to protect copyright infringement while 95% of bt traffic is movies and music, they will probably always come out on top of these types of debates.
Is this going to get federal class action status if out of staters join in with the defendent? If not, count me in to make it federal.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
I have Cablevision, and I have noticed that I was throttled after downloading torrent files. The interesting thing was that they throttled my upload speed only, which I didn't even notice until I tried to upload a file to a friend of mine and it was capped at 17kb/sec. I guess that isn't as egregious, and definately more surreptitious, which is why they probably have been keeping their throttling under the radar...
This is regional, unfortunately. I mean, it's good that it works in some places, and if you actually ask a tech, they'll say "we don't allow it," but I run an FTP server at home and it works just fine. I also had a web server up for a short while, but the upload speeds are too slow to make it worthwhile; it ends up typically oversaturating the connection.
Technically they state that any "server" is against the TOS for the home connections, and that if you need "server" capabilities you should upgrade to their business class price range. But given how goofy their definition of server is, they certainly aren't totalitarian about enforcing the block on ports/servers.
Isn't the answer to define block on a data particle level?
"Did X action related to this policy block one or more bits of data? Yes or No."
Take it out of the adjective "State of zero data throughput".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'll buy "crux of the disagreement," but if Comcast is a common carrier, then the content doesn't matter at all.
The rationale for maintaining one's status as a common carrier is to avoid liability for what's being transmitted. Comcast seems to want to discriminate based on protocol while remaining ignorant of content. That way they can reduce bandwidth (and therefore costs), theoretically increase revenue, and avoid legal costs for allowing content like child porn and terrorist plots.
Then again, they may be waiting for the outcome of the telecom immunity question before deciding whether to snoop for content.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
So please explain to me why Linux distros were PAINFULLY slow to download until I implemented rules on my firewall to block RST packets?
Tagging this article "getfios"
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The line is drawn, has been drawn, and always will be drawn at the profit margin (or above, if they "project" growth).
First of all, it is not about Comcast at all. And in no way I am going to defend a company that tortured me with average download speeds of 30kbps for the whole year (it was a ISP of choice for my landlord). The whole idea of me defending Comcast is actually offensive judging by amount of suffering I had to endure during that year.
As for other protocols you have mentioned, I have the same question: what is the percentage of traffic in question consittues in HTTP, IRC, SMTP and FTP.
I am going to put myself a subject to some kind of analog of Godwin's law and make a really over stretching analogy here. What is percentage of "legitimate" ("reasonable", etc/) usage of cluster bombs or land mines?
I am using here an offensive example just to illustrate the point that we have to apply this criteria to any technology, because any technology is no moral carrier by itself, but as a society we have a legitimate right to ask this question: what is the percentage of "legitimate" use of any particular bit of technology?
Car is a technology, yet we do not allow people under certain age to drive it despite the fact that some people under this age are quite capable of it and benefit themselves and the society as a whole. We are judging by percentage here.
Same applies to any technology. The problem is not in declaring torrents evil or not, the problem is in defining areas where the use of technology should be limited and if we are technologically capable of doing so with some kind of reasonably minimal damage to legitimate use of it.
The solutions (_if_ we want to limit somehow the use of torrents) could be registered assignment of unique signatures (like PGP) to Blizzard and vuze torrent traffic, for example. (I am just answering original post "There are plenty of legitmate uses").
The absolute freedom of using technology is not an answer if there are significant material damage to a whole class of businesses by usage of that technology. May be it is impossible to fight it, may be not. The answer is not clear yet.
I understand that people like their torrents and their freedoms, but questioning the use of it on statistical social level should be accepted as well.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
If I go with provider A because they say, "unlimited service at $50/month," and then they say, "Well, we meant 200M/month and we mess with some protocols," I believe I have a case.
Where are the libertarians? How can you have a market when one party breaks contracts?
Comcast's technology is pretty protocol indiscriminant, as I understand it. Any bulk data transfer that goes on for a certain amount of time gets hit with these false RSTs. I've heard at least one case of it screwing with a business VPN.
So yes, they target HTTP, IRC, etc as well. They draw no line.
The idea of assigning unique signatures to "approved" bittorrent traffic is a fiasco waiting to happen, and counter to the ideals of an egalitarian internet (rather than a one-way tube from large corporations into the minds of consumers - we already have TV for that!) Since a signature would have to depend on the data being torrented (to prevent 'illegitimate' parties from coping it verbatim for their own torrents), a new one would be required for every new or changed file. This would add an anticompetitive barrier to any smaller organizations that want to use it, as well as delaying release of "approved" torrents, since each release would presumably have to be hand-checked, which would almost certainly cost $$$ that few can afford. (If each new release isn't checked for potentially infringing content, it becomes trivial to sneak arbitrary files into signed torrents, defeating the system.) The fact of the matter is, the main appeal of the bittorrent model is the ability to widely distribute files without having to have a high-powered server infrastructure to handle all the downloads. That's why pirates use it, that's why OSS people use it, hell, that's even why Blizzard uses it. The difference is, Blizzard could afford to distribute updates by HTTP if needed - lots of others can't. And, once this is done for bt, piracy will move to other avenues, requiring authorization and official signatures for more and more protocols - maybe even HTTP!
Making it so only multi-billion-dollar entities are allowed to distribute content to users isn't going to kill piracy --- it'll just kill the internet as we know it.
Jon Hart, the California man mentioned in the summary, is the main West Coast taper for the New Orleans rock band, The Radiators. I know Jon slightly through the band's mailing list, and he signed up with Comcast specifically so that he could distribute his own legal recordings through bittorrent. But of course, Comcast's so-called "unlimited" service isn't unlimited when it comes to torrents. Jon's not doing anything illegal with torrent--has never (to the best of my knowledge) attempted to do anything illegal with torrent--he's simply a man who believed an advertisement, and then discovered, to his surprise, that it was a lie. Don't you think it's at least possible that he has a valid case? I sure do.
Unfortunately that's one reason I don't even use Blizzard's peer to peer mode for patches. I don't want to have my bandwidth throttled, reported, subpoena'd, etc., just because I used a feature of a game that's turned on by default. I've also noticed that the patches come faster for me when not in p2p mode anyway. *shhh*
Your examples have one major flaw- all of them involve the risk of loss of life. 10 year old kids driving and landmines have a large change of somebody getting hurt or killed. The law must always try to strike a balance between the loss of rights of the individual and the possible effects of these actions. The law correctly (in my opinion, anyways) assigns more weight to the right of individuals to keep their life than to the right of a 10 year old kid to go joyriding.
You can't really compare a 10 year old driving to a 10 year old downloading the CD of the current popular Boy Band.
So yes, you are correct that we can ask what percentage of a certain technology is used for evil/unlawful uses. However, don't forget to ask the (perhaps more important) question of "what is the risk." We must always weigh both answers, especially when the "fix" requires loss of rights.
It IS a series of tubes. If you're trying to explain how the network of interconnected nodes that we call the internet works - a series of tubes is a great straight-forward analogy that damn near everyone can understand. It's an analogy I used to use to explain concepts to grandfathers before that poor sod said it in front of a camera, and it remains true. Other points aside - the series of tubes mocking should stop. -GiH
"are their substantial non-infringing uses?" You are making very good argument (or answer) to my question, but I still think that this should be compared to the loss. If you define substantial in terms of business generated or something equivalent to that, then it has to be compared to something. There is no "absolute" substantial.
For bands, we still need the numbers: business generated via torrents versus business loss (which could be actually not that significant, I do not know) of proverbial RIAA and MPAA.
"Don't you think it's at least possible that he has a valid case? I sure do." Absolutely, no question about that. Again, my original comment was not in any way in defense of Comcast.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I agree with you. You are absolutely right, and that is the flaw of my comparison.
Yet, the tradition of the laws of US does that all the time, and converts all types of risks, both financial and personal, into monetary value. That is why we have life insurance, accident insurance, that is why relatives of the wrongfully killed are suing for millions. It is unfortunate, in my opinion (thanks again for reminding about that flaw in my arguments), but that is how it operates.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Blizzard uses it to distribute patches
One of my biggest complaints too. X million dollars per month and they can't provide dedicated http/ftp patch servers? Cheap bastards.. Takes hours to patch a fresh install thanks to that crap.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
RIAA companies do not have a right to profit from their work. They have a right to try and profit from it, but their profit motive cannot possibly trump someone's rights. I, on the other hand, have a right to transfer arbitrary IP packets with as many friends as I like, provided that our packets don't directly contravene my ISP's TOS. That is why "legitimate use" is the litmus test. The idea is not to decide whether the good of torrents outweighs the bad, but to decide whether anyone's rights are violated by banning them, either in law or in code. If the answer is yes, then all the money in the world can't make such a ban legitimate.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Their argument is that you are transmitting information that you do not have a right to possess, or transmit. That what copying is in the word "copyright".
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
People, as private citizens, are violating rights when they pirate. That is government's responsibility to fight in whatever ways it can. But the critical bit is, the government's hands must be tied in the rights it violates in the pursuit of its law enforcement goals. That is why the Betamax suit failed.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
mmm... but I don't think it works like that.
This is where I wish I had a deeper understanding of networking protocols, but as I understand it, what happens is that that the receiving computer gets so many packets and then signals back to say "my buffer is full - don't send any more until I say so". Under normal use the receiver would then process the buffer contents, and then signal the sender saying, "next packet, please"
Thing is, you can throttle a protocol just by increasing the time between clearing the buffer and then telling the sender "Hit me!" If the time you add is greater than protocol's timeout period, you can effectively block it without a single byte being consigned to the bit bucket. Even if the protocol has a very long timeout, you can still slow it down to the point where it's becomes basically unusable.
And if it ever goes to court, there's not a single byte you can point at and say "this datum was blocked, your honour", for the simple reason that it was never sent, so how could they block it?
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
The Grokster folks got nailed not because their technology didn't have the potential for substantial non-infringing uses but because they were actively promoting their software as a tool for copyright infringement. It's sometimes hard for techies to grok, but intent matters under the law. Programmers tend to think that the legal system should be deterministic, with a fixed set of inputs leading to a fixed set of outputs, but, in fact, the law is based on human judgement and semi-mythical concepts like "a reasonable person", and has no problem whatsoever with arbitrary terms such as "substantial", as long as a reasonable person is likely to have a reasonable idea of what that means.
"and successfully showed that the overwhelming majority of use of the VCR at that time was for copyright infringment." Right, but the question is about how much damage it done do the industry compared to the business benefit of using VCR (units sold, etc). Since it was physical copying it was probably less than now.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.