Comcast Says FCC Powerless to Stop P2P Blocking

Nanoboy writes "Even if the FCC finds that Comcast has violated its Internet Policy Statement, it's utterly powerless to do anything about it, according to a recent filing by the cable giant. Comcast argues that Congress has not given the FCC the authority to act, that the Internet Policy Statement doesn't give it the right to deal with the issue, and that any FCC action would violate the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946. '"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful," concludes Comcast VP David L. Cohen's thinly-veiled warning to the FCC, filed on March 11. "Bearing these facts in mind should obviate the need for the Commission to test its legal authority."'"

Comments

Comcast

[Ancient123]

Damn corporations always find a lookhole to continue exploiting their customers.... (fp?)

Re:Comcast

[Doctor_Jest]

Well, this loophole they seem to crow about (which is horse feathers to me, since the FCC has regulatory authority when it comes to denial of services by a communications provider... phone or otherwise...) is most likely trumped by the recently passed Internet Security Fun and Excitement Act (I forgot the name off the top of my head) that makes this fakery they're doing, impersonating _you_ (your machine, specifically) illegal and possibly a felony. As I understand it from the other discussions on this subject... Comcast's guilty of "hacking".... ;) For lack of a better term, legal-wise.

So, no, the FCC may not have the power to stop Comcast (but I suspect they can levy a fine, but that's another discussion entirely), but I'd suspect the FBI does... and someone might do time for it. ;) ...I know... wishful thinking...

Re:Comcast

[electrictroy]

SUCH ARROGANCE BY COMCAST!

In a different age and under a different president (Jimmy Carter), the FCC chairman could simply pick up his phone & ask his buddy in the white house to apply Antitrust Legislation to the Comcast monopoly..... thereby breaking apart the cable tv and internet arms into competing forces..... as was done with AT&T.

Who knows. Perhaps the next president will do exactly that.

Re:Comcast

[AmaDaden]

Correct me if I'm wrong but could this work? 1)Start new ISP that does not filter 2)Get help from the FCC because they are a bit pissed at Comcast for their "nah nah nah You cant get us!" crap 3)When Comcast tries to buy you out/stomp you in to oblivion use antitrust laws to stay alive. 4)Grow to a reasonable size because you have some idea of how the internet works and will not be a dick to your customers. 5)???? 6)profit

Re:Comcast

[AmaDaden]

Hey I never said it would be easy, just that it could work. With any luck Google will get the same idea and act on it.

Re:Comcast

[plague3106]

This is exactly why all communications lines must be seized as property of the public. We have public roads, public water, public electricity, and it's time we have public ownership of data lines.

I'm glad my city decided it wouldn't wait for Comcast or Verizon, and instead went and laid their own fiber network. Guess who has the best internet, phone and cable TV prices and service now?

Re:Comcast

[contrapunctus]

You know what's going to happen though after step 6?
The new company will turn evil and become just as bad as the company it usurped.
The cycle of life continues...

Re:Comcast

[Toandeaf]

I for one like private companies owning the lines as it is one more barrier to improper spying by the government. Well, in theory anyway. We should be seeing whether this is true or not next presidency.

Re:Comcast

[MobyDisk]

The problem has nothing to do with who owns the lines. The problem is that the government grants the owner of the lines a monopoly to deliver content over them. This would not be an issue if Comcast owned and maintained the lines, and Earthlink/Covad/First Communications/AOL competed to provide ISP services over those lines.

Re:Comcast

[Teflon_Jeff]

We can only dream.

If I were Comcast, I'd be a little more careful, because the government tends to not give a crap what you, as a business, think. And I'd bet there are plenty of other laws out there that they broke.

Besides, if they admit they broke their own rules, wouldn't that open them up to a class action lawsuit?

Re:Comcast

[NiZm0]

The lines are already partially subsidized by tax payer money. The telcos don't want you to know that though. The lines are all on government easements. It wouldn't be hard to get this done.

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

WTH? You want to talk about Carter being a friend of the FCC? He actually had the FCC send letters to 'suggest' broadcasters to have employees join a list of approved liberal organizations or face license renewal hearings. The FCC has a horrible reputation with all broadcasters for a reason.

Re:Comcast

[electrictroy]

I doubt that my local government (Lancaster PA) would allow me to set-up a second cable company. They've already made up their minds to only string ONE cable to the city homes, and therefore a new startup is blocked from entry.

It's a regulated monopoly.

And being a monopoly, Comcast can do whatever they want (like block access to Itunes) as long as Comcast keeps bribing the Lancaster politicians to keep quiet.

Re:Comcast

[phizix]

I for one like private companies owning the lines as it is one more barrier to improper spying by the government. Especially companies like AT&T...

Re:Comcast

[mlts]

If we can get IP over power lines in more areas, perhaps the biggest competition to the usual ISPs would be the good old utility companies.

Of course, WiMax, 4G, and other fast wireless protocols have been promised, but nothing real has come of them yet in the US for the most part. Hopefully, cellular operators like T-Mobile and Sprint can move into this market. Sprint already has decent bandwidth (though not sure how good/bad their latency is).

Maybe instead of two companies (cable and DSL), we can get the number of options to five in most areas (cable, DSL, WiMax, IP over power lines, and 4G/EV-DO.)

Re:Comcast

[Fatal67]

If I were comcast, I would just completely block P2P uploading as it violates the TOS. Not a popular answer I know, but my terms do say that I cannot run a server on my residential connection. P2P seeding should qualify as a file server. Comcast made the mistake of letting customers do something that was against the TOS for far too long. Not that there is a time limit on enforcing TOS, but it is always harder to give someone something and then take it away than it is to not give them something to begin with.

Re:Comcast

[VoltCurve]

This president would launch cruise missiles at Comcast HQ. maybe that would be better?

Re:Comcast

[shdowhawk]

Guess who has the best internet, phone and cable TV prices and service now?

Japan?

Re:Comcast

[torkus]

Oh, yes. I want government run internet just like they do our roads.

There's already pointless speed limits when everyone wants to go much faster. There's potholes from LAST winter that haven't been repaired much less the ones from this winter or the others that were so poorly fixed the might as well not have bothered. How about the construction? 'Sorry, this part if the internet is closed for 6 months while our union crews wank off while holding construciton flags so one single guy can do the work'

I'm ALL for that...and that's without even playing the censorship-conspiracy-monitoring-big brother card.

Re:Comcast

[sm62704]

someone might do time for it

Dream on. In America a rich powerful man only goes to prison if a richer, more powerful man wants him there. The rule of law is worthless when legislators are bought and sold like cattle.

For instance, how many Sony executives went to prison for the XCP rootkit? That's right, none. Nobody from Comcast will serve time either, and if they donated enough money to the campaigns of the "elected" officials and legislators they'll continue to be able to abuse their customers.

And now for something completely different:

-mcgrew

Re:Comcast

[FredThompson]

So...your city created their own santioned monopoly and that means you advocate the theft of private property by "the people." Are you SURE the prices and service are better or do you only see part of the cost? Price and service improve for the customer when there is competition in a free market, not when a government creates a monopoly. Most likely your city is hiding some of the cost in taxation or they aren't including investment for the future. Advocating theft of private property by "the people" is almost always the worst option. Innovation comes from incentive to acquire through achievement. That requires private property rights.

Re:Comcast

[boyko.at.netqos]

I miss Carter. :(

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Good crypto and a bit of common sense are the only things that can combat spying. I trust neither my government or private companies.

Re:Comcast

[GlL]

I, too live in Tacoma, WA. I can get a 1.5MB internet connection for $29.95 including taxes,etc. and I can walk into the LOCALLY OWNED ISP's office and talk to real techs. The city laid the cable and maintains it, and wholesales it to three ISPs who compete on pricing and supporting end users.
Scumcast and Qworst have been trying unsuccessfully to sink this venture, but so far our politicians haven't sold us out.
Personally I think Comcast should be broken up like the bells were. The more competition there is, the better our prices and customer service should be.

Enjoy the curb Comcast, because that's what I've kicked you to.

Re:Comcast

[tonyreadsnews]

Yes, but the best way would be to force Comcast to allow other utilities access to customers through their network like they did with the phone companies for long distance AND DSL.

But that was shot down years ago, though I'm not sure why.

Re:Comcast

[sm62704]

In Springfield (home of alderman Simpson) the city owns the power company and the water company, and we have the cheapest electricity in the midwest, and service is very reliable. I wish CWLP would provide cable, telephone, gas, and internet!

Note this drawing of Springfield's mayor Davlin, CWLP's general manager Todd Renfro, and some guy probably related in some way to alderman Simpson.

-mcgrew (yes, my town is a cartoon)

Re:Comcast

[Buran]

Since you're apparently a traffic/roads engineer, show me the studies that say that the speed limits are incorrect. What's "correct" and what everyone wants to do (which is illegal, by the way) don't have to be the same thing.

Re:Comcast

[Shakrai]

And being a monopoly, Comcast can do whatever they want (like block access to Itunes) as long as Comcast keeps bribing the Lancaster politicians to keep quiet.

If they are really doing that then why don't you stop posting on /. and start working to get those local politicians out of office?

Local politics actually makes it possible for individuals/small dedicated groups to make a difference. You don't need millions of dollars to get started. In my time as an elections worker I haven't seen a local race that was decided by more than a few hundred votes -- and I've seen some (our recent County Legislative elections) with single digit margins of victory.

Re:Comcast

[LeafOnTheWind]

Actually, our country has the largest highway system in the world (by far) and it is widely regarded as a modern marvel of engineering. "There's already pointless speed limits when everyone wants to go much faster" is the stupidest argument I have ever heard and potholes happen - the fact that the US government successfully manages a transcontinental system of 45,400 km in length through some of the most varied terrain in the world speaks to its efficacy. If you want to argue about government monopolies, you should probably pick something less successful.

Re:Comcast

[Shakrai]

If I were comcast, I would just completely block P2P uploading as it violates the TOS. Not a popular answer I know, but my terms do say that I cannot run a server on my residential connection. P2P seeding should qualify as a file server

Actually, it's only a server (in the classical sense) if it accepts incoming connections and most P2P apps (Bittorrent included) will function just fine without this ability, albeit with a reduced number of peers that it can reach.

Re:Comcast

[QuoteMstr]

In a democracy, laws, as long as they respect basic pre-agreed-upon rights, should reflect the wide gamut for opinion. In a democracy, what other legitimate criterion is there? The low speed limits in the US are the fault of the screeching few, and that nearly everyone speeds is simply a public rejection of the law.

Re:Comcast

[LeafOnTheWind]

Sorry to reply to myself - I quoted the wrong statistic. The National Highway System alone covers 256,000 kilometers, and that only accounts for 4% of the nations roads.

Re:Comcast

[bjourne]

Oh no, private companies should run the internet. Just like they do your medical system, army and education system. Everything works much better when the government just hands out large sacks of money to companies to run internet. Even this article is proof of how well it works! The writing's on the wall. Now everyone sees how bad Comcast is, so they will go bankrupt and some other company will replace them. Go market forces!

Re:Comcast

[Actually, I do RTFA]

1)Start new ISP that does not filter

1a) Since you don't own all the fiber in between most computers, still send the data over Comcast or ATT backbone lines, and have filtering applied above you.

Re:Comcast

[Zenaku]

If I were Comcast, I'd be a little more careful, because the government tends to not give a crap what you, as a business, think.

ROTFL, dude. You ever thought about doing stand-up?

Re:Comcast

[j-tull]

This is exactly why all communications lines must be seized as property of the public. We have public roads, public water, public electricity, and it's time we have public ownership of data lines.

I don't want my internet/communication lines to be public property. In my state, I can't drink on the sidewalk because it's public property. I have to drive at a horribly slow speed, because the roads are public property. If the public takes over the commnication lines in my backwards neck of the woods, I won't ever be able to look at porn^H^H^Hslashdot anymore.

Re:Comcast

[electrictroy]

Does this also mean I'm not allowed to "serve" my family photos to my website, or "serve" my latest DV video to youtube.com, or "serve" my webcam for chatting online every night with my friends (a major bandwidth hog)?

Hmmm.

I don't know the answer, but if it is "no" then it's a stupid policy. Also: Where's the justification for Comcast to block access to Itunes.com? That doesn't violate any terms of service, so why's it blocked for some Comcast customers?

Re:Comcast

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I for one like private companies owning the lines as it is one more barrier to improper spying by the government. Well, in theory anyway.

As far as I am aware (IANAL), government whistleblowers are more protected under the law than corporate whistleblowers. And I would rather have b'crats with their job security and motivated to make one party look bad, as opposed to a unified desire for money.

Re:Comcast

[Ardaen]

The reason the "screeching few" tend to get their way probably has to do with the high number of innocent deaths as a result of the speeding. Its hard to say you should have a right to speed when your speeding leads to you killing others. The government tries to have some protections for random innocents and minorities to prevent certain kinds of abuses. Abuses like murdering people because your too impatient to drive safely.

Re:Comcast

[ady1]

Its a flawed analogy. You don't put anyone's life at risk of you download or upload faster. You do put lives at risk (at least potentially) if you drive recklessly.

Re:Comcast

[Ardaen]

Indeed, there are good reasons why pure market economies are not used. There are good reasons for the government regulations and antitrust laws. You can go too far either way. Privatization is not a magic bullet and is every bit as dangerous, if not more, than government regulation.

Re:Comcast

[Burz]

So...your city created their own santioned monopoly and that means you advocate the theft of private property by "the people." WHAT private property?

As for the rest of your dogma, it scarcely makes any sense in the context of this discussion. Verizon is becoming the upscale monopoly and Comcast the downmarket monopoly, and in a growing number of local markets Verizon simply refuses to offer data service. So, can you comprehend what a private monopoly is and how it sheds all accountability?

Re:Comcast

[Ardaen]

Its not a city sanctioned monopoly, its not theft by the people. The issue is far more complex than that. Private monopolies are as bad or worse for innovation. If one company owns and controls the lines there is little to no opportunity for competition. If the government owns the lines, or at least partly regulates their use, there is some potential for competition. Pure market does not equal innovation or competition. There are many examples of how a free market is anything but free for consumers, especially in the communication industry. "Theft" by "the people" may not always be a good option, but its not the worst. The worst is a completely unregulated market.

Re:Comcast

[Lumpy]

This bribe is called a "franchise fee" it allows the local government to take a substantial kickback from a cable company to ensure they are the only game in town. The locality must drop the franchise fee if there are two companies in town so they generally want to keep that steady bribe coming in they make sure that competition can not come in without a larger bag of money.

Gotta love how local government find ways of doing what the Mob has done forever.

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why i left comcast for a slower connection.

Re:Comcast

[kiran_n]

I agree. Internet access has become a utility and should be treated as such.

Ideally it has to go the Electricity or Water way - pay for as much as you use...

Re:Comcast

[Ancient123]

Comcast backbone... HA! Backbone (tier one) interconnects are fairly cheap. its the last mile connections and dealing with end users that is expensive. why do you think very few of the real backbone providers are residential ISPs.

Re:Comcast

[bgkorn]

We could all use a VPN/"anonymizer" service to a central provider service.

Re:Comcast

[BuckaBooBob]

You could never get a infrastructure in place to compete. You would end up "Renting" under rules that would end up benefiting comcast rather than the ISP renting. If you could manage to get all the contracts in place to be able to install a new infrastructure that your own and have control over.. 1 Billion dollars is but a drop of what it would take to fill the 50 gallon drum required to compete with comcast on equal footing.

Re:Comcast

[cromar]

The false sincerity they use to talk about free markets makes me sick. They are a government established monopoly and they know it. But any restrictions on their "service," fraud, and invasion are "against the free market." Bullshit. Their customers suffer and yet they say that their despotism is applauded by everyone. What fucking filth...

Re:Comcast

[dgatwood]

That's really not fair. The cost of maintaining a network infrastructure is tiny compared with the cost of maintaining all of the nation's roads. The cost per mile of fiber is estimated at $16,000 per mile in rural areas. (Source: isp-planet.com) The cost of a two-lane road in Florida is $2.7 million dollars per mile. (Source: Florida DOT) Then, there's the maintenance. With fiber, you get to fix occasional cuts. With roads, you have to repave them every few years at a cost of almost another half million dollars for that same two-lane road. Then, there's the cost of buying the land for the road in the first place, whereas with fiber pulls, you don't have that initial cost since it is pulled along existing rights of way.

So the initial cost of roads is two orders of magnitude greater, and the maintenance costs are probably on average five or six orders of magnitude greater. Also, you only need one fiber to reach each house. This means that you don't need to be able to get from any house to any other house. You just need the main arteries and a single way to get to every house. That means that you only need to cover a road if you have at least one house that cannot be served by another road that is already served. This means that many short roads don't need poles or fiber pulls at all, but they still need asphalt.

Further, the cost of pulling the bundle doesn't depend that much on how many fibers you pull, so you pull extra infrastructure for decades of build-out. With roads, the cost is almost exactly proportional to the square footage covered, so you tend to build extra capacity on an as-needed basis.

I can't imagine the government doing a worse job than the telcos do now frankly, but the best solution would be to have the government buy it out and spin off a nonprofit to manage it similar to the way TVA works now. That's a generally well managed power generation and distribution infrastructure that provides cheap power to several states, all from a nonprofit that was created by the government and spun off.

Re:Comcast

[mgabrys_sf]

AT&T broke themselves up dumbshit.

Re:Comcast

[End Program]

You are correct that it would not be easy, but starting a common-carrier has been a dream of mine too. Obviously, the build out of the infrastructure would be immense and trying to negotiate right-of-way agreements would be equally challenging.

However, maybe it could be accomplished by establishing a utility cooperative. Part of the financing could come from the user/owners of the service, by putting in place a 20 year agreement between the co-op and the user to buy communication services. The agreement would stay with the property and picked up by the next owner, if the property is sold.

It's a dream, but who knows maybe someday...

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Lookhole? Hahahaha...

Re:Comcast

[plague3106]

The problem isn't government, the problem with roads is the Federal government. They steal tax money from states, and dole it out in some corrupt fashion. The result is that states don't have adequate budgets to fix their roads, because the feds also raid the gas tax funds for things like, say, the Iraq war.

So you can say whatever you want, but my CITY is providing me far better service than Comcast or Verizon can. Verizon can't even get DSL to the most popoulous part of the city!

Re:Comcast

[plague3106]

I'm not a civil engineer, but they all agree that what everyone wants to do ends up being the safest way to handle things.

http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/

Speed limits exist to put profit into police and insurance companies, not to make anyone safer.

Re:Comcast

[Darinbob]

You could try satellite. I got mine initially because AT&T (pre-Comcast) still had an A/B switch for analog cable and it still cost more than digital satellite. It was a no brainer.

I talk to some coworkers about this, and the conversation sometimes goes:
"Comcast cable isn't very good, but using it gives gets me a discount on their internet."
"Is their internet better than my DSL?"
"No, it sucks too, but using it gives me a discount on their phone service."
"Is their phone service good?"
"No, it sucks, but using it gives me a discount on their cable."

Re:Comcast

[plague3106]

So...your city created their own santioned monopoly and that means you advocate the theft of private property by "the people."

Huh? My city still allows Verizon and Comcast to offer service as well. Oh, and that "private property" was largely paid for by the taxpayers, and private land was TAKEN from private citizens so that poles could be put on it (eminate domain). Spare me your theft. And yes, in case you're wondering, if a king hordes all the food in the land, and the people are starving (those same people that provide said food) they have every right to "steal" from the king. They actually have a right to chop off his head.

Are you SURE the prices and service are better or do you only see part of the cost?

The network is a city department but was not funded by one cent of taxpayer money. And yes, it is cheaper than the garbage Comcast offers, and dealing with satan himself is perferable to Comcast customer service.

Price and service improve for the customer when there is competition in a free market, not when a government creates a monopoly.

I said government should own the lines, not necessarly run the services over those lines. And yes, my city does offer other companies the chance to offer services of the city's lines.

Most likely your city is hiding some of the cost in taxation or they aren't including investment for the future.

Nope.

Advocating theft of private property by "the people" is almost always the worst option.

I already explained how this is horseshit.

Innovation comes from incentive to acquire through achievement. That requires private property rights.

Ya, that's why until the city rolled their own fiber service, "broadboand" from Comcast was 1.5 MB down and less than 1 upload. Oddly, after the city service started, they bumped that up considerably. Terrible, terrible tradegety for me I know. Of course Comcast still insists asyncronous is best, yet I find using the internet faster when I have 6mbps up and down.

Re:Comcast

[mweather]

A space elevator would work too, why don't be build one of those instead?

Re:Comcast

[BoberFett]

Private property rights? So the lines that Comcast runs over are private and therefore not subject to government appropriation, but my property that has cable lines running through it is fair game for the taking?

Screw that. Why does a private company get to use public easements and then claim that their copper on my land is their private property?

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you tarnish the Mob's name?

When someone screws up there, you can be assured it's taken care off. Not someone getting slapped and being given a golden parachute.

Unless it's an actual golden parachute.

Re:Comcast

[MBC1977]

Whoa.. wait a sec. Who said there needs to be public ownership of data lines? Did the government pay for those lines you want to nationalize? If not, then fuck no. Let the government pay for the lines and labor involved and then lets see if you want to foot that bill thats gonna follow...

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

We have public roads,

Which, at least in Pennsylvania, is a deterrent from making communications public. I've also seen public hospitals in Poland, they're not pretty either.

Besides, once communications are public, that is one less barrier for domestic spying programs...

Re:Comcast

[globaljustin]

private companies owning the lines as it is one more barrier to improper spying by the government

Not a chance. Several major private companies are falling over themselves trying to help the government spy on it's on citizens. Look at Google in China, and the major cell phone operators here in the states.

If the public owns the lines, they are subject to government oversight. If the government doesn't properly control privacy, it can be held accountable much more easily than a private corporation can.

Re:Comcast

[Omestes]

I completely disagree with you, but...

Have you considered a ballot proposition? If everyone agrees with you, you should have no problem receiving the requisite signatures, and votes in your next election, if not you must happily stop bitching since democracy willed it not so.

The government has the right to regulate our behavior when it puts others at risk. You can be an asshat, until someone loses and eye, basically. Most people drive much faster than their ability, and thus are a risk to the rest of us, and we can't expect these people to self regulate (something Americans are less and less capable with our post 80's confusion of right and privilege, and complete ignorance of the term "responsibility"), and thus it is the government's job to cap how idiotic we can be.

My favorite solution is tiered licensing of a sort. Let the people who think they could be doing F1 racing take a very tough real-world test to prove that they can perform over a certain speed (I'm guessing most of the speeding-is-justified-set would fail), and then allow them on special roads away from the rest of the public.

Re:Comcast

[Propaganda13]

Kick a dog and he might bite you. Back a dog into a corner and kick him, and he will bite you.

Hopefully, Comcast gets bitten hard.

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

*** Guess who has the best internet, phone and cable TV prices and service now? ***

Me. because I get mine all for free? Wonder how much in local taxes you guys pay too, to subsidize your uber net!

Re:Comcast

[plague3106]

Um, you compeletely disagree with civil engineers and all the studies that looked at the effects of speed limits?

Of course the problem is that others won't agree, because they "disagree" with solid science just as you do. Until THEY get a ticket, of course. Basically, they expect themselves to have wiggle room, but no one else should have that same privledge.

Democracy is a fancy term for mob rule, and I don't buy into mob rule. And governments don't have a right to regulate you because something you do MIGHT injure someone else. Especially in this case, WHERE SPEED LIMITS DIRECTLY LEAD TO ACCIDENT RATE INCREASES.

Your entire suggestion is nonsense, because you're advocating mob rule, by a mob which is largely uninformed, and saying there's no problem with that situtation.

Oh, and studies have shown people DO self regulate. Or do you believe the reason people aren't murdering each other in the street constantly simply because there's a law?

Re:Comcast

[Fatal67]

The whole point of the 'no servers' section of the ToS was because they are aware of the limitations of their HFC upstream network. Storing files on your system for others to download is clearly a server. It's exactly the same as running a ftp server.

Saying that running a web browser is the same as running a file server might be just a little far-fetched there.

Re:Comcast

[flynn23]

HERE HERE! Mod Parent UP! This is the only sensible course of action unless the market's regulations were completely repealed and allowed real competition from the ground up. Putting the plant into a public trust with MINIMAL administrative fees for maintenance through taxes or surcharges would allow all service competitors to focus on SERVICE and innovative applications. Until then, the monopolies will just use the plant as a huge barrier of entry.

Re:Comcast

[jonaskoelker]

Comcast VP> The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful The Comcast VP says reliance on the marketplace maximizes consumer welfare. As a dual, I would expect consumers to say that reliance on the marketplace maximizes Comcast VP welfare ;) (Due, of course, to the marketplace being utterly broken, as you mentioned).

Re:Comcast

[AmaDaden]

I got one better for you. Put the packets your sending in encrypted packets of a different type while on the Comcast network. Comcast can't sniff you then and you could use it as a selling point. So your customers would all get a router or hub or something that can encrypt/decrypt on the user end and as soon as the packet gets to your network you decrypt/encrypt it. Using a packet in a packet is fairly common with the internet, the backbone is an acronym soup of packet types.

Re:Comcast

[jonaskoelker]

Quickie: couldn't that be handled by auctioning off the maintenance work to a bidder in a competitive market?

Re:Comcast

[Doctor_Jest]

That's why I said "might". It may be out of the question in practice, but in discussion, it's a pretty cut-and-dried violation of a law that ironically was backed by Comcast and the rest of them (without the foresight to consider if _they_ were held to the same standard.)

While your sentiment is correct, I have to wonder, which Sony Exec would do time? The US exec or the Japanese exec? I'm sure whoever had final authority... but that's the sticky part... these clowns are so far beyond national boundaries, we should simply deport them all to an island. ;) Because the UN and the World Court (or whatever it is called) simply goof off and take out tax dollars to draft resolutions and cover up human rights violations (and accuse the US or Europe of stealing resources from everyone else). (Not unlike most governments do now anyway, but you get the idea.)

Trouble with exile for these nitwits is, I don't want to ruin an island with that many assholes.

Comcast, IIRC is not international, though they may have international holdings, I'd wager (if they are any sort of greedy.. and I'm sure they are...) But then again, things are run by multinationals everywhere... so we're in a sad boat if we decide we want to do anything about it... (But it seems the EU has enough stones to fine Microsoft... so let's just fine Sony for each delivered copy of the rootkit.)

And, in the realm of possibility, a government sanctioned monopoly like a cable company should be more likely to comply with laws than a multinational that just doesn't care... (of course Comcast is an American company that just doesn't care... so we're in a vicious cycle here, I guess.) I realize in practice that this is a far seedier set of circumstances and most likely are at their very roots criminal enterprises anyway... but for the "great unwashed" these clowns provide moving pictures for their "magic boxes" and are allowed to fuck up everything else as long as they're not pre-empting Wrasslin for some goddamned presidential speech or something. ...now I'm sad. ;)

It's all depressing no matter how you look at it. And I guess we've all got to shoulder some of the blame for it, since we most likely kept voting these bastards in and not running them out on a rail when they ruined things....

Re:Comcast

[jimrob]

This is exactly why all communications lines must be seized as property of the public. We have public roads, public water, public electricity, and it's time we have public ownership of data lines.

And what, exactly, gives you the right to seize someone else's property? That's no different than seizing your neighbor's house because you don't like how they care for their yard.

Re:Comcast

[Tanktalus]

Uploading isn't prohibited. Waiting for, accepting, and responding to incoming requests on any port is. (Nevermind that ftp kinda works that way for non-passive connections.) Thus, putting your photos on a webserver or your video on youtube is fine. Your webcam probably isn't, though you might be hard-pressed to find a techie at comcast that understands why, or why blanket policies are bad policy.

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the whole point of a corporation to protect it's members from the legal consequences of it's actions?

Re:Comcast

[Omestes]

Um, you compeletely disagree with civil engineers and all the studies that looked at the effects of speed limits?

Care to give me a couple layman-worthy cites? If your going to talk about things like the Autobaun, don't bother, since that isn't geared towards the Big Gulp and Taco, Cellphone, Hair Drying, and Novel Reading American Driver. We're too busy doing other things to be fully trusted to our own means. If there are valid studies, taking into account the unique American character of road use and vehicular philosophy, I will cede your point, barring that I'm sure (guessing here) that there are other studies, equally valid in method, that say otherwise.

We can agree on the mob-rule thing, though I wouldn't go so far as calling democracy (en toto) mob-rule, and thus bad, there is something to be said for a group of people having the right to represent themselves. I do find benefits in the idea of Philosopher Kings or meritocracy, but generally these go wrong, since those who claim the right to rule generally look out for themselves, to the detriment of the polis. We generally forget that government is here for the sake of the governed, and not for that of the governors. Actually the ideal form of government, IMHO, would be mob-rule (ala democracy) with an informed public, and a large body of empowered experts within advisory roles in the government. Sadly, here in the US we have an ignorant and apathetic public, and corporate interests (and scientists who are willing sell their standards to said interests) represented in government. I digress.

But, interestingly, the g-g-parent said something along the lines of "most people don't want speed limits, but they are enforced for revenue only". This IS a statement FOR mob-rule, the term "most people" confirms it.

Murder and speeding are completely different things. Murder is harm by nature and intent. Speeding is potential harm and not intentionally directed towards harm. Traffic death is generally based on the perpetrators own ignorance of their ability, or disinterest in basic safety, and not the intent to actually harm. Being this is based on potential, it is up to the people (as in We the...) to decide what threshold of potential we are willing to tolerate, and for the government to regulate that.

Re:Comcast

[Doctor_Jest]

No, to protect them from the financial consequences. If they break the law, the corporation can no more shield them from prosecution than you or I.

Re:Comcast

[KingSkippus]

Okay, your roads are in bad shape. Mine happen to be in pretty good shape, but that's not even my real response to you.

My real response is this: Have you ever been to a country where the government doesn't build the roads and it's up to the private sector to do so? You're lucky to have a road. And do you know why? Because roads are very, very expensive to build.

I'd much rather have government roads than no roads at all.

But just out of curiosity, have you actually written to your local city councilmen/state legislators about the conditions of the roads in your area? Have you pointed out the specific problems that you're complaining about? If it's a safety hazard, I imagine they'd fix it. I've had some potholes fixed in my area, and all it took was a letter. They can't fix what they don't know about.

And hey, if they give you any resistance, just whip out your checkbook and offer to pay for the repairs. I'd bet they'll be more than happy to oblige, and isn't that pretty much what you're espousing anyway? Everyone wins; you get your roads fixed and have the satisfaction of knowing that it was done with private funds.

As for speed limits, write about that, too. Most speed limits are set and governed by state law, and I agree, it can be rather capricious. But be prepared to pay for engineering studies to determine exactly what the speed limit should be to get it changed. Hey, more opportunities for private funding, yay!

Re:Comcast

[FredThompson]

Nobody was actually preventing you from having life. Wants and not the basic needs of life. Keep this in perspective.

"I said government should own the lines, not necessarly run the services over those lines. And yes, my city does offer other companies the chance to offer services of the city's lines."

No, you didn't state that at all. You specifically typed, "This is exactly why all communications lines must be seized as property of the public." That is very clear advocation of theft of private property and they're the words you chose to use. They are a very dangerous thought.

Are you now trying to change your comments? If that's the case, fine, do so but take ownership of the words you did choose to use.

Do you see what the words you used communicate?

Re:Comcast

[ScrewMaster]

The GP was correct though ... the public paid for the installation of that wiring, and eminent domain was used to seize private property for a lot of it. Given the way the private sector has been mishandling infrastructure that is becoming more and more important to our economic survival in this country, turning it into a public utility is not the worst idea I've heard. It's either that, or tell the likes of Comcast and AT&T that their Internet divisions are now common carriers whether they want them to be or not, and apply some serious quality-of-service standards (much like the AT&T telephone system of old.) The private sector is not doing the job and something is going to have to give. Hell, the Telcos sucked up some 200 billion dollars of taxpayer funds, intended to build the next-generation Internet. Just took the money and ran. So that "next gen" Internet didn't happen. It's not entirely unreasonable that the public take back some infrastructure as repayment of that debt.

Re:Comcast

[QuoteMstr]

And have speed limits actually reduced the number of fatalities? Or have they simply made most people minor criminals?

Re:Comcast

[Lord Kano]

Even if the FCC has no authority in the case, the FTC certainly does.

LK

Re:Comcast

[pele75]

Just a thought, but if the FCC is "powerless" can a customer stop Comcast with a class-action lawsuit for limiting a method of transport? If the airlines stopped flying passengers from a drug infested country because planes *COULD* carry drugs...

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, sure. I can probably round that up. I've got some money trees in my back yard. Oh noes! Where'd all my money trees go? Damn. That'll teach me to conspire against the internet over the internet!

Re:Comcast

[Dun Malg]

If they are really doing that then why don't you stop posting on /. and start working to get those local politicians out of office?

Yes, because the 1.3 minutes it takes to complain on Slashdot is all it would take to get the crooks out of local government.

Local politics actually makes it possible for individuals/small dedicated groups to make a difference. You don't need millions of dollars to get started. In my time as an elections worker I haven't seen a local race that was decided by more than a few hundred votes -- and I've seen some (our recent County Legislative elections) with single digit margins of victory.

Your presumption that the 2nd place candidate represented a change from the status quo with regard to the topic at hand is absurd. Usually, you'll find that the guy who wants to throw Comcast out on its collective ear is the guy who came in 5th or 6th, right after the guy who wants to legalize drugs.

Re:Comcast

[casuist99]

While I agree that certainly Comcast was aware of the HFC upstream network limitations, it's also entirely possible that their policy decision was partially based upon the desire to charge for hosting services. If you want to use your connection as a server, they'd like it if you paid for some "hosting package".

The real issue is definitional as well as monetary. How does Comcast define "server" and what are their service package goals? While their ToS can answer the first question, monetary motivations are harder to assess to outsiders.

Re:Comcast

[Dun Malg]

Have you considered a ballot proposition? If everyone agrees with you, you should have no problem receiving the requisite signatures, and votes in your next election, if not you must happily stop bitching since democracy willed it not so.
Don't be daft. People think lower speed limits are safer because the safety nazis' propaganda has told them this since childhood. It doesn't matter that they, themselves largely disregard the speed limit in practice, they will still vote for the "safer" lower speed limit. Being eligible to vote doesn't make you a traffic engineer, and speed limits are purely a traffic engineering problem. It's like asking people to vote on the results of scientific studies. The very idea is simply ridiculous. The correct way to approach such things is to allow the experts to do their job and set limits based on traffic analysis rather than budget padding and fear mongering. If we were allowed to "vote with our speedometer" to set speed limits, we'd arrive right back at the 85% rule that's already in practically every book on the science of traffic engineering.

Re:Comcast

[Mr2001]

I for one like private companies owning the lines as it is one more barrier to improper spying by the government. It could be exactly the opposite. Remember, the Fourth Amendment only restricts the government, not private companies. The government can, and has, asked private companies to do the kind of snooping that the government itself is forbidden to do.

Re:Comcast

[Mr2001]

I can get a 1.5MB internet connection for $29.95 including taxes,etc. What do you have to pay for a 6-12 Mbit connection, like the one Comcast offers for $20 more?

Re:Comcast

[GlL]

The rate my ISP charges for a 6MB connection is $39.95 including taxes and fees.

Re:Comcast

[cheater512]

$5 billion is nothing in a $2.9 trillion dollar budget.

The Government should place, own and maintain the fiber/copper which leads to homes.
Only then will we get fair prices for using that service.
And it shouldnt be sold off.

Re:Comcast

[dbialac]

So, no, the FCC may not have the power to stop Comcast (but I suspect they can levy a fine, but that's another discussion entirely)

In other news, Comcast revenues fell by $60/m today as I canceled my internet service with them. The FCC may not be able to fine them, but I can.

Re:Comcast

[FredThompson]

Those are some good points. I'll have to point out the government wasted a huge amount of money putting wires into schools just a few years before wireless methods became so easy/cheap. The problem with government funding of private operations is the lack of accountability. That's the case in everything. Personally, I like the idea of treating the ISPs as common carriers and I do think the cable companies are allowed to do things the phone companies cannot do which doesn't make a lot of sense given both are basically digital switching packet networks. The phone companies aren't public utilities, though. They're not critical to physical survival the way water and power are critical. This being Slashdot, we'd also have to bring up the spectre of guv'mint spying/control of the people if they control access to data. I wonder what would happen to the traffic volume, too. What happens when porn and pirated stuff isn't moved on the Internet because it's run by the government. Maybe bandwidth limits aren't an issue in that situation! :P

Re:Comcast

[Shakrai]

Yes, because the 1.3 minutes it takes to complain on Slashdot is all it would take to get the crooks out of local government.

My point (which you apparently missed or ignored in favor of sarcasm) was that there are actually productive things that you could be doing to change the situation. Posting on /. is not one of them, unless you happen to know a lot of people from Lancaster that hang out around here ;)

Your presumption that the 2nd place candidate represented a change from the status quo with regard to the topic at hand is absurd. Usually, you'll find that the guy who wants to throw Comcast out on its collective ear is the guy who came in 5th or 6th, right after the guy who wants to legalize drugs.

So get off your ass and run yourself. Or find someone willing to run who agrees with your views. Your original claim was that Comcast is bribing local officials to obtain favorable treatment. If that's actually the case and provable then I have a hard time seeing the people involved managing to stay in power if these issues are brought into the public discourse.

We had a Village Trustee in my hometown that was fond of using his connections with village/county officials to secure favorable Government contracts for his friends. Said home town was 70% Republican and conventional wisdom would lead you to believe that he was unbeatable come election day -- hell, the last two elections he ran unopposed.

Anyway, a group of business owners that had been shut out of the bidding process for said contracts decided to challenge him -- one of them ran against him in the next election (as a Democrat) and the rest of them campaigned/drove voters to the polls/recruited other volunteers. The race was too close to call on election night but after the absentee ballots were counted said Trustee was defeated by 25 votes out of some 1,200 cast. Nobody thought it was possible but a small group of dedicated people were able to pull it off.

Honestly, if you are too apathetic to even try to affect change at the local level than I think you forfeit your right to complain about things that you disagree with. Local politics is one of the few areas left where individuals can make a meaningful difference and millions of bucks aren't required to run a legitimate campaign.

Re:Comcast

[triffid_98]

Um, have you been to Europe sir? You know, where they have roads that don't need repairs after 2 years? Going with the low priced bid is often good, and it can also have bad consequences.

I won't use a car analogy this time. I'll be good. Do you want to spend $80 on a Hitachi drive and have it blow up in a year, or would you like to spend a little more for something with a 5 year warranty?

Calling on the free market is all well and good if it is a free market, but this is ,at best, a government granted oligopoly. Comcast doesn't care about the free market, they care about money.

Actually, our country has the largest highway system in the world (by far) and it is widely regarded as a modern marvel of engineering.

Re:Comcast

[Fnord666]

If I were comcast, I would just completely block P2P uploading as it violates the TOS. Not a popular answer I know, but my terms do say that I cannot run a server on my residential connection. P2P seeding should qualify as a file server.

They aren't running a server, they are running a peer. Unless their TOS prohibits peering relationships between computers there is no violation.

Re:Comcast

[LeafOnTheWind]

I have been to Europe - the Italian roads are often subpar (sorry guys, you know its true), and to be honest, many of the British roads aren't very extensive and simply don't carry that much traffic. Those that do (highways and the like) are very near US quality - neither far better nor far worse. The German roads I've driven on are as good as US roads (as I expect), however they have a tiny system compared to the United States. France can vary in its road systems - I've seen the good in the areas around Paris and the bad in the rural areas in the south of France. The Swiss roads (those around Geneva anyway, can't speak to anywhere else, haven't been there) are excellent, but once again, they are dealing with a much smaller highway system. Most of the Swiss/Italian Alps seems to be of the same quality as Route 1 in California, if you've ever driven on it. You have me though, I have never visited Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, or any of the other European countries. Those that I previously named I have driven in, though. Of course, I've spent barely a cumulative couple of months in the UK, about the same in Italy, and less in the other countries, so a native's perspective is welcome. Let me tell you this though - while some Italian roads aren't great, that doesn't stop Italian drivers from speeding around the hairpin turns with 100 foot drops waiting for them ;)
By the way, each of these countries also implements system with substantial regulation compared to the United States, which I believe would work well in the United States. The problem isn't that we have to much regulation here, it's that the FCC is trying to straddle the line between regulating the lines and simply letting them go - I feel a regulated data network would be beneficial in the long run. For those worried about privacy, the simple fact is that in this country, the federal gov't. can do as it likes anytime it wants and spreading our data between private companies really doesn't solve anything. If you want to keep your communications private, the best advice I can give is to encrypt everything, because if they want to track your lines badly enough, they will find a way.

Re:Comcast

[Truekaiser]

unless the company bought off enough politicians or throws someone out as a scapegoat so the rest can get away.
get rid of corporate person hood and the financial protection it gives for stockholders and you will not see this again, letting them have protection just encourages stuff like this because they can make more money that way. not to mention that it will also re-ballence the whole political playing field back into the court of the average citizen instead of the pseudo citizens that are immortal and have endless streams of cash.

Re:Comcast

[ardin,mcallister]

How do you figure its a server? In that same regard, any computer that sends data to the internet is a "server". In fact, a server is simply a computer program that uploads data to another computer. That means that your comment was posted by a server, to a server.

Re:Comcast

[The_Wilschon]

Posting on /. does not preclude any of the things you suggest, so I'm not really sure what you're griping about.

Re:Comcast

[TooMuchToDo]

Thanks for the post. Learn something new every day. Kudos! I'd mod you higher, but you're already at +5.

Re:Comcast

[rmerry72]

They aren't running a server, they are running a peer. Unless their TOS prohibits peering relationships between computers there is no violation.

A peer is both a client and a server. It listens and accepts connections for outside clients and is therefore a server. In any connection over the network your process is either a client or server and P2P is no different.

Re:Comcast

[catmistake]

It's a regulated monopoly

I believe this is known as a natural monopoly

Re:Comcast

[vuffi_raa]

Correct me if I'm wrong but could this work? 1)Start new ISP that does not filter 2)Get help from the FCC because they are a bit pissed at Comcast for their "nah nah nah You cant get us!" crap 3)When Comcast tries to buy you out/stomp you in to oblivion use antitrust laws to stay alive. 4)Grow to a reasonable size because you have some idea of how the internet works and will not be a dick to your customers. 5)???? 6)profit nope- here in san francisco you have 1 cable provider- comcast, if you want cable that is the end of the line, so you have to use their lines- you could petition to start a company using their lines, but if they don't like you they can just split the fiber and filter at their end and then you will need to bring a costly suit on your own to fight it. Sadly the same thing happens w/ at&t on the DSL side- I actually was out drinking one night with a technician from at&t and not only did he mention how this is possible and how everyone there knew it was illegal (since they are a public utility) but that they actually do it now as we speak in covert test pilot projects within the company- if the ISP's had knowledge and proof of it the shit would hit the fan in a big way.

Re:Comcast

[rmerry72]

People think lower speed limits are safer

Almost. People think lower speed limits for other people are safer. They, of course, should be allowed to drive however they wish as is their right. The mob does rule - and most of the mob are hypocrites.

Re:Comcast

[gr8scot]

While your sentiment is correct, I have to wonder, which Sony Exec would do time? The US exec or the Japanese exec? I'm sure whoever had final authority... but that's the sticky part... these clowns are so far beyond national boundaries, we should simply deport them all to an island. ;) I recommend Antarctica.

Re:Comcast

[electrictroy]

Well...

I repeat my earlier question: Does this also mean I'm not allowed to "serve" my family photos to my website, or "serve" my latest DV video to youtube.com, or "serve" my webcam for chatting online every night with my friends (a major bandwidth hog)?

Hmmm.

I don't know the answer, but if it is "no" then it's a stupid policy. All of these functions (especially the webcam) are uploading huge amounts of data. Technically I'm acting as a server, and therefore violating the TOS, so does this mean I can no longer do video uploading or webcam video chatting?

Re:Comcast

[electrictroy]

So Comcast's "no server" policy effectively bans webcam video chatting (because my computer is acting as a server providing video to my friends).

Lousy policy.

Re:Comcast

[electrictroy]

I notice you said it took a GROUP of people. And not ordinary people, but wealthy businessmen. So not just one person acting alone, and not someone poor like myself.

Also:

I notice you support Barak Obama, who attends a "hate all whites" racist church.
I now question the validity of your thought processes if you support such a man.

Re:Comcast

[plague3106]

Nobody was actually preventing you from having life. Wants and not the basic needs of life. Keep this in perspective.

Piss off, asshat. Do we technically NEED electricty or phone service? No, it's call "raising our standard of living."

No, you didn't state that at all. You specifically typed, "This is exactly why all communications lines must be seized as property of the public." That is very clear advocation of theft of private property and they're the words you chose to use. They are a very dangerous thought.

Ya, I did. Note the presents of the word lines. As in physical cable. And the lines were largely paid for and land already taken from private citizens. So I see nothing wrong with "taking" them, because they weren't built without the public's help. Honestly, I could care less about "theft" from a company that is no longer serving a public good.

Are you now trying to change your comments? If that's the case, fine, do so but take ownership of the words you did choose to use.

No, like a moron, you attempted to misconstrue what I had said and tried to change it to make your point.

Do you see what the words you used communicate?

Yes, and apparently you lack any level of reading comprehension.

Re:Comcast

[Shakrai]

I notice you said it took a GROUP of people.

If you can't find four (that's the size of the "group" I was referring to) like minded people willing to fight against an injustice in your hometown then I don't know what else to tell you.

And not ordinary people, but wealthy businessmen

Where did I say "wealthy"? It was a group of local business owners, hardly Donald Trump types.

So not just one person acting alone, and not someone poor like myself.

One person can still make a difference. Do you have a phone? Make phone calls. Do you have a car? Drive people to the polls and/or knock on doors prior to election day. Do you have friends? Convince them that your cause is just and get them to help you out.

I notice you support Barak Obama, who attends a "hate all whites" racist church.

*sigh*, I love how the inflammatory comments of one person get warped into "racist church".

1. Obama has already condemned those comments. His only mistake was not condemning them in the first place and acting like a standard issue politician (deny/distance/disavow) instead of the eloquent intellectual that lots of us have come to know and support.
2. I don't believe Rev Wright is a racist. While I don't know him personally, I have known other African-American preachers before and I can understand the context of those remarks even if I vehemently disagree with them. You grow up under Jim Crow in the lynching era as an African-American and tell me that you wouldn't have a chip on your shoulder. You walk down the street and see people lock their car doors because of your skin color and tell me that you wouldn't be pissed off about it. You have people in the workplace dismiss your accomplishments because of affirmative-action and tell me it wouldn't grate on you. You get pulled over (repeatedly) for driving-while-black and tell me you wouldn't be bitter towards authority as a result.

I obviously can't make you listen to Senator Obama and I doubt I can even change your mind about him if you've drawn that conclusion. I do think that you are doing yourself a disservice by dismissing him and his message though. Did you happen to watch his speech on Tuesday? He speaks far more eloquently than I can on this issue and I can't recall a similar speech in my lifetime. Hell, I can't even recall many other politicians talking to us like adults instead of children -- and that goes for any issue (not just racism).

Go watch that speech if you want to know why I'm supporting him. Go watch his address at the Democratic National Convention from 2004. Obama appeals to our best instincts (hope, optimism, compassion). His opponents are running campaigns of FUD and trying to appeal to our worst inclinations.

I now question the validity of your thought processes if you support such a man.

Even if I accepted your opinion of Senator Obama's church, what does that have to do with the 'validity' of my 'thought processes' as it relates to the original discussion in this thread, i.e: getting people involved in local politics? Are you honestly going to walk away from a dialog with someone because they support someone who goes to a church which had an inflammatory Pastor (since retired)? Isn't that type of reaction part of the problem and not a solution?

Re:Comcast

[Shakrai]

Uploading isn't prohibited. Waiting for, accepting, and responding to incoming requests on any port is

Taken to the extreme and enforced to the 'letter of the law', that TOS policy would also prohibit DCC chats/file transfers on IRC (they listen for an incoming connection), file transfers on most IM clients, mIRC's ident daemon, FTP without PASV (as you pointed out), online gaming (if you are hosting the game you are accepting incoming connections) and a host of other useful applications.

Re:Comcast

[lucifuge31337]

People love to overreact to accidents with inappropriate "fixes".
Examples:
An intersection in my area is known to be dangerous. I'm there once a month with the fire department. Several accidents have been fatals. The 25 MPH road has a stop sign in each direction crossing the 45 MPH road. People can not see traffic when coming from the smaller 25 MPH road that crosses the formerly 45 MPH road because of brush on one side and a homeowner's fence and the grade of their yard on the other side. What was the solution? Lower the speed limit of the 45 MPH road to 40 MPH. Net effect? Nothing. Proper solution? Expensive: improve visibility at the stop sign.

Another road was 50 MPH. A young woman was killed in a head-on accident with a truck. The truck driver was coming in the opposite direction, drifted off of the road into the huge drainage ditch that runs along both sides. Their outside tire got hung in the ditch, and they over-corrected, sending the truck into the oncoming traffic lane. Both were doing the speed limit. Result: People got together a ballot initiative at the next election to "fix" the problem. One would think widening the road/fixing the ditch would be the appropriate response. Was that what was asked for? Of course not. The speed limit has been lowered to 40. If both drivers in the event that caused this outrage had been doing 35 MPH, it still would have been a fatal accident. Why? Because even at 35 MPH, this would have been a combined 70 MPH collision, and the plow frame on the truck would have still gone through the windshield of the Honda Accord. It's simply not a fair fight. So this was another totally useless exercise.

Re:Comcast

[penguin_dance]

In a different age and under a different president (Jimmy Carter), the FCC chairman could simply pick up his phone & ask his buddy in the white house to apply Antitrust Legislation to the Comcast monopoly..... thereby breaking apart the cable tv and internet arms into competing forces..... as was done with AT&T.

Yeah THAT really showed them...they've had a tough time of it ever since...oh wait.

Re:Comcast

[ivan256]

Right, 'cause that worked out really well for our communications infrastructure.

You know... Everything else about the Carter administration was wonderful too. Let's bring it all back!

Re:Comcast

[plague3106]

Care to give me a couple layman-worthy cites?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#85th_percentile_rule
http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/

If your going to talk about things like the Autobaun, don't bother, since that isn't geared towards the Big Gulp and Taco, Cellphone, Hair Drying, and Novel Reading American Driver. We're too busy doing other things to be fully trusted to our own means. If there are valid studies, taking into account the unique American character of road use and vehicular philosophy, I will cede your point, barring that I'm sure (guessing here) that there are other studies, equally valid in method, that say otherwise.

Well, perhaps you should do society a favor, and turn in your license. Your argument is that the average American (which you are, and we can't assume otherwise) can't handle making reasonable judgement calls. It stands to reason that you can't either, so make us all safer and stop driving.

The only studies I'm aware of which contradict the civil engineers are done by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Guess who fundes them? The same people can will raise rates if you get a ticket.. so they have a vested intrerest in making sure you get a ticket. Besides, the accident rates don't lie; rates do not increase as speed limits are increased, and in many cases accident rates actually drop.

We can agree on the mob-rule thing, though I wouldn't go so far as calling democracy (en toto) mob-rule, and thus bad, there is something to be said for a group of people having the right to represent themselves.

Of course there are issues that don't matter; for example, buying alcohol on Sunday, and other blue laws. These laws may be backed by a majority, but so what? Why should they take the rights of the minorirty that disagree?

I do find benefits in the idea of Philosopher Kings or meritocracy, but generally these go wrong, since those who claim the right to rule generally look out for themselves, to the detriment of the polis. We generally forget that government is here for the sake of the governed, and not for that of the governors.

Generally? Try "always." It's not that we "forget," it's that invariably once government starts regulating things, they tend not to stop. Our Consitution was supposed to stop or slow this, but unfortunately many state and certainly the Federal governments are overstepping their legal bounds. But that's ok, because the mob says its "for our safety."

Actually the ideal form of government, IMHO, would be mob-rule (ala democracy) with an informed public, and a large body of empowered experts within advisory roles in the government. Sadly, here in the US we have an ignorant and apathetic public, and corporate interests (and scientists who are willing sell their standards to said interests) represented in government. I digress.

Again though, the mob tramples the rights of the minority, so we must allow the minority to stop the mob from doing so. The only way to really stop all the issues you bring up is to simply remove most government intervention.

But, interestingly, the g-g-parent said something along the lines of "most people don't want speed limits, but they are enforced for revenue only". This IS a statement FOR mob-rule, the term "most people" confirms it.

I disagree with that statement; it seems to me that "most people don't want speed limits for themselves, but think that they should apply to everyone else." Also, I'm not arguing that we should remove speed limits because that's what people want; my argument is that speed limits are freedoms being limited illegally, not only because there's no proof that there is an "overwhelming societal need to do so (i.e. safety)," the opposite is true: speed limits make roads MORE unsafe. My argument has nothing to do with the OPs content

Re:Comcast

[Hubbell]

You're supporting someone who freely admits he wants to steal more of your money (taxes) to pay for people who can't even handle taking care of themselves. Please show me the logic in this.

Re:Comcast

[torkus]

Sorry but your assumption has no basis in reality. You assume that "my speeding" kills people. IF You looked at some real information instead just blind assumptions you'd realize that raising the speed limit has NOT increased the road fatality rate in places it has been done...and if memory serves it's actually LOWERED it in several situations.

Your attempt to connect murder with speeding is beyond laughable. I wish I had points to mod you troll.

Re:Comcast

[Tanktalus]

Absolutely. And all but one of those applications would merely be collateral damage. (Hosting an online game is probably not allowed on purpose, the rest are probably accidental - which means they're clueless.)

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he's not supporting someone who wants to run the Federal budget hundreds of billions of dollars into the red to pay for an unnecessary war and tax cuts for the richest 1% of the country.

At least the Democrats are upfront about what they stand for instead of claiming to be for "small government" all the while overseeing a massive expansion of both the powers and budget of the Federal Government.

Re:Comcast

[Shakrai]

Hosting an online game is probably not allowed on purpose, the rest are probably accidental - which means they're clueless.)

Why wouldn't hosting a game be allowed? I can understand why they wouldn't want you running a game server 24/7 (though a 24/7 game server would have little network impact compared to any p2p application) but if you want to kick back and play with some friends for a few hours I really don't see why they'd have any right to complain about that.

Re:Comcast

[Hubbell]

What bush has done is insane, but McCain is the only front running candidate that supports Instant Runoff Voting, which puts him miles ahead of everyone else. I thinks he's batshit insane, but only for the war in iraq/foreign policy shit. Otherwise he's ok.

Re:Comcast

[Omestes]

Thank you for the cite, I'm going to spend some quality google time with this topic. I'll cede that point for a bit.

Well, perhaps you should do society a favor, and turn in your license. Your argument is that the average American (which you are, and we can't assume otherwise) can't handle making reasonable judgement calls. It stands to reason that you can't either, so make us all safer and stop driving.

I don't do such things while driving, hence my criticism of these activities. I generally fall into the "never whistle while pissing" philosophy, I'd rather do something well, than do a lot of things badly.

We're probably never going to agree, since I can see you have libertarian leanings. This is not meant as an attack, just that we are wearing different colored glasses when it comes to humanity. I don't think that getting rid of government intervention would fix anything, since there still be greedy sociopaths willing to hurt everyone for their own gain, and there still will be the majority who are apathetic, uneducated, and and completely ignorant of their own best interests (or societies, in the aggregate).

I do agree that the government is getting very close to nullifying any social contract that might have existed, and is very much over-stepping their bounds in infringing with individual rights. This isn't completely the fault of government (people who want power are ambitious by nature, in all spheres), but also the fault of the people. Generally I agree with the proposition that we get the government we deserve.

Looking at the history of government, complacent and relatively rich subjects generally breed a tyranny. Actually, it seems, all government ultimately leads to tyranny. I suppose this thought should make me an anarchist.

Re:Comcast

[casuist99]

Thank god for meta-moderation.

Re:Comcast

[sm62704]

which Sony Exec would do time? The US exec or the Japanese exec?

Before Skylarof I'd say the US exec. My preferance would be both, plus the entire board of directors. Yes, I was bitten by their rootkit when my daughter, who worked at a record store, trusted them and executed one of the programs on the CD (autoplay was shut off).

a government sanctioned monopoly like a cable company should be more likely to comply with laws than a multinational that just doesn't care

Well, of course, since they're more likely to have paid for those laws in the first place.

Great comment BTW

Re:Comcast

[Shakrai]

I thinks he's batshit insane, but only for the war in iraq/foreign policy shit

Oh, well if it's just something as unimportant as foreign policy then I guess it's ok if he's "batshit insane" ;)

I used to have a lot of respect for him but I lost it after he started kissing the ass of the religious right. I miss the John McCain from 2000..... what happened to him? About the only thing I can agree with McCain 2.0 on is his steadfast opposition to torture. On virtually every other issue he stands opposed to what I believe in.

Re:Comcast

[Hubbell]

Are you against Instant Runoff Voting? Something both Barack and Hillary seem to be against.

Re:Comcast

[Shakrai]

Are you against Instant Runoff Voting?

Yes, actually I am. I think you should get one choice in the voting booth. Vote for the guy you support. If people can't understand that concept then I don't see why we should change the election system to make it easier for them.

I would note though, that even if I supported Instant Runoff Voting I would not think it reason enough to vote for John McCain. His stance on foreign policy and the war merits voting against him no matter what his other attributes may be. As I previously said I admire and respect his position on the torture debate -- but Hillary and Obama are also against it and they happen to not be "batshit insane" (to borrow your words) on foreign policy.

Re:Comcast

[Hubbell]

Hillary and Obama are just as big warhawks as him. Atleat he is upfront about it, and he isn't for a welfare state giving illegal immigrants free everything + id's without even becoming citizens/naturalized. So I'm either writing ron paul in, or I'm voting for McCain. If I were to consider voting for hillary or obama, it's so they would be killed much sooner than they already need to be.

Re:Comcast

[Shakrai]

Hillary and Obama are just as big warhawks as him

Umm, I won't argue about Hillary, but I'd like to know what you are basing that opinion of Obama on. As big of warhawk as John McCain???

Re:Comcast

[Hubbell]

They're all psychos when it comes to foreign policy. Obama has no record on anything controversial for the specific reason that he refuses to vote (when he was in the state legislature and now in congress) and simply marks Present on most of the votes. He is just another asshole playing the politician game, it just so happens he is a good orator and everyone thinks he's saying amazing things, when in actually nothing of substance is said.

Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Pojut]

Anyone willing to act as a translator for the law-speak impaired?

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[sconeu]

IANAL, but...

Comcast: "The FCC can bite my shiny metal ass. Nyah, nyah, nyah!!!!"

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it went something like:

Dear FCC,

FU.

Sincerely,

Comcast

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[moderatorrater]

Comcast: "Hey, FCC, I know that you're generally not wanting to regulate us cable companies, so why not just let us go?"

FCC: "Hmm, any chance of backing that up with a law somewhere?"

Comcast: "How about this one? Just say we're being regulated by 'market forces'."

FCC: "But you're a regulated monopoly! That'll never fly!"

Comcast: "Weren't you going to run for office? Here's a 'donation' to your 'exploratory committee'."

FCC: "Sounds good. The free market wins again!"

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[explosivejared]

I'm no lawyer, but here's the wikipedia article on the act in question. Seems to me new ground is being tread here, so I'm not sure how a court would rule. However, such hubris can't make things easier on Comcast. They'd have to be pretty sure to call out the FCC like this. I personally hope Comcast is wrong, but that is another matter.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[CubeRootOf]

The FCC has no standing to police what comcast does or does not do to its customers because congress has not given the FCC that power.

Additionally, sometime during President Truman's last term, a statement was issued that essentially said 'We are not communists! See - we like the free market, and we will regulate as little as possible', which WAS approved by congress, and is currently active.

Comcast is essentially telling the FCC to not bother, as whatever finding they come to, Comcast will believe it illigit and not comply unless congress gets involved and changes the laws, or issues a new guidance.

Essentially - this is big political news, and if this goes forward we can expect to see a new set of good laws ( or bad) coming out of congress to address issues like this.

My bet? Be prepared for congress to give the go head to throttle down P2P as a public service.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[jollyreaper]

Hah. My favorite version of that line.

[someone slips and falls]

me: Is there a lawyer in the house?

lawyer: [stands up, raises hand] Here, good sir!

me: *BANG!*

lawyer: Gah! [drops dead]

me: Now do we have anyone from marketing?

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[alexhard]

But that's complete bullshit, Comcast has been granted monopolies in the cable market, so they HAVE meddled with the free market (damn communists!). Government meddling is the reason that this problem even exists.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even have to bribe congress anymore. They pretty much genuflect in the direction of whoever has money. Anything at all, no matter whether it's right, no matter if lives or the country's future is on the line, if it causes a corporation to not gain as much profit, is immediately Bad For The Economy, and not even to be considered whatsoever.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Anonymous Coward]

Change a letter in the acronym and I bet you find an organization that does have authority to make a ruling against comcast in this matter. I can think of a few ways that their tricks would violate rules and laws that are traditionally administered by the FTC.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Shakrai]

But that's complete bullshit, Comcast has been granted monopolies in the cable market, so they HAVE meddled with the free market

And the people to bitch to about that would be your state and/or local politicians, because that's who granted the monopolies in the first place. I've never heard of a Federal cable franchise agreement......

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[_KiTA_]

Comcast: "The FCC can bite my shiny metal ass. Nyah, nyah, nyah!!!!"

Yeah, is it just me, or did Comcast just dare the FCC to just TRY and stop them?

If they weren't ran by clueless Bush appointees I'd wager this would piss some people off. Now they'll probably just send a nasty memo to Comcast's CEO to remind his peons to be more discreet.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Skapare]

But certain areas are not free markets. Cable TV is one of them in most areas. And even where Verizon FiOS is present, that's not much of a free market when people have to choose between merely two incompetent arrogant evil corporations. Only when there is enough competition for the offerings to be substantially different, and people have a real choice, will there be a free market. Yes, free markets do work and are the best thing to have. We just don't have them everywhere (yet). I hope the next Congress and President get together to create and pass the CFMEA ... Communications Free Market Enablement Act. We do need a true free market in all areas of communications.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[dissy]

The FCC has no standing to police what comcast does or does not do to its customers because congress has not given the FCC that power. Maybe, but congress has given the FBI the power to stop comcast when they impersinate me and my computers software to their customers without my express permission.
It's called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

pwned

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[soupforare]

I'm fairly certain that it's against federal law (telecom act of '96? IANAL) for cities to negotiate with cable companies over tier pricing or content. So, it's not like the local politicians have a seat at the table anyway.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not so sure, this IS Congress we're talking about, you don't get anything for FREE from them... Comcast better be ready to pay for that law just like the rest of us.

Pfft, expecting legislation that favors you for gratis? Please.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Neanderthal Ninny]

Ah, back to the sounds of Randy "Duke" Cunningham. It is a pity that all people that do this aren't in the same place as Randy "Duke" Cunningham.
Comcast is doing a "catch me if your can" thing with the FCC and what essentially Comcast is doing is daring FCC to do anything about it. The laws are there but how much "teeth" is in those laws to force companies like Comcast to do something.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a lawyer, and have worked on Administrative Law matters in the past, but don't do it now. We start with the premise that all laws, rules, etc. have to come from Congress. However, Congress can delegate these powers to Executive Agencies.

Every agency has an "Enabling Act" that sets out its authority and powers. The Administrative Procedures Act sets out how every agency has to make decisions and rules (and defines how Courts will review those decisions and rules). These enabling acts are amended from time to time to give the agencies more (and VERY occaisionally less) authority.

What comcase is saying is that the Enabling Act (and subsequent revisions) don't give the FCC authority to either regulate or punish Comcast in this situation. If they attempt to do so by promulgating rules or decisions that require such authority, they will be violating the APA.

Make Sense?

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Pojut]

It does indeed, thank you.

In your own opinion, do you think Comcast actually has something here, or are they just blowing hot air?

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The FCC has no standing to police what comcast does or
> does not do to its customers because congress has not
> given the FCC that power.

Unless comcast puts a nipple in front of its customers, I guess.

Haaaaay, maybe that'd fix it. Stop calling P2P Blocking as free/not-free market or forging or anything other than indecent. Only then will heads roll.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or...the FCC could revoke their access to spectrum and their licenses to act and operate as a telecommunications/information services company until them come into compliance. Or to be even more perverse and evil, rule that they can't run telecommunications across state lines. Good luck running as an ISP then. That's a rather large stick that Comcast isn't noticing.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Shakrai]

I'm fairly certain that it's against federal law (telecom act of '96? IANAL) for cities to negotiate with cable companies over tier pricing or content. So, it's not like the local politicians have a seat at the table anyway.

I honestly don't know if that's true or not but it doesn't really matter. The original complaint was about Government issued monopolies to cable outfits. For that you have no one to blame but your state and/or local Governments.

In my area it's even worse then that -- the last time the franchise was up for renewal the city asked Time Warner to freeze their rate increases -- TW basically told the city that they would charge whatever they want and if you don't want to renew the agreement we'll just take our hundreds of jobs and go somewhere else. The city folded like a cheap suit after that, which pissed quite a few of us off (what, a new cable company isn't going to employ people?)

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[calebt3]

So what are you waiting for? Call them.

Call the *AA?

[Lucan Varo]

The Federal Communications Commission has made clear, Cohen writes, that cable service is not a common carrier and therefore is not subject to common carrier guidelines.

So that means they're responsible for what passes over their lines, right? Gonna be interesting.

Re:Call the *AA?

[Attila Dimedici]

The Federal Communications Commission has made clear, Cohen writes, that cable service is not a common carrier and therefore is not subject to common carrier guidelines.

So that means they're responsible for what passes over their lines, right? Gonna be interesting. No, it doesn't. As has been discussed here on /. before there is a law that specifically exempts ISP's from being legally responsible for what passes over their lines. However, by choosing to block certain traffic, Comcast may be voluntarily giving up that exemption (the law in question exempts ISP's that do not regulate the content that they transmit, once they start regulating what content they transmit ,at some point they stop qualifying for the exemption. Exactly what constitutes losing the exemption has yet to be ruled by a court).

Re:Call the *AA?

[electrictroy]

Incorrect.

The reason why ISPs and phone companies are "exempt" for illegal activities passing over their lines is because they are granted Common Carrier status. i.e. AOL and Bell are not liable for someone using their lines to hire a prostitute, arrange a hitman, traffic narcotics, or share stolen files. Their common carrier status makes them exempt.

If Comcast claims they are Not a common carrier,
then they are liable for illegal activity over
their lines and can be prosecuted for same.

In other words Comcast's denial of common carrier status is a big mistake, because they are opening themselves to many, many lawsuits because their lines were used (by the customers) to conduct illegal activities.

Re:Call the *AA?

[isaac]

Incorrect.

[snip]

In other words Comcast's denial of common carrier status is a big mistake, because they are opening themselves to many, many lawsuits because their lines were used (by the customers) to conduct illegal activities.

Christ, this is 100% wrong. ISPs in the USA ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!

Please stop propagating this myth!

ISP immunity for subscriber traffic/content comes from Section 230 CDA (yep, that CDA) and the safe-harbor provisions of the DMCA. They don't need or want common carrier status.

The FCC explicitly classified cable (in 2002) and DSL (in 2005) ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" in order to remove any doubt that they were common carriers.

-Isaac

Re:Call the *AA?

[isaac]

No. ISP immunity for subscriber traffic/content comes from Section 230 CDA (yep, that CDA) and the safe-harbor provisions of the DMCA. ISPs don't need or want common carrier status.

-Isaac

Re:Call the *AA?

[cube135]

True, but the safe harbor provision states that a provider is a safe harbor if:

the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider; Comcast is selectively blocking certain methods. IANAL, but I think this qualifies as breaking this provision of the act.

Re:Call the *AA?

[10101001 10101001]

While you appear to be right, there stills seems to be a problem. From Section 230 of the CDA, a little problem might arise. Specifically:

In analyzing the availability of the immunity offered by this provision, courts generally apply a three-prong test. A defendant must satisfy each of the three prongs to gain the benefit of the immunity:

...

3. The information must be "provided by another information content provider," i.e., the defendant must not be the "information content provider" of the harmful information at issue.

The specific issue at hand is Comcast, in forging packets as if sent from the provider of potentially harmful content, may have themselves become part of the "information content provider". And while the CDA might have nothing to do with copyright, one does have to worry about the fact that P2P may be used to distribute other, illegal information (child porn, national security secrets, threats against the lives of others, etc). So, as Comcast I'd still be rather worried about any action that could be contorted as making them part of the "information content provider" of harmful information at issue.

Re:Call the *AA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I say they propagate it until it becomes true. Isn't that how laws are made?

Re:Call the *AA?

[electrictroy]

Alright.

So if Comcast is not a common carrier, they can block access to Itunes.com and get away with it. Is this how you interpret the FCC regulations?

Re:Call the *AA?

[gclef]

Nice try. The text you quoted only prohibits "selection of the material" (eg, the web page, email, etc) by Comcast. It says nothing about method by which it's transmitted.

Going only by that provision, if Comcast were selectively blocking certain torrents that would be a problem. Blanket blocking of the torrent protocol overall is totally fine.

Re:Call the *AA?

[yuna49]

By classifying them as "information services" the FCC placed ISPs in the "enhanced services" category defined long ago in the Computer I and Computer II inquiries. From a telecom regulation perspective that makes them the equivalent of voice mail and call forwarding. As the parent says, enhanced services are not regulated as common carriers.

Because of how broadly enhanced services are defined, I'm not convinced Comcast will lose this fight. It could make the argument that its internal methods to manage traffic constitute part of the information service it's providing, and how that's managed is none of the FCC's business. If customers don't like how Comcast manages its network, they'll switch to other providers.* The FCC can't tell Comcast how to runs its enhanced service any more than the Commission can tell the proprietor of 900-number sextalk line how to run that business.

_____

*Obviously there are monopoly issues in some locales that make changing providers more problematic, but the FCC has generally taken the view that there is competition in the provision of Internet services. I'm not arguing about whether monopoly exists, only whether Comcast has reasonable grounds to believe the FCC doesn't have jurisdiction over their network-management policies. Comcast might be right.

Re:Call the *AA?

[Loconut1389]

you mean, selecting only non torrents is totally fine?

Re:Call the *AA?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Christ, this is..."

Holy KIKES Batman! I see what you mean!

"-Isaac"

Re:Call the *AA?

[PieceofLavalamp]

There's one problem if comcast is using this logic.

The FCC explicitly classified cable (in 2002) and DSL (in 2005) ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" in order to remove any doubt that they were common carriers. And They're saying who can't touch them?

Re:Call the *AA?

[navtal]

Comcast customers think this? This is a lie.

Since my local company has been taken over by Comcast I have trouble watching Netflix and my streaming radio is constantly interrupted? Explanation? Not sure but coincidentally it happened the same day my service was switched.....

Is there any help for this? Compensation? Law suite?

Re:Call the *AA?

[ArhcAngel]

The FCC explicitly classified cable (in 2002) and DSL (in 2005) ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" in order to remove any doubt that they were common carriers.

Then what about AT&T? Aren't they a common carrier AND a DSL provider?

Re:Call the *AA?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

you mean, selecting only non torrents is totally fine?

Yup. They can block/throttle protocols/ports/etc. They cannot block/throttle based on the content (which I would imagine means URLs, but IANAL). So, they cannot say "no communist propoganda" or "no Linux distros" but they can say not FTP or torrents or even HTTP.

Re:Call the *AA?

[AJWM]

Sorry, they can't throttle a protocol without selectively looking at the content of the packets they're transmitting. To Comcast it should all be TCP/IP (or UDP) packets. If they're throttling Torrent-flavored (or FTP or HTTP) TCP/IP packets, then they're selecting based on content.

Re:Call the *AA?

[Kelz]

Method of transmission does not mean content of transmission.

Re:Call the *AA?

[aramps]

This was decided at the level of the supreme court - the brand x decision. scalia's dissent is pretty excellent (it's rare that I agree with him for what that's worth) - he talks a lot about pizza. "When all is said and done, after all the regulatory cant has been translated, and the smoke of regulatory expertise has blown away, it remains perfectly clear that someone who sells cable-modem service is 'offering' telecommunications," (AC, on behalf of the 3 dissenting justices). http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-277.ZD.html But that was the dissent, and the majority ruled (Thomas was the opiner) unbundling requirements under the 1996 act do not apply because the service (broadband over cable) is an information service (nee enhanced service). The FCC quickly followed this up with a ruling saying fiber-based end-user broadband should be treated similarly (not so for wholesale fiber trunks). But (and this is a sir mixalot sized but) - VOIP was not considered; they just ruled on if the pipes should be regulated as pipes. "By contrast, the high-speed transmission used to provide cable modem service is a functionally integrated component of that service because it transmits data only in connection with the further processing of information and is necessary to provide Internet service." (Thomas decision) - no reference to regulation of voice being provided inside that information stream. The comcast argument moving forward will likely be based on the idea that packets are just packets until they're processed elsewhere but this begs the question why are they prioritized at all? At it's core what I don't understand is why Comcast thinks the FCC won't reconsider on this point - some (any?) front other than the regulation of the pipes themselves. The court in brand x defers to (while softly agreeing with) the FCC's "understanding of the nature of cable modem service" - which sets up for what is called Chevron deference to the FCC's area of expertise on technical subjects. Should the FCC simply rule on VOIP service, on which there is no court language, the court's ruling on if the FCC was right to find the regulation of the pipes and the provision of information services over them could quite easily go out the window. Given the likelihood of demonstrable harm to a VOIP provider of being blocked, I would not be surprised to see this issue decided quickly by the FCC and then by the courts. Martin has never been particularly happy with cable providers, had I been Comcast I'd've asked ATT to do this first.

Re:Call the *AA?

[skywire]

this is 100% wrong. ISPs in the USA ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS! ... The FCC explicitly classified cable (in 2002) and DSL (in 2005) ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" in order to remove any doubt that they were [not] common carriers.

Of course you are technically correct about your parent poster's technical misuse of the term "common carrier". But that doesn't completely invalidate their point. And you are right about the current unfortunate state of US regulations. But contrary to the arbitrary declaration of the FCC, the ISPs do NOT in fact provide "information services". They simply provide a telecommunications link between parties, just like plain old telephone companies. I suppose if the Commerce Department declared that trucks are vegetables, not vehicles, you would scream TRUCKS ARE NOT VEHICLES!

The mere fact that some ISPs prefer the lack of common carrier status that, combined with certain specific immunities granted by statute, they believe outweighs the benefits of common carrier status, is hardly a decisive argument against treating them as common carriers. If any service in the world bears the attributes of a common carrier, it is what ISPs provide, and this ought to be recognized as such in law, if not for the ISPs' protection, then for the protection of their customers.

yea right

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, Comcast doesn't decide how to interpret the laws. Judges do.

Second of all, the FCC has been using powers that they weren't directly given (given through court cases that interpreted the laws as giving them such authority) for years, what makes Comcast think this will change for them?

Re:yea right

[rootofevil]

if comcast can convince the FCC not to bring it before a judge, they most certainly get to interpret the law however they would like.

"nyah-nyah :P"?

[HeronBlademaster]

So Comcast is basically saying "Even if we're breaking rules you can't do anything about it"?

I can imagine a Comcast rep at an FCC meeting doing a Nelson-esque "HA-HA!"...

Re:"nyah-nyah :P"?

[MozeeToby]

Let's see, according to the law, corporations are people, right? Do you think we could have comcast declared mentally incompetent?

Re:"nyah-nyah :P"?

[Firehed]

Can't we just hire a hit-man?

Re:"nyah-nyah :P"?

[PagosaSam]

You shouldn't tug on Superman's cape!

Can't wait

[esocid]

for the proverbial bitch-slap that will follow this from the FCC and customers. If this does in fact get a counter-suit from Comcast, the Supreme Court may end up deciding what to do on this matter, in another 5 years. In the meantime let's see if Congress can grow a pair and implement some net neutrality to topple this "network management."

thats the reason for the block

[ArchieBunker]

to cover their ass because they are not a common carrier.

Re:thats the reason for the block

[moderatorrater]

So if the FCC says they're a common carrier, that'll remove their motivation for blocking in the first place? I doubt that's the main reason for their blocking, and I also think they're shooting themselves in the foot with this defense. "Common Carrier" is a title most internet companies should be striving for.

Re:thats the reason for the block

[mabhatter654]

common carrier is different than open access. Comcast can be a closed network to outside companies, but a common carrier to their customers. The FCC has said they don't have to share lines, but Common Carrier status is determined differently. Although port blocking VIOP and such probably disqualifies them.

The way to fix this is a lawsuit from somebody sued by the RIAA that Comcast should have blocked them from doing bad things (not a common carrier) and/or Comcast should be preventing Media Sentry from trolling Comcast IP addresses looking for infringers (not protecting privacy of it's private clients). After all, if what they manage customers to do is "private" then what other people can access about their network should be "private" too.

Re:thats the reason for the block

[Anonymous Coward]

So if the FCC says they're a common carrier . . .

They aren't common carriers they never were and never will be. For some stupid reason people on Slashdot keep saying ISPs are common carriers, but they aren't and never will be. Never. Nada. Not a chance. So just stop saying it, please.

Re:thats the reason for the block

[Fatal67]

Except for the fact that the customer knowingly and willingly ran the software on their computer that gives anyone in the world access to their machine. Comcast didn't install it and if Comcast had their druthers, I'm sure they would outright block it all together.

"Hey! I was engaged in illegal activity, but Comcast let me do it!" That will be the beginning of the end. The first lawsuit would result in Comcast just flat out blocking p2p.

Re:thats the reason for the block

[dave562]

Or some evil script rewted their box and installed a stealthed torrent client that then proceeded to swap the no day radio hits across their Comcast line without them knowing. All of that could have been prevented if Comcast was properly filtering their traffic.

Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[nweaver]

Now, I sympathize with Comcast. Many ISPs, not just Comcast, are disrupting P2P sessions, and these sessions are in clear violation of most ISP's Terms of Service. And P2P is horribly disruptive, a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day.

Yet Comcast seems intent on making people WANT to regulate them. Its like they are deliberately behaving stupid?

They aren't agressive at pointing out all the other ISPs, to get the heat off.

They do stupid things like pack FCC hearing, say that the results won't matter, etc.

Who's running that place?

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

And P2P is horribly disruptive, a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day. So what? Look, if that many people really want to download my English conceptualizations of Vogon poetry, then why shouldn't I be permitted to transmit that much? If I'm paying for "unlimited service", I'm damn well going to use it.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[bitbiter]

They aren't stupid. This is the Standard MO of most US companies. Screw the customer, till you get caught and then say opps and pay a little fine.

Don't you know by now that most companies in the US sit down and think this out. "Lets see, we can make this much money (A) while screwing the customer. It will take this long (B) to get caught. We will make this much (C = (A X B)). When we get caught it will cost us this much (D) in legal fees and fines. So if C > D then it's what they do."

This is not going to change anytime soon. When the punishments never add up even close to what they make.
Welcome to the Corporate United States Of America.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[asterix404]

Comcast doesn't put an upload/download limit in their terms of service, you are paying for a service. What happens if you want to download 5 linux distros to try them out? They already cap bandwidth so that you don't ever get the 4mbps that you are "promised" I get 750KB/s download and 125KB/s upload, called them up and asked why and basically got the runaround with an answer eventually saying on because we can. The the FCC can't get them then the better business bureau may be able to for breaking a contract and/or not putting the basics of a contract (ie the fact that your packets may be dropped for network maintenance). I mean, if I had comcast, and read that, I would have told them to shove their contract up their ass and go to someone who wouldn't do that. They are targeting specific users, who use more of the service then others, which is EXACTLY the point of paying a monthly bill. It's exactly like paying 20$ a month for unlimited phone service, some people talk 6000 minutes, others talk 10, they both pay the same. Comcast doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day."

Only if he is freely provided with the bandwidth promised by the ISP. Now are you saying he should not be able to use this bandwidth? There are plenty of legal uses for P2P so your sweeping statements just come across as ridiculous and ignorant.

The problem is simple: the company has made bandwidth promises to more people than it can handle on its lines. This is analogous to an airline promising everyone a seat on a plane in exchange for X dollars, but then when everyone who was promised a seat actually shows up for the flight (*gasp*), the airline kicks off the fat people, and tells everyone else to share seats. Now at this point any reasonable person would demand a refund and go to another airline. The problem in this situation is that there is no other airline. Your only option is to pick up and move to another location. Ask the government how this situation came about.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[j79zlr]

the 4mbps that you are "promised" I get 750KB/s download and 125KB/s upload

750 kB/s == 6 mbps. So you are getting more than you promised, will you be sending Comcast a thank you card?

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[L4t3r4lu5]

P2P wouldn't be disruptive if they didn't oversell the bandwidth available.

If I get a contract for an 8Mb downstream connection, I should be able to receive 8Mb/8(to MB) x 60(seconds) x 60(minutes) x 24(hours) = 86.4GB of data a day, if I want.

They're now fscking over the customer because they blatantly lied about the bandwidth availability, redefined the word "unlimited" to cover it up, and are now pissy because the way we use the internet has changed.

I've no sympathy whatsoever for corporate whores lining their own pockets at the expense of the consumer. The whole lot can go and die.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[electrictroy]

What the hell are you talking about??? There's nothing disruptive or illegal about P2P software. How do you think Linux distributions get sent? Just last week, I downloaded the latest version of Firefox using P2P. (And the month before, Spybot, because the virus that had infected my system was blocking all browser downloads. P2P was the only way to get Spybot and fix the problem.)

Don't sit there and make false accusations that P2P Software does not have any legitimate use or is "disruptive".

P2P is a tool, just like any other tool (gopher, ftp, usenet, et cetera), ands Comcast has no fucking right to block its usage by its customers.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[GweeDo]

"so that you don't ever get the 4mbps that you are "promised" I get 750KB/s download and 125KB/s upload"

You do know that 750KBps is 5.859375 Mbps right?

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[WindowlessView]

Yet Comcast seems intent on making people WANT to regulate them. Its like they are deliberately behaving stupid?

I was thinking the same thing. It's almost as if they are unaware of what has been going on in the world of late. With the sub-prime market completely off the rails, major investment banks failing, etc., is this really the time to be spitting in the face of government? My sense is that you couldn't pick a worse time to be arguing against regulations and trotting out variations of the "free markets will take care of themselves" shibboleths.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[TubeSteak]

And P2P is horribly disruptive, a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day. Sure, if they max out 2Mbps of upload bandwidth for 24 hours straight.
What *Comcast/Verizon/AT&T connection do you have that does a steady 2Mbps up?

Last I checked, non-business connections were either 384 kbps or 768 kbps, which is about 4GB & 8GB per day respectively. I limit this discussion to Comcast/Verizon/AT&T because those are usually the only options for the vast majority of people in the USA.

So who are these non-business/non-FIOS users transmitting 20 GB per day?

http://www.google.com/search?q=20+GB+per+day+in+Kbps
http://www.google.com/search?q=384+kbps+in+GB+per+day
http://www.google.com/search?q=768+kbps+in+GB+per+day

*non-business & non-fiber since comcast can't exactly blame fiber users for running up their bandwidth bill.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Dutch Gun]

This is the Standard MO of most US companies. No, this is the standard MO of companies (or any entity) which grows to monopoly-size. Competition brings out the best in companies, because one can simply switch to a competitor if the service gets too bad. The capitalist approach typically falters when:

a) The government sticks its nose in and creates or sanctions a monopoly
b) The government doesn't stick its nose in to break up an illegal monopoly
c) It's the government itself that's providing the service.
d) The company gets too big to care about customers anymore, and implode under the weight of their own bureaucracy.

From companies that have to compete fiercely for my business, I tend to get great service. Abusive and underhanded practices won't keep a company going long, because the negative PR will eventually drive other customers away. It's simple Darwinism - those that don't just don't survive long. Capitalism may not always be pretty, but it sure beats the living hell out of any other system the human race has tried thus far.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[mabhatter654]

because they WANT regulation.. the kind they can write themselves, like all good monopolies. They'll write the regulations that they have to do lots of tracking and logging and preventing people from services... in exchange they'll get explicit permission to block WHATEVER they want to "new emerging threats" to copyright... or their business model. Everything out side of port 80 will be blocked unless you pay for a Game plan or a VPN plan or a iTunes Plan... wait for it!

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[AvitarX]

Wow, a whole 30GB?

Aren't they talking about way bigger numbers than that?

2 Linux Distros (9GB)
Firefox (negligible)
Spybot (negligible)

times 3 to keep your ratio (1 down 2 up)

The trouble is people doing WAY more than that.

I would recomend people running into trouble to pay a little money and get Usenet access. I pay $24 for a 100GB block of download (no time limit). This is about 100 hours + of good quality video (somewhere between DVD and HDTV). I usually get 500KB/s download (though sometimes it is down aroun 200).

For recent stuff it is easier to find a good NZB than a good torrent, and bandwidth usage is WAY lower (even when taking into account that checksumming overhead of PAR files).

Every now and again torrents are useful for older things, but most stuff is just way more convenient to get from the news servers.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Deagol]

I've had several dealings with stubborn local utilities. Most states have a Public Utilities Commission (or PUC), which regulate such entities at the state level. Every single time I've been blown off by a gas or phone company and I've lodged a complaint with the PUC, I get an almost immediate response (as in hours the same day, usually). I don't always get the issue resolved (such as the company not technically violating anything, just being asshats), *but* at least some some manager at the company is forced to do a bunch of paperwork one way or the other to resolve the complaint, so there's a very solid record of my complaint somewhere.

Now, is cable/internet service regulated by the state PUCs (i.e., is the service a "utility")? I don't know. But I urge people to sick their own State on unruly utility providers. It's fun and yet another way us lowly consumers can push back. If I witnessed Comcast pulling this shit with my account (I have DSL with some rural telco, so I can't even look for this), I'd at the least attempt to sick Utah's PUC on them.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just how stupid is comcast? Extremely. Playing a game of "chicken" with congress isn't wise.

If it comes down to it, congress will just invoke the "regulation of interstate commerce" clause and do whatever the hell it wants, as it has for a hundred years or so.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[bensode]

Let me be the first to say F*CK Comcast. I moved to southern PA recently only to get gouged with a $70 monthly internet bill. I don't have the option to switch to DSL/FIOS so my only other option is dial-up. No thank you. It's funny my neighbors (a lot of them) have a $24.99 monthly Comcast bill. The local ISP just before I moved in (SusCom) was bought out by Comcast http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6279636.html and they get grandfathered into the same price. Any "new" service REQUIRES cable TV + $50 a month internet, totaling $70 a month. I'm an avid DirectTV subscriber because the Comcast cable tv service is absolutely terrible here. So I have to pay for cable tv, internet and DirectTV.

You know what Comcast told me when I complained about the price, lack of options and their crappy service? "Move". Isn't that wonderful customer service ...

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[patchvonbraun]

nweaver writes:

  Now, I sympathize with Comcast. Many ISPs, not just Comcast, are disrupting P2P sessions, and these sessions
  are in clear violation of most ISP's Terms of Service. And P2P is horribly disruptive, a single user can
  easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day.

So, if you calculate what 20GB/day is in bits/sec, assuming a saturated end-customer line for the full
    24 hours, it works out to something like 2.3mbits/sec. With cable now offering 4mbit/sec service,
    I fail to see how this is "horribly disruptive".

In terms of "clear violation of most ISP's Terms of Service", that's a little thin. Granted, *a lot* of
    P2P traffic is "trafficking" in copyright-violation content, but it's kinda hard to justify painting
    with such a wide brush. I get most of my Linux ISOs via BitTorrent, for example. That would hardly
    be in violation of my ISPs T.O.S.

I think the real problem is that most company executives tend to think of computers as glorified
    typewriters, and any use of them that falls outside their "world view", they tend to think of
    as weird, and probably illegal.

I haven't followed the COMCAST debacle that closely, but it seems to me that if they argue that they
    *must* throttle due to bandwidth exhaustion, then they'd better start throttling non-P2P data-grabbing
    technologies--like FTP, and HTTP, and RSYNC, and e-mail, and...

Thank the heavens that I have an ISP that believes that its job is to convey bits, and that touching
    those bits would cause them to lose customers faster than rats leaving a sinking ship. I wish all
    ISPs had such a broad worldview...

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[poetmatt]

The lowest Tier of comcast internet provided is 6mpbs, they do indeed cap at 750KB/s. The amount you mentioned is indeed correct, and the response the GP got is what is typical of comcast.

The issue at hand is whether they lose Section 230 immunity if they are filtering connections like this. And I hope to damn that they are, because if they aren't I'm going to have to convince whoever controls the infrastructure in my area to build up something other than comcast every single time.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[magus_melchior]

Given how many corporations are now farting in the BBB's general direction rather than addressing customer grievances, I would go for a class action suit. Unfortunately the contract probably has a mandatory binding arbitration clause in it buried somewhere.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

One thing I left out of my airplane analogy is that the airline promised seats to more people than the plane could handle.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[electrictroy]

Comcast makes no distinction between small files and large files.

It is ALL blocked.

So no more Linux downloads if Comcast has its way. (Also your Usenet solution won't work, if Comcast decides to block that as well.) (And let's not forget how they locked Itunes.com because heaven forbid people watch tv on ipods, instead of on Comcast.)

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha!! Pwned...

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, don't F*CK Comcast...

You might get something off of them...

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[ultranova]

Yet Comcast seems intent on making people WANT to regulate them.

Maybe they are. Comcast execs are human too (propably); maybe they are trying to ensure themselves unfiltered access to Net even after they've left those jobs.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

And P2P is horribly disruptive, a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day.

No. A single user can only transmit a quantity of data that they are assigned by the ISP in a single day in the form of their upload/download rates that they BOUGHT with their subscription. P2P doesn't somehow enable them to go over that so they're only going to hit 20GB of data in a day if comcast (or whatever isp) has sold them speeds that enable them to transmit that much. No matter how you slice it, the isp is at fault for overselling their network when John Doe actually ends up using every bit he's bought.

I repeat. IT IS THE ISPS FAULT. NOT P2P.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Wartz]

"the airline kicks off the fat people, and tells everyone else to share seats." I would share seats anytime with a moderately hot chick.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Katmando911]

It probably does have an arbitration clause but those have been thrown out in some class action suits. Also, I wonder if you could sue the city for granting a monopoly to them.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Katmando911]

That's when she'd leave and demand a refund :p

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is simple: the company has made bandwidth promises to more people than it can handle on its lines.

Yes. It's called a communications network, and the whole concept is designed around the assumption that this is the most efficient way of using any limited amount of bandwidth. We call all get full speed most of the time as long as none of us can get full speed all of the time.

This is not much different from the fact that, say, the traditional telephone network has a limited number of circuits, and if all people tried to call at the same time, some people would have to wait until others finished. The marginal cost of guaranteeing that everybody can get full speed all of the time is too high--to do it, in effect, you have to build the functional equivalent of an exclusive, full-time, full-bandwidth circuit between each node in the network. How costly would this be? Well, look at it this way: the maximum connectivity of a graph is the factorial of the nodes.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"The marginal cost of guaranteeing that everybody can get full speed all of the time is too high"

Nobody is requesting that everyone get full speed all of the time. That's as ridiculous and foundationless as your argument that everyone (ie, as many people as want the service) should get some amount of service all the time. I am only requesting a choice of services. The issue is simply that there is no other choice. If you need high speed internet access for your home or office, you have to go with whatever company has the monopoly in your neighborhood. If that company happens to guarantee different levels of bandwidth all the time, then you are in luck. If not, you have no choice. So there is a demand, but no supply. And no other supplier can come into existence to fulfill this demand. And you have only government restrictions to blame for that.

The issue at its core is government interference in the economy, for which there are moral and practical objections.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, a single user can really consume many GBs per day. I do that fairly regularly, legitimately as per my ISP's TOS, not using any P2P functionalities (have no use for any at the moment). It's a 16Mbit DSL they offered and that I thus bought from them, and that's what it does. In other words, there is nothing wrong with such bandwidths and consumption if an ISP is able and willing to provide it, accomodating what they promise to deliver.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[nitehawk214]

Welcome to the neighborhood. This has been Comcast's MO since they inherited the system from AT&T, who operated it exactly the same way. AT&T expanded the original cable internet system from TCI when they bought it. They promised that prices would go down as subscribers went up, but the opposite has been true for the last decade. Comcast has certainly raised the bar for screwing their customers, and they know they have them by the balls as most of the areas do not have the option of DSL or FIOS. I predict that once Verizon finds an efficent way of rolling FIOS out en masse, you will see Comcast begin to die a slow and painful death here.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[why-is-it]

a) The government sticks its nose in and creates or sanctions a monopoly
b) The government doesn't stick its nose in to break up an illegal monopoly
c) It's the government itself that's providing the service.
d) The company gets too big to care about customers anymore, and implode under the weight of their own bureaucracy.

The thing is, there are natural monopolies, and it simply is not cost-effective to have more than one provider for the service. (How many water companies does your neighbourhood need?) Any attempt to subsidize other entrants to the market is just a waste of money. There is no point in having regulated monopolies, because those corporations are smart enough to spend the time and effort in subverting and co-opting the regulator to suit their own needs instead of what is best for their customers.

In such cases, I think it is best that the service be provided by a legislated non-profit organization. I'd be OK with a wholly state-owned and operated one as well, but it would have to be run at arms' length in order to be free from political interference.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Dutch Gun]

I hope you didn't infer that I thought all monopolies should be broken up on principle (see c and d). I agree, utilities are a prime example of natural monopolies. Government itself is another. In those particular cases, other balancing forces must be applied. In the case of utilities, it's typically government oversight. In the case of government - elections. In both areas, the first amendment is also a powerful balancing force. An informed populous can put pressure on politicians, which is typically how government oversight occurs to begin with.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would just make a all out voluntary ban on comcast. And everyone out there will soon get the picture and start dropping comcast and fast.. then comcast will be pressured to change

People make the company.. Yet for some Odd reason in the last few years companies like this are more demanding instead of jumping for there clients

Its effective.. Just block all comcast traffic.. and if anyone asks they do not allow it people some times need to be poked a few time before they wake up

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[JasonTik]

The grandparent has simply made the mistake of equating KBps and Kbps. 20GB/day comes out to about 250 KBps, which is a reasonable number if given the units Kbps.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[ErikZ]

Eh? I'm using Comcast's premium account and that only gets me 80Kb/s upload.

Which works out to about 8GB a day.

I can hardly wait for FIOS to get to Denver.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[N1EY]

Ever think that regulation would end most of the smaller players and improve Comcast's share? Comcast would still be around if more regulation occurred. Other players would be out of the game.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[bensode]

I have been begging Verizon monthly and I have a feeling that it's not likely that we will get dsl or fios any time soon here in the mountains. I now know to do my homework on ISP availability before moving. It's a real shame that Comcast has to shake down their new customers but what makes it worse is that they do it with a smile knowing there are no other alternatives. Maybe with those Intel wireless developments posted earlier there is a chance. Or maybe I'll go offer one of the neighbors a shiny new wireless router and $15 a month to share their connection ... =)

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[0111 1110]

How many water companies does your neighbourhood need? As many as it takes to have a competitive market and consumer friendly pricing and service. There is no reason to put up some kind of barrier to entry. If no one wants to step up to the plate because it is too expensive to build the infrastructure (or whatever the justification for the classification of 'natural' monopoly), then the monopoly can be regulated to protect consumers from the evil greedy corporations. There is, however, absolutely no justification for actually stopping anyone from trying to compete.

IIRC, there was a time when cable companies and electric utilities were considered 'natural' monopolies. But where I live there is Comcast, Verizon, and RCN to choose from. There are also multiple electric companies and local telephone companies (Verizon, RCN).So what happened? They were natural monopolies before but now they aren't? And where I live water is provided directly by the town. So I guess the answer is 'none'.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, when you're in an area where your ONLY possible internet provider is comcast... "driving other customers away" isn't gonna happen.

Comcast blows, and if there was anything I could do to get a different, better provider in the south bay area, I'd happily do it.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[mxs]

Now, I sympathize with Comcast. Many ISPs, not just Comcast, are disrupting P2P sessions, and these sessions are in clear violation of most ISP's Terms of Service. How's that ? Do most ISPs' Terms of Service prohibit passing packets to and from the public internet ? Does, say, BitTorrent not work without violating RFCs relating to TCP/IP ? Or are you making the assumption that all P2P sessions are used exclusively to commit intellectual property rights violations ? If you are claiming that, then, quite honestly, do your damn homework.

And P2P is horribly disruptive, a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day. You know what would help in that case ? Give the user a traffic quota. Spell it out that you don't want them transferring 20gb per day. Make it clear contractually. Charge more if they exceed that limit. Clear rules, clear advertizing, clear buying decisions.

I can EASILY transmit 30-40gb of data per day (and receive more than that) doing stuff that will not run afoul of most ToS agreements. Heck, you could leave your Blizzard Downloader running and it'll transmit a pipeful of data -- and that is the primary mode of distribution for data by Blizzard Entertainment (with a dozen million accounts now, IIRC). Clearly they are evil, evil P2P-pirates, right ?

P2P is not at all disruptive. If you really think that, you need to take a look on how, exactly, the internet is supposed to work -- namely passing packets back and forth between arbitrary endpoints. It is INHERENTLY P2P-oriented. Sure, you /can/ build a TV-like broadcast-style content-distribution mechanism on it, but really, that's just one application.
If your network can't handle the amount of pps or mbps common P2P-clients produce, either upgrade or change your plans. P2P itself is not to blame, either your marketing or your lack of planning is.

Yet Comcast seems intent on making people WANT to regulate them. Its like they are deliberately behaving stupid? I won't contest that.

They aren't agressive at pointing out all the other ISPs, to get the heat off. It might backfire in that there are also plenty of other ISPs that actually know how to plan their network buildout and service packages according to that plan.

Who's running that place? Morons. I don't even have a beef with them not wanting P2P on their network -- but they damn well better don't sell unlimited internet connectivity (or anything citing a bandwidth) if they can't, or won't, live up to it.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[DKlineburg]

Thing to figure out is what letter is in caps.:

Bandwidth Calculator

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Schnapple]

This is analogous to an airline promising everyone a seat on a plane in exchange for X dollars, but then when everyone who was promised a seat actually shows up for the flight (*gasp*), the airline kicks off the fat people, and tells everyone else to share seats.

Actually, Southwest and a number of "budget" airline carriers do something very similar. They don't kick off fat people or make people share seats but they do essentially oversell flights whenever they can. The only way their business model of charging less works is if they fly out as many full planes as possible. They oversell every flight they can (by like 3-5 people) in the bet that some number of people don't make the flight, either due to being late, changing plans, etc. When everyone does show up, they go on the plane and offer someone something (a discount on their next flight, or first class on the next flight leaving or something) in order to accomodate the overage person who has just shown up (which, it never fails, is trying to get to his next location for something he can't be late for). If they can't accomodate them then they try for the next flight. It really really sucks when you're the one who gets screwed by overbooking but Southwest doesn't care, they just have a business to run.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[why-is-it]

I hope you didn't infer that I thought all monopolies should be broken up on principle (see c and d).

No, I don't believe that all monopolies should be broken up on principle. I have no problem with the existence of natural monopolies, but I think that it is best for the citizenry if such organizations are run on a not-for-profit basis. If a monopoly is run with the intention of making money, the customers will be taken advantage of, with no recourse.

There are lots of free-marketers here on /. who won't like that suggestion, but the principles of a free market simply do not apply in a monopoly situation and the state is the only entity that can wield a stick large enough to force the monopoly in line. All monopolies abuse their customers, but strong state intervention will hopefully keep them to a minimum.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[why-is-it]

As many as it takes to have a competitive market and consumer friendly pricing and service.

That's your only criteria? Where is all this infrastructure going to go? There are physical and logistical limitations that I don't think you have considered, never mind the cost of entry to the market .

Sorry dude, but free market principles can not, and do not apply everywhere.

Re:Just how STUPID IS Comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

P2P software only violates subscriber agreements if

A) the software is being downloaded in violation of copyright
B) if the P2P has uploading enabled, when the TOS prohibits running a "server"

Now there is also the possibility of debate over whether uploading partial file segments can be constituted as 'running a server'. Also at issue is the fact that P2P software utilizes a PEER to PEER model, NOT a CLIENT / SERVER model. A good lawyer should be able to argue that P2P by definition is not a server.

The real issue that most politicians seem to be ignoring, or just don't understand, is that Comcast is using a classic Man-In-The-Middle attack to forge packets. This is NOT traffic shaping, it's not controlling their network, etc. it is, simply put, hacking a connection. They are not even isolating this to comcast to comcast clients, they are actively spoofing packets with the intent to disrupt communications even off their own network.
If any of us were to begin doing this, we could be prosecuted under anti-hacking statues.
So... my question is- why hasn't the Justice Dept. filed criminal charges against them? They have been caught and admitted to blatent criminal activity, namely disruption of communications and computer operation by posing as a remote machine and sending falsified data.

As for the whole common carrier bit, that's a huge mess and nothing is clear, especially as most ISP's are moving to offer phone services over their networks as well.

I'm tired of hearing all this 'poor,poor comcast' garbage. They oversold their bandwidth, and now are trying to blame P2P as the sole cause as their business model ages and collapses. If they really wanted to solve the issues, they should look into actively encouraging development of future P2P software such as P4P, which can actually REDUCE network load over traditional client-server models.

Glad to help! It means . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . "Stay out of our way and nobody gets hurt."

Re:Amazing.

[Scaba]

And they'll also lose their common carrier protections, which will open them to lawsuits for anything carried on their networks, like child porn or illegally shared MP3s.

Actually

[vandit2k6]

This is quiet interesting and, in fact, it seems like Comcast is right. Look at Verizon. They're essentially saying that they will HELP the P2P traffic. Not block it but 'gasp' HELP the P2P traffic. It seems like Comcast is taking the same direction. Anyway correct me I am wrong please.

We'll play along...

[KookyMan]

... with all these hearings and whatnot, not because we feel we have to, but because you can't do anything to us even if we're wrong.

What a totally screwed up system we have now, if this is all true. (No, I've not RTFA.)

A cable company in favor of 'the market'?

[mgkimsal2]

Isn't this the same Comcast which runs cable service in markets which usually has a local government-granted monopoly for cable service in those regions? Funny that now they want to say "let the market decide" when cable companies generally won't invest in the infrastructure unless granted a monopoly on providing cable service. I'm remembering back a long time - perhaps this isn't the case any more. If broadband options were available everywhere, I'd certainly say "let the market decide" - many people (myself included) only have one option for broadband, and it's often cable.

Re:A cable company in favor of 'the market'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast still has a monopoly in the City of Alexandria Virgina, just outside of Washington D.C. Verizon won't bring FiOS here b/c they can't sell the TV. So for now Verizon is pitching DSL + DirectTV to try to get folks off of Comcast I guess. I'm sticking with Comcast for now b/c the cable is still better than the DSL option, but they are getting annoying enough I may actually move anyway. Once FiOS arrives I'll drop them in a heartbeat.

In other news...

[sweatyboatman]

...Car thieves have declared the police have no legal authority to prevent them from stealing cars.

Good luck with that.

I don't really understand what Comcast hopes to get out of such an "above the law" argument. It's just bound to piss off the FCC regulators even more and make them more committed to enforcing whatever decision they make against Comcast. Just to show all the other cable companies and telcos that they aren't to be messed with.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is an FCC victory in everyone's best interest, though? It's unlikely that Comcast will say "eh, so be it" and eat the cost of P2P bandwidth. My best guess is that they would then create tiered service levels -- the normal, p2p crippled service will be $50, the really, no-kidding-this-time unlimited account will be $120 (insert your own prices here, this is just for illustration). Will people be willing to pay double for unlimited, unfiltered bandwidth?

Re:In other news...

[PeterBrett]

Will people be willing to pay double for unlimited, unfiltered bandwidth?

If it really is unlimited, unfiltered bandwidth: yes.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Car thieves have declared the police have no legal authority to prevent them from stealing cars.

I think that's a bad analogy. FCC is federal, and it does make sense that federal cops shouldn't have the authority or need to deal with local acts of thievery. (Uh.. if the stolen goods don't cross state lines, and that's a pretty damn big if.) See, that's unlike Comcast's network, which doesn't cross st-- oh wait.

Actually, their real argument is that the FCC hasn't been empowered by Congress to have much authority. US Congress perhaps does have the authority to regulate Interstate networks, but they haven't used it. Imagine car thieves were taking cars in New York and selling 'em in New Jersey -- but Congress had not yet formed the FBI.

Re:In other news...

[Nick Driver]

...something like "A man who picks up a cat by its tail learns a lesson that cannot be learned any other way" or something to that effect.

Anyone having the audacity to tell a federal agency what they can and cannot do, is probably about to learn a very similar lesson since this day and age, federal agencies tend to be very vindictive and retaliatory whenever anyone dares challenge their authority. They will find some way to save face and regain their insulted "honor" and they are very creative in how they go about doing that.

Re:In other news...

[Rod Beauvex]

As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving cars approaches one.

Re:In other news...

[Cajun Hell]

Slashdot is like a well-engineered and well-maintained car: it's predictable. Now, if Slashdot were hosted on Comcast's network, it would be like a car on a road full of pot holes, and there's no telling what sorts of comparisons the posters might try to make.

Communist China != capitalist corporation

[jscob]

There's a big difference between a communist government and a capitalist corporation on many levels even if the communist government is using some of those corporations to assist in the blocking and filtering of the internet. What restrictions to your network freedom do you currently have on your Internet access from your own home in the US?

What bullshit

[Coopjust]

I honestly can't believe the amount of crap coming from Comcast.

The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful,"

Yeah, right. Which is why US broadband penetration continues to rank lower and lower worldwide despite $200 Billion from the government. And people are protesting traffic filtering. And your company is so afraid of actual people sitting at an FCC public hearing that they pay people to hold seats for employees, busing the employees in, and locking the public out from the meeting.

What Comcast is doing with the sandvine filtering is forging packets. That's fraud.

Re:What bullshit

[nuzak]

> Which is why US broadband penetration continues to rank lower and lower worldwide despite $200 Billion from the government.

200 billion is a massive chunk of change, higher than the infrastructure investment of any other industrialized country. What's the law that authorized it, and where's it actually going? I'd like to follow that money and see if there's perhaps a few people who belong in the clink for misappropriating it.

Re:What bullshit

[electrictroy]

Ya know, "U.S. has one of the worst broadband speeds" is a myth. If you take all the European Union states and compare them to the United States (as a whole region), you will discover that they are essentially equal. U.S. = 5.1 and E.U. = 4.9 megabit/s per home. Furthermore, if you take highly-populated states such as New Jersey or Connecticut, you will find that they provide average speeds (11 mbps) almost as good as the #1 country, Japan.

"U.S. is slow" is a myth that is not sustained by the available data.

In fact, U.S. is the 2nd fastest region in the world (behind Japan, and just above the E.U.).

Re:What bullshit

[cube135]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070529-survey-average-broadband-speed-in-us-is-1-9mbps.html Right...

Re:What bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

The more this goes on, the more I think Comcast is trying to bring the roof down on their heads... and the heads of everyone else in the room. AT&T is the 800 lb. gorilla here. And Comcast is taking a hatchet to the roof supports.

So Comcast brings holy hell down on their own head for "forging" packets. So what happens to AT&T when that precedent is set and Comcast points out that the NSA-packet-copying-thing actually forges packets too? (Think about it, store a packet, copy it to the NSA, copy it to its original destination, destroy the original... that's arguably forgery and fraud.) AT&T meets hot water, and Comcast gets a boost from AT&T's misfortune. No, they're not in it for the privacy rights. They want a larger piece of the pie. Privacy rights are just a bonus, and Comcast doesn't care if that part happens or not as long as they take a chunk out of their competition.

Re:What bullshit

[Shakrai]

If you take all the European Union states and compare them to the United States (as a whole region), you will discover that they are essentially equal

Aren't you being a little selective with your "whole region" argument? Many people in the United States only have dialup or comparatively slow (768kbps - 1.5mbps) DSL as an option. Many other people can only choose between dialup or a cable provider that may or may not be friendly towards their customers. Furthermore your "whole region" argument glosses over the fact that in some EU countries (Sweden) you can obtain 100mbit connections.

I'm lucky enough to have a cable provider that isn't (yet) trying to screw over it's customers (though there's been rumblings....) so I can actually get broadband service at a decent speed (8.0/512). My only other option is DSL at 1.5/384, which isn't really fast enough to stream (decent quality) video in real time, so I'd have to give up a service that I've come to enjoy if I left the local cable monopoly.

Anyway, the point is that many (most?) American's don't really have any "choice" when it comes to broadband service.

Re:What bullshit

[xstonedogx]

GP was talking about broadband penetration, not average bandwidth. Average bandwidth is only a meaningful metric if penetration is comparable.

In any case, I doubt the veracity of your numbers. Could you cite a source?

Re:What bullshit

[hairyfeet]

The problem is clear in part of your sentence. Did you catch it? The problem is this-Highly populated areas.Basically the only places they are bothering to compete is in the choicest neighborhoods while the rest of the country can go rot. The simple fact is broadband helps new SOHO startups, it cuts down on pollution as folks order online instead of driving miles to the store(which quite adds up over the course of a year) and it helps create new markets and services.

We will need nationwide broadband to compete in the 21st century, but like the rest of our infrastructure it is being neglected in order to maximize profits. Until we have true nationwide competition, or figure out a way to get corporations to think in the long term again instead of "damn everything but the quarterly earnings!" we will just get worse,not better. But as always my 02c on the subject,your opinion may vary.

Re:What bullshit

[electrictroy]

Every survey will have different results. It depends upon HOW they gather their data. HOWEVER this article does confirm what I was saying (that the U.S. is not that horrible) (that it's a myth U.S. is a third world country in terms of broadband speeds).

Why?

Because the European Union average is only 3.1 Megabit/s..... which makes it the fifth fastest region after Japan, Korea, Canada (7.6), and the United States (4.8 Mbps). We Americans are no worse off than our European brethern.

Re:What bullshit

[electrictroy]

I don't think it's unreasonable to compare the Whole United States to the Whole of the European Union. We have similar levels of technology & lifestyle & culture. We have a similar system of government (federalism). We are more alike than different.

It's comparing apples to apples.

Vice-versa: To compare the whole continent-stradling U.S. or Canada to a single small state* (example: Netherlands) is comparing apples and oranges. It's an invalid comparison. Like comparing farmland to city.

* (Before you object to me calling Netherlands a state, you will note on the European Union website that "state" is its official designation.)

Re:What bullshit

[mikael_j]

You can't really compare the US to the European Union since there is a lot more diversity within the EU than there is within the US, the countries in the EU are independent countries (a whole bunch of them recently agreed to share a common currency but some (like us Swedes) have opted out of that). If you look at the page at Ars that was linked to the average speed here in Sweden is 18.2 Mbps with The Netherlands at 21.7 Mbps being the only other european nation to beat us, but if you average our connections out with those in Greece (1.0 Mbps) and the UK (2.6 Mbps) then of course we're gonna seem backwards. And now two of our largest ISPs are about to roll out VDSL2 so hopefully us DSL users will no longer be limited to 24 Mbps ADSL2+ (or hacked-up 28 Mbps ADSL2+ through TDC Song's network).

/Mikael

Re:What bullshit

[Shakrai]

I don't think it's unreasonable to compare the Whole United States to the Whole of the European Union.

It might not be unreasonable but it masks several legitimate differences between the state of broadband in both areas. Like the fact that most Europeans have a number of providers to choose from vs. no more than two for most Americans (if you are lucky). Or the fact that several areas in Europe have access to broadband options that blow anything in the states out of the water (can you get a 100/100 connection anywhere in the US for $45/mo? I doubt it).

We have similar levels of technology & lifestyle & culture.

Umm, have you ever been to Europe? I'll grant you the technology bit but there are huge cultural differences between Europe and the United States. Ditto for lifestyle -- urban sprawl and a lifestyle that revolves around the automobile would be a foreign concept to many Europeans.

We have a similar system of government (federalism)

Umm, how the hell do you figure that? If the United States was that similar to the EU you'd see New York and California having veto votes on the UN security council and each state would be free to implement it's own foreign policy. You've also overlooked the fact that Europe has an entirely different legal system (civil law instead common law) than we do (with the exception of the UK).

Re:What bullshit

[electrictroy]

You worry too much (IMHO). The rural communities are always last to get new technologies, but they DO get it eventually:

- The rural homes were last to get cable tv (I got it in the mid-90s).
- The rural homes were last to get their phone lines upgraded from analog to digital (thus enabling 56k).
- The rural homes will be last to get Digital Television (low-power stations switch-over in 2010 or 11).
- Likewise rural homes don't currently have DSL or Cable internet, but they will eventually get it.

Technology slowly moves outward: First the highly-populated areas (cities) and then it gradually drops in cost & filters out to the rural communities. It just takes a little bit of time.

Be patient.

Re:What bullshit

[xstonedogx]

While the European Union does have federalist traits, it is in fact a supranational entity and has more in common with NAFTA than with the United States. You are conflating nation states with states as a political subdivision of a country. The Netherlands is not a state in the sense that California is a state. The Netherlands is a state in the sense that the United States is a state.

Even excluding these differences, comparing the United States to the whole of the European Union is also unreasonable due to vast economic differences between European states. Eastern Europe economies are still recovering from the collapse of communism, among other things.

If you must include more than one nation in your comparison with the United States (why?), then Western Europe would be a much more reasonable choice. We share similar forms of government and comparable economies over a period of time long enough to reach some level of parity.

Re:What bullshit

[bishiraver]

The problem is this-Highly populated areas.Basically the only places they are bothering to compete is in the choicest neighborhoods while the rest of the country can go rot.

This is so correct - and it's not just the highly populated areas - and it's not limited to cable. For example, FiOS has not rolled out in my Brooklyn neighborhood (Bushwick) yet. Bushwick is an up-and-coming neighborhood, so it's low on the list (even though rolling out things like FiOS would attract more wealthy people to the area. This is seen as both a good thing and a bad thing: good in that there would be nicer stores, safer streets; bad in that the lower income families in the area would get pushed out like what happened in Williamsburg, BK a few years ago and to some extent is still happening).

Just be aware that this problem isn't just about broadband either. It's also about education quality (suburbs with medium density and high incomes have better education typically than both rural and metropolitan schools), healthcare quality (not just ratio of population to doctors, but also how many people have health insurance and the quality of doctors), water air and soil quality, road quality..

Re:What bullshit

[MadUndergrad]

Is that alleged speeds, or real, usable speeds? I have Crapcast's 16/2 service, and even in the dead of night I get maybe a couple hundred KB/s at best. I should be getting 2 MB/s down. What I actually get is nowhere near what they supposedly offer. I have a feeling our European brethren are getting more like what's actually advertised than we are.

Re:What bullshit

[k3r3nsky'sr3v3ng3]

Yes, the same EU that is populated, in a significant part, by former eastern-bloc states. I live in the southeast and just recently moved to a broadband area (where I previously live had only dialup). Yeah, we have cable internet(charter). It gets approximately 300 KB/s We also have their terrible television service. But I live in a boarding school and we have state(Alabama) internet. It has kindergarten level internet filtering(for awhile godtube was the only unblocked video site) and we get approximately 50-100 KB/s. Yeah, where is this 5.1 mb/s internet?

Re:What bullshit

[electrictroy]

Likewise, you shouldn't try to compare a continent-spanning nation like the U.S. to a tiny island like the UK, or a small state like France. It's like comparing apples and oranges. It's easy to connect tiny states, because they are largely metropolitan, whereas the U.S. is largely empty space with hundreds of miles between cities! It takes more effort to string wires across a continent than it does to wire-up tiny little states.

If you're going to compare, then you should do it on the SAME SCALE - continent versus continent. America versus Europe versus Australia..... On the continental scale, we're all pretty much even.

Alternatively:

You could compare one tiny state versus another tiny state. i.e. Massachusetts versus France. Or Maryland versus the Netherlands. In the metropolitan American states, we have very very high speeds, equal to any of the E.U. states. Most of Massachusetts and Maryland are wired with Fiber Optic Internet. Extremely fast.

Re:What bullshit

[electrictroy]

There are vast economic differences between the U.S. States as well. Utah is nowhere near as wealthy as Maryland, and that's reflected in the broadband stats where Maryland average ~15 megabits while Utah barely averages 1.0.

I don't think it's fair to say "Europe has ultrafast rates & Americans are falling behind" while ignoring the slow 1.0 Mbps rates in places like Greece or Poland. Not all Europeans have ultrafast internet connection. Only SOME of them do... same as here in America.

Re:What bullshit

[electrictroy]

You sound impatient.

FiOS has only been around a few years (less than 5?), and yet you act as if the whole 2500-mile wide continent should already be wired-up with fiber.

Jeez.

These things take time... wiring up a whole continent doesn't just instantly happen overnight. It will take a couple years to buy the wires, hire the manpower, and lay down the necessary equipment. Be. Patient.

Re:What bullshit

[electrictroy]

You're still better off than an European living in Italy (slow connections).

You should be happy about that fact. As for speeding-up your connection, have you looked into Verizon DSL? They offer 3 megabit/s in most cities, and for a much lower price than cable.

Re:What bullshit

[mikael_j]

Sweden has a population density around 20 per square km. That would be comparable to Arkansas or Iowa and significantly less than the majority of US states yet the average broadband speed here is, once again, 18.2 Mbps. Where I live right now (in the northern half of Sweden known to southerners as the horrible frozen wasteland "Norrland" ;) I can get 24/8 Mbps via cable or 24/3 ADSL2+ (annex.m) but the real speed of DSL would be closer to 15-16 Mbps due to loop length. Yet I constantly hear of americans living a block away from the DSLAM being told that they can only get something along the lines of 2000/128 kbps because of crappy phone lines... I really don't think bundling us with semi-third world countries like Greece and Italy is fair, although comparing US states to European nations also has its own problems.

/Mikael

Re:What bullshit

[bishiraver]

"and yet you act as if the whole 2500-mile wide continent should already be wired-up with fiber."

No, I'm acting as if my neighborhood in brooklyn, five miles from areas in queens which have FiOS, and the fact that my neighborhood has a higher population density than many areas of queens, should be wired up.

Challenge

[whisper_jeff]

That sounds like a challenge to me. I'll be interested to see if the FCC accepts the challenge and shows Comcast that it's the government, not corporations that run things, despite what many (including Comcast, obviously) may think.

Re:Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

it's the government, not corporations that run things

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

thats a good one

Re:Challenge

[Timinithis]

Since the FCC can pull broadcast licenses from TV/Radio stations, can't they just yank Comcast's license? I know it would leave many people in the dark -- me included, but I'd love to see them shut down for this crap.

If anyone knew how to stop the RST bulls417 from reaching the other party, I might be able to enjoy my Netflix on demand more...

Re:Challenge

[Shark]

I was under the impression that in a constitutional republic, it was the people who ran things.

Re:Challenge

[gabrieltss]

Unfortunately corporations DO run the government not the other way around. It's caleld Lobbiests, payoffs, bribes and the like. If a corporation wants something they just write a check and they get a law in their favor, a favorable ruling in court battle etc.. It's the facts.

Re:Challenge

[pembo13]

that it's the government, not corporations that run things

Patience my friend, all in good time. The power of the corporation will devour all

Re:Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

That's assuming other corporations don't want the opposite thing.

Re:Amazing.

[moderatorrater]

the US internet will look like Communist China's Except for the cable company not being the government, and therefore divorced from a lot of the other power bases. Oh, and that the blocking likely won't get too far because there's another choice. And that Comcast won't be investigating people and then making them "disappear" because they're dissidents.

Other than that, yeah, the internet will be just like China's. I'm glad someone's finally had the balls to stand up and make an erroneous, inflammatory and completely unique critique of the state of freedom in the US.

Now I may be a mutated hyper chicken

[techpawn]

Comcast argues that Congress has not given the FCC the authority to act...

Then who gave the FCC authority in the first place to do anything?

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is a United States government agency, created, directed, and empowered by Congressional statute (see 47 U.S.C. 151 and 47 U.S.C. 154), and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current president.
The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 as the successor to the Federal Radio Commission and is charged with regulating all non-Federal Government use of the radio spectrum (including radio and television broadcasting), and all interstate telecommunications (wire, satellite and cable) as well as all international communications that originate or terminate in the United States.

So it was congress who gave them the authority to act and then took it away with another act?

Re:Now I may be a mutated hyper chicken

[Keith_Beef]

Does it have to be the FCC?

Could not some other gov't agency (e.g. FTC) not use parens patriae to take Comcast to court for breach of contract?

Beef

Jail time sounds good to me....

[Anonymous Coward]

If I was doing this to their users I'd be in jail for hacking, etc. Sounds like a good thing to do to those assholes in comcast. I would think are have violated the contract with their users.

captcha: congress aka useless

here let me...

[Some_Llama]

"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful for the corporations (including Comcast), but for the consumer, not so much."

There, fixed that for you, i appreciate the generous act of telling it like it is but you forgot that last part. :)

Competition

[DoofusOfDeath]

"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful,"

Comcast's "marketplace" justification doesn't work. Their implication is that having a market means you have competition. But Comcast has a licensed monopoly on the cable network, and some telephone company has a monopoly on the telephone network. That's a market with, at the very most, one competitor.

mod parent up!

[xmuskrat]

If I had mod points, you'd get them.

I'd like to test something

[Bryansix]

I'd like to test the outcome of shoving my foot up David L. Cohen's ass.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC is saying you have the right to use another ISP. If comcast changes their policy and it violates the original contract you signed with them, you have an out to leave the ISP and get another one.

Except the contract you have with them says they can change the contract at any time for any reason without notifying you.

I Agree With Comcast

[superid]

"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful," - Cohen

I agree completely and will move my "customer experience" from Comcast to Verizon FioS ASAP.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Bryansix]

Now if only FiOS was available in my area.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

And watch them cut your POTS lines so that you cannot away move from Verizon FioS later.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Bryansix]

Who needs POTS? Don't forget about wireless or the cable these people came from. Moving away from FiOS will be as easy as convincing yourself that you don't want a 15 megabit symetrical connection.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[rusty0101]

I would note that it is up to the FCC to determine if Internet service over Cable is a mature technology to the point that it should be opened to providers other than the company that owns the cable plant. If the FCC decides that it is, then Comcast, Time Warner, and other cable companies will be required to open their plant to third party internet service providers, just as Qwest, Verizon and AT&T do for DSL service.

Comcast's monopoly techniques and customer complaints to the FCC are likely to result in a review of their decision a few years back that allowed them to get to the position they are in at this time. I tend to suspect that there is a significant percentage of the Comcast subscriber base who would consider an ISP connection cost of $20 a month across their cable plant to be a significant improvement over the current $100+ a month fees. (Sure Internet service is only a $50 part of that bill, unless you decide not to have cable TV service in which case it becomes a $75 a month charge.)

I.e. there's a 250% mark up compared to DSL with possibly double the bandwidth potentially available, and the opportunity to have your P2P sessions interfered with.

A reminder, the reason Comcast has been interfering with P2P sessions is that they have not built the capacity in their plant to handle the volume of customer traffic. They may be really happy to announce that they are now looking at rolling out DOCIS 3 with it's 100 meg to the customer bandwidth, but it appears they have not built the backbone to allow customers to make use of it. Lots of luck there.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Shakrai]

Who needs POTS?

Quite a few people, actually, but that's not the point (POTS is available on FiOS, albeit without line power). The point is that by cutting out the copper lines to your address you lose the option of switching to a CLEC for DSL or POTS services, i.e: your choices of internet/telephone service providers are reduced.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Bryansix]

They are reduced hardly at all. Verizon is my CLEC so wtf am I going to do if I don't like Verizon? Well I'll tell you. I'll use my Time Warner cable modem and sign up for skype. My Skype wireless phone is my backup and my cellphone is my primary phone line.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[boris111]

Tell them you don't want your POTS line cut. Leave a sign so the installation guy doesn't do it as well. I agree you shouldn't have to request it.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Shakrai]

They are reduced hardly at all

Really? So going from the option of being able to choose between multiple CLECs, the ILEC and the cable company to being able to choose between the ILEC and the cable company isn't reducing your choice of providers?

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Bryansix]

I don't know what planet you live on but where I live you can't get DSL without a phone line attached to it. I wish this wasn't so but it is. I also can't use any other phone company over my POTS except VERIZON. Can you please explain what you are talking about? CLEC and ILEC don't make sense to me. I speak english, not telecom babel.

Which reminds me. Who in the hell named Digital Internet Access over POTS to Digital Subscriber Line? That doesn't describe the service at all. That's like calling a turd a muffin. Then you have Primary Rate Interface or PRI. What the heck is that you say? Well it's a digital interface that allows 24 lines to be bundled together and delivered to a company to use as a pool. But how would you know that from Primary Rate Interface? Really, these people are just dumb.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[rrohbeck]

I agree completely and will move my "customer experience" from Comcast to Verizon FioS ASAP. And how long until Verizon's backbone creaks and they'll throttle your connection? With more promised bandwidth the tradeoff must be even more difficult for them. Do they promise unlimited usage?

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[compro01]

In many areas, the ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier, the company that owns the physical lines) is required to lease out said lines to any CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, a company that provides service over said lines, but leases them rather than owns them) who wishes to provide services (usually DSL) over them.

In most of those same areas, phone lines without phone service (called "dry" lines) are available, allowing DSL service without having phone service.

Apparently no such arrangement exists in your area.

Though I have no idea why they decided on those terminologies.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Bobbler]

Im glad i haven't had to deal with comcast ever, i recommend brighthouse if you can get it.

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Shakrai]

Who in the hell named Digital Internet Access over POTS to Digital Subscriber Line?

Actually it's not "over POTS". DSL service and POTS have nothing in common other than the fact that they both come into your house on the same wire. DSL runs at a higher frequency than your POTS service (that's why you need filters installed on all your phones) and the two services don't interact with each other. DSL can also be provisioned without POTS service active on the same line (though whether or not your phone company allows this is another question).

Re:I Agree With Comcast

[Bryansix]

Yes, I know all this. The DSL signal gets switched off at the substation before any POTS switching can get it's grubby hands on it and mess it up. The point is it's that same useless copper. Just give me fiber to my home. Plus the infrastructure can withstand a nuclear attack.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

oh, you americans.

[Anonymous Coward]

...relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare... Ha ha ha, you americans, you're so funny.

Comcast User Experince

[Colonel Korn]

'"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful," concludes Comcast VP David L. Cohen's thinly-veiled warning to the FCC, filed on March 11. "Bearing these facts in mind should obviate the need for the Commission to test its legal authority."'

1) How does the Comcast user experience relate to marketplace control when Comcast is lobbies for and relies on government support to drive build local monopolies? 2) How does the Comcast user experience say anything positive about the status quo, considering that Comcast is notorious for faking speed test results (with accelerated transfers for the first 10-20 seconds, sufficient to trick a speed test but not very useful for most meaningful transfers), blacklisting customers with no warning, and of course breaking customers' p2p transfers, as is the case in the FCC issue that prompted this response from Comcast. The FCC knows these things and Comcast knows that they know, so I'm not sure who the target of this statement might be. This might be an attempt to divide congress and the FCC on this issue and encourage them to fight each other.

Customer experience

[Dan Posluns]

The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful
Thanks for vouching on behalf of my customer experience, Comcast. As if I would be your customer if there were any reasonable marketplace alternatives.

Dan.

Enforced monopoly should answer to a reg. body

[bishiraver]

They gave up their rights to rely on the marketplace when they signed on to government-endorsed monopoly status.

I would have absolutely NO qualms about allowing the marketplace to sort this out - unfortunately, the marketplace is artificially sparse.

If a power company with government-mandated monopoly was blocking power to your electric oven because it sucked down too much juice and you ran it all the time, the government would get involved.

If an internet company with government-mandated monopoly blocks bits to a piece of software because it uses too much bandwidth, the regluatory body (FCC) should get involved.

That's how it should work. If you want the government to keep you in power, you gotta make sure your services don't fuck people over. If you don't like it, have fun competing and - well - making consumers happy by striving to have the best and least expensive service. Common fucking sense. Unfortunately there's nothing common about it..

(For those of you who don't think this is an enforced monopoly - Right now I only have one choice for broadband - optimum. Time warner services buildings two blocks from me, but I'm in a different district in brooklyn and TW is legally restricted from servicing the area -- because it's optimum's area.)

Comcast is in Big Trouble

[HermMunster]

Comcast may think they have the right to do what they are doing but this is all bad publicity. That though is the normalized side of things. They'll loose lots of business.

What Comcast may not be understanding is that shitting on the FCC now means the FCC will shit on them later. Guaranteed. Comcast is burning bridges.

They need to disassociate their activities completely with any blocking and open the network and become neutral. What the FCC will probably do is give everyone the right to sue Comcast over what the consumer does on line. Essentially they are removing their own neutrality.

Comcast is far to simplistic in their thinking and dangerous in their actions.

Consumer Welfare or Comcast Welfare?

[outofoptions]

'"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful," concludes Comcast VP David L. Cohen's thinly-veiled warning to the FCC, filed on March 11.

I must be reading this wrong. ;) Disrupting consumer's internet usage is the customer's welfare?

What marketplace?

[porcupine8]

When at least 50% of households in the US have more than one cable company to choose from, then maybe we can let the marketplace decide. Because then there will BE a marketplace.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, Comcast. Either you get a government-sanctioned monopoly OR you get to "let the market decide" whether you're doing things that hurt consumers.

Radio Free...

[Alastor187]

Word...send out the FCC Search and Destroy vessel to "drop the ****ing hammer"!

ftc?

[f1055man]

They've been forging packets. If the FCC can't do anything can the Federal Trade Commission step in? If I was Comcast I'd definitely prefer the FCC to the FTC.

Re:In other words...

[cube135]

And have they changed the contract? It's a given that they're allowed to(you agreed to it to use their service), but if the updated one is not available, is it still valid?

No wait, that doesn't look right...

[Omnedon]

1) Offer unlimited service

2) Surreptitiously choke your customers

3) Deny

4) Nyah! Nyah! You can't stop us!

5) Profit...?

(6 has the potential to be quite entertaining.)

Great marketing opportunity for DSL companies

[the saltydog]

I can see/hear it now...

"Comcast claims they have the fastest broadband speeds in the country. What good is that, when *THEY* decide what they will let you connect it to?"

"Want to grab the latest official game patch on BitTorrent? Sorry, Comcast is blocking it."

"There's a new Linux distro that just got released - but Comcast says you're not allowed to download it via P2P."

"What's next? No, you can't go to YouTube, but you can get the same content at comcastcrappyonlinevideos.com?"

"Try cutting the cable, and go with Qwest. You pay for the connection, and we'll get you connected - but YOU can decide what to connect to."

Re:Great marketing opportunity for DSL companies

[scubamage]

Not to mention that games like World of Warcraft push all patches/updates via bittorrent.

One loophole begets another

[TBone]

"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful," concludes Cohen's thinly-veiled warning to the FCC, filed on March 11. "Bearing these facts in mind should obviate the need for the Commission to test its legal authority."

Then the FCC should test it's other legal authority, that by which it can remove Comcast's Common Carrier status for refusing to allow equal passage of datatypes on its network.

Re:One loophole begets another

[jskline]

This will likely change substantially once the elections are over and we see what kind of political layout we have in Congress and the Senate. Remember the Dem's are the ones who are likely to kill Net Neutrality because they need a river by which to generate revenue streams for their programs. Market driven forces do not bode well in 2009 I suspect. Albeit; the real telling will be after November and we'll know for sure. I hope a lot of people are paying attention instead of being glued to their social web sites. Unfortunately I still suspect that money talks and bull**** walks, and someone in the FCC would simply drop the case on them and they get off. There has already been too much inequities passed around as it is. I don't like it one damned bit.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Tin foil hat time?

[zappepcs]

Tin foil hat time? Perhaps Comcast needs to be above the law/FCC in this case in order to take the money from the **AA next year when they begin implementing the **AA's recommended network practices for ISPs. If it is against the law, the **AA won't pay them, well at least not honestly.

Common Carrier. Solved.

[Bob9113]

True, false, whatever. The market is entirely capable of fixing this problem.

Here's the solution: Common carrier. There, problem solved.

All you have to do is say, "If you route every packet on your network the same regardless of origin, destination, or content, you are a common carrier, and you are not liable for what those packets constitute. If you treat anything flowing over your network preferentially, you are not a common carrier, and you are liable for the content of ever packet that travels on your network." Simple. Nobody is going to put their company in the path of child pornography enforcement. All this talk of extra legislation for net neutrality is completely unnecessary. The common carrier laws are already in place, the only remaining step is to clarify that they apply to data as well as voice.

I love the idea of net neutrality, but I am convinced we don't need an extra law to make it happen. Just enforce common carrier.

Am I missing something here?

Re:Common Carrier. Solved.

[qeveren]

Common carrier status doesn't apply to them, already. People above have already commented on this.

Re:Common Carrier. Solved.

[Svartalf]

I think the point is that all one needs to do to fix "net neutrality" is to enforce Common Carrier status on the ISPs.

Yes, it'll raise prices a bit, but it'll put the kibosh on most of these fun and games. How to get them to agree to
being brought back the Common Carrier protection umbrella? Hold them actionable for the data that they're transporting.
Not the P2P stuff, but all the other bogus things- Kiddie Porn, Animal Porn (it's illegal in some municipalities...),
that sort of thing.

Hang Comcast or one of the other mainline players out to dry on something like this (they ARE contributing unless they
hold Common Carrier status, no matter what their silly TOS says...that won't protect them...) and you'll be seeing them
realize that the lack of Common Carrier status, the trying to get out way cheaper than they ought to, etc. as being a
BAD IDEA for them in the first place and it'll largely come to a halt.

Go FCC, go!

[Ganghiss]

Even if the FCC can do nothing more than fine Comcast for its activities, any information gathered during the FCC investigation is ripe for subpoenas from civil lawsuits against Comcast, especially a class action suit.

Re:The next thing you know...

[Anonymous Coward]

That will put slashdot users on the side of Comcast and the world will promptly explode

fixed that for ya...

Software should fight back!

[John Sokol]

Is there any reason the virus's and worms can get through the P2P can't?

  Bit Torrent is already showing it's age.

  I would like to get some team together to create on based on erasure codes, ECIP http://www.ecip.com/
  or LT Code, the Luby Transform (Michael Luby), Fountain Codes (from Digital Fountain), network codes, Tornado codes, Online Codes, and Raptor codes.

  In addition the P2P engine should morph and change it's communications similar to stealth viruses do.
  So no static filtering scheme could work.

  And it should also detect networks that attempt to block them and immediately launch a DOS attack against the router and infrastructure that attempts to block them. Let's not call is DOS attack, but basically by attempting to slow or stop P2P transfers to conserver bandwidth the system just starts to pour on the traffic even higher.

  back in 1996 to 1999 Aryeh Friedman and myself worked on what we called Rude protocols, SPAC.
  the basic idea was to provide a guaranteed data throughput on the receiver side without any regard to how much it had to send on the sending side.

This is critical for fix rate video transmission if you are to get good quality and is a very different approach to the QOS RSVP where your begging ISP's to allow your traffic to have a higher priority. We just Take it very rudely.

  In 1997 we did a broadcast with Sir Arthur C. Clarke (who died yesterday) from Sri Lanka to the US.
  It was over the Island of Sri lanka's only internet connection and 64K line that had 90% packet loss.
  By pushing out almost 1 Mbps at the 64K like we were able to get a clean 60Kbps at the receive side for a live streaming video event! We had permission from the country's ISP at that time since the event lasted only for 1 hour.
http://www.livecamserver.com/ and http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/clarke.html

  But during ours test in So Cal, we were on a Dual T3 Circuit that went into Mae West, Large data interchange, pushing 10Mbps video and the network had some small outage and we pummeled the entire California internet down to an almost complete outage, 1997. this only lasted for maybe 10 minutes or so as almost every network Backbone admin was scrambled to try to stem the 100Mbps flood of UDP packets that our protocol started to push down the line.
  We took a lot of flack for that out, lost our Co-Lo at that location.

    Anyhow since that time we just added some cap's on the maximum.

  Point being, that any deliberate attempts to stem the flow would in a sense create back pressure, that would only force an increase of the data being sent, and so creating network blockages would have the opposite of the desired effect by costing them even more bandwidth instead of saving it.

  Wouldn't that be a fun thing ;)

Re:Software should fight back!

[Svartalf]

Heh... John, you're a bad, bad kid. But, I suspect you know this already... :-D

All things being said, I think this would fall under the "serves them right" category if someone were to come up with an answer for P2P that did this to someone like Comcast.

Re:Software should fight back!

[dbkluck]

Sounds like a one-way ticket to Guantanamo to me. Hell, half of Congress already thinks people use p2p to fund terrorists. A protocol that DOSes Our Noble Corporate Sponsors in their fight against piracy and terrorism? No thanks, not in this political climate.

Re:Software should fight back!

[bugnotme]

Have you heard of Rodi? http://rodi.sourceforge.net/ It can transmit using UDP packets (difficult to throttle) uses encryption and can spoof the IP address of transmitted packets (weak pseudo-anonymity). Rateless codes are pointless in unicast TCP transmission. They only make sense if you are transmitting via UDP.

Re:Software should fight back!

[__aailob1448]

Yours is a romantically appealing idea to be sure. I can't comment on the value of using erasure codes codes and I think morphing and obfuscating data the way you suggested sounds like a very educational experience (though perhaps CPU expensive or less network-efficient) but I don't think your DOS attacks would fly at all

1- The p2p user would sabotage his/her own internet connection and lose internet access altogether during the attack initiated by his client on the router(s) that provide him connectivity.

2- Comcast could just disconnect cablemodems launching these attacks quickly and perhaps use these attacks on the network as a valid excuse to terminate potentially bandwidth-expensive p2p users with total legitimacy.

3- P2P applications would be tainted by the dark side of DOS and the RIAA/MPAA and others would have a field day spinning this to demonize filesharing further.

2 can be circumvented by swapping targets between p2p users on different ISPs but inter-ISP collaboration in disconnecting any attacker would defeat this.

Re:Software should fight back!

[mxs]

I have to wonder : are you familiar with the concepts of null-routes and automation ?

Re:Software should fight back!

[John Sokol]

The (DOS) or flood of data would come at the blocked machine on comcast from other ISP's increasing his throughput. Each sender would only send a little, but PC a comcast would end up with a lot of data from many sources pouring in.

So disconnecting the user will not protect Comcast bandwidth and they would have to outright and overtly lock out a users connection. The penalty could be a 10 minute flood of 1Gps of UDP with legitimate data trying to reach it's destination.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast, so how does it feel to be one of the top 10 most hated corporations in america, and knowing you'd be higher up on the list if you serviced the midwest and some other random areas you don't have a monopoly on?

Comcast to FCC: let the market decide!
FCC: There is no market because we (the government) protected/enforced your monopoly status. You really want the market to decide? Then we'll just have to create a market and dice you up like we did Bell and AT&T. Hope you enjoy your new, trim, figure!

You seem to have missed the whole TIA thing.

[gnutoo]

The stove pipes have been torn down. There is no division between government and private networks and data. Comcast's defiance of the FCC is an illusion because other elements in the government want Comcast to censor the net. It's the next logical step: awareness, control, dominance. Independent minded bloggers and a free internet threatened the Manufactured Consent model of US policy making.

The US is moving to a censored and controlled network faster than you think.

FCC has Nukes.

[gnutoo]

Spectrum liberation is possible and it would put Comcast and their greasy counterparts in other areas out of business overnight. The FCC and FTC made these bitches and can break them because the public owns the air and public servitude. A sea change in administration is coming. Comcast should shut up before they find themselves replaced. The whole point of creating Comcast and friends was control. It would be better to have a government that was interested in freedom but that too would screw Comcast.

Don't be confused by the bluster. The government is in control.

I'm worried that's not the case

[hellfire]

I've been wanting to get off Comcast for years. I can't. My neighborhood was supposed to be one of the 5-6 suburbs where FiOS was rolled out initially in the Philadelphia area, but it won't go to my condo. I have no idea why. I can't even friggin' buy DSL if I want to. Satellite service is right out because of trees (which I should not have to cut down to get internet service, so damn the clear view of the southern sky).

So I want to exercise my consumer rights, but I'm locked into Comcast and they know it. Until there is better choice, they don't give a shit. That's why they are flexing their muscles with the FCC, they don't give a shit and they know they have power over a captive audience.

Re:I'm worried that's not the case

[Doug52392]

I'm in the same situation your in. In my neighborhood, half of us can get FiOS but half of us cant (including me). I've been waiting for 2 years to get off Comcast so I can actually use my service for what I want to!

have it your way

[Katmando911]

"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful," I wonder if the FCC has the power to force Comcast to lease its lines to other ISPs. Then we'll let the market place decide.

Obviate

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, sorry, but this is a pet peeve of mine: "obviate the need" is redundant, nonsensical even. "Obviate" already means "to render unnecessary" so "obviate the need" is equivalent to "render the need unnecessary". Huh? What?

The phrase can be rewritten more succinctly as "Bearing these facts in mind should obviate any testing by the Commission of its legal authority". If the author wants to emphasis the sense of "need", then don't use "obviate" at all, i.e. "Bearing these facts in mind should eliminate (remove, negate) any need of the Commission to test its legal authority".

Pnp rpg analogy

[PieceofLavalamp]

If you said something like this to your DM(dnd) you get the Tarrasque if they're nice or Deities and Demigods if they're not. If you tell this to your Storyteller you get the Week of Nightmares/6th Great Maelstrom If you tell this to your Gm(d20 modern) you get a nuclear toxyderm or maybe something creative out d20 apocalypse. Please feel free to add any analogies i might have missed/forgottern

Mmm, Fresh Doughnuts....

[GeneralPayne]

Oh I'm sorry but all of this talk about Comcast having a lot of powdered sugar made me think of doughnuts. You know that's what they have too, a lot of powdered sugar and it's called a service monopoly. We pay the prices they demand, and believe me those prices are going to rise now that they think the FCC is nothing more than a bunch of Neutered pets. Nothing to worry about but the bark and meows. Have fun with the monopoly .

Relying on an act passed in 1946???

[Doug52392]

What idiots, Comcast are so desperate to save their own dumb asses from a federal investigation that they rely on a law passed in 1946! They didn't even have computers back then (besides the ones that take up a whole building and have as much memory as my cell phone), let alone the Internet!

When they passed that act, I'm sure they could have never guessed we would have the Internet, let alone guess that corporations would be sooo evil like they are now that they would use censorship and dirty politics to violate our civil liberties...

Re:Relying on an act passed in 1946???

[entropiccanuck]

For perspective, ENIAC was unveiled in 1946. According to the wiki it could do 385 multiplications / second, or 3 square roots a second. Your cell phone is in a different league.

Proven by experience?

[memorycardfull]

I've been reading the economic news lately and relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has not been proven by experience at all.

Comcast just screwed themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience"

Right there they just screwed themselves. They are correct in that the marketplace ought to determine what they can and can't do by customers either joining or leaving them. However a cable company is a monopoly, not a marketplace. A marketplace must have competitors. If I don't like Comcast blocking my P2P traffic and I want high speed cable, where am I to go? I'm not talking about switching ISPs here and going with BellSouth, I'm talking about, how many other cable providers do I have to choose from to get the service I want if I'm unhappy with Comcast?

3.5 Options

[nurb432]

1 - anti trust suit, due to their gobbling up every mom and pop ISP in sight.
2 - FCC finds other ways to penalize them until they comply.
3 - change the rules .5 - what ever happened to breach of contract being wrong? Class action suit perhaps?

Being a regulated monopoly

[nurb432]

Would mean they cant do anything they wanted.

Currently they aren't really a regulated monopoly, just a really damned large company with some FCC regulations. Until they are declared a monopoly by the courts and get strapped with all that fall out, the rules wont really change and they will continue to trample over us consumers.

Boycott

[Lil Nathan]

Well being a Comcast customer and one who just made them spend thousands to run a new line to my home I'm going to call them up and cancel my service. I would suggest every person capable of doing this without pissing off their spouse jump on the bandwagon and switch to a new service starting in April. If we as Slashdot decide to boycott Comcast they will loose millions and millions. Why not? Is there anything that good on TV? I think not! It's all regurgitated crap. We run the market! If we stop giving them monies they WILL change. They can not ignore millions of people. They can not run without our support.

New business plan?

[nurb432]

1 - Take over all the competition
2 - Piss off your customers with poor service and down right anti-service in some cases
3 - Tell the Feds to take a flying leap when they step in to stop it.

Hey, it worked for Microsoft..

All kidding aside, comcast really needs to be taken down hard, and broken up.

You know what?

[phreakincool]

Fuck Comcast! I'm so sick of their shit! I don't watch most cable stuff anyways. All my shows are torrents. Their arrogance is disgusting. I'm switching to dsl. I'll wait for a fiber offering.

Cable companies are required to follow regulation

[woods01]

When cable companies first came to power, as was told to me by my grandfather who worked closely with a mayor of one town (when cable was just starting) the system was designed to prevent the current situation that we have where companies such as comcast, have the monopolies they do. While owning multiple businesses isn't a bad thing, you can see here how blatently Comcast disrespects the FCC.

I don't agree with alot our government does, I think we need less instead of more governmental regulations. However, as a comcast customer myself it angers me that some people eat up bandwidth the way they do, and I pay the same price they do. Regardless of what they are doing, it's the amount of usage that bothers me. Why should I pay the same price as someone that's constantly using up as much as comcast will let you, (in general 500GB/month).

Comcast is trying to appear bigger then the government, I hope the FCC nails them to the wall and comcast shuts down, let's break up these monopolies, they can't have it both ways, they can't cherry-pick which laws they want to be exempt from.

If they want to stop p2p (as comcast has denied doing all along) then they are regulating traffic. If they are going to regulate traffic, then they need to be responsible for the traffic that passes across their network. So now they should be responsible for the illegal file trading that is on their network that exists through other non-p2p means. Also every other illegal thing done through comcast should leave comcast fully responsible, you can't have it both ways comcast.

Powerless?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think the FCC finding that Comcast was a giant collection of assholes is going to hurt Comcast regardless of the FCC's ability to impose a fine. Maybe they could just run a TV add... "ATTENTION: Your cable is being provided by a company that hates you, America, and freedom of speech!" Then we'll see who wants to bitch about rules and power.

Re:David L. Cohen

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is on topic. This is the name of the Comcast VP just mentioned in the article.

The way Comcast do business look exactly like how the Jews do business, you either follow their way and let them take your money, or They will call you an anti-Semite and destroy your life forever.

HEIL HITLER 1488!

Apparently he isn't a Comcast customer ...

[ScrewMaster]

(including the Comcast customer experience)

WTF?

Re:The next thing you know...

[Dhalka226]

...Comcast will be arguing that the IRS has no power to promulgate regulations regarding taxation.

Do they? It seems to me that tax code is spelled out by Congress and the IRS is basically tasked with processing the returns and collecting the money (and looking for cheaters). I'm not aware of them actually creating tax code. (Maybe I'm just ignorant on this fact.)

The FCC, on the other hand, is an administrative agency; their decisions carry the weight of law so long as Congress has provided them a specific scope and their decision falls within that scope. Comcast is basically claiming that this is outside the scope Congress has provided the FCC. It may be right or wrong; I'm not a lawyer and certainly not that familiar with the laws in question--but it's not an absurd claim. In fact it's a very logical defense to make. If nothing else, it almost ensures they get the FCC decision stayed for a year or more while they contest the issue in court.

Civilians Powerless To Stop Government & Corps

[Anonymous Coward]

While we bathe in the light of britney spears paris hilton janet jackson wardrobe malfunction uselessness, another law is passed, another civil right violated.

If you are a Comcast basic cable subscriber

[dr2chase]

and want to hit them in the pocketbook, ever so slightly, get (try) an HDTV TV or converter. I got one, we get all the channels we care about, perhaps clearer than the cable, plus some optional channels (sort of a PBS extravaganza).

There's also a coupon you can request from the federal government to get $40 off you converter, arrives by snail mail, though it takes them weeks to process the request.

That's my plan, anyway. Still don't have any choices for internet besides them, but I'm jumping ship the instant the opportunity presents itself.

Notice, also, that Verizon seems to be making nice with at least some torrent servers. It would suck for Comcast, if Verizon managed to get people interested in a service that Comcast was incapable of providing because they invested all their money in blocking access, instead of expanding bandwidth.

Enough! I just cancelled after reading this

[ScottFree2600]

My Comcast internet has been out for a month anyway, and last time I tried to get it fixed I almost hurt someone because they pissed me off so badly. I have a tough time believing that this is the most effective way to get a government regulator "off your back", even a corrupt, incompetent one like the FCC. I just showed them how the 'free market' works. They didn't even try to save the account. I've been paying $190 a month for 1 DVR and internet, and it goes up every month it seems. Now to get rid of the TV. I already have DSL from Speakeasy (Covad). It's not as fast, but it's never gone down and they're pretty responsive and well run. The FCC needs to be taken apart. They are worse than useless!

You don't get it

[Mr2001]

It's called a communications network, and the whole concept is designed around the assumption that this is the most efficient way of using any limited amount of bandwidth. We call all get full speed most of the time as long as none of us can get full speed all of the time. As the other response pointed out, no one is saying we all need to get full speed all of the time.

The problem is this: ISP builds out a network with a total shared capacity of (let's say) 100 Mbps. They sell internet service to a bunch of customers, capping the rate at (let's say) 5 Mbps. Now, if everyone used it all the time, this network would only handle 20 customers. But the ISP knows that not everyone will use 5 Mbps all the time, so they estimate an average load -- let's say 10% -- and they sign up 200 customers on this network instead.

That's all fine, as long as the average load stays the same. But now what's happened is the average load has gone up: more people want to use the capacity they're paying for.

The ISP's response should be to either add capacity to their network (so it can support the same number of customers at the higher load), or reduce the number of customers using it (split it up into two networks), or lower the maximum bandwidth per user (cap everyone at 4 Mbps instead of 5).

But instead, what they're doing is trying to keep the load capacity where it is -- at the level that was only an estimate in the first place -- by blocking the applications that use a lot of bandwidth.

Do you see how counterintuitive that is? It's like dealing with a traffic problem on the highway by saying "OK, most of the people on the road at this hour are going to the beach, so let's close down the beach and then the traffic will be gone." The highway is there to serve drivers, not the other way around: if the beach is where everyone wants to go, the highway system has to adapt to handle that.

Re:Amazing.

[Fnord666]

And they'll also lose their common carrier protections, which will open them to lawsuits for anything carried on their networks, like child porn or illegally shared MP3s.

This isn't really a problem since they don't have common carrier status anyway. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does provide them with protection as an ISP from torts arising from data traffic that passes through. There doesn't seem to be any clause that would waive this protection based on any traffic shaping actions that Comcast might take.

Actually, not a bad idea

[nikanj]

Having a noticable part of the high-income population move away from a given town because of really crappy telecom service just migth shake the political forces into action.

Antitrust Law Is Borken

[Kuma-chang]

Seriously, antitrust law in the US is a joke. It doesn't work. The federal judiciary has all bought in the Chicago school view of economics which essentially says that monopolies can't happen, or if they do, they can't exploit their monopoly because competitors will just enter the market and undercut them. As a result it is nearly impossible to convince a federal court that anyone has ever abused market power absent explicit evidence of some sort of price-fixing agreement. The fact that no real market operates the way their theoretical markets are supposed to operate doesn't seem to bother anyone. Even disregarding the rather significant franchising problems discussed in other replies to your post, antitrust is not going to stop Comcast from crushing you into oblivion. Antitrust is useless.

You have gotten this all wrong

[Kuma-chang]

Not that I don't want to bash on Comcast; there are few things I enjoy more and certainly I believe that Comcast is dead wrong on net neutrality as a general matter... however, the Ars article and the /. summary have badly botched what Comcast actually said. It's funny that no one has deemed it worthwhile to link to the letter itself. This is the Internet after all...

Rather than arguing that the FCC has no enforcement power, Comcast is making the rather more limited argument that the FCC cannot create a new rule regarding net neutrality and enforce it against Comcast (i.e. levy fines and other penalties) at the same time. This is a pretty well established principle of law, although its application in an administrative setting may not be quite as clear cut. Comcast is simply asking that the FCC either adjudicate Comcast's P2P blocking under current rules, or that the FCC pass new regulations then give Comcast an opportunity to respond to them (e.g. stop blocking P2P) before any penalties are assessed. This is one of the more reasonable arguments you're ever likely to hear out of Comcast, so all of the hyperventilation in this discussion seems slightly misplaced.

How the FCC can truly Screw Comcast Legally

[Nom du Keyboard]

All the FCC needs to do to bring Comcast back under control is tell them fine, inspect all your packets and block the ones you wish. You have now lost all your Common Carrier status protections and will be held responsible for EVERYTHING traversing your network.

Want to see Comcast fold like a cheap poolside chair after that?