Comcast Makes Nice with BitTorrent

An anonymous reader writes "In a dramatic turn-around of relations, cable provider Comcast and BitTorrent are now working together. The deal comes as BitTorrent tries to put its reputation for illegal filesharing behind it. The companies are in talks to collaborate on ways to run BitTorrent's technology more smoothly on Comcast's broadband network. Comcast is actually entertaining the idea of using BitTorrent to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future, said Tony Warner, Comcast's chief technology officer. '"We are thrilled with this," Ashwin Navin, cofounder and president of BitTorrent, said of the agreement. BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. It was important that Comcast agreed to expand Internet capacity, because broadband in the United States is falling behind other areas of the world, Navin said. Referring to the clashes with Comcast, he said: "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."'"

Comments

Half a loaf is bad when you are thirsty.

[Mactrope]

This sounds more like, "sorry I got caught" than sorry:

BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. ... "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."

No one caught doing something wrong is happy about the attention but they need to admit what they did was wrong not because a company was involved but because it harmed their customers. The above makes it look like they think they still have the right to block traffic their customers want. Beware of special deals like this.

What they said.

[Mactrope]

I'm not sure they have said anything but it looks like nothing good if they want to make a special deal with a single company. If they want some good attention, they can unblock ports and dedicate themselves to network buildouts. The core issue is one of network freedom. Without freedom, the internet is no better than cable TV.

Re:all bittorrent traffic, or just BitTorrent, Inc

[morgan_greywolf]

Right. All you people going "about time" "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense" didn't even read the summary. The deal is with BitTorrent, Inc. and probably has nothing to do with ALL bittorrent traffic, just the stuff Comcast is doing with video.

BIG HINT: This is probably why they started throttling bittorrent traffic to begin with.

No

[Wiseman1024]

This still smells bad on Comcast's part. What the heck does Comcast care what is BitTorrent used for? So if it's going to be used to share files with a friend (the extent of which is illegal is questionable) it's wrong and needs to be censored, and if it's going to be used for business it's acceptable?

This is still comcastic censorship, corporativism and licking the media mafia's asshole. Keep boycotting Comcast.