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Comcast, Pando Partner For "P2P Bill of Rights"
Bibek Paudel writes "Comcast on Tuesday announced that it would partner with Pando Networks to create a P2P bill of rights for file-sharing networks and Internet service providers. Comcast and Pando will meet with industry experts, other ISPs, and P2P companies in order to come up with a set of rules that would clarify how a user can use P2P applications and how an ISP can manage file-sharing programs running on their networks. Last month, Comcast announced that it had reached an agreement with BitTorrent whereby Comcast agreed to alter its network management practices, and BitTorrent acknowledged that Comcast has the right to police its own network. Comcast's battle with P2P networks started last year after the Associated Press published an article that accused Comcast of blocking peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent. Comcast admitted to delaying P2P traffic during peak times, but denied that any file-sharing applications were being completely blocked."
If comcast wants it... no good will come of it
I got you an Andes mint, but it melted in my pocket
Users will use technology as they see fit. That is the ONLY thing everyone need know.
"Well, we've determined that information doesn't want to be free. Therefore, all BitTorrent or P2P traffic not sponsored by one of our esteemed peers will be allowed 100MB a month. Over that and your bill will go up."
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
This isn't about the legality or otherwise of the content being transferred. P2P is not only used for "infringing" content, and Comcast isn't blocking or slowing it down because someone might be transferring something illegal. Your raising of the copyright infringement issue is a red herring. The real issue here is net neutrality.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
I'm tired of hearing "bill of rights" applied in ridiculous situations by people or organizations who want to make it seem like they're being oppressed.
It seems to me that every meaningful phrase or term -anything that elicits a positive reaction in people- eventually gets co-opted by a political or corporate organization and turned into a complete farce. Sometimes it recovers, sometimes it doesn't.
When's the last time you heard the word "wholesome" in a BS-free situation?
"We haven't blocked any specific p2p applications. BitTorrent packets may have been indefinitely delayed, however."
If you remember, Bittorrent Inc made a similar deal with Comcast to protect their transfers. Now another P2P company peddling a proprietary solution has done the same.
Where does this leave non-commercial P2P on Comcast. Are we going to see a situation where proprietary P2P is whitelisted, while everything else is throttled? Is Comcast going to move towards a protocol agnostic, but vendor specific throttling strategy?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Tuesday, Comcast Corporation and Pando Networks announced that they will lead the industry to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users and ISPs. With an FCC hearing on Comcast's anti-peer-to-peer practices scheduled for later this week, this is hardly a surprise. Once again, Comcast makes another sweetheart-sounding deal, but at the wrong time, and with the wrong sweetheart.
It takes a special kind of arrogance for a company that sells Internet Access to team up with another company that sells Content Delivery and together decide what rights and responsibilities that the world's Internet users should have.
As in its earlier "deal" with BitTorrent, Inc., Comcast's announcement tuesday doesn't change any of the facts it faces: in 2006, it assured Congress that network neutrality laws were not necessary, saying it would not "deny, delay, or degrade" its customers in order to deal with traffic congestion. Within a year it was caught secretly doing exactly that! Even after a long string of deceptive and deflective statements and tactics, Comcast continues to degrade their traffic tuesday.
As was the case in the BitTorrent "deal," neither Comcast Corporation nor Pando Networks represents the millions of customers and other members of the Internet community who were impacted when Comcast secretly launched its anti-P2P attack.
Tuesday's announcement came less than 48 hours from the US Federal Communication Committee's public hearing at Stanford University. There, the FCC heard from two panels of experts followed by public testimony on the Comcast incident specifically as well as similar industry practices in general.
And, just like in the BitTorrent deal, we also saw Comcast and Pando Networking executives start to explain why tuesday's "deal" signals that Network Neutrality regulation is not needed in the Broadband Marketplace.
Comcast talking = nothing.
This is a company with a sub-prime credibility rating.
Robb Topolski
I'm all for a bill of rights. Among the enumerated rights should be:
Any p2p user shall have available to them a detailed and complete description of what network services their monthly fees entitle them to. This will include all of the usage limits which may trigger account suspension or termination.
This information is required for any p2p user to make an informed choice among broadband providers. I don't particularly care if they advertise "unlimited" service, but there needs to be an asterisk which points to how they define unlimited.
The solution is simple: get rid of your Comcast 'net service, just keep cable. Get FIOS from Verizon or even DSL.
Comcast is a publicly traded company and as such here's what's important to them.....
Making money for their stockholders.
That means stopping the things that zap their resources. I don't think anyone will disagree that BitTorrent does exactly that.
Comcast is going to do what is best in their corporate interest. Surprised? Don't be. It's business. Vote with something they DO understand, your monthly $$$
I demand a Bill of Rights for Slashdot Trolls!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
What bothers me so much about this is that it's a transparent attempt to head off Congress, with the results not being pro-consumer. Last month, Comcast announced that it had reached an agreement with BitTorrent whereby Comcast agreed to alter its network management practices, and BitTorrent acknowledged that Comcast has the right to police its own network. Two companies coming to an agreement does nothing to resolve issues of Net Neutrality, especially when the agreement explicitly seems to disavow Net Neutrality.
I'd much rather have legislation I can comment on, than self-regulation which is not open to the public.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The chances of Comcast coming up with anything that users themselves will find the least bit palatable is next to nothing, but the fools in the media and government won't hear about that because they're too busy applauding how industry is clearly now ready to take the lead and solve the problems without government intervention.
Such a transparent attempt to kill Net Neutrality, when all we as user want is: It's our pipe. We pay for it. So let us decide how we want to utilize our paid-for bandwidth. And don't make it our problem that you have oversold your system capacity by hundreds of times!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"That means stopping the things that zap their resources. I don't think anyone will disagree that BitTorrent does exactly that."
In some cases it, no doubt, does sap resources. But, let me ask you this - which is cheaper for an ISP: to move bits between users of their own network, or to move bits from other networks on the Internet to their users? Maybe I'm wrong, but it is my understanding that shuffling data around inside the ISP's network is probably much faster and cheaper than moving data across the limited links the ISP has between itself and other networks.
If I have 10000 users that all want the same data (say the latest patch for Wow - which I believe uses a customized version of bittorrent for distributing patches), I would think it would be *much* more efficient to use P2P to copy the data around almost entirely inside my fiber network, than to transfer that data 10000 times from Blizzard's server across an Internet backbone link.
If that is the case, I would think it would be entirely within the ISP's self-interest to *promote* the use of P2P, to lessen the amount of traffic on upstream Internet links. Plus, it has the potential to allow their users to appear to get much better performance from their 'unlimited broadband' links than the ISP can really give if all data has to come from the uplink, meaning happier customers paying $X/month.
Hey, I'm sorry but BitTorrent doesn't speak for me. They're not even a user and I am, so who died and made them God to decide what's right for Comcast and what's not?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The reason Comcast wants it is because they want it for all the reason that the original Bill of Rights was considered dangerous: it will be an exclusive enumeration of all the rights you have. All other "rights" will exist at the good will of Comcast. Not to mention that I expect all kinds of weasel words in it that mean that Comcast's Bill of Rights will be nothing more than "You're allowed to use P2P for as long as we say you can, and we're allowed to change our mind at any time and without warning".
I hope this goes down in flames.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Don't screw with your customers packets.
Problem solved.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Careful...there is such a thing as an undesirable customer. Comcast could easily say, "You're costing us too much, we don't want your business." Then what?
I believe less than 5% of the US has this as an option, with most areas getting less and less options daily, with DSL prices going higher and higher.
In my area (Chicago), which is a very large metro area, you basically have Comcast or nothing else. Seven (yes Seven) years ago you could get full 1.5mbps SDSL at $80/month, but just like all of the local cable companies, most of the local Internet providers got bought out and dropped all of their customers.
Now, the same service is somewhere in the ballpark of $250/month, which is still somewhere in the range of 1/4 of the speed of what cable offers standard.
If the government actually did it's job and did not allow these buyouts / mergers!, competition would still exist and none of us would be having this argument today. Net neutrality and P2P would be a non-issue since people would just pick another option.
It's unfortunate people aren't educated enough to know that it's the politicians that are the problem, and that this will continue until we force them to change things.
Do people even remember when there was more than one option out there and how capitalism actually works then?
When you have a monopoly it is broken, plain and simple. We need to bust up Comcast, Microsoft, you name it, like Ma Bell and then things will start working again, and that will require different politicians in office.
But, this is really a pipe dream since most people just don't get economics (or care to educate themselves) and they'll keep on electing people who won't change a damn thing.
Preamble The Preamble to the Bill of Rights: THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their putting up with Comcast, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the ISP, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution. Articles: 1. Comcast shall be entitled to oversell bandwidth at a ratio of not less than 20 to 1. 2. Comcast shall not upgrade it's infrastructure without additional public funding. 3. Comcast shall have monopoly rights in as many markets as possible. 4. Comcast shall not be liable for anything or to anyone except it's shareholders. 5. The list goes on...
A "set of rules" is a "Bill of Rights" now?
Liberty in your lifetime
I trust Comcast in coming up with a P2P bill of rights about as much as I trust the fox in coming up with stipulations for how close it can legally get to the henhouse.
LEGISLATE IT.
Do not trust these slimeballs to police themselves.
"...read through a 50 page TOS for details!
.iso's by FTP between 1 AM and 6 AM to get any kind of decent speed and/or not having the connection dropped. YouTube is unwatchable especially in the daytime, and even XMMS/Winamp streaming audio gets RST's every 10-15 minutes during the day and 20-30 minutes at night.
:(
Where they *still* won't tell you how much bandwidth and throughput your money entitles you to, only that you'll be disconnected for "using too much" and/or "doing something we decide we don't like".
One other point I'd like to make is that anger here seems to be mainly directed at Comcast, and as that's the particular provider named in TFA, that's understandable. However, let's not forget that Comcast is is only one of many providers pulling shenanigans, Comcast is just the biggest and gets more attention.
I'm on Charter HSI, and I regularly get RST packets injected from their servers interrupting torrents, as well as streaming video and audio. I usually end up having to d/l linux/*BSD
I might even understand this if I was downloading movies and MP3's 24/7 consuming 100+ GB/month, but I don't as I have little use for RIAA/MPAA crap. I use between 25-35 GB down and 400-650 mB up a month. I don't know who configured their Sandvine or whatever they're using for my area, but I wish they had to suffer with it themselves at their own homes.
If there were any alternatives in my location besides dial-up, I'd be a former Charter customer. With my luck, if a competitor moved in, it'd probably be Comcast.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.