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Legal Trouble For Multiple ISPs

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-goes-around dept.

Ars Technica reports that Comcast has been hit with three new class-action lawsuits due to the company's traffic-shaping practices. "The lawsuits ... ask that Comcast be barred from continuing to violate various state laws, in addition to unspecified damages." Meanwhile, members of the US House Telecommunications Subcommittee have asked Charter Communications' president to stop testing a program which uses Deep Packet Inspection to track the habits of its customers. A number of privacy groups have voiced their support (PDF). As if that weren't enough, it seems the City of Los Angeles is suing Time Warner for fraud and deceptive business practices. The Daily News notes, "... the City Attorney is seeking $2,500 in civil penalties for each violation of the Unfair Competition law as well as an additional $2,500 civil penalty for each violation described in the complaint perpetrated against one or more senior citizens or disabled persons."

4 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. wtf... by jonaskoelker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the lawsuits ... ask that Comcast be barred from continuing to violate various state laws Uhh... it should be made no longer legal for Comcast to do things that that are (already) illegal?

    "I am above ze law!" <adds goop to hair>
  2. Why this constant fuzz in the US about bandwidth by chabotc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Living here in The Netherlands it's almost hard to imagine how it can be so bad over there in the US.

    For me bandwidth has been un-metered, un-throttled, un-shaped, unlimited and un-restricted in all senses of the word for the last decade or so. And while i do pay 50 euro's (~ 75USD) a month, i get 20mbit with great service, a personal home page, spam filtering and all the other services you would expect from an ISP, plus they never blocked any ports so running your own http/smtp/imap/etc server from home is no problem either. (there are a lot of cheaper options, you could get 4mbit with no restrictions for about 12 euro's a month but then you would loose a bit in the service and quality department).

    I guess my question is ... how the **** do you guys put up with it! It sounds like your living in some internet stone age where regional monopolies are trying to squeeze every dime out of you they can without having to provide much service to their customers at all ... it sounds outragous!

  3. It could add up even more quickly... by Coopjust · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you count every forged TCP RST packet as a violation, that would mean damages in the billions.

  4. Most disturbing image... by Jorophose · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This reminds me of possibly the most disturbing image I've ever seen on 4chan... And 4chan of all places! I don't have it saved but it really did make me crap a house, especially when I realised the poster wasn't kidding.

    The image?

    19.99$: Basic service: Access to MSN, Yahoo, (various other sites)
    29.99$: Premium service! Access to MSN, Yahoo!, Facebook, CNet, (other sites)!
    49.99$: Extreme service! Access to over 100 web sites! Even youtube! ... And I wouldn't put it past them even for a second.