FCC Chief Says Comcast Violated Internet Rules

Several readers sent in word that the FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, is calling for sanctions and enforcement actions against Comcast for resetting BitTorrent traffic. "Mr. Martin will circulate an order recommending enforcement action against the company on Friday among his fellow commissioners, who will vote on the measure at an open meeting on Aug. 1... Martin, a Republican, will likely get support from the two Democrats on the commission, who are both proponents of the network neutrality concept. Those three votes would be enough for a majority on the five-member commission."

Comments

BT Encryption

[rukkyg]

Since so many people enabled BT encryption, this whole idea of theirs has really backfired. Now, even if they were to shape some traffic to try to keep BT traffic in the network, so many people will now keep this encryption on that it won't work as well as it would have if they would have, in the first place, worked with the technology instead of against.

Re:BT Encryption

[Craig Ringer]

Such technology works even with encrypted BitTorrent. It doesn't need to know what's *in* the data streams, only that a given IP endpoint is communicating in patterns that match BitTorrent traffic. If such traffic is detected, spoofed RST packets can be sent to cause the host to treat the connection as half-open and respond with its own RST,ACK to close it completely.

Perhaps the particular implementation ComCast uses is easily tricked by encrypted payloads. Don't worry - even if that's so, it won't last.

Now, IP-level security like IPSec would do the trick, because you could identify fake RST packets by their lack of, or invalid, signatures. There is, however, no standard way to negotiate IPSec with a remote peer, despite the best efforts of the FreeS/WAN project.

Thus, in a world where the routers along the way are fundamentally trusted to do their job and route packets, you're not going to have much luck protecting yourself against this sort of attack by your provider.

Re:BT Encryption

[ArcherB]

Thus, in a world where the routers along the way are fundamentally trusted to do their job and route packets, you're not going to have much luck protecting yourself against this sort of attack by your provider.

That's why this is one of the few... VERY FEW cases where government is needed to step in and say, "you can't do that."

Re:BT Encryption

[computational super]

I don't know... as much as I agree with the actual decision, it sends a chill down my spine to hear the FCC start defining the "internet rules".

Re:BT Encryption

[tietack]

In this case, the FCC is saying that Comcast should not define the "Internet Rules" A case where they keep Comcast from regulating how their users communicate on the Internet.

Re:BT Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

I gotta agree that the FCC is actually doing something it should do here. In this case Comcast was filtering there users and lying right to them about doing so. The users caught on and made a stink to the officials and they are doing as they have been asked.

Now about the telco's...

Re:BT Encryption

[MikeBabcock]

As someone who still runs opportunistic encryption, I wish it would have worked out. It would be nice to have secure P2P connections for all sorts of traffic, whether its E-mail, chat, video conference or file transfers.

Personally, I always thought an online registry system like dyndns would be an excellent way to distribute keys. Update your keying data to match your current IP address using a pre-negotiated certificate with a known entity or registrar. Its very similar to their registration of names to IP addresses.

It wouldn't exactly be military grade security, but it would be a lot better than what we have now.

Re:BT Encryption

[Jonah Hex]

I could not agree more, if they end up the defacto arbitrator over the internet, here in the US at least, I don't trust them not to fuck it up as badly as they have everything else in their purview. Well unless you can afford to pay them their lobbying dollars, then you get what your company wants.

Jonah HEX

Re:BT Encryption

[davegravy]

The FCC shouldn't have to define internet rules but does due to lack of competition. If there was as much competition for ISPs as there is for most products/services then companies that pull stuff like Comcast would simply go out of business.

Re:BT Encryption

[frieko]

Somewhat off-topic, but regardless of why they're doing it, why is Comcast allowed to send RST packets on your behalf? Isn't that basically impersonating you? Isn't that about as bad as FUCKinjecting random swearASSwords into my ./ posts?

Re:BT Encryption

[budgenator]

All the FCC has said is using arguably illegal techniques to send forged traffic to unsuspecting users and irregardless of existing network traffic fail to meet the standard of reasonable traffic management. This isn't that much different to a slum-lord committing arson by burning down his rat and cockroach infested buildings and claiming it's a reasonable pest control technique!

Re:BT Encryption

[grandbastard]

Comcast inherently regulates how their users communicate on the internet. Users pay for a service and that service is provided. As long as there is an understanding of what that service entails and any limits, they can do whatever they want.

What Comcast did wrong was to change the service and not inform their customers.

Re:BT Encryption

[osu-neko]

The level of faith Americans have in corporations is utterly astounding. I don't quite get why it's okay to have huge, powerful organizations dictate policy undemocratically merely because they're doing it to make a profit. How does making a profit make the unilateral actions of powerful entities so much more trustworthy? Why is government by corporate fiat so much better than government by elected representatives?

If the FCC tells you what you can or can't do on the Internet, people are up in arms. When Comcast does it, people only grudgingly admit it might be a good idea for the FCC to tell them "don't do that". The mind boggles...

Re:BT Encryption

[I cant believe its n]

What Comcast did wrong was to change the service and not inform their customers.

No, Comcast actively engaged in sabotageing their customers communications.

Interesting...

[CauseWithoutARebel]

Martin said Comcast has "arbitrarily" blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so.

So, what sort of precedent might this set for other attempts to block access? Numerous states have attempted to block access, by law, to what they deem to be illegal content. Would a ruling like this tie the hands of companies like Comcast so that they're in a "damned if you do damned if you don't" position, or would one ruling likely supercede the other?

Martin's order would require Comcast to stop its practice of blocking; provide details to the commission on the extent and manner in which the practice has been used; and to disclose to consumers details on future plans for managing its network going forward.

I also find this amusing. Comcast is whining about it, but they're effectively been told off and punished for not disclosing to their customers what they were doing to paid services. It really says a lot about the company that they're complaining that they have to inform their customers before they make significant service changes.

Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.

Re:Interesting...

[garcia]

Would a ruling like this tie the hands of companies like Comcast so that they're in a "damned if you do damned if you don't" position, or would one ruling likely supercede the other?

After all the government has given to the telecommunication companies, like Comcast, such as permitting monopolies (which Comcast is in many of its markets), I couldn't give a flying rats fucking ass what position they're in. As far as I'm concerned, they should be fined and then regulated to reduce cost to their subscribers (note: I'm not a Comcast subscriber but I have been one in the past and they are not in my market, we have Charter which is just as bad -- if not worse) for at least 15 years.

If they don't like it, they can sell off their shares and get out of the business. Make it a lose-lose-lose situation for the bastards. I'm glad that the FCC commission wasn't swayed by the money I'm sure Comcast was trying to bribe them with.

Re:Interesting...

[Docboy-J23]

I've noticed that Comcast's approach to advertising also indicates an assumption that their customers are dim bulbs and don't know what's good for them. There are at least these two types of TV commercials:

1) You, the customer, are a dim bulb and have no idea what our "Internet service" is. Just buy it. Whatever it is, we assure you that it's fast and you have no other choice.
2) Our competitors are hapless morons.

They may boil down to a couple more similar bases, but those two stand out in my mind. Moreover, telecommunications advertising is a dirty, competitive game.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which government? The cable companies are lightly managed by the federal goverment - if you don't like having only a single cable company in your community you need to go after your state and local governments. Oh, and if you are not in a tier 1 city good look trying to attract a new overbuilder. I know its not popular on this site but economics will win out - (1) companies need to make profits and (2)you ultimately decide - you can choose to not purchase from the monopolist - while I would hate life without a broadband connection I can still get food, water, air and shelter without it...

Re:Interesting...

[Yungoe]

Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.

One of the traditional problems that has stopped self-interested customers from destroying Comcast's Business model has been the fact that they are the only high-speed service available. That is changing. The moment that Verizon offered Fios to my house, we switched. So far, I have yet to hear anyone say, "We are staying with Comcast." Further, I think that the blocking issue we are discussing here is only a symptom of the broader problem, that being deplorable customer service.

Customers need not be up to speed on this particular issue. All they have to do is call the customer service department.

Re:Interesting...

[Hatta]

Moreover, telecommunications advertising is a dirty, competitive game.

Just telecommunications?

Re:Interesting...

[penguin_dance]

Yes, I think the real *crime* here is that Comcast is charging customers the same, but is not treating them the same.

Which leads to the next question: Is there a class action suit pending? Because this reminds me of the NetFlix lawsuit. It was found that Netflix (which charged a flat monthly rate for movie rentals) was purposely slowing the deliver of movies to customers who had a fast turnaround. Chavez, who filed the lawsuit claimed you really couldn't rent unlimited movies as NetFlix advertisment claims and that they purposely throttled customers back to 12 movies a month so light users got preference. NetFlix's TOS even stated this, but they lost the lawsuit anyway and the Chavez who filed got $2,000, his lawyers got $2.5 million. Customers got a 1 month free upgrade. (woo hoo)

Re:Interesting...

[CauseWithoutARebel]

A state could pass a law that prohibits you from having child pornography on your computer, but I don't think it could pass a law prohibiting that traffic from entering the state.

Pennsylvania is the most recent state I recall hearing about, but I know there have been others as well. So far, the attempts to initiate these blocks have been shut down in court battles, but if one should eventually stick, it could present some interesting challenges.

As a hypothetical, the mere existence of 4chan is not illegal, nor is it inherently illegal to access it, but it has been blocked before by ISPs - notably in Europe, but it's a potential here as well - on the grounds that the content on 4chan is not acceptable to the communities those ISPs serve.

A community or state may pass a law to block 4chan, deeming it inappropriate by the standards of the community, and this FCC ruling may wind up in contention with that blocking as the ISPs would need to notify their customers and ensure that complying with the community law wouldn't clash with the FCC's regulatory ruling.

I can see the ruling going different ways. Existing demands to block content have already been ruled on, and the ruling has been that ISPs cannot be held responsible for not delivering illicit content into a community when a member of that community is actively requesting it, but legislators are a tricky bunch and continue to try and press laws that circumvent the court's findings. This FCC ruling would seem to throw yet another wrench in the gears.

Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

With Net Neutrality being a hotly debated issue at the moment, it seems a bit forward of Martin to act on either side of the issue. Comcast has not violated the law, and while it might be against Martin's view of the FCC's "principles", it cannot be held liable for actions that are not illegal.

If he goes ahead with this action and Net Neutrality is struck down, Comcast would have a good lawsuit to bring against the FCC and Martin personally.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[nenya]

Comcast hasn't violated any federal statute per se, but the FCC enforces its regulations--and its interpretation of those regulations--just as vigorously. Your point would be better directed at the fact that the FCC hasn't done a rulemaking on net neutrality.

This, however, doesn't mean the FCC can't do this. Federal agencies frequently make rules through enforcement actions like this. The SEC does it all the time, and the FCC certainly has the ability to do so. Telling federal agencies they can't do something is largely a loser in court.

This is especially true in this case, because judges are all cable customers, and cable customers almost all hate their providers. Not the best legal reasoning, but it's served the FCC very well for the past decade. Almost every time the cable industry challenges an FCC it actions, it loses.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[daveatneowindotnet]

Yeah that'd be like a company changing their service agreement without notifying their customers.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[jeiler]

This in and of itself could be a good foundational precedent towards net neutrality. Martin's recommendation is precedent--combine that with Comcast's statement that issues with P2P throttling have "been firmly placed within the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, an administrative agency whose authority to regulate Internet broadband access companies' services is well-established."

IANAL, but it looks like Comcast has hoisted itself on its own legal petard.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[value_added]

Nicely done, but to elaborate further, the following excerpt from a better article on Ars Technica should help.

But the precedent this could set has ramifications far beyond the narrow matter of Comcast's particular throttling scheme. Should the order go through, it would send a strong signal that the "four freedoms" outlined in the policy statement have teeth behind them, that these are more than "suggestions," and that the principles of openness and consumer choice will guide the FCC's approach to broadband. In case you're one of the few who don't have the principles committed verbatim to memory, here's a recap (emphasis added):

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers

Watch out for tiger woods

[whtmarker]

It's not bittorrent comcast needs to worry about. It's Tiger Woods

Yeah, right. Unless...

[straponego]

Perhaps, Comcast, you have heard from my friend, Mr. McBribe?

These days, any time the US govt. feints in the direction of possibly enforcing a law against a large corporation (energy, oil, telecom, software, any polluter)... it can safely be considered an RFB. Request for Bribe.

If Comcast's unethical behaviour is altered for the better as a result of this, or they are at least seriously penalized, I will eat these words, and a friggin' Comcast van to boot.

Remember Sony and the rootkit scandal?

[davegravy]

Don't get too excited yet. "Penalty" could be a slap-on-the-wrist drop-in-the-bucket fine per infraction... something small enough that could reasonably be passed on to the customer.

FCC v. FTC

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this isn't entirely surprising. What we may be looking at here is less a fully-developed FCC position on net neutrality and more of a turf war between federal agencies.

Both the FCC and the FTC have expressed concern about Comcast's activities. The FCC is concerned as the federal telecommunications infrastructure regulator. The FTC is concerned as the chief consumer protection agency. The FCC really doesn't want the FTC getting in the way of regulating the Internet, which the FCC has been struggling with since the 1996 Act was first passed (you try applying what is essentially a voice communications act to any IP network, let alone all of them!). By acting now, even arguably prematurely, the FCC has essentially staked a claim to the issue, signaling to the FTC to keep away.

Re:wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

[Gewalt]

Nothing. This is another example of the Bush administration supporting their loyal Ma Bells by acting in a hostile manner towards the telco's competitors, the cable companies. This is not sudden, and it is definitely not driven by common sense.

Re:wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

[whoever57]

What made these people suddenly behave 'consumer friendly'?

Look at this, the FCC taking action --- don't look at the man behind the curtain listening to your phone calls, scanning your emails, etc. without a warrant.

Re:internet rules?

[rob1980]

There are plenty of internet rules. Don't post goatse/tubgirl pictures, don't say "first post" on a thread, don't badmouth Ron Paul, etc etc etc

Make Sure to Say Thanks!

[Waterppk]

Make sure you drop the commissioner a note to say thanks!

The problem is not addressed

[MikeRT]

Increasingly, ISPs are getting weasely with their terms of service. "Unlimited access" that's not unlimited, shafting entire protocols, etc. How about changing fair advertising laws and such to make it so that you cannot hide behind the fine print, but that you must give your customer either a print out or a web page the describes, bluntly, in itemized terms, what all of that legal gobbledeegook really means?

Of course, if you had to publish a list that most high school graduates could grok in 10 minutes or less of reading, you'd undermine the position of the lawyer-as-secular-priest, and that's just unacceptable.

You want proof that societies don't evolve? Just look at the fact that the role priests used to play has been taken over by lawyers. Where people used to take every question to the priest for divination, now it's taken to lawyers.

Re:The problem is not addressed

[u-235-sentinel]

Increasingly, ISPs are getting weasely with their terms of service. "Unlimited access" that's not unlimited, shafting entire protocols, etc. How about changing fair advertising laws and such to make it so that you cannot hide behind the fine print, but that you must give your customer either a print out or a web page the describes, bluntly, in itemized terms, what all of that legal gobbledeegook really means?

At times the company will also terminate your internet because you used too much bandwidth without telling you how much is acceptable and how much is not.

They say only .001% of their customers are cut off.... so what are the odds of two people on the same block being terminated? how about three?

Within 4 months of my family's account being terminated there were other's on our street also terminated. I'd like to take those odds to Vegas personally :-)

Oh and all of us had signed up at the same time 5 years ago when it was advertised "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee" not "Unlimited Access" which isn't the same thing.

Protocols not Illegal, Anti-competitiveness is

[bill_mcgonigle]

So, what sort of precedent might this set for other attempts to block access? Numerous states have attempted to block access, by law, to what they deem to be illegal content.

Comcast wasn't blocking illegal traffic - they were blocking traffic they felt was expensive to handle and a plausible threat to their video content business.

On the first point, I use BitTorrent every few weeks and it's always to download FLOSS. I set my upload ratio to 3 to be reasonable but helpful. There's nothing illegal about this - compare with doing a Google search for My_Favorite_Song.mp3 and downloading it over HTTP.

On the second point, the FCC has previously barred a DSL ISP (ILEC) from interfering with VOIP traffic as an anti-competitive measure.

Priests v2.0

[__aarcfd8085]

You want proof that societies don't evolve? Just look at the fact that the role priests used to play has been taken over by lawyers. Where people used to take every question to the priest for divination, now it's taken to lawyers.

Ah but you've forgotten our evolution is accelerating. All questions are directed to google.

Re:... except when you want it

[imrehg]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

One solution would be per-user bandwidth allocation - as it has been on the proposed list for ages now... Then all you have to do, is you yourself decide not to run BT when you are making a VoIP call... How hard is that? Yours is the responsibility and yours is the power to decide what is important for you, and not the ISP, which has no business whatsoever, deciding your preferences for you...

How is this not a denial of service attack?

[ajrs]

I still can't figure out how sending a forged packet is not a denial of service attack. If I started putting forged packets on Comcast's network, wouldn't they treat it as a criminal matter? Why doesn't somebody report them to the FBI?

what is going on?

[joshtheitguy]

Legal sanction and proposed disbarring for Jack Thompson, then the FCC actually moves in the direction of net neutrality completely ignoring the ideals of a large corporation.

What is going on? Did I wake up in a parallel universe this week? Are we going to die?

Won't work

[Craig Ringer]

That sounds nice, but it relies on ISPs not overselling capacity.

You can get service with ISPs that don't oversell, and actually have enough upstream bandwidth to service all their customers downloading and uploading at max speed all the time. It costs 20-30 times as much, but it's available. After all, most ISPs operate at a contention ratio of between 10:1 and 30:1, where they have enough bandwidth for 1 fully utilized connection for every 10-30 signed customers.

What might be a more reasonable compromise is for ISPs to reserve a fixed 64kbps or so per user. Even that, though, will quickly get expensive. They really need to be allowed to use QoS to provide acceptable performance for latency-sensitive applications while continuing to service bulk traffic - and doing it all cheaply.

Likely to be disappointing

[nenya]

If the FCC does move forward with this, Comcast is going to sue. Obviously.

What's likely to make this disappointing is that if the case does get to court, it is almost certainly not going to be decided on substantive grounds. The real question is one of administrative law: does the FCC's "statement of principles" constitute a legally enforcable document? The FCC can't point to a specific statutory provision that gives it what it wants. And as it classified cable modem service as an "information service"--a classification which was upheld in 2005 in the Brand-X case--Comcast is exempt from all of the Title II provisions in the Telecommunications Act, including the common carrier requirements. The FCC is going to have to rely upon its "ancillary authority" under Title I, and the question to be resolved is not whether net neutrality is a good idea but whether the FCC has the authority to do this under the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946.

Needless to say, unless you're an administrative law geek like me, this isn't going to be a very interesting case. But the FCC has largely trounced the cable industry in almost every conflict in the past ten years, so I'm optimistic.

Re:... except when you want it

[nabsltd]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

Prioritizing (i.e., QoS) is OK, but what Comcast did wasn't any sort of QoS...it was forging packets to say "please permanently disconnect". I know that some people may define cutting off connections as QoS, but it isn't. QoS implies that every connection gets to send all of its data, eventually.

Re:... except when you want it

[slashgrim]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

This is not an issue of prioritization; this is a forced destruction of undesired (by ISP standards) streams.

Besides your ISP more than likely uses hot-potato routing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-potato_routing which does its best to take the shortest path _out_ of their network regardless of increase in latency caused by taking a longer path once out of their network. Unless you have a SLA, you're getting the worst service available. Oddly, with hot-potato routing, you even have a chance of some streams taking a shorter path when the network gets more congested (depending on topology, of course).

Also, congestion is hardly an issue with modern ISPs (in the US, tax dollars funded development of new optical backbones): http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/09/65121

IMHO, if I purchase a "bulk" link, I expect all traffic to be treated equally and the ISP to not cancel streams. I do like you're idea of users flagging traffic as bulk but wonder about the implementation, incentive and enforcement details.