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FCC Votes To Punish Comcast
MaineCoasts brings news that three out of the five FCC commissioners have voted in favor of punishing Comcast for their P2P throttling practices. The investigation of Comcast has been underway since January, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin made clear their conclusion a couple weeks ago. Ars Technica has coverage as well, noting:
"The initial report on the vote said nothing about which way Republican commissioners McDowell and Tate might lean. FCC watchers wouldn't be at all surprised to see both vote against the order; the really interesting moment could come if they support it. Having four or even five commissioners support the order would send a strong bipartisan signal to ISPs that they need to take great care with any sort of discriminatory throttling based on anything more specific than a user's total bandwidth."
Yea, when I am running torrents what Comcast does to me is make it so I drop like 30-80% of all (not just torrent) of my packets every 5-10 minutes, then it comes back up (tested via pings). My torrents are still blazing fast when I actually have a connection. All I do is spoof my router's MAC to a random number, release and renew my IP (to chick they give me a new one) and my internet works PERFECT for 2 days until they start the process over again. Annoying, but it's amazing they are so stupid they won't associate my IP with my MODEMS MAC instead of the router/PC. BTW, If I shut off my torrents after getting a new IP, I *never* need to reset the MAC as they never force me to drop packets.
adventure-today.com
The FCC are yes men/women.
They're only doing this so Comcast doesnt have to look like the bad guy, when they lower their bandwidth per month usage. This is so they can say "Well the FCC wont let us throttle P2P users, so we're going to raise prices for high bandwidth users, and cut bandwidth for everyone at the current rate"
The government would never do anything to hurt a corporation.
No it isn't legal. They deliberately forged messages ( RST packages ) that were sent over the phone lines. That is a federal crime.
Yes, I've heard that theory, but it's a huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that forged packets are some sort of illegal impersonation. I don't like what Comcast did, but I also don't like using abusing unrelated laws.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
If you sell something you don't own (bandwidth), then it's your fault, not the buyers.
What's really needed is QoS. You get X MB per month of high quality, Y MB per month at medium quality and Z MB (maybe z=inf) at low quality, and a final unlimited lowest quality, throttled down to something quite small.
Your app sets the QoS level it wants (eg voip sets high quality). When you run out of the quality level set, traffic automatically gets demoted to the next one you have. Or, you can buy more a la carte.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
RIGHT!
If you shut down torrents, what else do you shutdown next??? Do you stop the NetFlix pipe because it competes with your own or business partner offerings!??!!?
No!
And that's what this enforcement sends a message about-- net neutrality must remain.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I know it won't be anything like this; but I have this wonderful image of Comcast's CEO's face smashing into the hood of his limo as they slap the cuffs on and take him away...
Your sense of legality and illegality are the crux for a need to understand more than I can explain in this forum. Competition means unfettered pipes, which is what the FCC is ostensibly punishing Comcast for-- non-"net neutrality".
And I haven't been called kid in over 40 years!
Additionally, after 14 books, and heaven-only-knows how many articles I've written, I've discovered that my choice of communications is my own, and those that would not understand emphasis via punctuation are looney. Two days ago, it was my choice of the word gendarme-- meaning policeman. Someone believed that the only correct use had to do with syntax connoting only French and only military policing.... all here on /.
You're entitled to your opinion, but not your facts. There.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Comcast in fact has claimed that the FCC in fact does not have authority to regulate the Internet. See its filing with the FCC regarding this, and its followup here.
The recent decision in CBS v. FCC (the "wardrobe malfunction" case) may also bear on this decision. The court struck down the FCC's ruling against CBS, saying that the FCC couldn't just make up the rules as it went along! Normally, the FCC promulgates rules by posting a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking," takes comments, and only then creates rules (which are set out in writing before anyone can be cited for a violation).
But in this case, the FCC published only a vague and explicitly nonbinding "policy statement," on which the public had no chance to comment at all. And it's now trying to say, "Fooled ya! You believed us when we said that it was nonbinding, but we're retroactively turning it into a set of hard and fast rules so that we can take a swipe at Comcast. Why? Because we want to, that's why."
Worse still, that policy statement had several serious problems. For example, it required that Internet users be allowed to run the "application of their choice." While politicians may not graspthe full implications of this, the readers of Slashdot, as computer geeks, know how dangerous this could be. An "application" (a computer program which is not an operating system) encodes and embodies behavior â" any behavior at all that the author wants. And anyone can write one. So, insisting that an ISP allow a user to run any application means that anyone can program his or her computer to behave any way at all â" no matter how destructively â" on the network, and the ISP is not allowed to intervene. In short, such a requirement means that no network provider can have an enforceable Acceptable Use Policy or Terms of Service. Port scanning? The ISP has to allow it, even if it's a prelude to an attack, because it's not illegal. Better turn off all of the intrusion detection systems which detect and block port scans! Exploits? If they haven't been declared to be outright illegal, they are "applications" and so you must not block them. Anyone who engages in destructive behavior, hogs bandwidth, or even takes down the network with an intentionally or unintentionally destructive program could just say, "I was running an application⦠and I have the right to run any application I want, so you canâ(TM)t stop me."
Great work, FCC.
Now, imagine yourself as the administrator of a school network, a public hotspot, an ISP, or any other network which provides service to the public. Someone is doing something disruptive. Your users are complaining; quality of service has deteriorated. But if you act, and especially if you focus on the destructive behavior by detecting the rogue application and attempting to block it and not others (so that legitimate traffic can still get through), you would be subject to FCC fines and penalties.
The above conundrum is but one example of why any proposed rules or regulations pertaining to the Internet should be presented to the public for comment as part of a formal rulemaking process. The FCC is not only regulating what Congress, in its own policy statement, said should not be regulated. (If the FCC makes a policy statement, and Congress makes one, the one made by Congress obviously trumps the FCC's.) The Congressional policy is laid out at 47 USC 230(b), and it says:
It is the policy of the United Statesâ"
(1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media;
(2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet an