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Comcast Appeals FCC's Net Neutrality Ruling
Ian Lamont writes "Comcast has filed a court appeal of an FCC ruling that says the company can't delay peer-to-peer traffic on its network because it violates FCC net neutrality principles. A Comcast VP said the FCC ruling is 'legally inappropriate,' but said it will abide by the order during the appeal while moving forward with its plan to cap data transfers at 250 GB per month."
Comcast is the worst of the worst. But I'm over a barrel. DSL in my area is way too slow/unreliable. And the hassle of changing to Dish too ugly to contemplate. Those pinheads could make a lot more profit if they'd quit spending so much money on those crappy commercials they've been running for months. Bad puns, unfunny and annoying. (Like my cousin.)
.nosig
Anyone that has read my comments for awhile will know that I tried to point this out months ago, and got flamed for it basically.
The problem with letting Comcast or any ISP that also provides content do anything to shape or filter traffic is that there is no oversight on how they will do this to their advantage. In this case, anything that limits your video usage/sharing in favor of using their video delivery systems is an unfair advantage. This is exactly why bundling 3 or more services together is a bad idea for the consumer... very bad idea.
If Comcast is allowed to mess with traffic on their ISP services, they WILL do so in a way that favors their other services and content. I don't believe there are any scientific studies on the probability of this happening, but you won't find many people (or rocks, walls, monkeys etc) that will tell you that it's unlikely that a big corporation will act unethically if given the chance to do so when nobody is watching.
As in the case of P2P forged packets, they will do whatever they can get away with. Comcast is, and has shown themselves to be an unethical company. period. They should not be trusted. Class actions suits should follow shortly.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Would you like to have the electricity cut off at your house when you go over some amount in a month?
Right now, that limit may very well be enough for you, but what will happen in a year or so?
Returning to the electricity analogy, the power company sets the limit to a value they determine in let's say September, at a house where two old people live.
Everything's fine but summer comes and you turn air conditioning on, or maybe you have a kid and the kid starts watching tv 6 hours a day. Or maybe you start working from home instead of working at the office.
Once you accept limits and restrictions, the only way it's towards more restrictions and limitations.
The thing that has me curious is why they haven't been taken to court over this.
It seems to me that forging packets is both a form of communication interception, and impersonation. Which should be landing them in hot water with a number of state and federal laws.
Safe Harbor, not common carrier, is what protects Comcast as per the DMCA and the CDA.
Common carrier is a completely different concept that affects telcos, not cable companies.
Modifying TCP streams--however repugnant--does not automatically mean the ISP is liable for the content that traverses its network. That's the law, like it or not.
they have begun monitoring and demonstrating preference for and against certain content crossing their lines. That, under the DMCA, removes all safe harbor protections.
Where is the MAFIAA when you actually WANT them to sue someone?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This is what I thought of first, too.
Comcast has the FCC wrapped around the idea that it's -slowing- P2P traffic, that it's packet-shaping or throttling P2P. I would be totally fine if they just did that, it's their network, and it -should- be prioritizing VoIP, ICMP, interactive services, browsing, and file transfers (in that order) over P2P. What they are doing is -NOT- throttling, QoS, packetshaping, or whatever you want to call it, they are actively mangling the IP protocol to -drop- connections, making P2P actually unusable.
I'm a Cox customer, and they have a Sandvine appliance that does the same thing. I -cannot use bittorrent-. It's not that bittorrent is slow, or that they put it at a lower priority than my neighbor's porno, they -actually prevent it from working at all-.
The documents and PR I've seen from Comcast all seem to indicate that they are 'managing' the traffic, not 'mangling' it and the FCC has responded as if they were QoS'ing P2P.
Either the FCC doesn't understand what's really happening 'on the ground' here, or Comcast itself has a disconnect between Management and Network Management.*
*I worked somewhere once where there was a seriously overzealous network guy who would throttle services and block things at random. He always said he wasn't when I went to the boss and complained, but when I actually got access to the Packetshaper configs, I could see that he was in fact blocking and throttling services, except on his own machines and the boss'. I've been paranoid ever since.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Or better yet file a case in court asking it to throttle your payments to comcast: If comcast throttles your connection speed to a lower level for 20 mins, you can throttle your payment to a lower rate calculated exclusively by you for 20 mins. (say 8Mbps DSL costs $100 a month unlimited; that works out to 2 cents a minute. If the speed drops down to 15Kbps for 20 mins each day for 30 days it amounts to 8/100*0.0015*(600).
State to small-claims court that comcast is violating a contract by "damaging" goods: so you want to pay only for correctly arrived goods. Comcast's high-powered lawyers can't do shit here.
Get a court order allowing you not to pay for damaged goods: then apply your own definition of damaged goods and send off a payment you calculate along with the court order: If comcast refuses to accept the same, they are in violation of a court order: in which case you can "demand" they fulfill their contract. If they accept, then you have set a precedent.
Either way you win.
Use ingenuity instead of anger: corporates do the same. Logical, emotionless, greedy: be like them. Play them at their own game with a home advantage=Small claims court.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer