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Comcast Pays Out $16M In P2P Throttling Suit
eldavojohn writes "Comcast has settled out of court to the tune of $16 million in one of several ongoing P2P throttling class action lawsuits. You may be eligible for up to $16 restitution if 'you live in the United States or its Territories, have a current or former Comcast High-Speed Internet account, and either used or attempted to use Comcast service to use the Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FastTrack or Gnutella P2P protocols at any time from April 1, 2006 to December 31, 2008; and/or Lotus Notes to send emails any time from March 26, 2007 to October 3, 2007.' $16 million seems low. And it's too bad this was an out-of-court settlement instead of a solid precedent-setting decision for your right to use P2P applications. The settlement will probably not affect the slews of other Comcast P2P throttling suits, and it's unclear whether it will placate the FCC."
Not only that, but it basically immunizes them against further lawsuits on the issue. Sometimes, I think some of these class action suits are the result of a collaboration between the companies and some lawyers. The lawyers get a big payday, the companies get immunity from anymore lawsuits, and the consumer gets screwed.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
PPalmgren's suggestion is certainly worth investigating, but have you tried throttling your upload speed on your client? I had some serious problems until I cut way back on my upload speed and that made things calm down. I have no issues with downloading as fast as possible, but things start to get very bad for me if I allow the default unlimited speed on uploads. I have AT&T and not Comcast, but maybe you might look into that and see if it makes any difference.