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Comcast Customers Urged To Opt-Out of Settlement
funchords writes "As a settlement to the class-action lawsuits over Comcast's blocking of users' Internet traffic, Comcast stands to pay 'up to' $16.00 to every subscriber who makes a claim at their settlement website and declares, under penalty of perjury, that their online activity was for a lawful purpose consistent with applicable copyright and other laws. Robb Topolski, the veteran networking engineer who kicked off the case when he discovered the blocking back in 2007, says that the proposed settlement doesn't make sense, especially after the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled this month that the US Federal Communications Commission didn't have the authority to enforce its Net neutrality principles on Comcast. 'You paid about $50 a month for the service, and the amount that Comcast stands to return is up to about 50c per month for each month that it blocked traffic,' he wrote. 'If that tiny amount of money is compensation, then there is no penalty to Comcast for interfering with its customers, for failing to disclose it, for repeatedly lying about it, and for taking so long to stop it.' The Associated Press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in late 2007, each independently confirmed Topolski's reports that Comcast was blocking BitTorrent and some other traffic without telling its customers. Comcast first denied interfering with traffic, then finally said it throttled some applications only during times of peak congestion. However, studies from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany eventually proved that Comcast slowed BitTorrent traffic around the clock."
I haven't read any of the relevant articles, but the summary doesn't say anyone is urging anyone to opt-out of the settlement. Better headlines, please?
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Oh Luxury!! I do not have that option if I want high speed internet.
thrice a pittance is still a pittance.
And when you factor in the legal fees, it becomes clear that class action lawsuits are not really ever beneficial to the class.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I get that the courts ruled that the FCC can't mandate how ISP route their traffic. They can't enforce net neutrality.
But, in this case we had the ISP injecting packets to cause end user software to abort a communication. Last I checked, man in the middle attacks that interfere with network communications was worthy of felony hacking charges. So what is Comcast geting off so easy?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If only that were possible where I live.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Oh Luxury!! I do not have that option if I want high speed internet.
You can't eat your cake and have it too. Either Comcast pisses you off enough that you don't sign up with them (and yes, you go without high speed net access) or their behavior doesn't bother you enough to prevent you from entering a contract with them. Sometimes standing by what you believe in means doing without something you want.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
WTF? So basically, you are implying that I move out from where I live? High speed internet is absolute necessity for me for the work I do.
That is why damages should be separate from legal fees. This would give incentive to settle early if you know you are going to settle. Since a corporation is a legal entity and if you sue me you can get damages plus legal fees, why do corporations get a free pass?
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
Looks like English to me, although I'm not sure who this Never chap is, nor why we should care that he, she, or it understood class action lawsuits.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What if you came home one day and someone had taken a shit in the middle of your living room floor, and there was a note next to it: "Fuck you, courtesy of The Comcast Corporation"
Would you stop buying their product then?
WTF? So basically, you are implying that I move out from where I live? High speed internet is absolute necessity for me for the work I do.
You're a porn critic?
This makes sense when you actually have an open market with competition.
Let's follow your logic, "Well if you don't like it, don't use it". I need high speed internet to work. "Well if you don't like it find a new job." I have the job I have to afford my mortgage. "Well if you don't like it, move."
So I would actually need to abandon my mortgage and find a new career because a cable company has a state approved service monopoly in the area but isn't treated like the public service utility it should be in order to garner those protections. It's a whole lot deeper than "Well if you don't like it, don't use it." in this day and age.
Same here. But I use a wireless card instead of paying money to those bastards. Yes, even Sprint is better than Comcast.
Now I have to go brush my teeth for mentioning either of those names.
Not the greatest speed, but there are options:
HughesNet
WildBlue
I dropped them as soon as DSL moved in. This was followed by Clear moving in. The Comcast claim form does ask if you are a current subscriber. It looks like they are going to see the numbers of ex-Comcast customers in the claims. There is not a box to explain why you are no longer a customer.
When I installed Ubuntu, I attempted to remove the Transmission Bittorrent client, but found that is tied into the system updates so removal was highly discouraged. I used to get my distro updates using Bittorrent, but had to move to mirrors of FTP sites even though that is discouraged due to the cost of hosting FTP for the software upgrades.
I Filled out the online form. We will see what happens. When Bittorrent was broken, I tried to D/L some copyrighted material just to see what it did. It started and quickly ground to a crawl then stopped. The amount uploaded was always less then the ammount downloaded, and downloads never completed.
If you have kids at home, Comcast protecting you against RIAA lawsuits can be a good thing.
Incomplete files will never have a matching checksum of a real copyrighted file.
The truth shall set you free!
And they know this, and why it is such BS they can get away with it.
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
Well, I would probably just file a charge of trespassing, breaking and entering, vandalism or whatever it's called.
Same as in this case, when it should be possible to file a charge of fraud. Or a complaint over truth-in-advertising laws. The self-regulating nature of free markets depends on accurate information propagation. The muddier information gets the greater the power disequilibrium, and the less consumer demands are met.
Yeah, I know, "good luck with that".
What's wrong with Sprint?
While that would be ideal, unfortunately if we all refuse to do business with any company we find objectionable we would end up living naked in a cave. Too bad that's illegal.
You could buy the property and do that, but then you'd have to deal with the extremely unethical finance industry (the real welfare queens) and somehow get a job to pay for it that doesn't involve doing business with the unethical telecoms industry or the unethical petroleum industry.
So the settlement doesn't make Comcast pay out enough money, so everybody should opt out, so Comcast gets to pay nothing?
Breakfast served all day!
...who believes that bandwidth leeches (yes, you know who you are) should be capped? There are always those that push the envelope in any situation. Bandwidth leeches belong to that group. I would bet (totally anecdotal here) that the number of bandwidth leeches that are in the top 5% of bandwidth usage comprise only a few percentage points of Comcast subscribers. Why is it a loss to those of us who play nice with others when the few greedy subscribers are throttled?
It sounds like you don't have the option for high speed Internet anyway, then.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
From the settlement website: How do I exclude myself from the Settlement Class? If you do not wish to be a Settlement Class Member, you may exclude yourself by writing to the Claims Administrator. You must provide your full name and address, state that you want to opt out of the Settlement, and deliver your request by mail, hand, or overnight delivery service to the P2P Congestion Settlement Claims Administrator, c/o Rust Consulting, P.O. Box 9454, Minneapolis, MN 55440-9454. Your request must be postmarked no later than May 13, 2010. http://p2pcongestionsettlement.com/SettlementNotice.htm
Wrong. That wasn't the ruling. That was the sensationalist headline put out by all the news outlets to get ad viewers. Read the commission statement regarding that case: http://www.fcc.gov/ogc/ The court merely invalidated one of the enforcement methods the FCC was using.
Only the reception, pricing, throttling, and the fact their stuff stops working whenever we have a hurricane. $60 a month is a bit strong too especially when I had to purchase the modem. They frequently halt bandwidth flow for minutes at a time (signal strength is good during these times and disconnecting / reconnecting solves the problem temporarily). Unfortunately they're the chosen vendor for now.
I could tell you they blocked Legit p2p traffic 24/7 because I was trying to download vmware player iso's just to see what they were talking about. I wanted to see if they were a good solution what I did. I guess preventing someone from working isn't that important.
Only the reception, pricing, throttling,... They frequently halt bandwidth flow for minutes at a time...
Wait, how did you find out they did all this? Did they tell you up front? If so, then kudos to you for sticking by your principles.
If not, then it just seems to me like you're shooting yourself in the foot by giving more money to bastards who continue to do what some other bastards got caught doing and were forced to stop.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Nah, he's the performer.
By allowing ISP's to offer "Unlimited Internet Access" and then failing to hold them to that; verbatim from the very beginning, is what set the pace for them to dictate exactly how they want to define that phrase.
unlimited –adjective
1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.
Obviously, they've been allowed the use of an alternate-reality dictionary that has not been made available to the general public.
If only that were possible where I live.
It is always possible to no sign up for Comcast. Simply don't do it. Of course, you may be too addicted or otherwise obsessed with LOLCATZ or whatever to *want* to do without what Comcast gives you. :)
In Nature, stupidity is a capital offense. In human society, too many get off with less than a warning.
I heard it coming and braced myself against it, for I had something to shout in its general direction.
ACTION REQUIRED - IMPORTANT: To opt-out from the settlement, simply write "I want to opt-out of the settlement" along with your name and address and mail it by May 13th to: P2P Congestion Settlement Claims Administrator; c/o Rust Consulting; P.O. Box 9454; Minneapolis, MN 55440-9454. Ask your friends to please do the same. If we want a meaningful settlement in this case and open Internet in our future, it's important to spread the word and send a strong message to Comcast and the industry.
CAPS LOCK IS THE CRUISE CONTROL OF AWESOMNESS
You're trying to invoke the "if you don't like them then don't buy their service" argument. This is the greatest part of the free market. Companies that provide shitty products (like comcast) go out of business because everyone has moved to the better companies. There are two problems with this:
1. There is no free market in terms of high speed internet. There are only one or two providers at any given location in most of the United States.
2. Even if there are many companies, they all want to adopt the same "throttle bandwidth and fuck users" strategy. They've learned that if they all do it then consumers have no incentive to switch because provider X is just as shitty as provider Y.
Internet is a critical service (no, it's not a luxury, maybe YOU can perform your job duties with dial up but some of us REQUIRE high speed access to perform critical tasks for our jobs/school) so 90% of consumers can't use the "vote with your wallet" approach. The lack of proper regulation (net neutrality, no throttling) allows companies to take the "free" out of the "free market".
Really this is one of the problems with the free market. The free market, by definition, allows for things like monopolies buying out every competitor and companies colluding together. But those things are, by definition, not a free market. There's a paradox that must be solved with proper regulation.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Actually, quite often, it is not. And dialup is just fine for LOLCAT viewing, if that's really your thing.
On the other hand, if your job requires that you be able to move data at a reasonable rate, you have to have high speed. And in a lot of areas, that's Comcast, Comcast, or Comcast.
Let's quit with the "free market" garbage here. If we really had a free market, where Comcast was but one of many high speed providers in most areas (and at least some of the providers weren't pulling stunts like this), you'd have a point. As it is, a good lot of us don't.
Now, if we can go back to required line sharing, and actually enforce that with some teeth, so that there is real competition, I'm all for it. But that's not the case now. Generally, one or at most two providers have a monopoly of a given area.
The reason that telephone companies are so heavily regulated is that they provide a critical infrastructure service and generally are effectively local monopolies. The telephone company cannot, for example, block or degrade calls to the local public utility commission that accepts complaints about it. It must carry all traffic equally, except that it may prioritize traffic to emergency numbers.
Ironically, with the proliferation of cellular services, regular old telephone companies have more competition and less monopoly power than they used to, while ISPs are often in that very position they used to occupy. There's no reason that the ISPs should not be subject to the same types of rules-no blocking, no deliberately prioritizing stuff you want people to use or degrading the stuff you'd rather they not. Dumb pipe only-you sell people the pipe to put through it what they will, and if you need to upgrade your system to meet newer demands, then get to building.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Exactly...
A lot of people only have 1 Provider to choose from. In such cases the "Use a different provider" (or "Don't like it, dont use it") comments really do not work.
~7-8 years back I only had Cox Communications for internet speeds above dial-up. It was horrible. Terrible. Frightening. However, it was the only high speed choice.
For 2 Years I ran with a back up dial up connection to make sure I could still get online when service went out (which it frequently did from 5pm-9pm).
Thankfully, because I live outside DC, we eventually had new people move in and competition ensued. I swapped companies and had much better service (as in Internet service, not customer service -- i never had to call them!) and eventually FIOS moved in... I now have high quality reliable service.
When the monopoly existed it was crap. After the monopoly broke the service improved dramatically....
I'd say that's a win for consumers.
They want my account number to file or opt out of the claim, but at the bottom it says "DO NOT CONTACT COMCAST OR THE COURT FOR INFORMATION." It's been years since I used their shitty internet, how am I supposed to remember my account number?
the free market fairy solves all problems and is always superior to public solutions
Are you seriously claiming that the US broadband market is an example of the free market at work?
Comcast is getting off easy because the attorney's bringing the suit were bribed with $3 million dollars and decided they would take the money and let Comcast continue to deny that they interfered with their customer's traffic. That also makes the summary inaccurate, not only did they at first deny they were blocking traffic, but the class action suit legal papers still deny that they were blocking traffic.