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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."
Oh Luxury!! I do not have that option if I want high speed internet.
Dear Fellow ‘Netizens, I’m writing to urge Comcast subscribers to opt-out of the proposed P2P Congestion Settlement between Comcast Corporation and its customers (http://p2pcongestionsettlement.com/). There are huge problems with the deal, but it only takes you a minute to reject it.
Robb Topolski is urging people to opt-out in the InfoWorld summary.
"If people reject the settlement, they are freed from the restrictions of this settlement and can sue independently or join any other action," Topolski said in an email. "If enough people reject the settlement, it sends a strong message that the class of people that this settlement was intended to represent are dissatisfied."
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.
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.
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?
but $16/per isn't exactly a hefty penalty.. so if that's "all they had to pay" vs building out their infrastructure.. they will continue to take the lawsuits. $16 settlement is comcast taking their subscribers out to lunch. once. ...look at it this way. how many people have to die/get injured before an auto manufacturer issues a recall? it's cheaper for them to pay settlement(s) than recall X number of cars. they won't fix the problem until the cost of the lawsuits exceeds the cost of a recall.
they should have been forced to refund all the subscription fees they collected while they were throttling.
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.
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".
I'm a bandwidth leech.
I get games from steam. I watch netflix movies. I use xbox live. I watch hulu. I surf the web and use other various high bandwidth applications.
Those are all high bandwidth services which saturate my Internet connection.
I usually am online at least 12 hours a day.
I pay for Internet access, I pay for those services. I don't see the problem.
The problem comcast sees is that I download several GB per day and my content doesn't come from them. I use the access I pay for.
I prefer my content come from elsewhere. Comcast's conflict of interest isn't being taken seriously.
Why should I be throttled for legally consuming content?
They're using their grammar skills there.
No matter how you argue it, the problem still lies with the ISP. They sell an internet connection with "unlimited data" and start complaining when you actually use it - even worse, they start secretly throttling the connection.
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