No Pirate Bay for Comcast Customers

An anonymous reader writes with a PC World article, according to which "The Pirate Bay is unavailable for customers of Comcast, even as the torrent site remains online for other users. Problems began early Thursday morning, when several Comcast users told TorrentFreak that they were having issues with The Pirate Bay. Commenters at Techland and Engadget are confirming that they can't access the site." Right now, I'm on a Comcast connection in Pennsylvania, and get an "Ooops, could not connect" message when I try to reach The Pirate Bay.

Comments

Inevitable

[Jaysyn]

And so the building of the Comcast/NBC walled garden begins.

Re:Inevitable

[Seumas]

It's a good thing we don't have revolving doors between corporations and the government committees that regulate them. Otherwise we might have FCC Commissioners working in the FCC and then being rewarded by employment by the companies they were regulating, like going to work for NBC/Comcast. Oh, oops.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/regulator-to-join-comcast-after-ok-of-nbc-deal/2011/05/11/AFSSl6zG_story.html

Re:Inevitable

[Asklepius M.D.]

I'm confused. You say that net neutrality legislation is likely to make actions like the blocking of TPB happen, and yet it HAS happened in the current non-regulated environment. If that's true, it makes more sense to advocate for net neutrality which only has a possibility of promoting such events rather than advocating the status quo in which such events are guaranteed (have actually occurred). Of course there is the third option - that you have a brilliant alternative to net neutrality that will solve this dilemma, in which case please present your solution for peer review.

Re:Inevitable

[Andy Dodd]

It may be a generic unintentional routing failure. Proxies cause a different route to be used.

It's not like TPB is perfect - it was down for me for 2-3 days straight last a week or two ago (ISP is Time Warner RoadRunner) but has since returned

Re:Inevitable

[PopeRatzo]

Yep. That's what happens when you have unconstitutional federal regulations

Why you filthy, lying, ignorant son of a bitch. You dare to claim that Comcast/NBC is blocking websites because of a government regulation instead of because of simple greed, trying to get people locked into their own sources of content?

"Net Neutrality", which is a government regulation is the only way to prevent stuff like this from happening. I'm betting you know all this.

The power to protect = the power to take away

Really? Did you make up that poetic little couplet yourself? You know goddamn well that if the internet is NOT protected, if they let the broadband providers into the content-providing business, if they let broadband providers decide which websites you can visit and which ones you can't, The Internet as you know it is going away for sure. You're going to lose the ability to choose whichever web site you view. When Comcast starts its own movie streaming website, you think they're still going to let customers go to Netflix and get the same speeds as their own service?

There are two possibilities here: 1) You are stupid and 2) you are stupid, dishonest and working to spread lies.

Re:Inevitable

[PopeRatzo]

Don't bother, the anonymous troll you are responding to isn't looking for a discussion, he's here to spread lies and FUD about Net Neutrality, most likely as a astroturfer doing piece-work for the broadband provider lobby.

The thing that makes me think that he's a paid astroturfer instead of an ignorant troll is that his lies were very specific and exactly the opposite of the truth. You get his little message out and certain low-information citizens start repeating "Yeah, that awful Net Neutrality will give all the power to broadband providers to create a multi-tier Internet". It's the Fox News approach. Make the lie really really big and say it really really loud, over and over until the dumbfucks know it by heart and start thinking "It's gotta be true because they wouldn't be able to say it on TV if it weren't true, they'd get sued, right? So if nobody's suing Fox News, then everything they say must be the Truth!""

Re:Inevitable

[anyGould]

Of course, I found out right away that they DO have a bandwidth cap, 250gb per month. My account page has a meter on it.

So, did you call back and ask why your uncapped account has a cap? Pointing out that you did ask repeatedly and were assured there was no cap? Asking them to dig out the call recording (y'know, "for quality assurance purposes") to confirm that you were told that there was no cap?

Or, in short - did you actually do anything about it besides complaining here?

Re:Comast has allready sad

[Palmsie]

Then this will be the first time Comcast has ever lied. >

Re:Way to be slow on the draw

[Nemyst]

Why? Because it's almost certain the "anonymous reader" happens to be staff at PC World, just like all those InfoWorld submissions that always come from staff there.

Re:It's not just Comcast

[MoonBuggy]

Perhaps. Didn't Comcast claim not to be sending reset packets on P2P traffic, too, though? They don't exactly have goodwill to spare or a reputation for honesty.

Re:Comast has allready sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.

Time to put that to the test:

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights — I don't know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate.
--Carl Sagan

Re:Internet Censorship begins with Comcast

[KingSkippus]

...Except that Comcast is a goverment-established monopoly in many areas. Don't believe me? Try to get a fast upstream connection and set up your own networks for people to connect to. You will either be 1) immediately shut down by the government or 2) sued out of existence by the major network providers.

This just emphasizes YET AGAIN the importance of net neutrality laws. We absolutely, positively MUST force network providers to be just that--dumb pipes--and nothing more*.

*Unless you specifically ask them not to be; for example, I wouldn't be opposed to Comcast providing a premium "parent-friendly" tier of service where they agree to block sites for you if you want, or a "custom priority" tier where you can set up QoS settings to make sure traffic you deem important gets through, that kind of thing. Though I wouldn't subscribe to such services, it should be well within their rights to offer.

I said it before and I'll say it again...

[rsilvergun]

stop voting Republican. Even if the Dems want to do something there's always enough Repubs to filibuster it into oblivion. You'd think after 30 years of declining wages for middle class and skyrocketing wages for the rich, people would learn...

Re:I said it before and I'll say it again...

[swb]

When it comes to Hollywood and media, who do you think they support? The Democrats are deeply in bed with Hollywood.

Re:I said it before and I'll say it again...

[rsilvergun]

Hollywood can keep their movies if I can have back my rising wages, health care and retirement. Seems like a fair trade.