Slashdot Mirror


Comcast Kisses-Up To Obama, Publicly Agrees On Net Neutrality

MojoKid writes Comcast is one of two companies to have earned Consumerist's "Worst Company in America" title on more than one occasion and it looks like they're lobbying for a third title. That is, unless there's another explanation as to how the cable giant can claim (with straight face) that it's in agreement with President Barack Obama for a free and open Internet. Comcast issued a statement of its own saying they back the exact same things, it just doesn't want to go the utility route. Comcast went on to list specific bullet points that they're supposedly in wholehearted agreement with, such as: Free and open Internet. We agree — and that is our practice. No blocking. We agree — and that is our practice. No throttling. We agree — and that is our practice. Increased transparency. We agree — and that is our practice. No paid prioritization. We agree — and that is our practice. Really? Comcast conveniently fails to address the giant elephant in the room whose name is Netflix. Earlier this year, Netflix begrudgingly inked a multi-year deal with Comcast in which the streaming service agreed to pay a toll to ensure faster delivery into the homes of Comcast subscribers, who prior to the deal had been complaining of frequent buffering and video degradation when watching content on Netflix. Comcast would undoubtedly argue that it's not a paid fast lane, but it's hard to see the deal as anything other than that.

8 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. Bullshit by jsepeta · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comcast throttled me. Fuck them.

    --
    Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
  2. Re:Private Links != Paid Priority by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...Netflix traffic gets no special priority once it's on the internal network....

    The problem with Netflix was not whether or not Netflix gets special priority once on Comcast's network.

    .
    The problem with Netflix was Comcast allowing its edge router to saturate, thus effectively throttling Netflix traffic until Netflix started paying Comcast for a private link.

  3. Re:Private Links != Paid Priority by andydread · · Score: 2, Informative

    You miss the fucking elephant in the room. Comcast has failed to upgrade their peering points so video traffic suffers as a result forcing VOD sites to pay Cuntcast for a direct link. You know better so...Fuck you.

  4. Re:Private Links != Paid Priority by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Not to mention it was affecting other, non-Neflix users as reported

    http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/30/1821257/first-detailed-data-analysis-shows-exactly-how-comcast-jammed-netflix

  5. Re:Window Dressing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    How many Republican votes did that awful piece of garbage pick up in the senate? Zero! How can you reason that the ACA was caving in to republicans when none of them voted for it? The reason why we got the crap that we did was to get the moderates of his own party on board, which they almost failed to do anyway (see Nebraska). They never would have agreed to a single-payer system, and this was the best they could do to try to get coverage for everybody.

  6. Bullshit. by khasim · · Score: 4, Informative

    Anyone who believes that buying private links into a providers network is the same as your traffic getting paid priority knows jack shit about network ops.

    The Fallacy of Equivocation.

    You've substituted the more specific network-jargon "priority" for the usage of "priority".

    Once Netflix PAID Comcast then Comcast gave Netflix PRIORITY access to the Comcast network. The PRIORITY access means bypassing the choke point that Netflix was previously restricted to.

    No one is saying that Comcast changed the QoS or priority of individual Netflix packets. But that is what you are denying.

    Now I'm sure a bunch of people (who are not network engineers) are going to argue over the wording and philosophy as to whether or not buying paid links into a providers network constitutes priority or not. It's not.

    Again, you are substituting a more specific network-jargon usage of "priority" that no one other than you is using.

    And you are denying something that no one else is claiming.

    That is the Fallacy of Equivocation.

    The only difference that buying direct links in meant was that they got to skip the congestion in the peering points.

    Which is what everyone, except you, is saying.

    Once Netflix paid Comcast, Comcast users could suddenly get better access to Netflix.

    But Comcast refused to do anything to address that congestion UNTIL NETFLIX PAID THEM.

  7. Re:Window Dressing. by penix1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    How can you reason that the ACA was caving in to republicans when none of them voted for it? The reason why we got the crap that we did was to get the moderates of his own party on board, which they almost failed to do anyway (see Nebraska). They never would have agreed to a single-payer system, and this was the best they could do to try to get coverage for everybody.

    Where were you when they were drafting the act? The reason we got what we got was the Republicans were given an equal footing at the drafting table. There were 6 Democrats and 6 Republicans drafting it in the false belief that if they had a hand in making it they would support it. The reason it almost failed the Senate was totally Harry Reid's failure to take Mitch McConnell at his word to "make sure that President Obama was a one term president" and use the "nuclear option" to fix the filibuster rule at the start of that session. Even to this day it still hasn't been fixed.

    The only reason the Republicans are fighting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the FULL title of the act) is their fear it will be as popular as Social Security and the fact that President Obama was backing it (at that stage I argue he would have backed anything that had a positive effect on the broken healthcare system we still have).

    The insurance companies are against it because it requires 80% of the premiums be spent on healthcare while trying to eliminate the arbitrary denials. The doctors don't like it because it requires them to be more transparent and stop unnecessary tests that only line their pockets. It also cracks down on the waste, fraud and abuse by hospitals. So that is why they are against it.

    Meanwhile, millions of Americans now have some form of healthcare that they could never get before.

    --
    This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
  8. Re:Window Dressing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    That is a fucking lie!

    The republicans were never given "equal footing when drafting the bill".

    The democrats locked them out of the room! That fucked up healthcare reform is 100% democrat ownership. You own it bitch!