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Comcast, Pando Partner For "P2P Bill of Rights"

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Apr 21, 2008 05:09 PM
from the until-we-figure-out-a-sneakier-way-of-doing-it dept.
The Internet Businesses
Bibek Paudel writes "Comcast on Tuesday announced that it would partner with Pando Networks to create a P2P bill of rights for file-sharing networks and Internet service providers. Comcast and Pando will meet with industry experts, other ISPs, and P2P companies in order to come up with a set of rules that would clarify how a user can use P2P applications and how an ISP can manage file-sharing programs running on their networks. Last month, Comcast announced that it had reached an agreement with BitTorrent whereby Comcast agreed to alter its network management practices, and BitTorrent acknowledged that Comcast has the right to police its own network. Comcast's battle with P2P networks started last year after the Associated Press published an article that accused Comcast of blocking peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent. Comcast admitted to delaying P2P traffic during peak times, but denied that any file-sharing applications were being completely blocked."
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Related Stories

Submission: Comcast, Pando Partner for 'P2P Bill of Rights' by bibekpaudel (1113383)
[+] FCC Reports Comcast P2P Blocking Was More Widespread 120 comments
bob charlton from 66 tips us to a ComputerWorld story about FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who has testified that Comcast's P2P traffic management occurred even when network congestion wasn't an issue, contrary to the ISP's claims. After defending its actions and being investigated by the FCC over the past few months, Comcast has tried to repair its image by making nice with BitTorrent and working towards a P2P Bill of Rights. Quoting: "'It does not appear that this technique was used only to occasionally delay traffic at particular nodes suffering from network congestion at that time,' Martin told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. 'Based on testimony we've received thus far, this equipment was typically deployed over a wider geographic area or system, and is not even capable of knowing when an individual ... segment of the network is congested.'
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  • Ruh-roh (Score:2, Informative)

    by trickonion (943942)
    If comcast wants it... no good will come of it

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Moryath (553296)
      Comcast admitted to delaying P2P traffic during peak times, but denied that any file-sharing applications were being completely blocked.

      Except that was actually proven, and they even admitted to, is like standing outside someone's house patched into their main phone line and then randomly hanging up on people.

      Time to watch this with as many eyes as we can get. Letting Comcrap do this is kind of like putting Mohammed, Lenin, Stalin, Che Guevara, Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, and Chairman Mao in a room to write a de
      • Wow - not only a very speedy Godwinism, but lumping Muhammad in with mass murderers and dictators. I do love a rational argument!
          • Child marriage was not a particular taboo in medieval times, and was pretty widespread, particularly amongst higher-class people. I'm not saying it's right, but that you're putting a highly emotive and anachronistic slant on a practice which Muhammad's contemporaries would probably never have dreamed of calling into question.

    • Yup. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NeutronCowboy (896098) on Monday April 21 2008, @06:06PM (#23152336)
      The reason Comcast wants it is because they want it for all the reason that the original Bill of Rights was considered dangerous: it will be an exclusive enumeration of all the rights you have. All other "rights" will exist at the good will of Comcast. Not to mention that I expect all kinds of weasel words in it that mean that Comcast's Bill of Rights will be nothing more than "You're allowed to use P2P for as long as we say you can, and we're allowed to change our mind at any time and without warning".

      I hope this goes down in flames.

  • Users will use technology as they see fit. That is the ONLY thing everyone need know.
    • Well said. The only thing they are spouting here is that users will be given permission to use their service that was already contractually given to them, instead of illegally manipulated. There does not need to be a bill of rights. Laws already are in place to manage what ISPs and end users are allowed to do. End of story. If Comcast is getting scared because of FCC fines/class action lawsuits they only have themselves to blame for how they "managed" this, not the end users.
      Fuck off...and go to hell.
    • Careful...there is such a thing as an undesirable customer. Comcast could easily say, "You're costing us too much, we don't want your business." Then what?

  • The Findings (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Renraku (518261) on Monday April 21 2008, @05:16PM (#23151696) Homepage
    "Well, we've determined that information doesn't want to be free. Therefore, all BitTorrent or P2P traffic not sponsored by one of our esteemed peers will be allowed 100MB a month. Over that and your bill will go up."
  • What makes Comcast think that will get rid of their bad reputation?

    This is just posturing to look like they did something. Also, I doubt they'd put anything meaningful that didn't please Our Dearest Stockholders from on high.
  • The phrase "bill of rights" is and has been for some time corrupted by idotic proposals like this. I cannot hear it without becoming nausious.

    Discuss.

  • Every Meaningful Phrase Gets Dragged Through Mud (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pantero Blanco (792776) on Monday April 21 2008, @05:20PM (#23151752)
    I'm tired of hearing "bill of rights" applied in ridiculous situations by people or organizations who want to make it seem like they're being oppressed.

    It seems to me that every meaningful phrase or term -anything that elicits a positive reaction in people- eventually gets co-opted by a political or corporate organization and turned into a complete farce. Sometimes it recovers, sometimes it doesn't.

    When's the last time you heard the word "wholesome" in a BS-free situation?
    • In other words, you want a Bill of Rights Bill of Rights!

    • I'm tired of hearing "bill of rights" applied in ridiculous situations by people or organizations who want to make it seem like they're being oppressed.
      Except, in this case, the people using the term "bill of rights" are the ones trying to do the oppressing. They want to use this "bill of rights" to fend off legislation (which, ironically, would be an actual BILL of rights) with actual penalties for violations.
    • Not to mention that throwing around "Bill of Rights" tends to ignore the entire context in which that document was written... and the fact that the document almost wasn't written at all.

      What bothers me so much about this is that it's a transparent attempt to head off Congress, with the results not being pro-consumer.

      Last month, Comcast announced that it had reached an agreement with BitTorrent whereby Comcast agreed to alter its network management practices, and BitTorrent acknowledged that Comcast has the right to police its own network.

      Two companies coming to an agreement does nothing to resolve issues of Net Neutrality, especially when the agreement explicitly seems to disavow Net Neutrality.

      I'd much rather have legislation

  • Aah, the beauty of the english language. (Score:5, Funny)

    by wattrlz (1162603) on Monday April 21 2008, @05:22PM (#23151772)
    "We haven't blocked any specific p2p applications. BitTorrent packets may have been indefinitely delayed, however."
    • We haven't blocked any specific p2p applications. BitTorrent packets may have been indefinitely delayed, however

      Well, they cut off torrents, but that could have been from any number of applications: utorrent, azureus, World of Warcraft, etc. So clearly, they're not lying at all.

  • More proprietary garbage (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hatta (162192) on Monday April 21 2008, @05:22PM (#23151778) Journal
    If you remember, Bittorrent Inc made a similar deal with Comcast to protect their transfers. Now another P2P company peddling a proprietary solution has done the same.

    Where does this leave non-commercial P2P on Comcast. Are we going to see a situation where proprietary P2P is whitelisted, while everything else is throttled? Is Comcast going to move towards a protocol agnostic, but vendor specific throttling strategy?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by catch23 (97972)
      I've been using BT on Comcast for some time now using encrypted streams. So far so good, fast transfers too. I say let Comcast throttle as much as they want, sooner or later users will adapt to using full end to end encryption rendering it basically impossible for them to block without potentially screwing up someone else's https connection to their banking website. I say let them throttle, they'll force all application developers to use encryption which is a good thing.
  • This was already covered [slashdot.org] less than a week ago.
    • Indeed. Not only is this story a dupe, but it comes much too late to count as "news".

  • Comcast talking == NULL (Score:5, Informative)

    by funchords (937529) <robb@funchords.com> on Monday April 21 2008, @05:25PM (#23151830) Homepage

    Tuesday, Comcast Corporation and Pando Networks announced that they will lead the industry to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users and ISPs. With an FCC hearing on Comcast's anti-peer-to-peer practices scheduled for later this week, this is hardly a surprise. Once again, Comcast makes another sweetheart-sounding deal, but at the wrong time, and with the wrong sweetheart.

    It takes a special kind of arrogance for a company that sells Internet Access to team up with another company that sells Content Delivery and together decide what rights and responsibilities that the world's Internet users should have.

    As in its earlier "deal" with BitTorrent, Inc., Comcast's announcement tuesday doesn't change any of the facts it faces: in 2006, it assured Congress that network neutrality laws were not necessary, saying it would not "deny, delay, or degrade" its customers in order to deal with traffic congestion. Within a year it was caught secretly doing exactly that! Even after a long string of deceptive and deflective statements and tactics, Comcast continues to degrade their traffic tuesday.

    As was the case in the BitTorrent "deal," neither Comcast Corporation nor Pando Networks represents the millions of customers and other members of the Internet community who were impacted when Comcast secretly launched its anti-P2P attack.

    Tuesday's announcement came less than 48 hours from the US Federal Communication Committee's public hearing at Stanford University. There, the FCC heard from two panels of experts followed by public testimony on the Comcast incident specifically as well as similar industry practices in general.

    And, just like in the BitTorrent deal, we also saw Comcast and Pando Networking executives start to explain why tuesday's "deal" signals that Network Neutrality regulation is not needed in the Broadband Marketplace.

    Comcast talking = nothing.

    This is a company with a sub-prime credibility rating.

    Robb Topolski

    • Mod the parent up please.

      This is a pure public relations [wikipedia.org] play and marketing bullshit move on the part of Comcast (i.e. so that they can muddy the waters and look like they are doing something in front of politicians and average citizens who don't know any better without actually changing their ways). They were caught red handed doing exactly what they said they wouldn't do and now they are trying to capitalize on the whole "bill or rights" buzz that seems to be infecting marketers these days who are tryin

  • Please include isp full disclosure! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eponymous Coward (6097) on Monday April 21 2008, @05:25PM (#23151838)
    I'm all for a bill of rights. Among the enumerated rights should be:

    Any p2p user shall have available to them a detailed and complete description of what network services their monthly fees entitle them to. This will include all of the usage limits which may trigger account suspension or termination.

    This information is required for any p2p user to make an informed choice among broadband providers. I don't particularly care if they advertise "unlimited" service, but there needs to be an asterisk which points to how they define unlimited.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What choice? Your choice is either the local monopoly or dialup.
      • Unfortunately, that's often the case - but not always.

        Where I live (Portland, OR) I can get dsl, cable modem, or other business class services (think T1's). Some people I work with have Verizon's fios, but I don't think that's available in my neighborhood yet.
    • Agreed. Not only that, but they need to stop hiding behind the word "disruptive", since the only thing that someone can determine in advance that would be "disruptive" to the network is a DoS attack. Everything else they call "disruptive" is just making things up as they go.
  • Is this fooling anyone?

    No, seriously.

    Anyone?

  • Vote with your 'net dollars (Score:5, Insightful)

    by i_want_you_to_throw_ (559379) on Monday April 21 2008, @05:39PM (#23152004) Homepage Journal
    The solution is simple: get rid of your Comcast 'net service, just keep cable. Get FIOS from Verizon or even DSL.

    Comcast is a publicly traded company and as such here's what's important to them.....

    Making money for their stockholders.

    That means stopping the things that zap their resources. I don't think anyone will disagree that BitTorrent does exactly that.

    Comcast is going to do what is best in their corporate interest. Surprised? Don't be. It's business. Vote with something they DO understand, your monthly $$$
    • "That means stopping the things that zap their resources. I don't think anyone will disagree that BitTorrent does exactly that."

      In some cases it, no doubt, does sap resources. But, let me ask you this - which is cheaper for an ISP: to move bits between users of their own network, or to move bits from other networks on the Internet to their users? Maybe I'm wrong, but it is my understanding that shuffling data around inside the ISP's network is probably much faster and cheaper than moving data across the lim
      • I don't disagree with your post in general, just that specific statement, I think, might be somewhat incorrect. But, it is somewhat correct to, in that, one could argue that, with regards to *illegal* file-sharing, sans P2P, there would be no *legal* source for that data, so that would just be less traffic, period, to move around the network and the Internet. But the problem is, there's no good way that anyone's found *yet* to discriminate between legal and illegal traffic. I still think that if the ISP's r

  • This is a Bad Idea for Users (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Monday April 21 2008, @05:45PM (#23152092)
    This is such a bad idea for users. Like 2 wolves and a sheep getting together for a democratic vote on what's for dinner - except the sheep isn't even invited to the vote.

    The chances of Comcast coming up with anything that users themselves will find the least bit palatable is next to nothing, but the fools in the media and government won't hear about that because they're too busy applauding how industry is clearly now ready to take the lead and solve the problems without government intervention.

    Such a transparent attempt to kill Net Neutrality, when all we as user want is: It's our pipe. We pay for it. So let us decide how we want to utilize our paid-for bandwidth. And don't make it our problem that you have oversold your system capacity by hundreds of times!

    • Such a transparent attempt to kill Net Neutrality, when all we as user want is: It's our pipe. We pay for it. So let us decide how we want to utilize our paid-for bandwidth. And don't make it our problem that you have oversold your system capacity by hundreds of times!

      Absolutely. And if they actually do need to limit bandwidth (which shouldn't be the normal state, but say they're doing maintenance or something and have reduced capacity), then just do it on a content-neutral basis. It shouldn't matter whethe

  • Who Speaks for You? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Monday April 21 2008, @05:50PM (#23152148)

    and BitTorrent acknowledged that Comcast has the right to police its own network.

    Hey, I'm sorry but BitTorrent doesn't speak for me. They're not even a user and I am, so who died and made them God to decide what's right for Comcast and what's not?

  • Comcast admitted to delaying P2P traffic during peak times, but denied that any file-sharing applications were being completely blocked.

    This sounds like the typical "non-denial denial", of the classical "weasel words" variety. For it to be true, all they need to show is that there are some file-sharing apple that are sometimes not outright killed. So, for example, if they kill all file-sharing apps after 10 seconds, and kill all BT apps outright, there would still be a few transfers of very short files th

  • Abbreviated version: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nurb432 (527695) on Monday April 21 2008, @06:28PM (#23152522) Homepage Journal
    Don't screw with your customers packets.

    Problem solved.
  • BitTorrent Inc. has no more right to state what users or Comcasts rights are than Comcast had the right to retroactively dictate how the bandwidth they sold to consumers should be used in the first place!
    I can really see the EFF going "oh, that's fine then, BitTorrent Inc. said it's 'OK' for them to abuse their users"
  • The real Bill or Rights in the US is sheredded on a daily basis. You wouldn't even recognize it any more, and what's left requires a lawyer to explain. When the real deal is restored to its rightful place of dignity and respect, and politicians and elected leaders are subject to criminal prosecution for violations thereof, then come talk to me about a stupid (yes, it's stupid) "bill of rights". This makes me sick, really. Just like the dumb airline passenger "bill of rights" that got shot down in New Yo

  • I don't want a P2P user's bill of rights. I want an ISP subscriber's bill of rights. Top entries:

    1. As a subscriber I have the right to use the bandwidth I pay for, and to use it in whatever manner I find appropriate so long as that activity is not against the law.
    2. As a subscriber I have the right to know what policies the ISP will impose before I subscribe, so that I can decide whether those policies are acceptable to me.
  • That fake "Bill of Rights" is a scam [cnn.com] to require customers accept that ComCast service can suck whenever ComCast wants it to, and customers have to suck it up:

    Now just two days before the FCC's Stanford hearing, Comcast issued yet another press release, probably aimed at dissuading the FCC from taking any action against it. Comcast and another peer-to-peer company, Pando Networks, said they created their own "Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for file sharing, much to the amusement of some legal experts.

  • Bill of Rights? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by J'raxis (248192) on Monday April 21 2008, @08:47PM (#23153578) Homepage

    A "set of rules" is a "Bill of Rights" now?

    • Re:Article 1: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by psychodelicacy (1170611) <psychodelicacy@gmail.com> on Monday April 21 2008, @05:19PM (#23151736) Homepage
      This isn't about the legality or otherwise of the content being transferred. P2P is not only used for "infringing" content, and Comcast isn't blocking or slowing it down because someone might be transferring something illegal. Your raising of the copyright infringement issue is a red herring. The real issue here is net neutrality.
    • and if they take that stance they'll find that *they* are going to be sued as they have now lost common carrier exemption.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lunarsight (1053230)
      I trust Comcast in coming up with a P2P bill of rights about as much as I trust the fox in coming up with stipulations for how close it can legally get to the henhouse.

      LEGISLATE IT.

      Do not trust these slimeballs to police themselves.

    • they'll anger them all they like (in the name of profit) as :

      a. most of them won't notice or won't care.

      or

      b. they have no other reasonable option for internet access.

    • It's perfectly fair when you consider that 90% of comcast's bandwidth is being used by 10% of the users doing p2p, yet everyone is paying (nearly if not exactly) the same price--that's what's not fair.

      Let me rephrase that for clarity:

      So you mean that 90% of the users are underutilizing a resource, and therefore the 10% that are actually using what they paid for should be penalized.

      Nope. Still doesn't parse.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by BlueStrat (756137)
        "...read through a 50 page TOS for details!

        Where they *still* won't tell you how much bandwidth and throughput your money entitles you to, only that you'll be disconnected for "using too much" and/or "doing something we decide we don't like".

        One other point I'd like to make is that anger here seems to be mainly directed at Comcast, and as that's the particular provider named in TFA, that's understandable. However, let's not forget that Comcast is is only one of many providers pulling shenanigans, Comcast is

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