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FCC Votes To Punish Comcast
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Jul 27, 2008 09:16 AM
from the time-for-your-whoopin' dept.
from the time-for-your-whoopin' dept.
MaineCoasts brings news that three out of the five FCC commissioners have voted in favor of punishing Comcast for their P2P throttling practices. The investigation of Comcast has been underway since January, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin made clear their conclusion a couple weeks ago. Ars Technica has coverage as well, noting:
"The initial report on the vote said nothing about which way Republican commissioners McDowell and Tate might lean. FCC watchers wouldn't be at all surprised to see both vote against the order; the really interesting moment could come if they support it. Having four or even five commissioners support the order would send a strong bipartisan signal to ISPs that they need to take great care with any sort of discriminatory throttling based on anything more specific than a user's total bandwidth."
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Politics: FCC To investigate Comcast Bittorrent Meddling 196 comments
An anonymous reader writes "FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday that the commission will investigate complaints that Comcast actively interferes with Internet traffic as its subscribers try to share files online. A coalition of consumer groups and legal scholars asked the agency in November to stop Comcast from discriminating against certain types of data and to fine Comcast $195,000 for every affected subscriber. While known for months in tech circles, the issue wasn't given broad attention until an Associated Press report last year, in which reporters tested and verified the data blocking."
[+]
FCC Chief Says Comcast Violated Internet Rules 174 comments
Several readers sent in word that the FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, is calling for sanctions and enforcement actions against Comcast for resetting BitTorrent traffic. "Mr. Martin will circulate an order recommending enforcement action against the company on Friday among his fellow commissioners, who will vote on the measure at an open meeting on Aug. 1... Martin, a Republican, will likely get support from the two Democrats on the commission, who are both proponents of the network neutrality concept. Those three votes would be enough for a majority on the five-member commission."
Submission: Network Neutrality Put to the Test by Anonymous Coward
[+]
FCC Commissioner Urges, Don't Regulate the Internet 343 comments
Brett Glass writes "In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell makes a case against government regulation of the Internet, opining that 'engineers, not politicians or bureaucrats, should solve engineering problems.' With state governments pressuring ISPs to pull the plug on Usenet, and a proposal now in play for a censored public Internet, McDowell may have a very good point." McDowell is one of the two FCC commissioners who did not vote with the majority to punish Comcast for their BitTorrent throttling.
[+]
Comcast's Congestion Catch-22 177 comments
An anonymous reader sends us to Telephony Online for a story about Comcast's second attempt at traffic management (free registration may be required). After the heavy criticism they received from customers and the FCC about their first system, they've adopted a more even-handed "protocol agnostic" approach. Nevertheless, they're once again under scrutiny from the FCC, this time for the way their system interacts with VOIP traffic. By ignoring specific protocols, the occasional bandwidth limits on high-usage customers interferes with those customers' VOIP, yet Comcast's own Digital Voice is unaffected. Quoting:
"The shocking thing is just how big a Pandora's box the FCC has appeared to open — and it just keeps getting bigger. When the FCC first started addressing bandwidth usage and DPI issues, it quickly found itself up to its knees in network management minutia. Not long after that, it followed another logical path of the DPI question and asked service providers and Web companies about their use of DPI for behavioral targeting. Now it seemingly has opened up huge questions about what it means to be a voice carrier in the age of IP. It's not hard to imagine the next step: What about video? Telco IPTV services are delivered in roughly the same way as carrier VoIP services — via packets running on the same physical network but a prioritized logical signaling stream. Is that fair to over-the-top video service providers?"
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Comcast's likely reaction to any FCC "punishment": (Score:5, Funny)
Comcast (Score:5, Funny)
"Throttling" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Throttling" (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:"Throttling" (Score:5, Insightful)
I call bullshit on this.
The cable companies allow access to their networks based on MAC. What you are doing is possible, but you would need to call comcast and tell them that you got a new modem every time, which would look extremely suspicious. MAC addresses are also not random. So you cannot spoof it to a "random" MAC.
Your post also lacks continuity. You say that they start dropping "30-80%" of your packets every "5-10 minutes". But you also say that you only need to reset your MAC every 2 days?
please go Home [digg.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It used to be that if I changed the computer connected to my cable modem, I had to call in to register the MAC address of the new system. Apparently they got fed up with the hassle of all the calls, so they changed the system to allow any MAC, eliminating the need to call. At least that's true of Comcast in some areas. It's not true of all cable providers, though.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Punishment enough (Score:5, Funny)
Punishment enough would be for the FCC to require Comcast to double the capacity of their network every 18 months.
Good first step, now to the telecoms... (Score:2)
Im glad that our elected officials are taking meaningful, important and proper steps to curb wrongful practices by large businesses. Hopefully they will go after the phone companies ne--oh that's right, nevermind.
It looks good, but its not. (Score:3, Interesting)
The FCC are yes men/women.
They're only doing this so Comcast doesnt have to look like the bad guy, when they lower their bandwidth per month usage. This is so they can say "Well the FCC wont let us throttle P2P users, so we're going to raise prices for high bandwidth users, and cut bandwidth for everyone at the current rate"
The government would never do anything to hurt a corporation.
Tiered bandwidth is not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Tiered or capped bandwidth is not the problem here. Net Neutrality is the problem.
The most fundamental way to distinguish between the two is that violations of Net Neutrality will lead to tying between different relevant markets, a critical Antitrust concern.
Tiered or capped bandwidth ALREADY EXISTS at Comcast, and has been around since the days of Compuserve and timeshared systems.
AT&T in the 1980s could charge you for every minute you were on the phone, but they sure as hell couldn't tell you that you could only call their preferred pizza delivery services. I hope you can see why that matters.
Parent
Re:It looks good, but its not. (Score:5, Informative)
"The government would never do anything to hurt a corporation."
Um, AT&T, Standard Oil, and a few other examples come to mind... plus, if you run a small business and have ever dealt with OSHA, you'll have plenty of other more modern examples ready.
While it's certainly true that the government supports corporate interests from time to time, it would behoove you to understand why it happens instead of making blanket assumptions.
Parent
Re:It looks good, but its not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, AT&T, Standard Oil, and a few other examples come to mind... plus, if you run a small business and have ever dealt with OSHA, you'll have plenty of other more modern examples ready.
Bear in mind those were pretty progressive governments at time compared to society. Unless you think having a single company determine the price of oil and force you to rent your phone for an arbitrary price is a good thing.
In truth some of our government regulation for small businesses is asinine, but letting single or a select few corporations run the economy is just as bad as having a government planned economy (aka Soviet Union).
If Comcast doesn't want to deal with government regulation now, I'd say it would be fair if they gave back the tax money they got for infrastructure development on public lands back from the telecommunications acts during the 90s.
Parent
Well, they deserve it. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you sell something you don't own (bandwidth), then it's your fault, not the buyers.
What's really needed is QoS. You get X MB per month of high quality, Y MB per month at medium quality and Z MB (maybe z=inf) at low quality, and a final unlimited lowest quality, throttled down to something quite small.
Your app sets the QoS level it wants (eg voip sets high quality). When you run out of the quality level set, traffic automatically gets demoted to the next one you have. Or, you can buy more a la carte.
the vote hasn't happened yet (Score:5, Informative)
"The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that commissioners Copps, Adelstein, and Martin have decided against the cable giant, paving the way for an official vote when the order is publicly voted on next Friday."
Mmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
This ruling will never stand (Score:5, Funny)
All Comcast needs to do to get this overturned is find a judge that isn't a Comcast customer.
Nice change of tactics... (Score:3, Funny)
Instead of fining a single boob, the FCC moved up to fining plural boobs. Business as usual.
FCC no longer an "expert agency"; now political (Score:4, Insightful)
What this result shows is that the FCC, which has driven away all of its best technical people during the past eight years, is now purely a political organization. And because the law requires a 3-2 partisan split among the Commissioners, it means that most of its decisions will be influenced by partisan politics rather than what's best for the people.
If the Chairman and the two other Commissioners of the same party agree on something, it sails right through. (This is what happened with travesties such as the Sirius-XM merger.) However, if the Chairman is motivated to support an agenda to which the other party subscribes, he can expect the two Commissioners of that party to fall into lockstep due to partisanship. That's what happened here. McDowell and Tate, the Republicans, want (as McDowell put it) to "let engineers solve engineering problems." But the Democrats, beseiged by the left-leaning Democratic lobbyists of Free Press, voted to regulate the Internet both because of the Democrats' inherent desire to regulate and because they swallowed the falsehoods of their fellow partisans at Free Press uncritically. So, if the Chairman was willing to support the same result, it would happen.
The question, of course, is why Martin -- a Republican -- would be pro-regulation. I do not know Kevin Martin, but several theories have been floated on various blogs. The first is that the Chairman was feeling pressure from Congress. (He was on the hot seat less than a month ago before a Congressional subcommittee which strongly suggested that if he did not regulate, they'd take matters out of his hands.) The second is that he is "anti-cable," and -- regardless of what harm he might do to the Internet -- wanted to take a swipe at Comcast. (Some bloggers have speculated that Martin is bucking for a job as a telephone company executive or board member when he retires from the Commission, and so is giving those companies the quid pro quo for obtaining such a post. I certainly hope that this is not the case, but then, I do not know him.)
Many people have also noted that the slates of panelists at the two hearings on network management were stacked against Comcast. In Boston, the ratio was about 2:1; at Stanford, it was 6:1. Since the Chairman picks the panelists (the other Commissioners can offer advice, but he need not take it), the fact that even the first hearing was heavily stacked against Comcast suggests that the Chairman or his staff may have had a predisposition to rule against Comcast from the start.
In any event, the fact that only one witness at either hearing was actually engaged in business as an ISP strongly suggests that politics, not engineering facts, would rule the day. And they did. The lobbyists and lawyers of Free Press, an inside-the-Beltway lobbying group which spent more than $700,000 on various Internet agendas in 2007 alone, repeated statements which were simply technically false again and again until the Commissioners believed them. And little guys like my own independent ISP? We got 8 -- count them -- 8 -- minutes to talk. This is not promising for the future of the Internet. If it's dominated by politics, and especially by an agency which has lost its technical compass and rules on the basis of politics and partisanship -- the Internet is in trouble.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
If that's what it's about, then this belongs in civil court, as a class action suit, not a bureaucratic ruling.
Re:Finally!!! (Score:5, Informative)
That's not what this is about. Comcast was found by the FCC to be interfering in the traffic of specific application types, violating principles established by the FCC to allow customers open access to the Internet. The customers were not charged for the bits that were blocked, so it had nothing to do with bandwidth caps.
Parent
Re:Finally!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not what this is about. Comcast was found by the FCC to be interfering in the traffic of specific application types, violating principles established by the FCC to allow customers open access to the Internet. The customers were not charged for the bits that were blocked, so it had nothing to do with bandwidth caps.
Ok, what? They were not charged for the blocked data? Are you nuts?
As a customer you are paying for XMb/sec download by yMb/sec upload on their network, not taking account of the fact that those speeds will be affected by traffic on other networks and the actual speed of the server, you still are paying for that bandwidth continuously.
If they are messing with your traffic and/or reducing your connection speeds on their network then they are not giving you the service you payed for. And they are violating federal law that prohibits ISPs from discriminating against data types.
It would be like the phone company blocking calls from an area that a lot of people call or intentionally reducing call quality to lower the number of calls from there.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'll see that blazing speed if I download the linux ISOs via an HTTP link, or from an FTP site.
No you will not, those files are to big to get much out of the "powerboost", my last system update was on a comcast connection and today the KDE update came in in the neighborhood of 375 Kbs, but the files under 2MB flew in around 1.5Gbs. What cable ISPs hate is uploads, it kills their systems, they are happy when you download a 1000 times more than you upload.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:alignment (Score:5, Insightful)
So whose side is the FCC on? they seem pretty two-faced to me.
Mmmmh... a contradictory double-sided bias.. what could it possibly mean... maybe... I don't know.. a lack of bias?
Parent
Re:alignment (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, the body of FCC commissioners is designed to be double-sided [wikipedia.org].
That said, I think it's pretty obvious that the commission makes biased decisions all the time. The Republican commissioners are almost always unified, and the Democrat commissioners seem to swing over to the "regulation is bad, m'kay" position a lot of the time.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So whose side is the FCC on? they seem pretty two-faced to me.
As always, they are on the side of the administrations loyal pets, the incumbent telcos.
Re:alignment (Score:4, Informative)
Telcos? You're talking like they were plural. Yeah, Ma Bell was forcefully split up, but what has happened since is that all the baby bells have merged again, like metallic droplets flowing together to reform a blasted monster. With the SBC/AT&T merger, the monster is back with a vengeance.
Parent
Re:alignment (Score:4, Informative)
hat has happened since is that all the baby bells have merged again
It is definitely going that way, but they aren't quite there yet. They haven't ALL merged together again.
After the breakup, there were 7 "baby bells". There are now 3 left: AT&T, Qwest, and Verizon.
- AT&T is SBC renamed after SBC acquired AT&T. SBC (formerly Southwest Bell) also acquired the baby bells Ameritech, Pacific Telesis, and BellSouth.
- Qwest was an independent which became a de facto baby bell when it acquired U S West.
- Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic) acquired baby bell NYNEX.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No it isn't legal. They deliberately forged messages ( RST packages ) that were sent over the phone lines. That is a federal crime.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No it isn't legal. They deliberately forged messages ( RST packages ) that were sent over the phone lines. That is a federal crime.
Yes, I've heard that theory, but it's a huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that forged packets are some sort of illegal impersonation. I don't like what Comcast did, but I also don't like using abusing unrelated laws.
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Informative)
It's not at all a stretch.. thats' why they call them "Forged Packets"
They *very clearly* do not come from the source that compcast pretends they come from.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it not at least an equally huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that it is "absolutely legal?"
Packet forging is rightly named---Comcast sends them as if they originated from me, when they did not. They do not advertise that they do it & I did not sign any document authorizing them to do it on my behalf. In fact, many AUPs prohibit forging and spoofing from their users & ISPs should be held to an even higher standard.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Funny)
> Is it not at least an equally huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that it is "absolutely legal?"
How about 'barely legal'?
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Insightful)
it's a huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that forged packets are some sort of illegal impersonation.
So you won't mind if I send some mail and list yours as the return address then?
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I don't agree with a lot of what they do, and they do have considerable power, but power that's not unlike that of the EPA, the military, and so on.
So is the Comcast pending fine a good idea? You bet. Once the pandora's box of stepping on protocols to favor another is open, it can't be shut. This sends a great signal to carriers that they'd best not fool with consumer access. Be a good carrier; don't mess with protocols to favor your own perceived traffic. Controversial no doubt; a good one this time, IMHO.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not a legislative arm. It has broad legislated enforcement mandates from Congress, going back to the early-mid 1930s on communications policy and enforcement.
Yes, exactly. Enforcement. Not legislative. We agree.
So is the Comcast pending fine a good idea? You bet. Once the pandora's box of stepping on protocols to favor another is open, it can't be shut. This sends a great signal to carriers that they'd best not fool with consumer access.
And then, frustratingly, you turn right around and are happy(!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now you have the crux of the matter.
The FCC is authorized by law (see the nineteen additions to the Communications Act of 1935 as amended) to set and execute this policy. Good thing their nipple wasn't showing, eh?
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:4, Interesting)
Your sense of legality and illegality are the crux for a need to understand more than I can explain in this forum. Competition means unfettered pipes, which is what the FCC is ostensibly punishing Comcast for-- non-"net neutrality".
And I haven't been called kid in over 40 years!
Additionally, after 14 books, and heaven-only-knows how many articles I've written, I've discovered that my choice of communications is my own, and those that would not understand emphasis via punctuation are looney. Two days ago, it was my choice of the word gendarme-- meaning policeman. Someone believed that the only correct use had to do with syntax connoting only French and only military policing.... all here on /.
You're entitled to your opinion, but not your facts. There.
Parent
Laws are legal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that convenient? The will of the people will be done, and the will of the people is that douchebag corporations don't abuse the people after being gifted billions of the peoples' tax dollars to build network infrastructure.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:4, Informative)
I'm going to assume for the moment that you do not have a legal education. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
The FCC is -- and should be -- both an enforcement and legislative arm of the Government. This is because it is an ADMINISTRATIVE body created by CONGRESS. Congress delegated [limited] rulemaking and ordermaking power to the FCC. That's not unusual: go look at the Enabling Acts of the other administrative agencies who handle a huge chunk of the rest of the way our Government functions. The Supreme Court has upheld the Constitutionality of agencies like the FCC again and again.
Now as to whether Net Neutrality is "already law", you would need to define what you mean by "law". Court made law? Statutes? Agency rules/orders? You do see the title of this, "FCC Votes to Punish Comcast" right? Guess what -- that's the action of the law. You may think the "law" is purely statutory, but then you'd be leaving out the Constitution, administrative bodies, common law, executive orders.
But hey, it's not surprising for me to see a subject line like "The Republicans Are Correct" spouted by someone who appears to know little about the law.
(Law student.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The FCC is -- and should be -- both an enforcement and legislative arm of the Government.
The FCC is mostly an interpretive arm of government, with *limited* ability to extend and enforce *existing* law. The cannot create new law out of whole cloth.
Now as to whether Net Neutrality is "already law", you would need to define what you mean by "law".
You seemed to have missed all the ongoing debate about network neutrality among the government. Apparently the real legislature does not believe that network neu
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Informative)
The FCC can make law within the bounds of its enabling act. Rulemaking and orders have the force of law. The FCC can't pass a rule that forces ignorant people to actually learn about the law before they speak, but they can create an order to punish Comcast, and they can make rules regarding network neutrality. You can go read the enabling act at: http://law.onecle.com/uscode/47/151.html [onecle.com]
If it is arrogant to point out how wrong you are, then anyone with any education must seem arrogant to you. I guess that's the "liberal elite" hate we see from Republicans. Your statements are just as annoying as someone who comes to Slashdot apparently not knowing shit about computers, but still wants to talk like they do. Do yourself a favor and stop seeing knowledge as arrogance. It's not my job to coddle your ignorance.
And in regards to whether the "real legislature does not believe that network neutrality is existing law", there again you are clueless. Go read up on Antitrust law (tying), or the policy statement in section 230 of the CDA. Congress has been quite clear, throughout its history, that preserving competition is more important than preserving competitors, and that the Internet in particular deserves preservation as a free market.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:4, Insightful)
I AM a Republican and I'm on the FCC's side.
It's debatable whether or not Comcast's conduct was legal. They advertised and sold "internet access". That has certain connotations. If instead of the promised "Internet Access" they sold a neutered version thereof, then they may have run afoul of Federal regulations.
LK
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:4, Informative)
"Regardless of your stand on Network Neutrality, the fact of the matter is that what Comcast did was absolutely legal."
I don't think that has been established. Actively forging packets may qualify as an act of impersonation, which might be considered illegal. This may or may not be the case, but I suggest that the legality of what Comcast did is not yet a 'fact'.
A.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:4, Informative)
Consequently the FCC is (rather surprisingly, I admit) enforcing the law as written. That's actually a good thing.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Comcast in fact has claimed that the FCC in fact does not have authority to regulate the Internet. See its filing with the FCC [fcc.gov] regarding this, and its followup here [fcc.gov].
The recent decision in CBS v. FCC (the "wardrobe malfunction" case) may also bear on this decision [bennett.com]. The court struck down the FCC's ruling against CBS, saying that the FCC couldn't just make up the rules as it went along! Normally, the FCC promulgates rules by posting a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking," takes comments, and only then creates rul