FCC Complaint Filed Over Comcast P2P Blocking 178
Enter Sandvine writes "A handful of consumer groups have filed a complaint with the FCC over Comcast's "delaying" some BitTorrent traffic. The complaint seeks fines of $195,000 for each Comcast subscriber affected by the traffic blocking as well as a permanent injunction barring the ISP from blocking P2P traffic. '"Comcast's defense is bogus," said Free Press policy director Ben Scott. "The FCC needs to take immediate action to put an end to this harmful practice. Comcast's blatant and deceptive BitTorrent blocking is exactly the type of problem advocates warned would occur without Net Neutrality laws.""
bittorrents shaky legal ground (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems the more prudent approach would be to use the blocking of Google traffic, as Google is loved by the media and has been helpful to the courts on a few occasions, to file the complaint, and then rely upon the Google decision to defend torrent traffic. Much like the "tame" playboy defends the more hardcore free "speech"
Go defenders of Neutrality!
Screw Comcast and get Gmail notifier to work again!
Re:Remove their common carrier status (Score:1, Interesting)
Not just Comcast? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was downloading the latest Ubuntu distribution a couple of days ago using TimeWarner cable. The download went very fast, but I notice I wasn't seeding very may users, and the few that were had 5Kb speeds.
After I finished downloading, I decided to let it run OVERNIGHT to reseed back to the world. When I checked in the morning, I had only updated 10MB and I noticed peers would pop-up in the window, show a few kb of transfer and then disappear again. I'm assuming that TimeWarner is sending dummy packets to the OTHER computers to stop my seeding.
However, MY download didn't seem affected AT ALL. Also, there were several clients that seems to stay connected but with very low transfer rates.
Re:Not just Comcast? (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I've seen of Time Warner, a lot of decisions seem to be made at the local level (speed, whether they block port 25, how bitchy they are about you running personal servers, USENET policies up until last year when they ditched their local per franchise servers and went with a national contracted one, etc). If they are screwing with your BT transfers, it's likely a local franchise decision rather than a national company-wide policy.
Re:finnaly, comcast will get fucked in the ass (Score:2, Interesting)
Where is that ISP? No where - because of the regional monopolies. Its _crap_! My representatives don't understand it either. The two senators sent back boilerplate responses about how they appreciate the letter, etc. My rep. sent me a letter that was so far technologically off base it shouldn't even count.
Re:finnaly, comcast will get fucked in the ass (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually yes. Before the flame war starts, remember that bandwidth just like any resource is a commodity with an expense. This is the tragedy of the commons.
Supporting the mega bandwidth users prevents me from obtaining a $20/month plan. 2/3ds of my bill is to pay for the commons pool of bandwidth, not the surfing I do on Slashdot.
If everyone demanded and got and used saturated feeds 24/7, then the typical bill would need to be close to $600/month to provide the service. This is not alright with me. The compromise is either toss off the high usage customers (hidden cap), throttle after a certain amount (check Australia throttling), or go from an unlimited plan to a usage base plan just like cell phones. Pick one. Unlimited for all and growing demand is not going to cut it at current rates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_cap [wikipedia.org]
http://www.news.com/2100-1034_3-5079624.html [news.com]
The overgrazing of the commons by the few is why fences are being erected to protect the commons from degrading. Now there is still a green patch when I arrive. The other option is per use pricing, or raising the price for all to expand the supply of the commons to meet demand.
Pick one...
Higher prices for all
Dropping high bandwidth users
Capping users monthly bandwidth
Throttling the one application which uses 2/3's of the system bandwidth
Eliminating the last one as an option will require one of the other ones to be used, otherwise the overgrazing of the commons by the few 24/7 torrent users will overuse the bandwidth requiring the purchase of more bandwidth. Guess who will get the bill. It's #1 on the list.
Peer to peer is growing. More computers are now using lots of bandwidth when there is no user planted in the chair in front of the keyboard. The ISP's are noticing the added expense for bandwidth and must do something. Do you have a suggestion? Supporting the growing load without adjusting service plans is not an option for remaining in business. ISP's know simply tripling the price for everyone is not going to cut it.
I gave several suggestions. (Score:1, Interesting)
All Comcast has to do is actually sit back and calculate what they can actually afford to sell for a given price and then tier it. Or use QOS to throttle the bigger hogs during periods of high demand (who gives a crap about the bt users in Indiana at 3 am?).
And if they go bankrupt, we still won't go "back to dial-up". There'll be plenty of companies ready to buy up their cable lines and try again. Maybe with a lesson learned...
How is it that universities don't get killed by the hogs on their lines, with much wider guarantees on their system? And at less than $300 a month - usually $50 or so a lab. How are prices structured throughout the world to handle higher demands in Europe and developed Asia?
Don't sell what you can't afford. For the market to work, the customer's have to have adequate knowledge, the product has to be broken up into small enough quantities, and the customer's have to have real choice between vendors. Otherwise you get exactly these kinds of Comcastic decisions by vendors to focus primarily on marketing, and only secondarily on the economic and engineering realities of provisioning.
Simple Suggestion (Score:2, Interesting)
Why don't we let ISPs decide whether they are common carriers? If they are common carriers, then net neutrality should apply as a matter of course: the key feature of a common carrier is that it doesn't distinguish between "good" and "bad" content flowing across its network, as long as the content doesn't harm the network itself. That's why you can't sue the phone company if someone slanders you while talking on their phone, and the police won't go after Verizon if someone uses FIOS to download something illegal.
On the other hand, if an ISP filters traffic in any way, they are implicitly saying "We monitor our network." Once they do this, they should assume responsibility for whatever flows across it.
I think most ISPs would choose common carrier status over perpetual civil and criminal liability for the usage of their networks.