FCC Seeks Comment In Comcast P2P Investigation

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The FCC has officially opened proceedings investigating Comcast's use of Sandvine to send RST packets and 'throttle' P2P connections by disconnecting them. The petitioner, Vuze, Inc. is asking the FCC to rule that Comcast's measures do not constitute 'reasonable network management' per the FCC rules and to forbid Comcast from unreasonably discriminating against lawful Internet applications, content, and technologies. If you want to weigh in on these proceedings, you can use the Electronic Comment Filing System to comment on WC Docket no. 07-52 any time before February 13th."

Deja Vu

[elrous0]

These companies are ostensibly throttling bittorent and other P2P services because they eat up too much bandwidth. And rather than improve bandwidth or set up a new pricing structure (abandoning the silly pretense of "unlimited" usage), they are taking a more heavy-handed and secretive approach.

When I though about this, though I got a sense of Deja Vu. I can't remember the particulars, but wasn't there a similar controversy back when people first started using modems over their phone lines? I seem to remember the telcos rasing a stink and saying something like "this was not what the phone lines were intended for, it's eating up too much of our resources" or something to that effect and threatening to sanction or even cut off heavy modem users. Of course, we know how that one turned out, but can you imagine what the world would look like today if they had followed through, cracking down on modem use and crippling the internet before it even got started?

Dear FCC....

[Anonymous Coward]

While you are at it, can you please deliver a nice deadly blow and announce that Public Airwaves like FM and Tv bands will not have any encryption nor "content control" allowed on them. Also announce that if you broadcast it for free, you give UP the right to sue anyone over that content as it was recorded over the air. I.E. if someone shares that episode recorded off their local TV station and it is intact with commercials, you cant do squat to even stop them from sharing it.

I'm hoping for some sanity, I know it will never happen.
I also want them to force cable tv to have their basic lineup as unencrypted QAM if they "must" switch from analog broadcasts. But Comcast wants to force cable boxes into every livingroom.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

Streaming and downloadable video and audio are my primary form of entertainment. I also use services to download games. Everything I download is legal - some of it is paid for, and some is made available for free by the content providers. This month, I got the call from Comcast saying that I had to use less bandwidth, or risk being shut off for 12 months. I asked how much I should be using, and they refused to give an answer.

Comcast is discriminating against more than just P2P users. I'd be happy to meet their specified usage limits, if they would specify them, or use a different plan if they would define the limits of each option.

Re:Deja Vu

[Alsee]

These companies are ostensibly throttling bittorent and other P2P services

No, Comcast was absolutely NOT throttling.

What Comcast was doing was impersonating their customer and sending a fraud "hang up" command to the other end of the connection, and also impersonating the other end of the connection to send a fraudulent "hang up" command to their own customer, killing the connection from both ends.

US Law Computer Fraud and Abuse act [cornell.edu]
TITLE 18 PART I CHAPTER 47 Section 1030 Paragraph (a)(5)(A)(i)
[Whoever] knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
Paragraph(a)(5)(B)(i)
loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period (and, for purposes of an investigation, prosecution, or other proceeding brought by the United States only, loss resulting from a related course of conduct affecting 1 or more other protected computers) aggregating at least $5,000 in value;

And where Paragraph (e)(8) defines:
the term "damage" means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information;

Comcast was in fact knowingly transmitting fraudulent commands with the intent and effect of "impairing the availability of data", and considering that they did so to a VAST customer base it trivially exceeded an "aggregate value of $5000" even on the most conservative per-customer estimate valuation.

As far as I can Comcast hit a bullseye on an explicit criminal statute. Forget about FCC diddling over whether this was or was not "reasonable network management", as far as I can tell this should be a damn CRIMINAL case.

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Re:Forging packets = questionable activity

[immcintosh]

The real problem with Comcast isn't that they were throttling traffic, it's that they were completely blocking it. As I understand the issue, they were caught introducing commands to reset the connection into packets as if they had come from the genuine sender. So, not only were they taking it a step further than throttling, but they were, in essence, subversively forging a communication in order to do it.