FCC Chief Says Comcast Violated Internet Rules

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."

BT Encryption

Since so many people enabled BT encryption, this whole idea of theirs has really backfired. Now, even if they were to shape some traffic to try to keep BT traffic in the network, so many people will now keep this encryption on that it won't work as well as it would have if they would have, in the first place, worked with the technology instead of against.

Re:BT Encryption

Such technology works even with encrypted BitTorrent. It doesn't need to know what's *in* the data streams, only that a given IP endpoint is communicating in patterns that match BitTorrent traffic. If such traffic is detected, spoofed RST packets can be sent to cause the host to treat the connection as half-open and respond with its own RST,ACK to close it completely.

Perhaps the particular implementation ComCast uses is easily tricked by encrypted payloads. Don't worry - even if that's so, it won't last.

Now, IP-level security like IPSec would do the trick, because you could identify fake RST packets by their lack of, or invalid, signatures. There is, however, no standard way to negotiate IPSec with a remote peer, despite the best efforts of the FreeS/WAN project.

Thus, in a world where the routers along the way are fundamentally trusted to do their job and route packets, you're not going to have much luck protecting yourself against this sort of attack by your provider.

Re:BT Encryption

Thus, in a world where the routers along the way are fundamentally trusted to do their job and route packets, you're not going to have much luck protecting yourself against this sort of attack by your provider.

That's why this is one of the few... VERY FEW cases where government is needed to step in and say, "you can't do that."

Re:BT Encryption

I don't know... as much as I agree with the actual decision, it sends a chill down my spine to hear the FCC start defining the "internet rules".

Re:BT Encryption

In this case, the FCC is saying that Comcast should not define the "Internet Rules" A case where they keep Comcast from regulating how their users communicate on the Internet.

Re:BT Encryption

I gotta agree that the FCC is actually doing something it should do here. In this case Comcast was filtering there users and lying right to them about doing so. The users caught on and made a stink to the officials and they are doing as they have been asked.

Now about the telco's...

Re:BT Encryption

I could not agree more, if they end up the defacto arbitrator over the internet, here in the US at least, I don't trust them not to fuck it up as badly as they have everything else in their purview. Well unless you can afford to pay them their lobbying dollars, then you get what your company wants.

Jonah HEX

Re:... except when you want it

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

One solution would be per-user bandwidth allocation - as it has been on the proposed list for ages now... Then all you have to do, is you yourself decide not to run BT when you are making a VoIP call... How hard is that? Yours is the responsibility and yours is the power to decide what is important for you, and not the ISP, which has no business whatsoever, deciding your preferences for you...

Won't work

That sounds nice, but it relies on ISPs not overselling capacity.

You can get service with ISPs that don't oversell, and actually have enough upstream bandwidth to service all their customers downloading and uploading at max speed all the time. It costs 20-30 times as much, but it's available. After all, most ISPs operate at a contention ratio of between 10:1 and 30:1, where they have enough bandwidth for 1 fully utilized connection for every 10-30 signed customers.

What might be a more reasonable compromise is for ISPs to reserve a fixed 64kbps or so per user. Even that, though, will quickly get expensive. They really need to be allowed to use QoS to provide acceptable performance for latency-sensitive applications while continuing to service bulk traffic - and doing it all cheaply.

Re:BT Encryption

As someone who still runs opportunistic encryption, I wish it would have worked out. It would be nice to have secure P2P connections for all sorts of traffic, whether its E-mail, chat, video conference or file transfers.

Personally, I always thought an online registry system like dyndns would be an excellent way to distribute keys. Update your keying data to match your current IP address using a pre-negotiated certificate with a known entity or registrar. Its very similar to their registration of names to IP addresses.

It wouldn't exactly be military grade security, but it would be a lot better than what we have now.

Re:BT Encryption

Somewhat off-topic, but regardless of why they're doing it, why is Comcast allowed to send RST packets on your behalf? Isn't that basically impersonating you? Isn't that about as bad as FUCKinjecting random swearASSwords into my ./ posts?

Interesting...

Martin said Comcast has "arbitrarily" blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so.

So, what sort of precedent might this set for other attempts to block access? Numerous states have attempted to block access, by law, to what they deem to be illegal content. Would a ruling like this tie the hands of companies like Comcast so that they're in a "damned if you do damned if you don't" position, or would one ruling likely supercede the other?

Martin's order would require Comcast to stop its practice of blocking; provide details to the commission on the extent and manner in which the practice has been used; and to disclose to consumers details on future plans for managing its network going forward.

I also find this amusing. Comcast is whining about it, but they're effectively been told off and punished for not disclosing to their customers what they were doing to paid services. It really says a lot about the company that they're complaining that they have to inform their customers before they make significant service changes.

Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.

Re:Interesting...

Would a ruling like this tie the hands of companies like Comcast so that they're in a "damned if you do damned if you don't" position, or would one ruling likely supercede the other?

After all the government has given to the telecommunication companies, like Comcast, such as permitting monopolies (which Comcast is in many of its markets), I couldn't give a flying rats fucking ass what position they're in. As far as I'm concerned, they should be fined and then regulated to reduce cost to their subscribers (note: I'm not a Comcast subscriber but I have been one in the past and they are not in my market, we have Charter which is just as bad -- if not worse) for at least 15 years.

If they don't like it, they can sell off their shares and get out of the business. Make it a lose-lose-lose situation for the bastards. I'm glad that the FCC commission wasn't swayed by the money I'm sure Comcast was trying to bribe them with.

Re:Interesting...

Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.

One of the traditional problems that has stopped self-interested customers from destroying Comcast's Business model has been the fact that they are the only high-speed service available. That is changing. The moment that Verizon offered Fios to my house, we switched. So far, I have yet to hear anyone say, "We are staying with Comcast." Further, I think that the blocking issue we are discussing here is only a symptom of the broader problem, that being deplorable customer service.

Customers need not be up to speed on this particular issue. All they have to do is call the customer service department.

Protocols not Illegal, Anti-competitiveness is

So, what sort of precedent might this set for other attempts to block access? Numerous states have attempted to block access, by law, to what they deem to be illegal content.

Comcast wasn't blocking illegal traffic - they were blocking traffic they felt was expensive to handle and a plausible threat to their video content business.

On the first point, I use BitTorrent every few weeks and it's always to download FLOSS. I set my upload ratio to 3 to be reasonable but helpful. There's nothing illegal about this - compare with doing a Google search for My_Favorite_Song.mp3 and downloading it over HTTP.

On the second point, the FCC has previously barred a DSL ISP (ILEC) from interfering with VOIP traffic as an anti-competitive measure.

Is Martin acting within his bounds?

With Net Neutrality being a hotly debated issue at the moment, it seems a bit forward of Martin to act on either side of the issue. Comcast has not violated the law, and while it might be against Martin's view of the FCC's "principles", it cannot be held liable for actions that are not illegal.

If he goes ahead with this action and Net Neutrality is struck down, Comcast would have a good lawsuit to bring against the FCC and Martin personally.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

Comcast hasn't violated any federal statute per se, but the FCC enforces its regulations--and its interpretation of those regulations--just as vigorously. Your point would be better directed at the fact that the FCC hasn't done a rulemaking on net neutrality.

This, however, doesn't mean the FCC can't do this. Federal agencies frequently make rules through enforcement actions like this. The SEC does it all the time, and the FCC certainly has the ability to do so. Telling federal agencies they can't do something is largely a loser in court.

This is especially true in this case, because judges are all cable customers, and cable customers almost all hate their providers. Not the best legal reasoning, but it's served the FCC very well for the past decade. Almost every time the cable industry challenges an FCC it actions, it loses.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

Nicely done, but to elaborate further, the following excerpt from a better article on Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] should help.

But the precedent this could set has ramifications far beyond the narrow matter of Comcast's particular throttling scheme. Should the order go through, it would send a strong signal that the "four freedoms" outlined in the policy statement have teeth behind them, that these are more than "suggestions," and that the principles of openness and consumer choice will guide the FCC's approach to broadband. In case you're one of the few who don't have the principles committed verbatim to memory, here's a recap (emphasis added):

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

Yeah that'd be like a company changing their service agreement without notifying their customers.

Watch out for tiger woods

It's not bittorrent comcast needs to worry about. It's Tiger Woods [crn.com]

Remember Sony and the rootkit scandal?

Don't get too excited yet. "Penalty" could be a slap-on-the-wrist drop-in-the-bucket fine per infraction... something small enough that could reasonably be passed on to the customer.

FCC v. FTC

Actually, this isn't entirely surprising. What we may be looking at here is less a fully-developed FCC position on net neutrality and more of a turf war between federal agencies.

Both the FCC and the FTC have expressed concern about Comcast's activities. The FCC is concerned as the federal telecommunications infrastructure regulator. The FTC is concerned as the chief consumer protection agency. The FCC really doesn't want the FTC getting in the way of regulating the Internet, which the FCC has been struggling with since the 1996 Act was first passed (you try applying what is essentially a voice communications act to any IP network, let alone all of them!). By acting now, even arguably prematurely, the FCC has essentially staked a claim to the issue, signaling to the FTC to keep away.

How is this not a denial of service attack?

I still can't figure out how sending a forged packet is not a denial of service attack. If I started putting forged packets on Comcast's network, wouldn't they treat it as a criminal matter? Why doesn't somebody report them to the FBI?

what is going on?

Legal sanction and proposed disbarring for Jack Thompson, then the FCC actually moves in the direction of net neutrality completely ignoring the ideals of a large corporation.

What is going on? Did I wake up in a parallel universe this week? Are we going to die?

Re:wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

What made these people suddenly behave 'consumer friendly'?

Look at this, the FCC taking action --- don't look at the man behind the curtain listening to your phone calls, scanning your emails, etc. without a warrant.