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.""
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Re:The music and movie industry is saved! (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually, I think the way the Internet is tiered is that the end that makes the request pays. So that pesky upstream traffic is saving Comcast money. It's the downstream traffic that they're paying through the nose for. What should Comcast do, then? Prioritize traffic so that you get better data rates downloading from other hosts within the Comcast network and pushing content out.
Unfortunately, DSL and cable modem service is set up exactly the opposite way. Under the assumption that people will do mo
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They could have manipulated things in a way that would be a win
Lanham act & Bittorrent.com (Score:2)
I think that Bittorrent.com & Blizzard could persue a lanham act complaint against Comcast for this one. Comcast is deliberately interfering with Bittorrents legitimate business - distributing rental movies over bittorrent, and WOW updates. The point being that lanham reparations can be percentages of the offending companies gross profits ... doesn't take a big percentage of Comcast to make a big payoff for Bittorrent or Blizzard.
If Comcast were doing what they say they are doing, then they would actua
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Re:The music and movie industry is saved! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, wait, I got it. They are so dumb, they failed at being deceptive and ended up being blatant! What kind of a world do we live in when a multi-million dollar evil corporation can't even be counted on to lie properly?!?
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It's deceptive to software - the forged packets cause BitTorrent et al to drop connections.
It's blatant to human observers.
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Of course, if you had put any thought into your comment at all, you 1) wouldn't be posting as an AC and 2) wouldn't be dismissing someone's comments as "retarded" just becuase their political philosophy is different from yours.
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Before you buy any CD's and line the pockets of the litigious bastards, please visit here;
http://www.riaaradar.com/ [riaaradar.com]
http://defectivebydesign.org/ [defectivebydesign.org]
Shop informed.
If this works, we don't need net neutrality laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If this works, we don't need net neutrality law (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:If this works, we don't need net neutrality law (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:If this works, we don't need net neutrality law (Score:2)
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No, you'd still need a law because FCC policy can change at the FCC's (not the public's) whim.
My Moneys On No Fine (Score:2, Insightful)
Wish It Were Going Down in NY Courts (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, with that said, there is one option that could be taken now that Net Neutrality has been brought into this.
I see from the PDF that the people filing this complaint are from Washington, DC. It probably should have been filed in New York with the demands specifying only NY victims for the time being. Why might you ask NY? Well, it's the only state to have established net neutrality as a telecommunications standard (See 16 NYCRR Part 605) [wikipedia.org]. And this case is exactly the definition of what those standards are put in place to protect!
So while it may have had to be filed with the FCC, the real place where you could pretty much guaranty a (maybe even court case) win against Comcast is in the state of New York. I know they provide service there [usdirect.com] and I think it would be more prudent to first prove your point there, then file a complaint to the FCC from New York after the local government has awarded the victims there.
In my opinion, a guaranteed sure win in a small battle is bigger than a huge uncertainty in the overall war.
late night troubles (Score:1)
I'm curious, are RST's the reason I have to get up and reset my cable modem la
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Your down is probably one of two things: freaking out a fritzy modem, OR (more likely in my experience) it's choking your Linksys cable/dsl NAT router. I used to have huge problems with my Linksys WRT56G's after long downloads at high speeds (even, sadly, with the DD-WRT 3rd-party firmware). I went over to a D-link gaming router and I haven't had to touch it for months unless I change DHCP reservations or something of the sort.
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!
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This is like saying public highways are on shaky legal ground because people smuggle drugs across them.
Re:bittorrents shaky legal ground (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you either have that wrong or you need to clarify.
Bittorrent is not on shaky legal ground, it is a valid peer to peer file transfer protocol which is used for legal purposes. I've transfered many gigs of bits in downloading and sharing Fedora and Ubuntu linux distros, I've also used it to download commercial game demos such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. By your logic the entire internet is on shaky legal ground because all sorts of illegal activities traverse the backbone, does that mean we should shut down the entire internet?
And I'd hardly call Larry Flynt a "tame" playboy. (happy birthday Larry) And I'd also go further and say that the work Larry has done to protect his own free speech for works that many find distasteful has protected the free speech of others who have something much less morally questionable to communicate than the magazines Larry publishes. I believe that was the basis of Larry's arguements, if his free speech is restricted then where does it stop, do we restrict people from pointing out fraud and questionable deeds of governments and corporations. His objective was not to ensure there was free speech for something hardcore even though it would be protected as well, his objective was to protect free speech, period.
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Blizzard springs to mind as one of the bigger ones.
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Why is Blizzard doing this? It sounds to me like Blizzard figured out a way to not have to pay Akamai, or have a huge amount of bandwidth themselves. They're instead pushing their bandwidth costs to Comcast (and other ISPs).
IIRC, one of AT&T's statements was something like "Google is getting a free ride", which is obviously false. Google is paying for all of the bandwidth they are using on their end. In this situation, though, Blizzard *is* getting a free ride.
I'
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Consumers don't get truly unlimited rates anywhere, just hidden limits on a flat rate. If they want more, they upgrade to a higher flat rate with another hidden limit. Verizon finally got sued for advertising "unlimited" rates recently as reported on Slashdot.
If commercial use of bittorrent causes ISPs to revamp their pricing structure into transparent pay-for-what-you-use structures then that should be a good thing. The
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I couldn't imagine trying to deal with hosting files the size that Blizzard uses and provide instant access to 9 million people trying like mad to download the patch to be on for the night's raid.
In this alone, you can see how Comcast's limiting of the BT protocol is harming a legitimate business interest. One that is likely generating a huge amount of revenue for the state in the for
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but is "TCP/IP standards compliance" part of their user contract?
That is a bit like providing telephone service for people with bulk packages (49.00 per month unlimited) and then forcing their conversation to hangup in the middle if they talk too much (hmm..)
Yep, that would be fraudulent. The Internet is based on the TCP/IP protocols. If a company does not hold to those protocols in good faith, they might as well be using ipx/spx. Offering a service based on a set of conditions happening a certain w
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If they throttle everything down just so that you can only use the basic offerings, t
Quality-of-Service configuration (Score:4, Informative)
However, this seems to be clearly stepping above that, and performing what is essentially source address spoofing, regardless of the whether or not there is congestion on the network. I don't know if you can really classify this as a QoS technique.
Goodbye Comcast (Score:2, Flamebait)
There are plenty of competitors to choose from that don't treat their customers like criminals.
So goodbye Comcast, and good luck!
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I've been a Comcast customer for like 5 years and I don't think they even know an email address for me unless it's a Comcast address they made up for me in which case I'd have no idea how to receive it, so the joke's on them
Re:Goodbye Comcast - In my dreams. (Score:2)
Bring Them Down Hard (Score:2)
And lying about it is the worst part!
The complaint uses wrong diction, too close to QOS (Score:3, Insightful)
spoofing packets to intentionally interrupt a connection is very different of course, but the way they present it, using the term "degrading", is not specific enough.
"interrupting" is more accurate, and more egregious.
Comcast will likely use the long time case of QOS to weasel out of it, harming the credibility of an honestly legitimate gripe.
If they can't weasel out of it, this could put QOS in danger, resulting in terrible performance of voip, streaming video, vpn, online gaming, and other latency sensitive applications.
In their justifiable zealotry they did not put their complaint through the proper egghead QA channels, and not only may the entire net neutrality cause may suffer for it, but even a "win" may ultimately be a harm.
Does anybody think this will go anywhere? (Score:2, Insightful)
I expect this will go nowhere or just like everything else, comes back to bite the consumer.
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The upsetting thing for me isn't throttling certain traffic or even traffic shaping all of a customer's traffic during peak hours using a packet rate limiter. It's the method they're using. Sure, it'd be nice to have the whole pipe. However, I'd bet a lot of customers would like to be able to make a VoIP call and download something on BT at th
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.
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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 r
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Yep - that sounds like *exactly* the symptoms I started getting on bittorrents when Comcast started doing this. Used to be a download would take an hour or 2, then I could let it run for 4-8 hours and I have uploaded as much as I downloaded. The downloads now really aren't any slower, but I can leave it running for *days* and transfer maybe 100 to 150 MBs. There are never more than 2 pee
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What URL? Ok, so I tell grandma "Yea, that's right, I know, just at the end, type colon eighty eighty. No, grandma, don't type colon, just the colon - it's shift-semi-colon. No, not Tiffany. Never mind, I'll send you an email...".
Of course, now I gotta figure out how to redirect all my email, too, because port 25 is also blocked, and webmaster@my
Should just use CoS instead (Score:2)
I would have no problem with Comcast using CoS instead and just classify Bittorrent traffic as low-priority bulk transfers. This way it would get whatever bandwidth is left over yet prioritize more important traffic like games and VOIP. (In fact, this is how I h
Everyone should ... (Score:2)
... install and enable IPsec, even if they are not a Comcast vict^h^h^h^hcustomer.
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I have tried that, but it doesn't stop Comcast's mucking with it. They are blocking it whether encrypted or not.
how is that different from all the others? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs [azureuswiki.com]
It seems odd to pick on only one of them.
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greed (Score:2)
Jeez. (Score:2)
Re:Jeez. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you are just doing a bunch of downloading, using your connection mainly for push-at-you content and VOIP. They will get around to trampling the VOIP that's not their own pretty soon, but it sounds like it's working ok for you right now. Your usage sounds kind of high, but before long Comcast will be approaching those television networks and other content providers with their hands out, looking for a little more money from them. Because basically you're what Comcast wants - a good consumer.
Yes, it seems Comcast is fine with the downloads using BT. Apparently you didn't check to see if you are helping with contributing bandwidth (you do know that Ubuntu is supported solely through contributions from the community, don't you?) when you were running those BT downloads. You probably just waited for the download to finish, then closed BT right away. If you had left it up for a while, you would have noticed that the peers trying to connect with you to share those files were sent barely a trickle of data, and then got bumped off. That's what Comcast is doing to BT now.
We are participating, sharing, and contributing. But Comcast is interfering with us. They don't want us to have a voice. They just want us to sit back and take what they're sending.
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I have the funny feeling it may depend more on how competitive your area is, broadband-wise. Where I happen to live, I can get DSL from a number of providers, Comcast of course, and some other wireless solutions. Consequently, Comcast sees fit to leave me alone, because if I got too much grief I'd just get my connectivity elsewhere. If I were living in a one-horse town it might very well be a different story.
What about IPSec? (Score:3, Informative)
$195,000 is just batshit mental (Score:2)
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 someo
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Re:Remove their common carrier status (Score:5, Informative)
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To which Comcast would reply... (Score:1)
"Cable Internet Service Not Common Carrier"
Re:Remove their common carrier status (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone says this on every single article relating to traffic shaping, QoS, or filtering. Somehow this one even got a +5 Insightful (at one point), despite being based on an invalid premise. ISPs are not common carriers. The line-level divisions of the telecommunications companies are common carriers. The divisions relating to actual Internet service, and other non-telco ISPs like Comcast, are "information carriers" (or some such label) and not subject to common-carrier regulations. The ISPs don't want to be common carriers; they're much better off as they are. You can't threaten them with withdrawing a regulatory status they never had and never wanted.
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Common carrier status does NOT require legislation (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong.
Common carrier status does NOT require explicit legislation. It is a creature of common law. Explicit legislation may codify the details of the obligations and immunities of a PARTICULAR type of common carrier, rather than leaving it to judges and precedent. But it isn't necessary to create such a state.
An ISP may be or may not be a common carrier, depending on its behavior:
- If it accepts all comers on equal terms it's a common carrier. Making no choices it is
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Why do some geeks have such a hard time with law? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do we not ridicule politicians who make laws based on their completely boneheaded ideas about what technology means ("tubes", anyone?)? Do we not loathe judges who rule in favor of the "MAFIAA" due to their complete lack of even elementary comprehension of what is involved in, say, *watching* a DVD? Do we not scoff at the astonishin
Correction (Score:2)
All fixed.
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finnaly, comcast will get fucked in the ass (Score:4, Insightful)
First off before I even get to the throttling, we are the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and we lag so behind in other countries in bandwith speed, and comcast has literally done NOTHING in their long term plan to provide more bandwith speed. They are milking their shitty lines for every Americans last penny. Its corporate greed at its finest. Big brother setting his hand in there to make sure im not taking up to much bandwith that I PAY FOR and limiting my legal torrents download speed.
EAT A DICK
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You are one of the high use people Comcast would love to drop. You use the resources of about 200 regular customers.
comcast has literally done NOTHING in their long term plan to provide more bandwith speed.
They want users who use no bandwidth when they are not directly between the chair and keyboard. They want users who pull a page ore email and stop to read it. They hate 24/7 saturated connections and will be glad to be rid of you.
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kudos on sending a letter. More people should. More precisely, more people with MY views should.
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They made a mistake and offered the plan knowing in the day the typical usage of users. When high bandwidth P-P invaded the network and high bandwidth continued after the u
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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
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Simon
"Tragedy of the commons" ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
The poster is correct - bandwidth is not an unlimited commodity, since there is no such thing as an unlimited commodity. Comcast, etc, attempted to pretend that it was in their advertising campaign by promising the impossible -- unlimited bandwidth. In a sane world, they contractually obligated themselves to bankruptcy by their fraud, hoping that the price in bandwidth costs would always outpace bandwidth usage growth, instead of actually advertising what limitations they could afford.
And now we get all kinds of sophistry to defend them. Obviously, you have to have some form of bandwidth cap. You could do it by total bandwidth monthly or weekly, you could degrade bulk services at high demand (and state it openly in your terms) or you could drop high-bandwidth users (and state it openly in your terms).
But they're the ones who have f*cked up, and want to have their cake and eat it too. They're the ones who still have "Unlimited Bandwidth!!!" ads at the malls still today.
This is no tragedy of the commons. There's no abuse because contractual obligations are lacking and oversight is limited to traditional norms. This is a case of explicit contractual obligations that are clearly delineated, where "property rights" are quite obvious, where private entities aren't sharing but are trading. It's just that one of those entities is much larger than the rest of the partners, and that entity is simply trying to defraud their partners by promising what they can't deliver.
Libertarian language is just so Orwellian.
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The campus buys a limited amount of bandwidth that is shared by all users. At work I have 60 meg on my desk and it make Comcast seem like dial-up. When surfing on my break, I sometimes hit a page on an
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While competing with DSL, they are trying to avoid having to drop the unlimited from their advertising. They got caught. It would have been much better for them to roll out a new guaranteed high speed plan with a minimum monthly data transfer. After that, then the hogs can be throttled after X number of GB has been transferred. They can no longer offer unlimited accounts wh
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Here's where your analogy fails: this commons isn't finite! Comcast and other telcos have had all the opportunity in the world to upgrade the backbones to deal with the demand. They've chosen not to do so, and that's their problem, not ours. I do not believe for one second that they "can't afford" to take on the burden of actually fulfilling their "unlimited" promises, even with BitTorrent users, while still charging a reasonable rate. They just aren't willing to do so, because it would cut into their monop
Re:finnaly, comcast will get *I** in the ** (Score:2)
The money to buy bandwidth isn't either. Most people have no idea that Comcast has to buy bandwidth and think the answer is simply to upgrade equipment to handle more bandwidth. Buying the bits is the problem. There is a point where the bits used exceed many users contribution to the purchased bits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_cap [wikipedia.org]
Here is an idea of what ISP's pay for broadband.
http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/isp-bandwidth/0608/msg00015. [isp-planet.com]
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You are in the dark if y
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It is the whipping boy because it is used constantly by less than 20% of the subscribers, but consumes 2/3rds of the bandwidth. You can drop your bill to level 3 over half by ticking off less than 20% of your users. The over 80% notice reduced ping times and faster page loads.
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I think you got that backwards. Weren't you trying to say that the money to buy bandwidth is finite (or equivalently, not infinite)?
On the contrary, in the general case, all the ISPs have to do is upgrade equipment. How so, you ask? Well, I'm saying that the equipment upgrades have to occur up the ISP chain too, all the wa
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The same reason you can go to an all you can eat buffet and can eat all you can. If you bring in an automated eating machine with you that continued to eat 24X7 when you were no longer in the chair would be a problem in an all you can eat place. Unlimited was intended for while the space between the keyboard and chair was occupied. The automated
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Actually yes. Before the flame war starts, remember that bandwidth just like any resource is a commodity with an expense.
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.
I live in a capitalistic society. My role is a customer. I pay for 5 Mbit. I'm going to use all 5 Mbit as much as possible. The more I use the more value I receive from their product. It is not my role to help them turn a profit or manage their resources. If they can't make money on me using my 5 Mbit 24/7 then they need to change something. If they change something they need to communicate those changes so I can decide if I continue to want to do business with them. This resetting connections is
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Upload is not the only thing this will impact. Download speed is important also. When a new ISO of Linux is out, I would like to have a fast connection. If the upstream is clogged by P-P running 24X7, then I would not be able to get a quick download. Preventing the few from keeping the upstream connection saturated is good for my VOIP, web surfing, streaming media, and
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So why do you think a good part of the US is still on dial-up? The high cost of a broadband connection is directly the largest reason. High bandwidth users will pay the fee. For those who check for an email from the grandkids are fine with dial-up as they won't get their value out of it.
The ISPs made a mistake and should have sold bandwidth the same way cell phone plans do. An unlimited account should be priced in the $200-$600 range to cover the
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If Comcast did that, they would again be in hot waster for their advertised unlimited service plan. They are caught between a rock and a hard place on this one. That would be the ideal situation as most users would have fantastic bandwidth most of the time. The downside is when people hit the cap, and think thier connection is broken, the constant calls to service would be a problmem. To do it properly, they would need to provide a usage meter for each customer. This is again another expense for Comcas
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The interesting thing is that even if you manage to "regulate" P2P inside the US, umm, that still leaves P2P in the hands of your alleged "enemies" outside the US. So the point is?