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FCC vs Comcast: Blocking Filesharing customers is a no go
Lanz
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...Za?Registered User regular
news text in spoiler
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-07-11-0181.html
So, long story short, after receiving complaints regarding their internet service being blocked, The FCC has come out and said that By blocking service and not disclosing the reasoning to their costumers, Comcast has violated FCC principles that guarantee people open access to the internet.
As a result, Comcast can no longer can block (and I'd assume throttle down) customer speeds as they have been for god knows how long now, and must tell the FCC what and how exactly they've been doing this. In addition, they'll from now on have to tell customers from now on how they plan to "manage" their networks.
Personally, I see this overall as a good thing for Net Neutrality and hopefully the FCC will prevent any further attempts from ISPs from blocking off internet access. Especially in a day where people are constantly taxing their bandwidth with video services like YouTube, the myriad of Television stations that deliver online content (such as CBS and it's massive catalog of episodes free for streaming), not to mention legal movie and game downloads and ISPs may try to find underhanded means of shaping traffic at the customer's expense
As a sidenote, I'm wondering now if anyone continues trying tactics like this to restrict internet access, could customers have a firm leg to stand on to take legal actions against their providers?
I also wonder, could this lead to companies like comcast actually investing in ways to get more efficient broadband into the areas it services?
EDIT: Edited title to be mroe accurate
InRich.com wrote:FCC chief to rebuke Comcast on access
Martin to recommend company be punished in file-sharing case
Friday, Jul 11, 2008 - 12:55 AM Updated: 01:16 AM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- The head of the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday he will recommend that Comcast be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet.
The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of a type of "file sharing" software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data.
"The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers' access to the Internet," FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin told The Associated Press yesterday. "We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles."
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.
Company spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice denied yesterday that it blocks Internet content or services and said that the "carefully limited measures that Comcast takes to manage traffic on its broadband network are a reasonable part" of the company's strategy to ensure all customers receive quality service.
Martin will circulate an order recommending enforcement action against the company today among his fellow commissioners, who will vote on the measure at an open meeting on Aug. 1.
The action was in response to a complaint filed by Free Press, a nonprofit group that advocates for "network neutrality," the idea that all Internet content should be treated equally.
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.
The FCC approved a policy statement in September 2005 that outlined principles meant to ensure that broadband networks are "widely deployed, open, affordable and accessible to all consumers."
The principles, however, are "subject to reasonable network management."
Comcast argues that the agency's policy statement is not enforceable and that the commission has "never before provided any guidance on what it means by 'reasonable network management.'"
So, long story short, after receiving complaints regarding their internet service being blocked, The FCC has come out and said that By blocking service and not disclosing the reasoning to their costumers, Comcast has violated FCC principles that guarantee people open access to the internet.
As a result, Comcast can no longer can block (and I'd assume throttle down) customer speeds as they have been for god knows how long now, and must tell the FCC what and how exactly they've been doing this. In addition, they'll from now on have to tell customers from now on how they plan to "manage" their networks.
Personally, I see this overall as a good thing for Net Neutrality and hopefully the FCC will prevent any further attempts from ISPs from blocking off internet access. Especially in a day where people are constantly taxing their bandwidth with video services like YouTube, the myriad of Television stations that deliver online content (such as CBS and it's massive catalog of episodes free for streaming), not to mention legal movie and game downloads and ISPs may try to find underhanded means of shaping traffic at the customer's expense
As a sidenote, I'm wondering now if anyone continues trying tactics like this to restrict internet access, could customers have a firm leg to stand on to take legal actions against their providers?
I also wonder, could this lead to companies like comcast actually investing in ways to get more efficient broadband into the areas it services?
EDIT: Edited title to be mroe accurate
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Yeah, I'd suspect they're trying to do it to protect themselves from subpoenas or some-such from those that are after illegal file sharing using completely legal services and applications.
I'd also suspect they're not going to be allowed to raise their prices in response to them not being able to do this.
If I dare ask, why does one need to "protect themselve" from a "subpoena" and what does "some such" mean? Is there an official PA propaganda campaign about how the ISP's are scared of litigation? Because that topic comes up in every single internet related thread we have and I'm forced to quote the same 100 sources again and again as to why it is not so.
Well, I'm not a lawyer. I would assume, probably bad on my part, that a company would like to protect information about their infrastructure and customers as best as possible. And opening themselves up to a subpoena by RIAA, and all of those fancy people, by not taking measures to stop illegal file sharing would probably not be in their best interests. (EDIT: This is a hypothetical, I don't know what kind of traffic they were capping or shaping, but I think it's pretty evident what they're trying to stop)
It costs them money (someone has to get that information presentable), and possibly, a lawsuit. You can link all the sources you want, it doesn't stop someone from bringing them up for trial. Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. Just because it has happened and has failed, doesn't mean it will this time.
If you actually bother to read FCC's statement, ISP's are not allowed to act in a way policing their networks. Their involvement in copyright infringement ends with identifying users on court requests.
I also have some breaking news for you. No matter how many times you sue somebody, if the law isn't on your side, you're not going to win. Ever.
I absolutely agree with you. And if you remember, I agreed with you in the last thread. That's why I said subpoena, you know, for information. I never said they'd get successfully sued, but you seemed to imply that they couldn't be brought to trial, ever. (That also doesn't mean they can't be ass-fucking-lucky and get successfully sued because of a clueless judge, it happens)
I'm also not trying to be a jerk on purpose, but every time somebody implies ISP's are scared of litigation to justify a stick for the consumers I get slightly pissed off. It's just that somebody reads it, buys it and starts repeating it.
On the information requests, I honestly don't get it. I can't think of a subpoena that could be potentially harmful to an ISP's business. Probably there is one, but I can't see it and anyway, we're really going into far fetched theories.
I believe there was a study illustrating that main reason for Comcast's throttling(and that it was region based) were bandwidth demands for their own hi-def & ppv services, so all the legal talk really isn't necessary.
I'm more interested to see if the FCC's decision actually has consequences with regards of future net neutrality debates. It would make the FCC look all kinds of dumb if NN doesn't pass.
They couldn't easily. Each market sets its own prices, they aren't nationwide, and those prices are agreed upon with a franchise agreement with the city. Which is what allows them to setup a monopoly in the areas. Your local government has a lot of say in your cable companies prices.
My guess is every single guy that has suggested that on a board meeting got a pink slip the following morning. Seems too obvious from a rational point of view to be acceptable for businesses.
It's very true, but their unlimited plans are usually on par for price as ours are. I had a friend in Norway who paid about $25 USD for his "limited" broadband and $60 USD for his "unlimited" plan. That's about what our broadband plans cost, at least mine does.
Yeah, very true. However, as a business, I'd rather have 8,000 loyal and happy customers than 8,001 unhappy and pissed customers.
Canada was the only place where I actually had to pay more for uncapped broadband and that was because I insisted on not using Bell's services(it was still uncapped at the time.). I've not seen this anywhere in Europe, so I'm not sure how "most other countries" is defined.
I believe in two of those countries(UK, I'm sure, Canada should be that way if it hasn't changed) unlimited cap is tied to faster services. It's not that you pay extra for the cap per se, but rather, it's used an incentive in the offer.
(what I get quoted from my UK friends is 5pounds 8MB, 40GB cap, 10 pounds 16MB, unlimited with Sky Dig and the other guy has an unlimited 8MB from BT)
Edit: Also, it seems that the "unlimited" is subject to a "Fair use" policy. Meaning they could fuck you up at any given time.
Not so much anymore.
Unlimited data plans are pretty much gone in the current economic climate.
SUCK
I wouldn't sign up for it unless I had roll-over, or the limits were incredibly high. I'd rather have 56K with unlimited than 2 MBits that I can only use for 8 hours a month unless I want to pay $200 a month for a business line.
I'm currently on a 20Mbit ADSL2+ line 60 GB peak, 150 Off peak 10 GB Usenet (although because of the distance from the exchange it maxes out at about 14Mbit)
It's not bad, but not brilliant.
It is, as far as I can tell the best deal currently available on the Australian market..
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do other countries have unlimited bandwidth? or at least to the point that it's ridiculously unlikely right now that you'd max your caps (I think I heard it was Japan that had like a significant amount of gigabytes a day, well into the tens of gigabytes. I want to think 50, but I'm not 100% certain)
Yes, but in America we don't have an equivalent to the low-cost capped plans. Comcast wants to keep prices the same, but add caps. A quick google says that UK residents can get broadband for 11 US dollars a month, which is much lower than in the US.
Not to mention that our speeds are generally terrible. I get 30 kb/s upload, which means that it takes about half an hour to upload a video to Youtube.
30GB per day upload, but they have fiber optics so a heavy P2P user can actually reach that.
Also, it costs a hell of a lot of money to shape that much traffic... money that is provided through government subsidies that were allocated for the purpose of the improvement of infrastructure... gogo Comcast.
A computer crime by any other name...
If they were just limiting speeds or even dropping some packets here and there for people using up a lot of bandwidth I think they probably would have had a case. Forging packets though, not so much.
That's a US satellite internet company, by the by.
Their internet policy is called "FAP"?!
What?!
I know, I know.
Anyway, it depends; I think the FCC got mad at Comcast because they were injecting forged packets to deliberately fuck with BitTorrent traffic specifically, so we'll see in the coming weeks how the FCC decides to run it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but does this roughly translate to "You broke the law. Your punishment will be that you must stop breaking the law."?
B/c if so, that's bullshit.
If the first article is correct and the FCC never specified what reasonable network management is then I don't really see how they can fine them.
Salvation122: I'm pretty sure bandwidth caps are still legal as long as they are stated.
Especially since the government's been subsidizing them to do so for a while.
Oh, shit, sorry, I realise that it's not actually an accurate description.
It's no longer available (at least at for the moment) I got on this plan through the following set of circumstances.
Started off with Koala Telecom on an unlimited 1.5Mps ADSL plan, they nixed the unlimited and so convinced me to move to ADSL2 for the same price per month with the same download limit (100GB). Then they went broke (because of an idiot marketting guy that the board put in charge above the GM) and got purchased by Blitz, Blitz killed everyone's plans and started new ones, one of which was the Velocity max plan. You either got 30 GB download per month with 190GB usenet access or 40 Peak, 130 Off peak and 10 Usenet and free PIPE (for both), I chose the latter option.
Blitz got screwed by Koala's previous purchases and we spent like 10 days without internet when the investors pulled the plug, the administrators did a bunch o idiotic stuff and then Supernerd who had come to the rescue providing back up bandwidth to as many customers as they could bought all the old blitz customers.
Which brings me to the present day - Supernerd have purchased the Blitz customer base and are currently honouring old plans. They've started up the new server and it's even better than before, and their release says that they really like the blitz plans so are seeing if they can offer the ones they like, one of which, will hopefully be the velocity max plans (assuming you want to join). They also say that the free PIPE is coming back, but it's going to take a month or so - at the moment I trust my new nerdy overlords.
Actually, since joining SN it looks like the quotas have been raised a bit. But I can't remember what they used to be.
Currently there are similar plans offered by TPG and SPIN internet. I'd go with spin because they offer free PIPE (but no usenet).