Comcast May Face Lawsuits Over BitTorrent Filtering 378
An anonymous reader writes "It's been widely reported that Comcast is engaged in a sneaky form of Internet filtering. The company is terminating its customers' BitTorrent sessions by sending misleading data onto the network. The end result is that instead of targeting key heavy users, Comcast is instead engaged in an all out war against P2P protocols. In an interview with CNET, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann states that Comcast is 'throwing a spanner in the works of the Internet, hoping that this will somehow reduce bandwidth usage overall.' Other lawyers seem to have smelled blood, and are circling in the water. Lohmann reveals that '[The EFF has] already been contacted by attorneys who are considering legal action against Comcast.' Could Comcast be facing a class-action?"
Comcast (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be nice.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Having said that, I hope it scares the crap out of Comcast (and any other ISP dumb enough to try this).
Re:Comcast (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Where does it end? Modifying emails because they disapprove of the content? What if your cell phone company monitored your phone conversations, and bleeped out words they didn't like?
This is obnoxious on so many levels it's not even funny...
Re:Heh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Comcast (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as they have a government granted monopoly on local cable service, they have the right to provide fully functional cable internet service to any resident who requests it and is willing to pay the fee specified in the contract between Comcast and the municipality.
Companies getting to chose who they do business with is great - I kicked people out occasionally when I owned a retail store - but it simply doesn't apply to utility companies with government granted monopolies or government subsidized infrastructure.
Re:I don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast has 1.) advertised full-function internet service 2.) contracted with municipalities to provide that service to residents. Sending out spoofed packets to disrupt users internet usage simply isn't reasonable behavior for a company claiming to provide internet service.
Lawsuits will have unintended consequences. (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Comcast rebuttal says that all the traffic is illegal.
3) RIAA, the Business Software Alliance, say, "oh ho, you can figure out that this traffic is illegal.. why are you allowing it at all?"
4) Comcast agrees to halt all "illegal" traffic, winning the 1st lawsuit, after being joined by RIAA and co, and they agree to drop their lawsuits against Comcast.
5) P2P is dead, killed by ISPs that follow comcast's lead.
Kiss neutral traffic access goodbye... (Score:2, Insightful)
Having said that...
Remember when the Green Card Lottery spam first went out? Everyone was up in arms about it, threats and lawsuits were coming from all sides...sound familiar? And that stopped the spam problem dead in it's tracks, right?
Same thing here. This is just the first volley. They're testing the waters. In 5 years it'll be commonplace for the ISP to disrupt/block/delay traffic as they see fit.
I hope I'm wrong. Smells like censorship to me.
Re:ZOMG!! Squeal!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Comcast (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine if the mail worked that way. The love letter you send gets altered to read that you hate them and never want to hear from them again. The sorrow filled response asking what they did wrong gets replaced with a directive to go to hell. All is fine because, after all, it's THEIR mail trucks.
Lets hope these sorts of filtering issues don't ever take a political slant where dissidents' web pages and text get altered in-flight and turn into glowing approvals. (Pro Tip: eventually, if this stuff isn't protected against NOW, it will.)
What would be the point? (WAS: Sue them) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Comcast (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Property rights are not, and never have been, absolute rights. I can not fill my backyard swimming pool full of radioactive sludge no matter how much I want to.
3. Comcast is a government blessed monopoly in many cases. Therefore, their behavior is even more limited since they must "act in the public interest."
4. Comcast likes to enjoy the legal protections of being a "common carrier" (i.e a dumb pipe). This behavior shows that they are not a dumb pipe at all. Once a provider starts manipulating the traffic flowing across their network, they lose common carrier status, and are now responsible for ALL the traffic on their network.
5. They are forging packets. This is a computer crime. [usdoj.gov] ("knowingly cause[] the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally cause[] damage without authorization, to a protected computer", where "damage is "any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information." and "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.") While you may not be able to say that any one computer was "damaged" in excess of $5,000, the entire network was affected, and that is certainly more than $5,000.
6. They are deciptively advertising their serves as "unlimited" when it clearly is "limited."
7. While not related here, you should know, that just because a legal "agreement" says something, doesn't make it legal. Case in point: The indemnity clause at ski resorts that say "If our ski lift collapses, you can't sue." Bullshit. You can, as there is a clear public interest in not having deathtrap ski lifts.
Re:One should hope so (Score:4, Insightful)
and could choose to sign up with a service that doesn't do so
Re:ZOMG!! Squeal!! (Score:3, Insightful)
So even though the majority of Bittorrent traffic is based on infringing copyright, it's also used for the majority portion of Linux ISO distribution. It's also used by a few game companies and other, very legitimate, purposes. If Comcast simply put out a press release saying "Due to our infrastructure, we are blocking all Bittorrent usage," there would likely be no problem. Instead, they're claiming they're not doing anything, or perhaps they're doing something, or they are definitely doing something but not really, or it's just like a "busy signal" on a telephone, and they're allowing people to download but not upload (which kills Bittorrent).
Instead they're lying, and trying to kill even legitimate torrents (without saying they're killing them). I'm not at all surprised that they're doing it -- the upload speeds on Comcast's network are laughable. But it's the avoidance and lying that gets me. Come out and say "We are actively blocking Bittorrent activity on our network." Otherwise, you're just misleading your customers.
Re:Comcast (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue I take with this is that there are a myriad of ways to handle this problem. Forged packet RST is not the answer. There are plenty of options at their disposal, but they have chosen one that not only spoofs my identity but is very disruptive. What is wrong with response queuing and traditional QoS methods?
What if it were a protocol less resilient then Bittorrent?
SIP for example, which I still think Comcast was playing with against Vonage. I know slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but I lose a lot of faith in my carrier when they play man in the middle games with my content. In addition, their refusal to admit to their customers what they are doing is inexcusable. I pay for the service, I should receive notice if they're going to decide to gimp a part of it I actively use (in a legal way).
Re:Comcast (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not? Provided you're not violating their absolute property rights by poisioning or irradiating them, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to store whatever you like in your backyard pool.
Rights are negative, not positive. They describe what other people can't do to you, not what you can do. The fact that you can't act so as to poison or irradiate your neighbours is an example of absolute property rights, not an exception to them. By the same argument, they can't take action to stop you from filling your pool with radioactive sludge (or whatever) unless you happen to be violating their rights by doing so. This simple principle is the basis for most of the common law.
Re:I don't want money (was Re:ZOMG!! Squeal!!) (Score:3, Insightful)
No. I do not want my data traffic to be lower priority than someone else's VOIP. I don't use VOIP, I HAVE PHONE SERVICE. When I first heard of VOIP in 1996 I thought it was a bad idea, and I think it's worse now.