FCC Considers Taking Action Against Comcast 181
Presto Vivace writes "According to CNet the Federal Communications Commission is considering taking action against cable operator Comcast modifying peer-to-peer traffic, a subject we've discussed here in the past. 'It looks like Chairman Martin, and by extension the commission, sees Comcast as going beyond simply managing its network. But even if the FCC decides that Comcast has violated Net neutrality principles, it's unclear what the agency can actually do to Comcast. The principles are not agency regulation.'"
Government Controls Not Working!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Government controls are not the answer (Score:2)
The proper place for this is in the courts. If Comcast violates its customer contract, they should be sued. Believe me there are more than enough trial lawyers out there that will pay for this themselves on the hope of future earnings. Its their network and whether or not you and I believe net neutrality is moral, right, wrong, legal or illegal, they have the right to control, patrol, fuck with, etc, their own network to the extent that they don't violate their contracts or the law. There are no net neut
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Regarding the FCC... The FCC has no authority in this domain
Yeah, I'd suppose that the FTC would be more appropriate. That said, this is a perfect place for the feds to stomp on Comcast. I know, contracts are holy writ, but sometimes it makes more sense just to pass a law.
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You do realize what happened when we nationalized the broadcast radio spectrum? Freedom was lost in the process. Now the FCC regulates what can and cannot be said on the radio.
Nationalizing the internet would be the worst idea for keeping the internet free (as in speech) and in the process would also end up making it less free (as in beer). Right now you have thousands of companies pro
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Right now you have thousands of companies providing access. If you have a problem with one (such as Comcast) you can choose an alternative, or pressure/advocate the company into changing. With so many alterntives its likely there's a choice out there for you.
No, that's exactly the problem: there aren't thousands of companies providing access. In huge parts of the country, the only alternatives to cable are dialup and satellite (in other words, jack and shit).
If the system was nationalized, and you didn't like something they were doing you have no choice, no alternatives. You can still try advocacy except you now have a much smaller voice than you did before.
Smaller... or larger? It seems to me that my opinion is more likely to matter to my elected representatives than it is to the suits at Comcast.
The suits at Comcast know that they're going to have customers no matter what, because if you don't have cable then you're stuck with rabbit ears and dialup (unles
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There are no net neutrality laws AFAIK, and I personally think giving the government ANY regulation powers or control of the internet is a horrible idea.
Too late. It's government regulation that brought us these monopolies to begin with. They created the monster, it's their duty to reign it in if it tries to run amok.
If Comcast continues to limit availability of certain protocols then competing ISPs and community sponsored networks will fill the void.
Yeah, that hasn't been going so well. Competing ISPs often don't exist, or if they do, they're phone companies who are also local monopolies that do whatever they feel like with their network.
What we really need is municipal ownership of the infrastructure, which would allow for any number of ISPs to offer services to the customers and cre
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Out here in the pacific northwest there is a lot
Local Monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes! But, unfortunately, their lobbyists got the politicians to give them local monopolies. So, therefore, they won't lose customers unless their customers are willing to do without.
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And if you contradict that with "socialist ideas" (including but not limited to Keynesian economics, trustbusting, welfare, and civil projects), prepare to be derided as one who will "tax the country into poverty".
I'm not kidding.
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but, I'd suggest:
Ayn Rand was Jesus, and Milton Friedman is Peter, upon whom The Church was built at the University of Chicago School of Economics.
Re:Local Monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)
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How low can the barrier of entry really get, when anyone who wants to start up a new cable company is going to have to wire up every house in the area? And how many different sets of wires do you really want running along those poles, anyway?
Maybe these problems can be solved with modern technology, but historically, at least, it made some sense for these companies to have monopolies.
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I agree with your comment 100%, but I would like to note that these companies like Comcast operate in anything but a free market. Free market != government sanctioned monopoly. I'd be fine with an Ayn Rand, objectivist, libertarian free market if the market really was free and had low barriers to entry. What we have in the US is closer to fascism (the merger of corporate and government power) than libertarianism.
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I'd be fine with an Ayn Rand, objectivist, libertarian free market if the market really was free and had low barriers to entry.
This market wouldn't have low barriers to entry even without the regulations.
Cable TV/internet isn't a product that people can come to you to buy. If you want to sell cable, you have to run wires all the way across the city or county to every one of your customers' homes. That means you either spend $millions up front before you get any customers, or make your new customers wait for days or weeks before they can use the service they're paying for.
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It isn't really a monopoly. Yes, they have the right to be the cable provider for a particular area, but that is not a monopoly for Internet and television service.
You don't like Comcast cable Internet? Switch to DSL or wireless(if it's available).
You don't like Comcast cable television? Switch to Satellite.
I do believe, however, that Cable companies should not be able to be the exclusive provider for cable access for any area.
You speak as if those things are equivalent. They're not. There's big differences in service levels and capabilities depending on where you live and what you use the service for. If there's only one cable company allowed to serve an area, then that is a government-sanctioned monopoly, by definition. By your definition, since I could use IP over Carrier Pigeon, the local cable company doesn't have a monopoly.
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Cry me a river, hippie.
Comcast in my area is the fastest service, with next to no downtime. Their network is rock solid.
Satellite sucks, has the normal latency issues, costs a metric assload, and it totally inferior.
DSL is about the same price as Comcast, but you only get 5 down instead of 8, and 768 up instead of 1.
So this being a free market, I could
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I think one of us misunderstands communism.
To reduce it down to a few sentences, you own nothing. Anything you invent, create, make or do belongs to the 'everyone', and by 'everyone' I mean the government. Working harder doesn't get you anything. Working harder benefits everyone else, including those that do nothing. (Like my neighbor who sits at home all day and drinks beer in his bathrobe while collecting welfare)
In no way does having a business and a prod
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Re:Local Monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)
Even when there's only one Cable system in town, there are usually alternatives for broadband. Not many, and often not as cost effective, but they are there. DSL is available in most areas, and Satellite is an option even in areas where there's not Cable OR DSL service. If you really want to have first rate service, and can afford it, full T1's are down under $300/mo in some places. Sure it's 5 times the price of Cable broadband, but you're dealing with a whole world's different class of service.
Personally, I'd love to see the FCC smack Comcast silly for this crap. Cable ISPs and Telco's like to claim Common Carrier protections for a world of things. But they want to be able to filter content and manipulate traffic too, and the FCC needs to put it's Governmental boot down and say "No! You can filter, or you can be common carrier. Not both!"
Wishful thinking, I know.
Beyond wishful (Score:4, Informative)
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DSL is available in most areas, and Satellite is an option even in areas where there's not Cable OR DSL service. If you really want to have first rate service, and can afford it, full T1's are down under $300/mo in some places.
DSL and wireless are the only alternatives that can really compete with cable, but they both suffer from limited coverage areas.
The laws of physics make satellite unusable for anyone who does anything real time: chat, gaming, VPN, VoIP. A T1 is much more expensive than cable and also much slower for downloading: 1.5 Mbps is nothing compared to the reliable 6 Mbps you can get over cable (with bursts up to 12 Mbps). Someone who does enough torrenting to worry about Comcast's interference is probably going to
Dirty Liberal = Not a slur. (Score:2)
Anyways, the government thinks that by regulating cable, it is keeping prices down - which it might be (the cost of infrastructure is lower, because you only need ONE system)
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Take their license away? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the Comcast situation has much to do with net neutrality. Lack of "net neutrality" would mean that a service provider slows down some traffic and not other traffic. So your bittorrent might take 12 hours instead of 1, but work without problems. But that is not what Comcast does: They actively manipulate the traffic that goes through their system, sending fake abort messages to bittorrent clients. That, I think, could be very much in violation of whatever license they need.
If I sent you a letter and it arrived in five days instead of one day, I would complain. If the post office deliberately threw away my letters, I would complain a lot louder.
Re:Take their license away? (Score:5, Insightful)
The post office deliberately sends a soldier fake dear john letters [wikipedia.org], merely because they believe that soldier's girlfriend to be unscrupulous, or because they have grown tired of mailing that soldier's letters to his girlfriend.
Other than that minor point, I agree entirely.
Re:Take their license away? (Score:5, Funny)
Comcast is like a car, er wait, truck, no... HUMMER and you are behind them in traffic, but you drive a Pinto. All you can smell is the diesel exaust from the Hummer. Then the driver of the hummer gets out and kicks you in the face, but there is a dear john letter stuck to his boot, that is now stuck to your face. You can't see where you are going, so you go home, but when you get there your cat is hanging from the celing with a puddle of water on the ground. There is no evidence of struggle, so obvously your cat committed suicide by standing on a large block of ice and slowly hanging itself. You look at your cable modem and the "sync" light is slowly blinking... no internet. Damn! screwed by Comcast again!
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For the ever present "young people" on slashdot you can read about the pinto's reputation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Take their license away? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that a bit more appropriate to you? It's still grossly unacceptable.
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I'm a Cox customer, and they're using the same methods in my area. After several minutes on Gnutella (any client) or bittorrent (again, any client), my machines keep connected, but the -application- can't communicate -at all- with other hosts. I can close the app and reopen it and get a minute or so of P2P time, but then it's disconnected again.
What Comcast (and Cox) are doing is sniffing the packets (so you can't 'just use port 80', they actually sniff the traffic for P2P data packets),, and injectin
Re:Take their license away? (Score:4, Insightful)
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And I don't buy that your ISP completely con
Re:Take their license away? (Score:4, Informative)
what would be the proper course of action would be to remove their DMCA safe harbour status, which would render them liable for any copyrighted material moving through them [that occurs without the right holder's permission].
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Re:Take their license away? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if the FCC has the authority and/or the will to take such an action, however.
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Won't Comcast then just increase the price of their service to cover the fines? Their customers can't change ISP to get a better now because they lack choice, they won't be able to change ISP to get a lower price then either.
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Which Comcast will turn around and pass on to their customers. Either way, Comcast customers are pretty much screwed. Comcast knows this and so does the FCC.
Dissolving the company and selling their (Score:2)
There would be NO ComCast bills passing on the cost because there would be NO MORE ComCast.
It is perfectly ethical to TERMINATE ComCast when they do something illegal.
(They're NOT a living being. You can't kill them. But you can dissolve them.)
Imagine how delighted one of their current competitors would be at picking up their assets and their customers at fire sale prices.
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Yes it fattens the wallets of the acquirerer, but at least its not at our expense.
What about a fine? (Score:2)
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Don't get me wrong, I think Comcast needs to stop, and if they violated any actual regulations I hope they are punished for it, but if they didn't actually break any rules then what that means is not that they should be punished anyway, but that the rules
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Bingo. From section 512(a) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act:
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Additionally I am a Vonage customer, and would be unable to place a 911 call because of this. It's just plain irresponsible corporate greed, seems to me.
This happens even when Bit Torrent traffic is at a minimum. It's like Comcast is takin
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This is quite likely not Comcast's fault. P2P clients open lots of connections, and this often overflows various tables in home routers and crashes them.
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=Smidge=
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How do you kill a clown? Give them a free Comcast account.
So this cannibal walks into a bar and sits beside these clowns. The cannibal wacks one clown on the head and they start eating him. Suddenly the second clown looks up and says, "Hey, do you taste something funny?"
Two hobo clowns were waiting at the bus stop along with a nun with her leg in a cast. The first hobo asked, "Sister, how did you break your leg?" The nun replied, "I sli
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You're analogy is poor, because dropping packets when a network is busy is part of the standard. Also, you failed to capture the fact that the rest packets are forged. The finally problem with you analogy is that it didn't mention cars.
You are looking at this at the wrong level. The individual packets are not the letters. The complete file transfer equals the letter. If a few packets are dropped, even if a few percent of all packets are deliberately dropped, then the protocol copes with it by resending the packets (that would be an analogy to the postman missing a few letters before he starts his round; they will be delivered on the next day). The single forged packed makes sure that the complete file transfer doesn't happen, which is th
Verizon (Score:4, Funny)
Don't hold your breath (Score:5, Informative)
Kevin Martin was an aide to Bush/Cheney in the 2000 election, he worked the Florida recount, he was coat tailed in as an aide in the transition from Clinton, was appointed to an advisory position once Bush took office, his wife was given a job as one of Cheney's aides, and since late 2007 he has been under investigation by Congress for abuse of power, and working to reduce the effective power of the FCC.
-Rick
Laws are not needed. (Score:2, Interesting)
If Comcast is a common carrier, it is by definition serving the general public under the license and limitations of
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As for the opposition's investigation, it's slightly more than a "dislike". I would classify it as more of a well documented history of trying to subvert the will of the FCC's commission
Comcast is safe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Penalty phase (Score:5, Funny)
Bad Comcast, Bad Comcast, Bad.
We're sorry we had to be so harsh.
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If you think the FCC will go that easy on Comcast, you're mistaken. It will be "Bad Comcast! Bad Comcast! Bad!" The exclamation points are critical.
Anyone remember Michael Powell? (Score:4, Interesting)
That pretty much sums up the FCC. So don't hold your breath, the FCC is there to mouth words that the the religious right wants to hear and to support the oligopolies that keep American telcom mired 10-15 years in the past.
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Well, since Kevin Martin has said "The public interest is not what any company wants," [arstechnica.com] maybe FCC heads are getting progressively closer to the truth :-)
Maybe the next chairman of the FCC can learn from these two, and say something just as eloquent, like "The public interest is what the public wants... but I don't know what the public wants."
A Comcast customer (Score:2)
Setup (Score:3, Funny)
I haven't experienced any of this slow down or even ask other comments have suggested the "end packets" or whatever that mess up my downloads.
Duduuuude! The FBI is setting you up! Get out!!! Now!
Re:A Comcast customer (Score:5, Informative)
Many torrent sites require a balanced ratio or close to it to be able to participate on their trackers, Comcast makes it difficult (though not impossible) to maintain such a ratio.
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Perhaps. But more likely it's just that you're not living in one of their test areas. You see, they knew quite well that their packet-forging "traffic management" technique would be controversial, and probably illegal. Before they extend it to the rest of the n
This is what will happen... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comcast will continue to stop Bit Torrent until it can find a way to make money off it.
FCC's Martin will resign in Jan 2009 and join Comcast.
Impersonating me (Score:4, Interesting)
If I'm Alice, the Comcast customer, I would find it fraudulent to see a company sending forged packages as me. Why should it be hard to punish Comcast for impersonating me and disrupting my communication with someone else?
If Comcast is allowed to send forged IP messages, are they also allowed to forge emails from me that disrupt my communication with those people?
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The Remedy (Score:2)
I'd say that a 70% reduction in broadband rates -- retroactive -- is very much within the ballpark for this.
New Speak (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like the phone company saying that you talk too much, and in order to slow down your talking they will suddenly and without warning hang up both telephones on the two ends of the conversation for you. Since you have a Redial button, this should only be a minor inconvenience for you at most.
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that is unless Concast terminated your account. Then you are without service for 12 months.
Yeah I thought it was a joke until January 19, 2007 [youtube.com]
then I learned how sick this company really is.
Another reason I submitt
Wait.... (Score:5, Informative)
AOL/Time Warner
Viacom
News Corp
Bertellsman
Disney
?
I'll believe it when I see it. Until then I have my rifle loaded and my FM transmitter on high.
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maybe get local govts involved? (Score:4, Interesting)
Guess the FCC will get the $1,000,000 rate hike (Score:2)
Well.. (Score:2)
Not enough... (Score:2)
What justification do these companies have to raise rates every year? Why have mobile phone companies raised text messaging rates to 20 cents per message when it probably costs them a fraction of a cent to transmit them? We pay more for our
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Comcast's spoof RST packets broke federal law (Score:2)
For a full analysis see my blog post [blogspot.com] for more details.
TCP MD5 signatures (Score:2)
However, a thought occurred to me, as a work-around until this issue is "fixed." The problem, from what I've read, is that Comcast is sending spoofed TCP RST packets. I'm assuming this causes the peers to tear down, or at a minimum have to re-establish a TCP session.
How much ov
Pull "common carrier" status (Score:5, Interesting)
If Comcast is messing with the content going over their cables, then they should no longer be allowed common carrier immunity for that content. This makes them liable for every bit of pirated media, kiddy porn, libel and spam sent over those cables.
A few lawsuits ought to wake them up, I'm sure Comcast has pockets deep enough to attract a few contingency lawyers.
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Re:Pull "common carrier" status (Score:5, Informative)
As a cable provider, they don't. As an internet and phone provider, they do.
It's all about control. Cable companies have control over their content and thus can be held liable for their content. Internet and phone providers, however, do NOT have control over the data that passes over their wires. Thus they cannot be reasonably expected to be held accountable for that data. Unless they demonstrate that they are actively attempting to control the content. Then the legal veil is pierced and the common carrier status is lost.
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http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512 [copyright.gov]
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That's different from 512(a), which establishes common carrier status for Internet Service Providers.
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