Comcast Finally Files Suit Against FCC Over Traffic Shaping 353
Following up on their threat last year to sue the FCC over sanctions imposed, Comcast has finally filed suit, stating that there are no statutes or regulations that support the FCC's authority to stop traffic shaping procedures. "First, let's recap: After months of proceedings, hearings, and investigations, the FCC concluded on August 1, 2008 that Comcast was discriminating against certain P2P applications using deep packet inspection techniques. These methods thwarted the ability of users to share video and other files via BitTorrent. 'Comcast was delaying subscribers' downloads and blocking their uploads,' declared then FCC Chair Kevin Martin. 'It was doing so 24/7, regardless of the amount of congestion on the network or how small the file might be. Even worse, Comcast was hiding that fact by making [affected] users think there was a problem with their Internet connection or the application.'"
Not traffic shaping! (Score:5, Informative)
Following up on their threat last year to sue the FCC over sanctions imposed, Comcast has finally filed suit, stating that there are no statutes or regulations that support the FCC's authority to stop traffic shaping procedures.
Traffic shaping is writing rules like "give ssh and http packets priority over ftp-data". This is good and something almost all ISP that care about good customer service already do. What Comcast was doing, aka packet forgery, was a deliberate attempt to disrupt certain types of transfer. NO good ISP does this, by definition.
Re:Republicans (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Republicans (Score:4, Informative)
I have a philosophy ... (Score:5, Informative)
Lack of government regulation can be bad. Some government regulation is good. Massive amounts of government regulation is bad.
who here disagrees?
Common Carriers (Score:4, Informative)
They don't.
!packet shaping (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not traffic shaping! (Score:4, Informative)
Yikes, what the fuck hospitals and doctors do you work for?
Can we say major HIPAA violation? Clear text passwords, no data encryption for EMR?!?
Jesus. At the shop I work at, SCP, IPSec ONLY, for all of our HIPAA-covered data (EMR, claim and benefits).
Meh.
We use plain FTP for stuff that's legally protected like that, we just make sure that everything on the ftp server is pgp/gpg encrypted.
Re:Read Common Sense - not so common anymore (Score:3, Informative)
We need governments. More to the point, if we didn't have them, we would create them.
That is entirely the point of Common Sense (though I can see how my out of context quote can and most certainly be misconstrued). I should have posted the following, in addition:
In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto; the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him to quit his work, and every different want would call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune, would be death; for, though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.
Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but Heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other: and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.
Re:Republicans (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, Comcast does allow you to opt out of the DNS redirection and they processed my request for this quite quickly.
Re:Qualification vs. Status (Score:1, Informative)
Here you go.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/27/1510219 [slashdot.org]
Re:Comcast could be right, except (Score:5, Informative)
Comcast could be free to throttle.
This is what a lot of people, and comcast, are not seeing.
No body at all (except comcast) has said they can't throttle!
Comcast wants to be free to do 'thing A', because there are no laws against doing 'thing A'
And they are right. And they CAN do 'thing A' and no one said otherwise.
Problem is, comcast is actually doing 'thing B' which is totally different and unrelated.
The FCC told them they can't do 'thing B' because it is not legal.
Comcast replies "But but but, 'thing A' is legal! we should be able to do it!" as if that was relative to anything at all.
Obviously, 'thing A' is traffic shaping and throttling. 'thing B' is packet forgery and spoofing.
Re:Qualification vs. Status (Score:3, Informative)
*sigh*, the persistence of belief in this dated misinformation is more than annoying.
Please see http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=36623 [slyck.com]