Does an ISP have the legal right to block or slow down access to certain sites based? Or is it a situation where they can do whatever they want?

Encryption!

@stanfrombrooklyn: They're carrying out a man in the middle attack and impersonating other people. Last I checked that's illegal.

@Cowboys_fan:
Yeah, encryption... because your dealyed or dropped packets aren't slow enough already.

Ture, while it might stop the ISP from figuring out what's in the packet and therefore maybe stop them from interfering, maybe instead we should be asking "why do we have to get into an arms race with our own ISP that we pay to carry packets for us?"

As Buran points out, how about just getting them to do the right thing, rather than the probably illegal thing?

@stanfrombrooklyn: It's being debated right now, actually. The problem is, when they start mucking with traffic they begin to lose the right to claim that they don't know what's being transmitted on their networks, and will then be somewhat culpable for aiding the various crimes that their users may commit.

My favorite part is when people think the encryption makes the data packet larger. Actually all encryption does is make the transmitting computer CPU and the receiving end computer CPU work a little harder doing the encrypting/decrypting of the payload.(Like 2%, if that!) MTU will still be 1500 people.

Encryption is good, use it.

@r4__:

Absolutely, they start shredding the "we're just a pipe, like for water ya know?" defense. Additionally it begins to open them up for damages due to service interruptions. Imagine someone that legitimately uses torrent services to transmit large work-product files...say a graphic designer. Now imagine that person is unable to send an important deliverable because Comcast has been mucking about with their connection. I'm in no way saying it's a slam dunk to prove they did it or prove damages but it certainly edges them a lot closer to taking responsiblity for economic effects of service disruptions.

@Cowboys_fan: Encryption doesn't defeat deep packet inspection which Comcast employs. And for the genius about to post the drop RST packets and "Linux ftw" crap, congratulations, you just created a useless "Half-open connection".

Has anyone checked Charter using the program? I meant to yesterday and forgot.