Consumerist

bittorrent

Comcast: No Thanks FCC, Blogosphere Polices Us Just Fine

By consumerist.com 2.14.08

In the brief Comcast filed arguing that they doesn’t need the FCC telling it how not to throttle its customers’ internets, Comcast came up with a pretty special explanation:

The self-policing marketplace and blogosphere, combined with vigilant scrutiny from policymakers, provides an ample check on the reasonableness of such [network management] judgments.

So after dissing on the relevance of blogs, Comcast turns around and says that it takes blogs seriously enough that they’re a sufficient proxy for FCC regulation. The lawyer that came up with that one deserve a very big M&M cookie.

cable

EFF Confirms Comcast Mucks With BitTorrent

By consumerist.com 11.29.07

The elite cyber-squad freedom fighters of the The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released findings today that Comcast does indeed meddle with peer-to-peer file sharing. They’re also giving away some software you can install to test your own ISP. The FCC still has yet to respond to complaints and reports of Comcast’s interference.

at&t

Tell The FCC, Congress To Support Net Neutrality

By consumeristcarey 11.8.07

Net neutrality advocates are gathering momentum to take Comcast to the woodshed for an old fashioned populist beating. Comcast believes that deliberately destroying connections to the popular communications protocol BitTorrent amounts to “reasonable network management,” which the FCC permits. Advocates figure if they can’t ride the net neutrality pony to Congressional passage now, it will forever lie dormant in the stable munching on BitTorrent packet hay.

fcc

Consumer Groups Ask FCC To Ban Comcast From Blocking Any Peer-To-Peer Activity

By cwalters 11.2.07

Advocacy groups and legal scholars filed a network neutrality complaint with the FCC today against Comcast, asking the government to issue a temporary injunction against the cable company that forces it to “stop degrading any applications. Upon deciding the merits, the Commission should issue a permanent injunction ending Comcast’s discrimination.” More importantly, the complaint asks the FCC to classify any blocking of peer-to-peer file sharing as a violation of the agency’s Internet Policy Statement, “four principles issued in 2005 that are supposed to ‘guarantee consumers competition among providers and access to all content, applications and services.'”

sam goody

NIN's Trent Reznor Shared Files On OiNK, Compares iTunes To Sam Goody

By Meg Marco 10.31.07

Trent: I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me.

sandvine

Damning Proof Comcast Contracted To Sandvine

By consumerist.com 10.27.07

Comcast told its employees to not comment when customers ask about recent reports in an AP article that it contracted BitTorrent sabotaging to a company called Sandvine, or to even discuss that a relationship exists between the two companies. Too bad that Barron’s financial magazine reported back in April that the two are in bed together:

cable

LEAKS: Insider Tells Us There's Proof Comcast Contracts BitTorrent Sabotaging To Sandvine

By consumerist.com 10.26.07

In the reports about Comcast’s disruption of traffic between customers using the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, it’s alleged that Comcast outsources the traffic meddling to a third-party company called Sandvine. Publicly, and in an internal talking points memo leaked exclusively to The Consumerist, Comcast refused to comment on having any relationship with Sandvine.

leaks

Comcast's "We Don't Throttle BitTorrent" Internal Talking Points Memo

By consumerist.com 10.26.07

You may get customers who are contacting us with regard to several articles which were published recently, accusing Comcast of blocking or otherwise filtering customers’ Internet traffic. An in-depth AP story suggests Comcast is hindering our customers’ ability to use BitTorrent, a peer to peer file sharing program. If a customer contacts us to inquire about this, please use the following talking points.

internet

Comcast: "We Throttle Traffic To Help Other Users; Besides, It's Not Permanent"

By cwalters 10.24.07

Comcast is in heavy PR-spin mode this week following last week’s reports that they spoof customers’ computers to cancel peer-to-peer connections, and have been blocking corporate users from sending large attachments via Lotus Notes (that blockage was “fixed” last week, around the time this story broke). Comcast says that they don’t “block” anything but rather delay requests, and that it’s only done to improve overall performance for their customers.

internet

Comcast Impersonates Users' Computers To Meddle With Internet Traffic

By cwalters 10.22.07

Comcast uses its own computers to masquerade as those of its users in order to disrupt and throttle internet traffic—specifically the peer-to-peer kind—whenever it chooses, according to nationwide independent tests carried out by the Associated Press. A Comcast rep dances around the charge by saying that the company doesn’t “block” access to anything—but he makes no mention of throttling or disrupting connections to shape traffic, probably because if he did, he’d have to admit to it or blatantly lie.

comcast

Comcast Tries To Sterilize, Decapitate BitTorrent

By consumeristcarey 8.25.07

Comcast is reportedly stabbing at the heart of the file transfer protocol BitTorrent by preventing users from seeding torrent files. Seeds are completed BitTorrent downloads shared with other users; without seeders, the BitTorrent protocol does not work, much the way a garden can’t grow without seeds. Comcast’s draconian throttling solution utilizes a program from Sandvine that affects all files distributed through BitTorrent, regardless of whether the shared file is an illegally downloaded movie, or a legal distribution of Linux. From TorrentFreak: The throttling works like this…

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