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Comcast could receive hefty FCC fine for throttling Bit Torrent traffic
Remember October's news of Comcast throttling Bit Torrent traffic? The debacle not only created a firestorm of bad press for the nation's largest cable provider but also re-ignited the nationwide debate about Net Neutrality. We had numerous signs that Comcast was inhibiting our use of this legal and legitimate file transfer protocol, but to have the AP catch them red handed was icing on the cake.To add to our pleasure, we learned today that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has finally taken notice of Comcast's indiscretion as well. According to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a group of consumer advocates and legal scholars have asked the commission to look into Comcast discriminating against specific types of data (read: Bit Torrent). The groups have also requested the FCC to fine Comcast $195,000 per affected subscribers. In case you were wondering, at last report, Comcast has 9.1 million subscribers.
We don't really think Comcast will be forced to fork out the projected $1.77 trillion, but we do hope they get scraped through the mud on this one. They completely disregarded their entire customer base and should receive far more than just bad press as a result of this. If you are a company and you're going to filter network traffic, be transparent and disclose it up front. If not, be ready to pay up to Mr. Martin.
[via Mashable]
Comments
34
Subscribe to commentscableGUYFeb 26th 2008 2:19PM
the people that think comcast is crazy for throttleing bit torrent users are crazy themselves. i cant wait untill isp's here in america start to charge by the kilobyte then we will see how much of you bit torrent morons download. There has to be some kind of regulations otherwise these morons would bog the network down and make my online game play lagg that would be great wouldnt it, becuase some idiot is trying to download 5 different movies from some bit torrent f-off already.
robotrockJan 8th 2008 11:49PM
good ...F those bastards
waiting for FIOS to hit my condos
waderJan 8th 2008 11:57PM
What about Shaw users in Canada.....
theseenJan 9th 2008 11:44AM
What about them? Shaw doesn't do throttling for BitTorrent or any traffic shaping?
KamalJan 8th 2008 11:57PM
Net Neutrality NOW and forever!
snifeJan 9th 2008 12:26AM
Wow, you guys should think yourself lucky - almost every ISP in the UK is guilty of this kind of practice (I use newsgroups and the throttling is insane sometimes, ie 200KB/s using FTP but 2KB/s using NNTP) - its considered standard practice and none of our regulators seem to have a problem with it.
robotrockJan 9th 2008 12:33AM
I would rather consider yourself unlucky than consider myself lucky.
keevesJan 9th 2008 5:03AM
Is this really the standard in the UK? I've never experienced it, or herd anyone mention this sort of thing before...
snifeJan 9th 2008 6:06AM
Yep i'm afraid so, i'm not sure how much it affects bitorrent as I stopped using P2P years ago but they are certainly guilty of it for NNTP traffic. Most ISP's won't admit to it even in the face of evidence proving it or they simply say its 'traffic shaping' but its throttling, you may not notice it depending on how much and when you download but I download almost constantly and noticed it, sometimes if wasn't major, throttling down to 100KB/s etc but sometimes it made it unusable.
Add to this the fact that most ISP's in the UK offer 'unlimited' deals which actually have caps of anywhere between 2GB!!! and 40GB a month (i do about 10GB a day generally), the only ISP i was able to find that wasn't guilty of either of these practices (I tried UKOnline, BT, Bulldog, Tiscali, Eclipse) was Extranet (distributed by www.ukfsn.org) but you pay for the privilege.
theyRwatchingUJan 9th 2008 1:12PM
LOL... ofcourse people dont complain about net throttling @ the UK man... government spies on you all day and you dont care about it.. why would they give you filter free inet?
AlvinJan 9th 2008 1:30AM
this is everyday news in Canada. Both Bell and Rogers in Ontario throttle bit torrent downloads.
PeteJan 9th 2008 8:34AM
You should use alternative ISPs then. There are plenty that can resell Bell service.
KeithJan 9th 2008 9:21AM
And hopefully they will suffer the same fate. Especially Rogers -- anti-consumer, greedy bastards.
KentJan 9th 2008 8:33AM
I find it highly unlikely that Kevin Martin, the conservative corporate friendly FCC chairman is going to fine anyone for this. I would not be surprised at all if he in fact condones this type of practice publicly or at least refuses to take action.
JayJan 10th 2008 9:22AM
...how about fining them for anti-trust violations? Comcast-ick.
Douglas MuthJan 9th 2008 9:31AM
I'm glad you found my picture useful!
I'll check up on that box again when I get home tonight, but the last time I looked, the cables were still hanging out like some guy's intestines.
And this would be why I don't get cable.
JamesJan 9th 2008 9:54AM
I'm of two minds about this -- obviously, I don't like it when my torrents of Mythbusters and 30 Rock trickle in slowly (especially when it causes the rest of my network to bog down), but at the same time I don't want my entire community's shared pipe clogged up by the guy next door downloading 500 gigs of Swedish porn a month (and paying the same price as me). Maybe the solution is a modified version of what Comcast advertises. Have a more reasonable "average" download speed (say 1MB) with "speed boost" applied to the first e.g. 2-3 minutes of each spike in your downstream traffic. That way, "lighter" users who are just getting web pages and the occasional iTunes store download or even Unbox movie get most of their content at a faster rate (say 5MB or even 10) while "heavy" users get their gigs and gigs of torrents fast for a minute or two, but can't hog the pipe forever.
I know it sounds harsh to favor anybody over anybody else, but the fact of the matter is that even with recent capacity upgrades, there's still a limit to the size of the pipe and bandwidth still costs money in the end. I for one would rather pay 40 bucks a month for legitimately high-speed access that slows down when you use it a whole lot (for sufficiently generous definitions of "a whole lot") than pay 80 bucks a month for truly unlimited use that stays at the same high speed all the time. I at least want that *option* available to me.
MTJan 9th 2008 10:05AM
I'm on Cox and so far, at least in my state, they haven't throttled anything.
And in fact, usually when I get a small file (ie < 500 MB), it only takes a matter of seconds because I get a speed boost for a minute or two up to 1.25 MB/s.
AndrewJan 9th 2008 10:36AM
Now, I'm all for Net Neutrality and Comcast being required to stop filtering BT traffic, but I don't think FCC fines are the way to go. If you think about it, making Comcast pay billions in fines will just keep them from upgrading their outdated hardware and networks with new equipment that could actually handle the increased traffic. This is an ever expanding and developing business that requires billions of dollars in investments and infrastructure development. They are one of the few companies that have the resources to enable us to see anything like the bandwidth that is provided in some European countries. Would you want that to be hindered? It's like that speeding ticket you got over the holiday that's keeping you from getting that new HDTV this month.
Hopefully, any action from the FCC will at least scare Comcast into a better stance on BitTorrent traffic. I'm don't care for making them pay for what they've done, only enforcing that they do the right thing in the future.
bobJan 9th 2008 1:15PM
On the same note as Andrew, additionally, Comcast will simply charge consumers more money for their services to offset the fine. Just as taxing oil companies simply results in higher gas prices, giving Comcast a huge fine will simply punish the end user. Rather than fine them, force them to use the money to upgrade the network and not pay out a dividend or bonus.