RSSFCC likely to punish Comcast for blocking P2P file sharing traffic
By Tim Conneally | Published July 28, 2008, 12:00 PM
On Saturday, the Associated Press cited "an agency official" reporting that the majority of FCC commissioners had voted in favor of punishing Comcast for blocking subscribers from engaging in certain activities -- namely, peer-to-peer file sharing.
The likely punishments were first reported to be sanctions, but at a press conference shortly thereafter, Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin said a policy change will be the outcome.
On the August 1, an open commission meeting will take place, with the formal complaint of Free Press and issues surrounding Comcast's secret degradation of P2P applications as first items on the docket.
Free Press' Complaint asks the Commission to address Comcast's secret violations of the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, which "guarantee consumers access to the content, applications, and services of their choice, as well as access to competition among network, applications, and content providers."
Last year, "throttling" was brought into common parlance after several Canadian ISPs were found to have been limiting the bandwidth that customers could use. Comcast, the United States' second-largest ISP was accused of engaging in the practice, but denied doing so. Later, the company admitted that it had been "delaying" requests for BitTorrent files, but maintained it was a limited form of network management.
A German study conducted in May 2008 found Comcast and Cox to be the two American ISPs most guilty of BitTorrent blocking.
While early reports are effectively meaningless until all commissioners have voted, Democrats Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, as well as Republican chairman Kevin Martin, have been said to be in agreement upon Comcast's violation of the policy statement. A memorandum opinion and order will be voted upon Friday.
Big surprise here that the FCC is cashing in on punishment.
Does not mean they will stop Comcast from doing it? Just means they are getting money for fines.
Is Comcast going to stop or just pay the fines and go on?
Score: 0
sukit Comcast.
We all signed that!
Score: 0
I wonder if this case will also address isp's who block specific ports (known for use with p2p softwares as defaults). another form of throttling and if one isn't familiar with how to ip forward and/or change the port of their p2p software to one that is not being blocked
Score: 0
Wow considering the notion that P2P traffic is mostly seen an avenue for pirating copyrightred works i'm a little suprised that they're still willing to address Comcast's throttling practice on BitTorrent transactions.
Hopefully that means that i won't see throttling on Qwest's Fiber-Optic network whenever it comes around here.
Score: 0
It's not so much what they're throttling, it's more about that they are doing it at all, it is not specified in their policy, nor is advertising "unlimited" internet at an available kb/s ratio and then limiting that ration for a particular reason is a contract violation on all of its users. Also, assuming all users are using the bittorrent technology for illegal gain is assumption and profiling which is also illegal. Doing something illegal to "prevent" others from doing something illegal is still illegal. They should have to pay for what they do wrong just as anyone else.
Score: 0
Precisely. And here's hoping that this will set a precedent and other ISPs will think twice about following Comcast's example.
Score: 0