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Groups File Official Action with FCC to Stop Comcast’s Meddling

Nov 1, 2007
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Coalitions are popular. A different coalition from the one I wrote about yesterday has filed an Official Action with the FCC accusing Comcast of “engaging in substantial network neutrality violations” by secretly degrading and interfering with subscribers’ use of peer-to-peer services. As part of this, they ask for fines amounting to $195,000 per affected subscriber.

Comcast better watch out. I’m not sure how they can figure out how many subscribers were affected, but the numbers could grow dramatically as news of this gets out. Just in case the FCC does decide to fine them, every Comcast subscriber might immediately download Gnutella and BitTorrent and start sharing legal content such as pictures they took or public domain literature to maximize the fine. You could even use it to download Open Office or Ubuntu, or maybe to get an update to World of Warcraft, as they use BitTorrent technology as well.

Comcast even admits to “delaying” content. A senior vice president of Comcast Online Services said, “we use several network management technologies that, when necessary, enable us to delay – not block – some peer-to-peer traffic.” Yet the tactic used by Comcast is to actually spoof both sides of the communication and send reset signals to both sides which drops the connection. Sure, many programs retry and reconnect eventually, but this does not fit my definition of delay. If Comcast intercepted the requests and added a time based delay and then passed them on without spoofing or interfering, then I’s accept this as a delay. I’d still be pissed because they are in violation of Net Neutrality by treating data differently, but at least they would not be lying.

But what are they violating? In 2005 the FCC rejected “Net Neutrality” style rules and instead adopted an Internet Policy Statement setting out users’ rights to access all lawful Internet content and applications. This same policy also says that they will not hesitate to take action to address evidence that providers of telecommunications for Internet access or IP-enabled services are violating these principles. Now we will see if the FCC was placating big business or actually has the interests of consumers as their priority.

The foes of Net Neutrality claim that it is a solution in search of a problem. Really?

About Brad Waller

Some say Brad created the first affiliate program. We’ll never know for sure, but we do know that Brad has been running businesses online since 1994 and affiliate programs since 1996. When he is not running the affiliate program for EPage Classifieds, helping publishers monetize their sites with AdJungle, or working on iPhone applications, Brad is also busy starting up the Performance Marketing Alliance, a trade association created to represent and build the entire performance based industry.

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Filed under: Security Issues
  • http://www.rhinofish.com Pat Grady

    Nice report. I appreciate your advocacy done here by sharing the word.

  • http://www.tincap.com Libertate

    The coalition will need some heavy hitters.

    Comcast has a lot riding on this, and will not back down, unless there are sufficient public (and I mean not just tech heads) outcry about this.

    Problem is, most non-tech people have no idea what P2P stands for and forget "resets", "dropped connections" and such.

    The modem is dead – and the memory of it has already faded. No reference…