[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Comcast Sets its Sights on Peer to Peer Apps here

[zman00]

Well this is quite a big argument that we are seeing develop. But if you think about it, it was also inevitable. When and if a company gets rights to block or monitor how you use the internet, you have a serious violation of the 1st Amendment. But to quote the Simpsons, "The Constitution? I think the Patriot Act killed it."

[chuck1533]

Let's see now, my water bill is tiered so that the more I use, the higher the rate per gallon. On my gas/electricity bill, they give me a discount if I reduce my usage. On my trash, if I want to use more than average, I have to pay for a larger trash can.

What again was the argument why these heavy users should not have to pay proportionately more?

[zman00]

i do agree that people that use more should pay more, but I dont believe that the companies should be able to limit access to certain files.

I am a high bandwidth user, transfering of hugh photo files and gaming, but I pay a lot more for it. Cox Communications Premium Tier.

[nothingbutagthng]

personally i think what i do with a service as long as its legal is my business and if i use file sharing, which can be done legally thats my business also. And by the way Chuck you pay for the bigger can because they paid more for the larger can and if you want to compare a physically size than yes if i buy a volkswagon and then the following year decide i want a cadillac than yes there will be a price differenc, however its because the cadillac is bigger and it cost more to make.But G.M. doesn't control what i do with the bigger vehicle i buy it if i choose to rob a bank i deal with the law not G.M. and thats how the cable company should look at it. If i download illegally the law should get involved by comcast turn what info they have over to them. I don't need comcast to police what i do at home. This may seem like jibberish but i'm tired and i'm sure you get the picture

[popijw39]

Is Pando Networks a Russian outfit connected to News paper there called "PRAVDA" the State newspaper ??if so "nice bit of stiffing the USA where Comcast Execs makes their living .
You want to be in Bed with them??

[chuck1533]

I guess nothingbutagthng is not familiar with how the trash works in some cities. In our city, you 3 sizes of trash can you can get from the city. You can only use one of those 3 trash cans. How much you pay per month for trash collection is based on which can you got. It is their way of tiering your bill.

Anyway, let's move the amount you are charged to the government getting involved with what you do. If you provide cigarettes or alcohol to a minor, you go to jail because you are providing something to someone that is illegal for them to have. If you copy someone's literary work and publish it yourself, you go to jail because you took someone else work without compensating them.

Anyone that says that most of the large users are just copying legal stuff is flat out dishonest. That would be the exception. The majority of this copying is people sharing music they don't own legally with other people who are willing to take it illegally. Sorry, just the opinion of old folk.

[DevilsAdvocate]

@chuck...
The "metered service" comparison needs to be corrected:

If I'm already paying for the maximum usage, and not getting a discount for using less, then I shouldn't be scrutinized for what I use, or for what purpose.

I won't even get into the fact that NO BANDWIDTH SHORTAGE has ever been proven by any of these throttling providers. Nor will I get into the fact that providers DO NOT have the legal right to inspect the data packets in the first place, which needs to be done in order to select what is being throttled. That's against the Canadian and American Constitutions.

Contrary to what this article says, and what the MAFIAA would like us to believe, Canadian and US providers are protected by the law from being legally responsible for the data they pass along, and they shouldn't be "aware" of its contents (privacy law).

Funny how throttling began right after ISPs were approached about their "obligation to police" by the MPAA. And P2P was the target, wasn't it?!

[Ken345]

My big problem with the COMCAST plan is this. I am on broadband and I ALREADY pay big bucks for 7 Meg download and 1.5 Meg upload speed. No matter what I do I don't ever max out the bandwidth I am paying for. Now COMCAST is whining that "Heavy Users" are clogging up their network. What they have done is sell more service than they can support. Considering that millions of customers are paying for service that COMCAST doesn't have the capacity to provide it seems to me that they are committing massive fraud. It's comparable to the airlines purposely overselling tickets on specific flights to ensure full aircraft. Utilities build infrastructure ahead of time to handle maximum loads and normally only sell what they can provide to ensure avaiability to everyone. COMCAST just needs to provide the bandwidth that people are already paying for even if that means they need to build out their networks to cover what they are promising. Jail em if they don't.

[AlecWest]

Look at how Comcast is structured (and other ISPs). It doesn't take long to figure out they prefer business customers. Home users are a dime-a-dozen and can be replaced easy enough. Business customers tend to be long-term customers - some, by contract. And when an ISP promises speed to a business, they'd better deliver. The loss of one medium-sized business customer is like losing dozens of home users simultaneously. I'd love to see the following experiment performed and can guess the results. Have a home user and a business user download the same file multiple times with BitTorrent. Which user do you think Comcast would complain to ... or have their speed throttled? I honestly don't think this is an "application" issue. Rather, it's a means to stroke the BIG GUY at the expense of the LITTLE GUY. It's just better PR to blame the "evil" file sharing community when it's BUSINESS that uses the lion's share of bandwidth and DEMANDS a promised speed "or else."

[DevilsAdvocate]

What any broadband provider really wants is a customer that will make the payments on a premium connection, while only using a very small percentage of it.

That's obviously the goal, as many providers continue to advertise "Consistently fast, 24/7 downloading of videos and large files, and your connection is never shared", while keeping this "bandwidth hog" propaganda going.

Does any other service in the world get away with charging full price for a service, while supplying only half of it, and punishing its customers for taking advantage of the features they were sold on?? (Besides the government, I mean.) : )

Bell has certainly been the worst example of all of this.

[backspaceiptv]

Boiling it down, the problem is really quit simple.

Clearly, ISP's at large have completely oversubscribed their available bandwidth forcing themselves to now look for ways to minimize its use. The solution is rather than limiting its use, to simply charge for what the subscriber utilizes.

ISP's and Subscribers both know that using 10Mbps continuously could never cost $30 per month. Therefore, if the subscriber is going to use 10Mbps continuously then simply charge them for it.

It is not now, never was, and should never the job of the ISP to police content. It is however a very clear and simple business practice to charge customer accordingly for what services they are provided.

If a customer uses 10Mbps for 10 minutes per day then okay, $30 per month works. If on the other hand they use 10Mbps every minute of every day then obviously they should be paying a reasonable price for that consumption.

[nothingbutagthng]

Your exactly right, i'm not familiar with the trash system because i was only offered one can. But i do think if i needed a bigger one they would provide it.Didn't know they charged for it though. But anyhow i do know that selling minors cigarettes and alcohol is a different matter than monitoring what i download on my computer once i've paid for the service. And i also pay for fast upload /download i also send videos to my childrens grand-parents and i know there's alot of gamers online. I just don't think Comcast should spy on what i do with my service as far as what sites i visit and what i download.i Ithink we are forgetting what the thread was about, and it was about them monitoring p2p apps not if they should charge people for usiing more bandwidth They are not obligated like the convenient store operators to safe guard our children and make sure business owners are responsible to sell these products. Short version unless Comcast obligated by law to report what i download or how much i download they should provide the service i pay for and what i pay for is unlimited downloads. If they wanna make changes tell them to improve customer service. Also i'm of the older geration also just with a different opinion.

[backspaceiptv]

I appreciate the redirection to the issue at hand, privacy.

My point is that privacy is simply a sham. It's not about making sure subscribers are not doing anything illegal, it's about being able to oversubscribe services to dramatically increase profits.

Follow the money.

I buy 1 bandwidth for $1. I sell 1 bandwidth to 100 people for $0.10 per bandwidth. I spend $1 and I make $10.

The thought being that not all people will use their 1 bandwidth at the same time. So, while customer X is ringing the till at 7eleven, customer Y uses the 1 bandwidth and when customer X comes home to use the 1 bandwidth, customer Y is flippin' burgers at McDonalds. In short, OVERSUBSCRIPTION.

Problem occurs when customers X and Y leave bittorrent running while at their day jobs and the entire country of Germany downloads polka collections from their 486's.

Comcast, and all other ISP's are in jeopardy of losing their grand oversubscription ratios.

Its always about money.

[ImaPhake]

I'm sorry, but this article is just plain wrong when it alludes to the use of file sharing software as some sort of legal breach by an ISP. Quote: "Worse, such software is often used to share copyright-infringing material, which could land both ISPs and their customers in hot water."

An ISP has "common carrier" status just like the telephone companies. I can commit a conspiracy using the telephone networks but they cannot be held responsible in any way, shape or form due to their "common carrier" status. I could deliver a bomb via UPS or FedEx and the same rule applies -- they cannot be held legally liable.

Or are have we become a trans-oceanic province of China during my last 8 hours of sleep?

[nmcallister]

ImaPhake, you may be correct -- maybe, but it would need to be tested in the courts.
One irony here is that once an ISP starts taking responsibility for the content that is carried over its networks -- filtering some packets but not others, for example -- it may technically cease to be a "common carrier" and lose that protection you mention.

[smax013]

chuck1533 said:

Anyway, let's move the amount you are charged to the government getting involved with what you do. If you provide cigarettes or alcohol to a minor, you go to jail because you are providing something to someone that is illegal for them to have. If you copy someone's literary work and publish it yourself, you go to jail because you took someone else work without compensating them.

Your analogy is a bit off. A service provider is not "providing" the illegal content...they are providing the pathway to it. In your analogy, it would be like fining Ford due to some minor driving to the convience store in a Ford car where they illegally obtained the cigarettes or alcohol. Ford did not provide the illegal alcohol or cigarette but merely the method for which the minor was able to get to the location where they were able to get the stuff. The same is true of Comcast with a P2P network that people might visit to obtain illegal content. And like the convience store, the P2P network has legal stuff as well as illegal stuff.

[ImaPhake]

I do believe this has already been tested in the courts.


I can't recall the specifics, but some years ago there was an AOL forum in which someone said some things not to the liking of someone else and AOL was taken to court over it in consequence. The situation (whichever way it went) hinged upon whether AOL moderated the content of that forum, or not. The upshot being that they could be held responsible for what one of its users said in the forum only if AOL moderated and was aware of said content.


If an ISP like Comcast is going to dig into bittorrent packets to determine if they carry copyright infringing material so that they can terminate the torrent (or the user's account), then they should certainly be held responsible for allowing access to sites like thepiratebay.org or the use of IRC to carry out illegal transactions (such as stolen credit card numbers), etc.


Many years ago I fought against a news adminstrator over their Usenet feed carrying newsgroups containing images of child porn and discussions between pedophiles on how to get jobs that give them access to children, etc. The answer I received was that he didn't even want to investigate whether my allegations were correct or not because if he dropped those newsgroups from the feed he would not be able to claim common carrier status as a defense against carrying whatever garbage the Internet might happen to contain or transmit between its users.


While I only engage in sharing legal files over bittorrent and have nothing to fear from Comcast investigating what I'm doing (except for a time a year ago when I downloaded a torrent for a TV show and got a DMCA notice) the mere fact that they deem all or most bittorrent traffic as illegal disturbs me greatly. Next thing they will be reading our email and terminating the account of anyone sending pics of their baby in the bathtub to their granny.


I mean, really, how are they to say what is legal or illegal unless they're actively delving into and deciphering the packets on their network? They shouldn't be doing that -- and if they did, couldn't they be sued for invasion of privacy?


Comcast needs to get off of their high horse and stop messing with people's data and give them the network experience they promised (and still promise) in their advertisements. They certainly make more than enough money to do so, and their network must be able to handle it or else why would they offer their own free streaming video service "Fancast?" If everyone on the Comcast network utilized Fancast beyond its potential, would they shut it down or improve their infrastructure in order to handle that crapfest? Other than deciding to charge for that service, I'm sure they would choose the latter option.


It's so hypocritical for people to claim that bittorrent users are "bandwidth hogs" yet at the same time deem streaming video as of no consequence where the network is concerned. Those people need to get a life or at least learn what the hell they're talking about. Every once in a while there is an article or blog on PC World concerning the demise of DVDs and how high-definition video will be delivered to us over the Internet in their place. Bandwidth is always the determining factor and right now it simply doesn't exist for such a thing to work. But everyone thinks that idea is just "peachy." Why the double-standard? Usenet has been delivering illegal content for years and years now, yet I don't see Comcast getting rid of it, or people calling for GigaNews to be put out of business.

This whole "Comcast versus Net Neutrality" issue is really beginning to "burn my biscuits" and I am not alone in my feelings about it. Mark my words, if Comcast doesn't gracefully concede the issue and allow the existence of bittorrent traffic on their network they will start losing customers in droves.

[nothingbutagthng]

Wish i could add something to what ImaPhake said, but i think he or she did a very good job without any help from me. B-)

[danny5]

ImaPhake is right on the money. but here is my 2 cents anyway. This is just another ploy to bring in more revenue without spending money to upgrade their systems. Like Enron and the housing mess it's all about the money. It's not about fare or equal access. I've had 3 ISP's in 3 years and none of them Comcast,Time Warner or AT&T have been able to provide me with even close to the max speeds they advertise even when I've paid extra to get them. They need to upgrade their systems to provide the top speeds they offer now. Not ask for more money from the little guy