At our house, we have a little saying we shout out every time
our digital video recorder chokes, sputters, and stops playing our recorded
show: Comcast sucks!
We also say that when we get the monthly Comcast bill.
What happened to that legislation whereby we could buy just the few channels we
want, and dump the 200 we don’t watch?
Comcast’s backhanded ways are in the news again today.
Andy Patrizio of Internetnews.com has an excellent story on the latest development,
“Comcast, BitTorrent Pass The Digital Peace Pipe.”
It’s a complicated story regarding networking and
bandwidth. The bottom line is that the nation’s largest cable TV and Internet
provider had been surreptitiously throttling back the Net usage of certain
users. This led to pissed-off users, unintended consequences, and an
investigation and hearing by the Federal Communications Commission.
As Patrizio reported:
After
months of accusations, denials and foot stomping on the part of users, cable
giant Comcast and the peer-to-peer file sharing company BitTorrent have reached
an agreement that supports file exchanges on the Comcast broadband network.
The
issue surfaced last summer when Comcast subscribers began to notice a
degradation in their BitTorrent uploads. Further investigations by individuals
were later confirmed
by the Associated Press: Comcast was sending out signals to disrupt the uploads
of BitTorrent transfers.
The
controversy expanded as Lotus Notes users realized they were also being
throttled back, and other Internet service providers (ISPs) admitted that they
too throttled excessive traffic use. The FCC even held hearings, and Comcast
became the whipping boy among net neutrality advocates.
The problem is, Comcast’s reversal on BitTorrent doesn’t go far enough.
It doesn’t prevent the future blocking of traffic or really embrace emerging
innovative applications.
Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press, a media
reform organization, said this about the agreement:
[W]ith
Comcast's history of broken promises and record of deception, we can't just
take their word that the Internet is now in safe hands. This doesn't change the
urgent need for the FCC to take action.
The
issue of net neutrality is bigger than Comcast and BitTorrent. [The deal] does
nothing to prevent other phone and cable companies from blocking. Innovators
should not have to negotiate side deals with phone and cable companies to
operate without discrimination. The Internet has always been a level playing
field, and we need to keep it that way.
Leave a comment