Court rules in favor of comcast over FCC in net neutrality (torrenting)

[vixro]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/court-rules-the-fcc-doesnt-have-authority-to-impose-net-neutral/


Those of you may remember when Comcast throttled BitTorrent usage through the use of Sandvine a couple years ago. They would send false RST packets that would basically halt all torrenting to a standstill when attempting to seed.

The FCC ordered comcast to halt in 2008 and they did but filed for an appeal. Today the Court ruled in favor of Comcast. Whether this means sandvine will continue again or get even worse, we will see in the future. :shrug:

[shuiends]

I am glad I switched to FIOS. Verizon has been 10x better then comcast ever was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mla7RMDBfC4

[FudgeNuggets]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/court-rules-the-fcc-doesnt-have-authority-to-impose-net-neutral/


Those of you may remember when Comcast throttled BitTorrent usage through the use of Sandvine a couple years ago. They would send false RST packets that would basically halt all torrenting to a standstill when attempting to seed.

The FCC ordered comcast to halt in 2008 and they did but filed for an appeal. Today the Court ruled in favor of Comcast. Whether this means sandvine will continue again or get even worse, we will see in the future. :shrug:

Sucks that a lot of people don't have choices in providers. Having a lot of paying customers dump Comcast for an alernative would be the best and only way to put a halt to their Gestapo tactics.

[KonaKona]

Yeah, where I live the only choices are comcast (1.5m down, 400k up in real use) and some local yocal DSL ISP (400k down, 40k up). That said, I don't think comcast has ever throttled torrent usage where I am.

Maybe it's because I'm good and just seed linux ISOs? ;)

[WonderingSoul]

Ugh. I hate Comcast.

I want FiOS so bad. Versus, HDNet, mmm.

[EarthDog]

FIOS FTW! 25/25 baby!

[SteveLord]

Yeah, ISPs are pretty much your local cable company/owner of your testicles or DSL....where you often sacrifice speed.

Mediacom is now requiring 2 year contracts for their new customer prices....and the prices still only last 1 year.

[nd4spdbh2]

I am glad I switched to FIOS. Verizon has been 10x better then comcast ever was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mla7RMDBfC4

HAHA thats a great comercial and its true... i have had zero probs with my fios and if i have any questions on billing or technical questions i call them up and they are there to help and knowledgeable.

Ugh. I hate Comcast.

I want FiOS so bad. Versus, HDNet, mmm.

FIOS FTW!

FIOS FTW! 25/25 baby!

He he yup i get 26/20mbit FIOS for 49.99 a month. I cant imagine going back to cable at 5/512k.

[FudgeNuggets]

HAHA thats a great comercial and its true... i have had zero probs with my fios and if i have any questions on billing or technical questions i call them up and they are there to help and knowledgeable.



FIOS FTW!



He he yup i get 26/20mbit FIOS for 49.99 a month. I cant imagine going back to cable at 5/512k.

You're making me so jealous. I get 17/7 for $60 a month but my locality is monopolized by Time Warner. Our DSL provider is a joke, speed-wise

[KonaKona]

Not only was our connection slow, but anything above, maybe 20kbps upload saturated the whole connection. Wherever I move after I get out of HS, has to have some kind of fibre connection.

As for the court case, it seems loopholes and technicalities are more of a factor in the law system then what the actual action that should be taken is. It's like those people who try to rob a house and get hurt, sue the person they robbed and won.

Oh well. :shrug:

[Sorin]

Thought this would have gotten far more attention so far, but anyway, it would be nice to just say screw Comcast and jump to Verizon FIOS, but the last I heard, AT&T is apparently cockblocking Verizon from coming to Silicon Valley, but I forget what the reason was. I think AT&T owns something in the area that Verizon needs in order to do it, and AT&T won't give it up.

This is really, really, very extremely sad - you'd think Silicon Valley, the capital of the tech industry, would already have this. Not only that, but you'd think we'd have been first in line to get it when it came out.

So that means we're stuck with either Comcast, or AT&T's DSL.

[FireMogle]

This country is messed up when a company wins against the gov.

A friend of mine who is a lawyer kinda explained it to me a little. The FCC is an organization that is made by congress, but does not have the power of congress. Congress probably has the legal authority to pass a bill to accomplish this, but the FCC was not granted the power to do so. So in this respect a company should win.

Now if we want net neutrality the two big things that can happen, either congress can pass a bill to achieve it or pass a bill to expand the FCC's power.

[Shiggity]

I'll live with it.

Comcast is still 2nd best at least and they will be offering 100Mbps soon.

I do a decent amount of legal torrenting and the throttling isn't THAT bad.

I COULD be stuck with Timewarner and AT&T, they make Comcast look like fiber optic gods.

[SeanBest]

No FIOS here, Verizon DSL blows big time. Comcast doesn't limit me at all, get a great student combo (everything tv, hd, dvr, highest internet) for $60. Comcast has their issues, but they've been good to me here. Better than Adelphia, which we had before Comcast took them over.

[darkknight187]

Hmmm i don't like this at all, a court ruling in Comcast's favor could open the door to other things including my "backwoods" isp FrontierNet trying to go back to their plan from 1-2yrs ago which was to have a 5gb bandwidth limit per month with a few services they offer not counting towards the limit.

Alas atleast due to ping complaints when they had my area overloaded atleast got me an upgrade to 3mb/768 vs the old 1mb/256. paired with a few routing issues fixed made me quite happy for now.

anyways if this sort of literature interests anybody there seems to be a decent site solely covering the subject Stop the cap (http://stopthecap.com/). It's a decent aggregate for the subject however it does have a fair bit of opinion that you need to sort out.

*Edit*
My apologies upon further review my AUP still suggests 5gb is what is considered acceptable Frontier Residential Internet Service Acceptable Use Policy (http://www.frontier.com/policies/residential_aup/) I'm fairly sure just preloading MW2 for the free steam weekend trial will nearly break this and that i have been easily breaking it for months with steam purchases. no reprecussions here so far. I still find it unacceptable that it's even in there however my only other options were their dial up service which they discontinued at the start of this year.

[MadMan007]

Legally this was the right decision even though it sucks from a real-world perspective. Law does not move as fast as technology unfortunately so what we need is for Congress to grant these powers to the FCC.

There are two broader tie-ins to this story though: 1) possible effect on the 'national broadband' intitiative 2) Comcast's merger with NBC/Universal (anyone who believes for a second that Comcast/NBC would not favor their own content or thinks that having a service provider/infrastructure owner/content creator all rolled in to one is a good idea is a complete moron)

[zexmarquies01]

Legally this was the right decision even though it sucks from a real-world perspective. Law does not move as fast as technology unfortunately so what we need is for Congress to grant these powers to the FCC.

Actually, congress DOESN'T need to give the FCC more powers. Instead...

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/fcc-next/

The FCC is thinking about rebranding ISP's as “telecommunications service”, instead of “information service" ( as they are now ).

The FCC has no power over “information service" companies. But they do have quite a bit of power over Telecommunication service companies.

That article explains it well enough, that if they can ISP's changed from Title 1 to Title 2 of the Telecommunications Act, The FCC can impose regulations on them, as they do with Phone companies.

I don't know how long something like that takes though. I can't imagine that it would take longer than the time needed for congress to give the FCC more power.

[FudgeNuggets]

I don't know how long something like that takes though. I can't imagine that it would take longer than the time needed for congress to give the FCC more power.

Congress for the most part is a bunch of rich, technology illiterate old men. We may have a hip young(ish) President but he's got bigger things on his plate right now.

That being said, I wouldn't expect anything to happen any time soon. The last time the FCC got any attention was because of Janet Jackson.

[EarthDog]

The last time the FCC got any attention was because of Sirius/XM Satellite Radio Merger.Fixed. :chair: :santa:

[FudgeNuggets]

Fixed. :chair: :santa:

That really wasn't even that big of a deal. I'll be surprised if satellite radio still exists in 2 years. You would think that HD radio would catch on but that hasn't really either. Chalk it up to being able to plug our phones into our car stereos and stream Pandora or Last.FM I guess :shrug:

[EarthDog]

Riiiiiiiight. (but thats really not the point here)

[Aynjell]

I love Cox Communications 25 down, 5 up. :)

[zexmarquies01]

I love Cox Communications 25 down, 5 up. :)

Cox!

[MadMan007]

Actually, congress DOESN'T need to give the FCC more powers. Instead...

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/fcc-next/

The FCC is thinking about rebranding ISP's as “telecommunications service”, instead of “information service" ( as they are now ).

The FCC has no power over “information service" companies. But they do have quite a bit of power over Telecommunication service companies.

That article explains it well enough, that if they can ISP's changed from Title 1 to Title 2 of the Telecommunications Act, The FCC can impose regulations on them, as they do with Phone companies.

I don't know how long something like that takes though. I can't imagine that it would take longer than the time needed for congress to give the FCC more power.

Yes I was aware of that but the downside is that whoever chairs and has a majority on the FCC can change that policy when they wish. A law allowing, or even mandating, that the FCC regulate ISPs and that sets the framework for net neutrality would be much harder to reverse. It doesn't take long for a partisan FCC to change things to their liking a lot, the removal of many marketshare and ownership limits on media outlets under Chariman Powell is an example.

[David]

Moved to internet, networking and security.

[deathman20]

That really wasn't even that big of a deal. I'll be surprised if satellite radio still exists in 2 years. You would think that HD radio would catch on but that hasn't really either. Chalk it up to being able to plug our phones into our car stereos and stream Pandora or Last.FM I guess :shrug:

Yeah but not everyone has a smartphone to do that type of thing. I enjoy my XM radio and the channels it provides. Sadly I only have it for my car but I use it daily for 1-2 hours at a crack getting my monies worth IMO.

As for HD radio, well yeah that hasn't caught on much in my area. Only have a few stations that have it, and mainly they are just re-bradcasting the same program from the normal radio, sometimes I might see a second channel on there.

[col_sanders]

I've had comcast back when the fastest thing they offered was 6 meg down and 384k up. After about 2 years they over subscribed and the normal speed was around 2 megs of download. Verizon dsl rocked out and later on switched to fios and had amazing results
http://www.dslreports.com/im/88144729/65594.png
I don't like comcast as a company and im kinda surprised they wont that case.

[Max0r]

It would be nice if Comcast could just deprioritize bittorrent type signals, and allow them to run unimpeded otherwise. I don't mind occasional lowered p2p speeds or increased p2p latencies at times if it keeps everyone's games and conferences from lagging up. It's much better than just completely throwing a wrench in torrent traffic altogether. But apperently such a deprioritization is illegal... but that didn't stop them from completely screwing up seeding for a while. Is it really that hard to just make heavy p2p traffic a lower priority signal? :shrug: