Comcast Lies to the FCC About Throttling P2P
Posted by: Geekfury on September 22, 2008
Computers/Internet
Wired.com reports (read whole article) that Comcast admitted last Friday that, contrary to its former statement to the FCC, it does actually throttle traffic through certain protocols.
Comcast came clean with the Federal Communications Commission late Friday, detailing how it throttled and targeted peer-to-peer traffic — maneuvers it has repeatedly denied.
The cable concern said (.pdf) it indeed hit “particular protocols that were generating disproportionate amounts of traffic.” The peer-to-peer protocols, Comcast said, include Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FastTrack and Gnutella — vehicles used to transport copyrighted material without the owners’ permission.
Granted, P2P apps may be used for illegal purposes, such as downloading copyrighted materials, it does provide positive uses as well. I seem to remember when I used to play WoW, it utilized P2P technology to provide game updates. Now, whether or not Comcast’s blanket throttling of P2P protocals affected WoW and other legal uses of P2P, I don’t know. I don’t play WoW anymore (wish I could though), and I don’t have Comcast. But if I ever have to make a choice of subscribing to Comcast or another service, I will be seriously looking into Comcast’s operating procedures.
I don’t like the idea of Comcast deciding for me, “what’s best for me”, no matter what the issue is. If I wanted a corporation doing my thinking for me, I would have… well I don’t want a corporation EVER doing my thinking for me. IMHO, most corporations can barely make decent decisions for themselves, let alone for a person they’ve never met, know nothing about, nor care about.
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