FCC to investigate Comcast BitTorrent filtering

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin announced at CES last night that his agency will be looking into Comcast's data-meddling ways. "Sure, we're going to investigate and make sure that no consumer is going to be blocked," he said. Per FCC rules Comcast is allowed to use "reasonable traffic management" solutions to keep its network running, but Martin said he thinks Comcast and other ISPs should be required to disclose filtering to customers even if it's found to be reasonable. That's pretty encouraging, but we'll see how this all plays out in the industry -- especially since NBC and AT&T execs were talking excitedly about ISP-based copyright filtering on another stage at CES earlier in the day.

[Via Slashdot]

[andy @ Jan 9th 2008 2:42PM]

Kevin Martin is burning political bridges and romping egos, all for me, the customer. (otherwise known as doing his job as FCC chairman) I think he's done more for us in the last year than any previous FCC head has even thought of.


God bless buddy.

[Jonathan Bergeron @ Jan 9th 2008 2:46PM]

I agree 100%.

[MasterCKO @ Jan 9th 2008 2:48PM]

Here here. I love this new costumer-centric FCC. It could be the best thing in government right now.

[Student Driver @ Jan 9th 2008 2:51PM]

Ditto. Nice to see someone worthwhile doing this job.

[blomster @ Jan 9th 2008 3:10PM]

Step away from the Kool-Aid.

For starters, go to Google News and search for "FCC media ownership rule hearings"

[MasterCKO @ Jan 9th 2008 6:48PM]

wait, I shouldn't like the FCC because Martin pissed off Congress by not bowing to their whim? Hmmm...Interesting. I know Congress is supposedly the closest thing to my voice in government, but I largely disagree with a lot of what they do. Whereas I largely agree with the things that Kevin Martin and his new FCC have been doing. Soooooooo.....

PS: I read about the law that this spat is over and while it's a little interesting that he's relaxing the media ownership rules (for broadcast and newspaper) in a single market, I think that it might not be the Harbinger of the Apocalypse that Congress is making it out to be. Especially since news and stuff is moving more and more away from both of those media.

[blomster @ Jan 10th 2008 9:48AM]

You might like what he's done, but he's not "customer-centric." He scheduled media ownership hearings -- allegedly to get consumer input -- with basically no notice and already had the order drafted. His cause celebre is fining companies for anything he thinks is raunchy, and he's suggested that the FCC should start monitoring content on XM and Sirius. You might agree or disagree with his policies, but the way he pursues them is by being a complete tool.

[shanoboy @ Jan 9th 2008 2:50PM]

I wonder if Comcast has backed off on the Bit-torrent throttling.

I noticed my speeds being kicked down a lot for the past few months (mainly uploads), but then over the last 2 weeks they've started to come back to normal.

[R1cebrner @ Jan 9th 2008 3:25PM]

u torrent has encryption that seems to bypass those speed bumps.

[shanoboy @ Jan 9th 2008 3:30PM]

But will using encryptoin limit me to only sharing with other Utorrent users and will it interfere with private trackers? Maybe thats something to look into.

[Arthur Nonamiss @ Jan 9th 2008 4:12PM]

Just set it to force encryption outbound and allow (but not force) encryption inbound. That way, clients not using encryption will still be able to hit you, albeit at a reduced speed. (i.e. the speed you are getting now.) You don't lose anything, but you gain extra transfer speed from those clients that allow encryption.

[aoeu00 @ Jan 9th 2008 2:58PM]

Hmm.. Qwest has been blocking ports 21 and 80 for a few years now so people don't run ftp or web servers.. but a simple change to not using those "default" ports works fine. Somewhat ironic, though.. because using these peer 2 peer networks could very well be using more traffic than traditional ftp/http servers.

[OneLove @ Jan 9th 2008 3:20PM]

I work in the port 80 control room at comcast and that is not true!

[OneLove @ Jan 9th 2008 3:21PM]

ok fail, I meant qwest. lol.

[ethana2 @ Jan 9th 2008 4:38PM]

I tried setting up an apache server to try to host my own blog or something.

Cox blocks http out regardless of port. I was disgusted. Did I pay for this bandwidth, or did I not? The simple fact of the matter is that this buffet style ISP business doesn't work. If I use up more bandwidth, charge me more, logarithmically. And tell me what your peak hours are so I can shape my own traffic to cost us all less. Last but most absolutely not least, leave your filthy hands off my traffic.

[James Anderson @ Jan 9th 2008 3:02PM]

Please save my ratio Mr. Martin.

[OneLove @ Jan 9th 2008 3:12PM]

...eh we've investigated ...been paid off...and found nothing...thank you.

[larcen007 @ Jan 9th 2008 3:15PM]

OMG - he is soooo hot. Who is this guy and will you be putting up hundreds of pictures of him? Is he dating an engadget editor? How do I join the club?

j/k

Either let Veronica do her job without the catcalling, or be an equal opportunity cat caller. Engadget.com is not a bar nor a construction site.

[jtc970 @ Jan 9th 2008 4:38PM]

I think most of us are heterosexual men.
And women don't catcall until at least the shirt is removed.

[benjasmine @ Jan 9th 2008 4:07PM]

so who's the best ISP now? I'm thinking switching to AT&T from Charter... maybe I should reconsider it...

[MEAT! @ Jan 9th 2008 4:11PM]

I hope they fine them out the ass. I use a small ISP called NTC (a part of Shentel), and they do the same thing, using an intelligent sniffing system to determine if P2P traffic is taking place and to slow it to a crawl. NTC has a monopoly on the student housing in the area, and thus get away with charging $25 per mo. per person in each apartment, disallowing routers and requiring occasional logins on an https site, and delivering ~5KB/s download for any torrent. (Usual speeds are between 100 and 150 KB/s for normal TCP connections.)

The difference is Comcast is huge, and no one cares if little NTC intentionally cripples its over-priced service and is the only available connection in all dorms, and comes pre-wired in all off-campus housing up to a few miles away.

[sk8rpro @ Jan 9th 2008 4:21PM]

It looks as though he's saying two contradictory statements
1. We will prohibit data-throttling
2. Need companies to disclose when data-throttling

Am I missing something here? I want to make sure net neutrality will always be enforced.

[Chris Uzun @ Jan 9th 2008 4:28PM]

Rogers in Canada should be under investigation for this as well.

[ethana2 @ Jan 9th 2008 4:41PM]

You're not under our jurisdiction.
That's a good thing.
I hope your fcc equivalent is competent.

[Chris Uzun @ Jan 9th 2008 4:44PM]

Yeah I know. I'm hoping that something gets done about this.

[Ed B. @ Jan 9th 2008 6:49PM]

i am extremely annoyed with comcast right now. not only have they limited my download speeds (not just for torrents, but my firefox download speeds have been cut by 60%). also, my network channels went down for 5 days with a standard cable package.

one question

wtf comcast?

[Ken C @ Jan 10th 2008 5:36PM]

OK I keep hearing about how they are going after ComCast over this, but what about Time Warrner, they throttle me every time I fire up bittorrent and I never anything about it? So what gives?

[JTM @ Jan 9th 2008 9:16PM]

I think the difference here is Comcast is actually forging packets. It's very dishonest and I think there should be a law against it. I once heard a very appropriate analogy that went something like this: It's like you're having a phone conversation with someone and all of a sudden, the operator busts in and says, in the voice of the other person, "I have to go now, bye" and disconnects the call. That is pretty much exactly what Comcast is doing. Throttling is bad too but at least your messages are delivered as intended.