According to Drew Clark, these are the FCC’s findings in the Comcast dispute:
1. Comcast’s network management practices discriminate among applications and protocols. It uses deep packet inspection.
There is no law against deep packet inspection for the purpose of reasonable network management, and Kevin Martin’s press release says it’s OK to discriminate for and against applications: “We do not tell providers how to manage their networks. They might choose, for instance, to prioritize voice-over-IP calls.” So no problem here, but nice attempt at scaring people with “deep packet inspection.”
2. Comcast’s practices are not minimally intrusive, but are invasive, and have significant effect.
Comcast’s actions only affect BitTorrent in unattended seeding mode, which actually helps BitTorrent in peering mode and download mode, so it is minimally intrusive.
3. Comcast has blocked content and significantly interfered with person’s ability to access applications and content of their choice.
Comcast’s actions have no effect on the ability of its customers to access content. In fact, they help. Seeding cannot be construed as “accessing content” under any reasonable definition. In fact, it’s “offering content” and the Four Freedoms don’t enumerate that as a right.
4. Comcast’s practices do not constitute reasonable network management practices.
In the opinion of actual working engineers, these practices are reasonable, if less than ideal. In engineering as in politics the perfect is the enemy of the good.
5. The economic harms have been compounded by Comcast’s failure to disclose its practices.
There has been no demonstrated economic harm. In fact, the system discourages piracy, and therefore prevents economic harm.
6. Comcast’s practice contravenes federal internet policy, and limits consumers’ ability to access the lawful internet content of their choice.
Once again, this practice doesn’t affect consumer ability to download content.
So the Commission is wrong on the facts, wrong on the law, and generally pounding on the table.
Technorati Tags: net neutrality, FCC, broadband, Comcast
“Comcast’s actions only affect BitTorrent in unattended seeding mode, which actually helps BitTorrent in peering mode and download mode, so it is minimally intrusive.”
The deep packet inspection is the invasive part, not the throttling of BitTorrent traffic.
“which actually helps BitTorrent in peering mode and download mode”
Right. Downloads are faster when the seeds are being choked.
“Comcast’s actions have no effect on the ability of its customers to access content. In fact, they help. Seeding cannot be construed as “accessing content†under any reasonable definition.”
If no one is allowed to offer content, how can anyone access it?
“Once again, this practice doesn’t affect consumer ability to download content.”
See above.
Any torrent with an active swarm isn’t negatively affected by the throttling of seeds within the Comcast network, Anon, because Comcast doesn’t throttle the seeding that happens in the peering mode.
Sunday I used BitTorrent to download Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9 on Comcast, and both downloads completed at or slightly above the peak rate for my plan, 16 Mb/s.
So as I said, the nuking of selected seeder connections doesn’t harm the consumer’s ability to access the content of his choice.
“Any torrent with an active swarm”
You’re right. Now pick a barely active or unhealthy swarm (as most are), instead of torrents for monster distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora.
My friend, a Comcast customer, wants to send me a long movie he has edited using BitTorrent. At several gigabytes in size, the resumable downloading and hash checks on each piece are great. I want to access that content, but he can’t seed it, and, because he made it, there are no peers to get it from. Comcast just “harmed my ability to access the content of my choice.”
Hopefully I won’t ever want to access content created by Comcast users, because, well, they can’t seed it.
BitTorrent isn’t an appropriate tool for one-to-one communication; try ftp with auto-resume and you’ll be fine.
It was a fictional example. While BitTorrent was not designed with one-to-one communication in mind, it can still be useful for doing so, and it should *really* not be broken by the ISP.
You did not respond to my other point, though.
“Hopefully I won’t ever want to access content created by Comcast users, because, well, they can’t seed it.”
In the case that one Comcast user has a file to seed, they can’t do it. Period. That’s not right. Whether I want it (so that it fits in with “accessing the content I want”) or not, it’s not right.
However, I appreciate the ftp suggestion for file transfers. It may give other people who don’t know that much about computers something to research so they can transfer their own files.
As it turns out, Anon, I’m a Comcast customer, and I’ve confirmed that seeding is not actually disabled for me. During the peak of the controversy, I saw a large number of Resets, but it’s tapered off, and even at the peak I was able to seed one-off Torrents. At the worst, the management slows you down, but BitTorrent keeps trying and eventually your file gets transferred.
So your basic premise – that Comcast blocks seeding – is simply false. They slow it down, sometimes, but they don’t block it.