Comcast pulls more “scarce” bandwidth out of ass; corporate media fawns

By Michael Fraase

Sunday, 06 April 2008 12:13PM CST

Section: Media

Coax cableLast October, Associated Press reporter Peter Svensson reported that internet service and cable behemoth Comcast was blocking file sharing activities by its customers and competitors. Comcast was using a nefarious cracker technique—sending forged reset packets (TCP RST)—basically telling the receiving computer to “hang up the phone.”

Comcast’s president of its interactive division, Amy Banse, subsequently admitted as much to the Web 2.0 conference audience.

As a result, Jon Hart filed a lawsuit against Comcast, alleging violation of federal computer fraud laws, federal advertising laws, and the company’s own contracts with its customers.

The outrage against Comcast grew and in January (government wheels turn slowly), Federal Communications (FCC) chair Kevin Martin announced the agency would investigate complaints.

In what turned out to be a comedy of corporate errors, the FCC’s hearing was held at Harvard in Feburary. Comcast hired seat-warmers—sleeping seat-warmers—off the street to keep its opponents in the network neutrality and common carriage debate out of the hearing. David Cohen, Comcast executive vice president, said in so many words that the company had to block file sharing traffic because there wasn’t enough bandwidth for its customers. Most surprisingly, Martin told Comcast that the FCC is “ready, willing, and able” to punish network providers that violate the commission’s access rules.

More...

Permalink | (0) Trackbacks | (3) Comments

Page 1 of 1 pages