Jon Hart has filed a lawsuit against Comcast in California Superior Court, Alameda County, alleging the cable and internet service provider’s secret use of traffic-shaping technology to limit file-sharing applications, specifically BitTorrent, is an unfair business practice and violates federal computer fraud laws, the company’s own user contracts, and federal advertising laws.
Hart wants the court to certify the lawsuit as a class action in California, requests unspecified damages, and requests that Comcast be forced to stop interfering with internet traffic on its network.
Independent analyses show that Comcast intentionally limits BitTorrent traffic on its network by sending forged reset packets. Comcast has thus far denied that it blocks access to BitTorrent or alters the internet traffic of its customers. Technically correct, possibly, but most certainly incomplete.
Perhaps most interesting of all is that Hart’s lawsuit alleges that Comcast’s discrimination against BitTorrent traffic violates established Federal Communications Commission policies on network neutrality.
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