Comments on: Is Comcast's BitTorrent filtering violating the law?

Comcast has recently adopted some of the same Internet filtering techniques used by the Great Firewall of China. It turns out that some of these methods may also be illegal under US law.

[cyto_daoc]

Comcast and Filtering

I am wondering if Comcast is starting to infringe on anticompetitive behavior. The companies that they are being blocked/throttled might be able to make a stand based on this.

I think BitTorrent should goto the FTC and have a chat with them about this. This is really stopping them from competing in an open and fair marketplace.

[Ronaldscheer]

''Many states make it illegal for an individual to impersonate another individual. New York, a state notorious for its aggressive pro-consumer office of the Attorney General, makes it a crime for someone to "[impersonate] another and [do] an act in such assumed character with intent to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud another''
After reading the article and the comments I have come to the conclusion to start this discussion about Torrent-software in The Netherlands as well. I would like to share this information with you all. I use the website of a non-profit organisation www.geschilonline.nl. Soon all the text will be in english as well. Have fun exploring the site, leave your comments and we can all learn a lot. Regards,
Ronald Scheer

[dackl]

BitTorrent is a freeware protocol used by a large number of (generally freeware) file-sharing clients... They don't have a 'company' behind them, and most of the 'clients' make any commercial profits off of ad space on download websites...

We aren't dealing with a Napster, Limewire, or Kazaa type system that has a corporation behind the product...

[gmtheace]

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[reliablehosting.com]

Comcast uses Sandvine type routers to throttle, these are easily bypassed with using a VPN account like at http://www.strongvpn.com . Many VPN solutions are popping up now to bypass it, I wonder what Comcast will do to stop these.

[Reactor89]

Comcast can't stop VPN services I don't think they would try.

Reasoning is that if the Comcast understood the encryption on a valid VPN server they would have to be hacking those systems which is illegal, no matter what the intension.

Second is my assumption that if your using BitTorrent you don't want to spend money on things that should be payed for if you legally want to own them. This is why I can't see most BitTorrent users paying $25 a mouth keep using BitTorrent when you could be using that money to buy content legally anyway unless they are really hardcore pirater.

Yet I still think Comcast is chasing ghosts. There is already encrpition available for BitTorrent and if Comcast as much as touches that encryption the law suits will start flying. It's only a matter of time.

[baytapes]

I work for Comcast and I'm outraged that they are doing this. I don't think their Sr. Level Management understands that there are a lot of perfectly legal files transferred via bit torrent. I can understand them not wanting a few people to eat up the bandwith but there are other ways to handle an issue like this without Throttling everyone who uses bit torrent.

[blacklogic1]

There are so many to choose from.
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