The Federal Communications Commission likes to describe the enforcement action it took against Comcast for its overzealous network management techniques as “modest.” Which is an apt description, since the FCC measure really contained no substantive punishment. Certainly, requiring Comcast to disclose more information about its traffic management practices seems a mere slap on the wrist for a company that deliberately interfered with BitTorrent traffic in violation of Internet openness principles. But Comcast, which wants a court to reverse and vacate the FCC decision, feels that even it was too much.
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Microsoft has signed off on Windows 7. On Wednesday, the company released the final version of the operating system to manufacturers, a piece of software that it hopes will restore the engineering reputation that Vista so badly tarnished.
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Comcast is apparently too busy drafting its “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” to bother attending the daylong hearing into its dubious “network management” practices. An odd decision for a company so intent on “clarifying” the practices ISPs should use to manage P2P applications running on their networks. But according to a company spokesperson, Comcast [...]
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It’s quite a road-to-Damascus conversion Comcast is having these days, isn’t it?
Back in February the cable company claimed it was perfectly reasonable for it to throttle or degrade the performance of peer-to-peer file-sharing services on its broadband network. But when FCC chairman Kevin Martin suggested the agency was mulling action against it, Comcast had a moment of clarity.
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Back in 2000-2001, when the Recording Industry Association of America was still trying to recover from its CD price-fixing scheme with poorly reasoned justifications for CD price inflation (”Listen, if CD prices were governed by the Consumer Price Index, you’d be paying $33.86 for them instead of $12.75!”), a little company called Napster came calling. [...]
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If the Motion Picture Association of America is so intent on shuttering BitTorrent trackers, perhaps it should set its sites on the really big offenders, like say … Google. It’s going to have to sooner or later, because some day there won’t be any smaller operations left for it to sue.
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It’s a Comcastic day for BitTorrent. This morning the cable provider, under fire for degrading the performance of the peer-to-peer file-sharing service on its broadband network, announced plans to develop better ways to manage peer-to-peer traffic.
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The Federal Communications Commission isn’t buying Comcast’s (CMCSA) argument that throttling or degrading the performance of the peer-to-peer file-sharing service BitTorrent on its broadband network is a necessary traffic-management technique.
Speaking at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he’s considering taking action against the cable operator for violating [...]
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We compete with Comcast with delivery of content over the Internet. What we have here is a horse race and in this contest, Comcast owns the race track, in fact, the only track in town. They also own a horse. We are being told they are only slowing down our horse by a few seconds.”
–Gilles [...]
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As Sun Tzu once wrote, “Keep your customers close and your enemies closer, and should someone be both, kick them off the Internet.” At least that’s what he appears to have written in the recording industry’s well-worn copy of “The Art of War.”
Earlier this year, the British Phonographic Industry suggested that the British government pass [...]
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