The “Break it Down” Blog

Ohhhh FACE!

Comcast is finally getting slapped with a lawsuit pertaining to their secret manipulation of BitTorrent and other P2P traffic using the traffic shaping software from Sandvine. A lot of folks originally thought the traffic blocking (technically called “traffic shaping” but it’s more like “traffic ub3r-p0wn4g-ing”) just applied to BitTorrent traffic (because the RIAA and MPAA have successfully equated the word “BitTorrent” with the word “Pirate” or “Stealing Software”) but as Ars Technica points out, the blocking extends well beyond that, even to legitimate apps like IBM’s Lotus Notes that is no longer usable on a Comcast network because of this shaping going on.

Given that Comcast’s official FAQ states that in no way do they block or filter internet traffic, exactly the opposite has been independently confirmed by quite a few tech sites out there as well as security researchers. Glad to see this lawsuit out there in the public, an ISP with that level of control (or any ISP) shouldn’t be allowed to block traffic or throttle traffic beyond a reasonable limit. Notice I said “reasonable”, like turning transfer speeds down to 0.1 KB/sec for BitTorrent traffic just because the RIAA/MPAA said to.