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TechnoratiComcast Not Alone In Impeding Data Transfer: Report
Comcast Corp.'s interference with Internet traffic has prompted a federal investigation and is at the center of calls for network neutrality laws, but another U.S. cable company appears to be doing the same thing without drawing scrutiny.
A study released Thursday found conclusive signs that file-sharing attempts by subscribers of Cox Communications were blocked, along with customers at Comcast.
Of the 788 Comcast subscribers who participated in the study, 62 percent had their connections blocked. At Cox, 54 percent of subscribers examined were blocked, according to Krishna Gummadi at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Saarbruecken, Germany. The institute examined the network connections of 8,175 Internet subscribers around the world.
Comcast is the country's second-largest Internet service provider, with 14.1 million subscribers. Cox is the fourth-largest, with 3.8 million; it is part of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc.
Comcast's practice of interfering with traffic was brought to light by user reports last year and confirmed by an Associated Press investigation in October.
Consumer advocacy groups and legal scholars criticized the interference, saying that letting a service provider selectively block some connections makes it a gatekeeper to the Internet, violating the network's open principles. Their complaints prompted the Federal Communications Commission to start an investigation, which is ongoing.
Legislation also has been introduced in Congress to guarantee net neutrality, or equal treatment of traffic by Internet service providers.
"This research proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that consumers, Congress and the FCC must urgently pursue the complaints against network providers," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, one of the groups that urged the FCC to fine Comcast.
File-sharing programs like BitTorrent, which let people exchange documents, songs, movies and other content, can be heavy users of Internet bandwidth.
Comcast maintains that hampering such programs helps ensure that traffic other than file sharing is not impeded by a few big users. The company says that it is delaying file transfers rather than blocking them. Even that will end later this year, Comcast said in March, as it pledged to stop the practice.
At least since 2006, Cox's subscriber agreement has noted that the company engages in "protocol filtering," which means it treats different types of Internet traffic, like Web surfing, e-mail and file sharing, differently.
Cox said Thursday that it takes such steps "to ensure the best possible online experience for our customers." But Cox denied that protocol filtering amounts to discrimination of any specific services.
The blocking observed by Gummadi's group occurs when a subscriber has downloaded a file using the BitTorrent application and tries to upload it, or share it with others, over the Internet. The main victims are the other Internet subscribers, who will not be able to download a file if a complete version is not available from someone else's computer.
Persistent attempts by file-sharing software to get through an Internet service provider's filtering may succeed after several minutes, as experienced in the Associated Press test last year. But Gummadi's test did not look at the duration of the traffic blocks.
Gummadi found signs of interference at seven other U.S. Internet providers, all of them cable companies.
© 2008 Associated Press
9 Comments so far
Show AllThis is how slavery works. The slaves don't even realize how many rights have been stolen from them going back more then 20 years. In the early 90s there was actually debate about corporate tyrannies assuming control of the 'net. Now it's just their for-profit-behavior that irks the sedate masses.
If you're running any proprietary software on your machine that alone should irk you, but you need to do some reading, before coming to that conclusion. No, you don't need to be a CS major to get rid of windows, get rid of proprietary enslavement, encyrpt your file sharing, etc etc, but you need to be ever vigilant against these SOBs. If only everyone in this country would, for just a 2 month period, not send any money to Comcast....
More and more people are starting to see how Comcast is. Besides, they are union busters.
Monopolies in any industry are dangerous.
Like Rebel Farmer says, "Boycott Comcast!"
Bell Canada is in big trouble for "throttling" mostly because it then sells this diminished service to other suppliers and makes lies out of their claims of 24/7 broadband access. Individual users are nothing to them. The only reason they are on the carpet is because local ISP's are complaining.
Shaw is only now letting people have limited FTP connections to their own computers for an added fee. I'm sure if everybody was to actually read their agreement with their ISP they would find interesting stuff in the small print. The Internet has been compromised for a long time.
When my son was staying in my apartment I got several notices that Shaw thought I was using my modem too much. My son was downloading movies but I just told Shaw I had picked up a trojan.
Let's all just create one big open Wi-Fi network, and screw the internet. The only big issue would be getting across the ocean, or large expanses of unpopulated land.
boycott CLEARWIRE, too. they do the same "SHAPING"
Boycott Comcast if you can! This company is EVIL!
Everyone should check their junkmail or spam box from time to time.
Some legitimate emails have gone to my junkmail inbox. Every legitimate email in my junkmail folder has been political. Several were from Howard Dean. Another was from Sojourners, a Christian group that sends me emails daily. The one and only one email from Sojourners that went to my junkmail box had a subject line "Iraq".
I have complained to my email provider to no avail of course. They pretend not to understand and then divert me all over the place and then stonewall. I have also told Patrick Leahy because he seems to understand and care about internet and privacy issues. I have also replied to the blocked emails informing the senders that they are being routed that way.
Not just file sharing...
I tried to send my sister, who has AOL, an email with the text "shirley08.com" in it and it was blocked. That's the web site for Shirley Golub who is running against Pelosi, and has the 'rubber chicken' ad, and a petition against Comcast blocking the ad. I can't even send her the name of Golub's site as plain text.
The error was:
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html 554:
"There is at least one domain in your email that is generating substantial complaints from AOL members. AOL blocks emails that contain domains that may have been previously used to send unsolicited email or inappropriate content such as personal information solicitations. These blocks mainly target clickable links, but may also block non-clickable domains."
This behavior by the aforementioned cable companies smacks of the desperation shown by the American auto industry when Japanese offerings began to beat them in the marketplace. The cable companies know that they are a "maturing industry" and the Internet can be their death knell. The Internet also displaces their role as content filters & schedulers and allows the consumer to discover what they want when they want. Is it any surprise that big corporations truly fear real choice for consumers?!