Don't Call ACLU on Comcast Just Yet

Posted by Lorna Garey on October 25, 2007

Defending Comcast comes hard. It is, after all, the ISP that poor slobs lacking access to Verizon FiOS love to hate. But those getting their panties in knots over Comcast sending forged TCP resets are off the mark in implying that the company is making some moral judgement about users accessing BitTorrent. ISPs are against Net neutrality legislation because they're in business to turn a profit, and government regulations cost money. You don't see HMOs asking for more HIPAA-like regs. And, speaking of money, ISPs don't want pipes flooded by a small percentage of users, causing slowdowns for the majority, because more and more customers in major markets are getting choices in broadband providers. So go ahead and complain that Comcast is using a kludgy way to try and ensure QoS by limiting the amount of bandwidth P2P traffic can hog.

Illegal? Maybe. An elegant approach to traffic shaping? Not by a long shot. But censorship? Nah.

RELATED LINKS Comcast Chided For Managing BitTorrent Network Traffic Comcast Says It's Not Blocking Internet Downloads Comcast Corp said Monday that file transfers on peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent may be delayed by bandwidth management technology, but it denied blocking access to any applications or content.