

Comcast Wins Protest Against “Shake Down” of BitTorrent Pirates - lightspot
http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-wins-protest-against-shake-down-of-alleged-bittorrent-pirates-120622

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justinlink
Comcast has only recently started fighting back against this one law firm
(Prenda) because they were not promptly paying Comcast's fee for handing over
subscriber information.

Comcast charges $45 per IP address for civil cases. Prenda was late with
payments in another case and the dispute even made the court docket. Comcast
said to the court they discussed payment terms with Duffy (Prenda's main
counsel) and resolved their differences.

I do not know if Prenda ever ended up paying Comcast, but Comcast's refusal to
comply to me seem more rooted in the costs to their legal department than to
protecting their customers.

Comcast had no problem giving out thousands of customer's information for two
years to these black mailers until recently. The merits of the case have never
changed. They sue people in favorable jurisdictions and only Comcast could
have stepped forward with the contact information and fought that with real
evidence.

Kudos to Comcast, but don't consider them for sainthood yet.

~~~
jdp23
Thanks for the background. When I first saw that Comcast was doing the right
thing here, my head almost exploded. Now I understand :)

~~~
hbhanu
Haha, I did a doubletake, too - the background definitely helped.

~~~
ars
A reputation is a hard thing to shake isn't it. Even if they do something
good, please will look for other reasons for everything you do.

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lrs
The fact that Comcast is carrying this banner almost makes me want to switch
to Comcast in support. I say "almost" because I quickly remember their
frequent random connection drops, slower-than-promised speeds, intentionally
misleading promotional advertising, legendarily bad customer service, and
ruthless nationwide campaign against affordable municipally-provided high
speed Internet access.

~~~
ajross
Also: DNS response forgery, bittorrent throttling via packet inspection and
clear violations of the network neutrality principle by discounting their
partners' content over their IP network. I'm as pleased as anyone with this,
but honestly I think the scale still tips toward the "evil" side for Comcast.

That said, I'm a customer. They're my only good choice in broadband. And
honestly I've been reasonably pleased -- it's reliable and fast, if not cheap.

~~~
ars
Also: Very easy to disable DNS forgery (unlike some), DNSsec on their entire
network (which also disables the DNS forgery, but they knew that), IPv6, and
since they got hit so hard on the bittorent thing, they won't dare do it again
- which makes them perfect.

> clear violations of the network neutrality principle by discounting their
> partners' content over their IP network

That's isn't real. They are not doing that. Someone analyzed their TV over IP
service a little while ago and verified it.

> the scale still tips toward the "evil" side for Comcast

Not me. They were evil when they did the bittorrent thing, but ever since then
they've been great.

~~~
ajross
Most of that is a judgement call, and I won't argue.

But the network neutrality thing is very much real. They enforce a cap on
general traffic, but lift it for partner streaming. That's a discount. The
analysis merely showed that the packets were distinctly labeled for the
routers, and thus they were (plausibly, technically) within the letter of
network neutrality. They were quite clearly violating the spirit.

~~~
ars
They do the same thing for PPV. It makes no difference that it's TCP/IP vs
some other protocol. Those packets do not flow over your internet connection,
they flow over the dedicated wires comcast runs to the customer specific for
video.

They don't prioritize it over other traffic - it uses a totally different
channel which you pay extra to get. It's exactly what they should be doing.

> The analysis merely showed that the packets were distinctly labeled for the
> routers

No, that's not correct. The packets used a different DOCSIS channel, after the
cable modem the packets were not special.

If the packets went over your regular connection AND were prioritized, then
that would be a violation. Anything else is not a violation, not the letter,
not the spirit.

Comcast is a video provider, I bought some video and they used their wires to
provide it to me. Other providers don't have the same access to the customer,
but that's because they have no wires to the customer.

For network neutrality, other providers should have the same internet access
as the customer as comcast, but this service doesn't use your internet
connection, so network neutrality simply doesn't apply.

~~~
ajross
Do you have a link for that analysis (I'm too lazy to check)? I swear you're
wrong on that. I quite clearly remember that the packets were tagged with QoS
fields on the local ethernet. Whether they go over a different provisioned
channel or not isn't really the point. Clearly they're taking hardware they
installed for general internet service and repurposing it for a private,
privileged traffic. That traffic is "internet" traffic on teh local network,
and it's "internet" traffic at the backend (where it's sourced from Xfinity
partners networks over lines that I'm 100% sure aren't dedicated). How can you
possibly not feel that this is a violation of the spirit of net neutrality?

------
_delirium
This article doesn't mention it, but I wonder whether the fact that plaintiffs
were pornography producers ([http://paidcontent.org/2012/06/20/comcast-
crushes-porn-owner...](http://paidcontent.org/2012/06/20/comcast-crushes-porn-
owners-shakedown-of-subscribers/)) was relevant to the court's decision. The
decision is just a one-paragraph notice saying "for reasons stated in open
court...", so it's hard to know. But I could see the Court being more worried
about discovery being used for harassment in such a context.

On the other hand, given the lack of a written opinion, it's possible the
Court didn't care about this "shakedown" aspect of the argument at all, and
instead quashed the subpoenas for some more technical reason, like the
improper-joinder argument that the article mentions.

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jknupp
Even if there is no relevant legal precedent, Comcast's common sense argument
that the plaintiff in the case had a clear history of not using the identities
of the subscribers the court compelled ISPs to release in any litigation is
the kind of argument that, in a perfect world, would become the norm. However,
IANAL so I have no idea how likely it is to be successfully used again.

~~~
lrs
I don't know, man - I'm no ally of the Plaintiffs in this case, but I don't
think I buy that argument.

What Comcast characterizes as "shakedowns" are really just negotiated
settlements. The fact that the claims didn't go to litigation doesn't
necessarily indicate that they aren't valid; it just means that they were
settled before it became necessarily to file a lawsuit.

~~~
justinlink
This one law firm has had cases against tens of thousands of internet users.
To this date they have never served a single one.

Here's proof from Prenda itself in a court filing: "Although our records
indicate that we have filed suits against individual copyright infringement
defendants, our records indicate that no defendants have been served in the
below-listed cases."

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/83287284> (page 4 - all cases)

------
RedwoodCity
I guess now I know where comcast has been spending my subscription fees.
Apparently on very expensive lawyers. Now if comcast would only upgrade there
service so American broadband would be more comparable to Sweden or Japan.

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ericson578
wow, at least we know not to settle out of court. They need to prove I did the
sharing first (I am not my IP address).

