Comcast To Compensate Throttled BitTorrent Users

http://torrentfreak.com//images/comcast-throtting.gif

Comcast To Compensate Throttled BitTorrent Users
December 23, 2009

" Comcast has decided to settle one of the lawsuits brought about over their use of the Sandvine BitTorrent throttling hardware to ‘manage’ their network. For those who were affected, there is the possibility of receiving a payment from a $16 million fund set up by the Internet service provider.

The Comcast BitTorrent throttling story is one of the major case studies for net neutrality. More than two years have passed since we broke the story that led to an FCC investigation and even lawsuits from affected users.

In one of the class action suits that were brought about from the long-running incident, Comcast has now agreed to settle, meaning those affected may be eligible for compensation.

About two and a half years ago, reports surfaced on what appeared to be the throttling of BitTorrent connections by Comcast. The throttling, first discovered by Rob Toplowski, was confirmed by TorrentFreak, and was first reported in August 2007. Other news agencies picked it up later, especially after tests by the EFF and Associated Press confirmed events and included reports that other network based activity was also affected.

Comcast long-denied any wrongdoing, but a leaked memo revealed that the company went as far as instructing its front-line staff to lie about the issue. Then the FCC got involved and things deteriorated. At a hearing at Harvard, Comcast packed the venue with people they bussed in, but it didn’t stop the BitTorrent throttling practice being termed a ‘hacker technique’.

Eventually, some assurances were made, and the FCC ordered Comcast to stop using Sandvine. Meanwhile lawsuits had been filed. One of these, Hart vs Comcast of Alameda, attained class action status, and there is now a proposed settlement.

Comcast has agreed to put $16M into a fund to pay BitTorrent users that were inconvenienced by the ‘network management’.

The downside is the size of the settlement. If you qualify, you can receive a maximum of $16, yet still Comcast refuses to accept it did anything wrong. The administrators of the settlement have set up a website to deal with questions about the case which can be found at www.p2pcongestionsettlement.com

It’s not hard to imagine that some customers will feel this doesn’t go far enough, and undoubtedly the discussion on this topic will continue. For the affected Comcast users there is still time to decide how to proceed – the deadline for claims is August 14th 2010. Meanwhile, network neutrality remains a pipe dream for most people. "

:source: Source: http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-to-c...-users-091222/:view: Homepage: http://torrentfreak.com

Thanks for the story, Rart. This is very good news, hopefully this will set a precedent for others to pursue against internet providers who have interests that oppose those of their users.

I also think it's cool I get $16...:D That's almost 25% of what I pay these @$$h0735 each month.

16 dollars? :blink: Maybe I can go to a movie theater with the cash...ALONE! :P

I don't understand ( actually I do) they know that what they did was illegal so they settle out of court ( ie the lawyers conveniently get their cut) and miraculously the money acts like some moral stain remover and they are then absolved of any guilt ?

I pay-off therefore I am.

Moral stain remover sounds like a great idea for a new product! I'll take 2! Actually, make that 3, I have plans for this weekend...

If anyone here was a Comcast ISP customer between April 1, 2006 to December 31, 2008...you can file for your share of the $16 million. It only comes to ~$16.00 per customer, but hey...I wouldn't mind seeing the credit on my next bill. :rolleyes:

"As our users were the first to discover back in 2007, Comcast had been forging user packets to throttle upstream P2P traffic for all users 24/7, despite spending a lot of time claiming otherwise. The news resulted in an FCC investigation and a meaningless FCC sanction, though Comcast ultimately wound up shifting to a throttling solution that only targets high consumption users on heavily congested nodes."

The rest of the story:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/C...-Action-106097


Claim URL: http://www.p2pcongestionsettlement.com/

The 'Submit Claim Online' option is 'under construction'...

Comcast are losing on every field possible, it`s still being supported by the "head" tho , therefor any significant crash of the company might not happen in the near future...but sooner or later will come to an end !

Where the hell is my money? lol!? i'm so doing this!

You bunch of lucky bastards, Over here in the U.k We get punished for having a 10 meg connection, Thats 10 megabit not bytes ,If you use the full speed of 10 megabits you get punished for 5 hours and your speed reduced to 1/5th of the speed. They say its so that people with slower connection speeds don't get there speed lowered when they use it,Yet they advertise regularly about how upto date and fast there network is with there new 50 meg connection speed. I'm talking about VIRGIN Media. NTL used to have zero problems for the 3 years I was with them, then VIRGIN Media took over and problems galor happened.....Alledgedly with there network being hammered by people on 10 meg and above. Can you imagine you go out and buy a porche,drive on the motorway at the legal speed for 1hr then u have to slow down to 1/5th the speed just because people in slower cars can't go as fast as you? nah neither can I. I think its totally Illegal and unfair and most other companies here have adopted the same bullshit tactics of bandwidth shaping to curb the excessive use of people on 10 meg and above. We could really do with this being brought to court over here and all the companies that are participating in this bandwidth shaping lark paying there customers for lost bandwidth. Glad i got that off my chest :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by darkstate01

You bunch of lucky bastards, Over here in the U.k We get punished for having a 10 meg connection, Thats 10 megabit not bytes ,If you use the full speed of 10 megabits you get punished for 5 hours and your speed reduced to 1/5th of the speed. They say its so that people with slower connection speeds don't get there speed lowered when they use it,Yet they advertise regularly about how upto date and fast there network is with there new 50 meg connection speed. I'm talking about VIRGIN Media. NTL used to have zero problems for the 3 years I was with them, then VIRGIN Media took over and problems galor happened.....Alledgedly with there network being hammered by people on 10 meg and above. Can you imagine you go out and buy a porche,drive on the motorway at the legal speed for 1hr then u have to slow down to 1/5th the speed just because people in slower cars can't go as fast as you? nah neither can I. I think its totally Illegal and unfair and most other companies here have adopted the same bullshit tactics of bandwidth shaping to curb the excessive use of people on 10 meg and above. We could really do with this being brought to court over here and all the companies that are participating in this bandwidth shaping lark paying there customers for lost bandwidth. Glad i got that off my chest :)

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That's pretty lame, only get 1/5 of what you pay for..

Welcome to the country of ripoff britain :(