Comcast user sued his ISP over BitTorrent

[$SnoopDo2G$]

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A California man filed suit in state court Tuesday against internet service provider Comcast, arguing that the company’s secret use of technology to limit peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent violates federal computer fraud laws, their user contracts and anti-fraudulent advertising statutes. Plaintiff Jon Hart, represented by the Lexington Law Group, argues that Comcast’s promises of providing internet connections that let users “Download at Crazy Fast Speeds” are false and misleading since Comcast limits downloads by transmitting “unauthorized hidden messages to the computers of customers” who use peer-to-peer file sharing software. Hart wants the court to force Comcast to stop interfering with the traffic. He also wants the court to certify the suit as a class action and force Comcast to pay damages to himself and all other Comcast internet subscribers in California.

The suit *(.pdf)*, which also claims the BitTorrent blocking is an unfair business practice, was filed in California Superior Court in Alameda County. In the suit, Hart says he upgraded to Comcast’s Performance Plus service in September specifically to use the “blocked applications,” and that nothing in the 22-page terms of agreement with Comcast indicated that the company throttles traffic. Comcast refuses to plainly explain what it does to control BitTorrent traffic, but independent analyses have shown that Comcast is severely throttling internet traffic that is using the popular file sharing protocol BitTorrent by sending fake “I’m finished” messages to users’ BitTorrent programs. Those fake packets are also alleged to affect users of the mainstream business application Lotus Notes. The lawsuit charges those fake packets violate the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I will closely watch this case and inform you all about the results.

Source: rlslog.net, Wired, TGD
Homepage: http://www.rlslog.net/comcast-user-s...er-bittorrent/
*Download Link:* http://www.scribd.com/doc/495911/hart-v-comcast

[zach]

Gotta love Sandvine.

[mr. nails]

lol, this is actually pretty fuckin' cool. gj man. he kinda fucked himself in his argument though. they be watchin' him now.

[tusks]

If this guy wins the suit, this will be a serious victory for p2p and bittorrent. It will send a message to other ISPs and prevent them from taking the same actions as Comcast. Despite my obvious bias, I know what Comcast is doing is wrong because previous customers probably did not sign up knowing that their p2p traffic would be throttled in the future. In reality, they have as much right to throttle Bittorrent traffic as they do HTTP or FTP traffic but they damed better inform their clients about it. Even if this case does not stop Comcast from throttling traffic, I believe that they will no longer be able to do it "under the table" which will severely hurt their business.

[psxcite]

It's about time. I was wondering when someone would finally stepup to the plate and take one for the team. Even if it fails, it could bring more attention to the plight of Comcast users and cause the company enough bad PR to change their stance on the subject of throttling.

[TheFoX]

We have to remember that using Bit Torrent is no indication of sharing illegal material. There are many legal uses of the protocol, such as sharing Linux distributions and other open source data. Unwarranted interference is something that this guy should be able to be compensated for.

[Evil_Monkey]

Nice! This guy is doing just great here. What a warrior.

[Colt Seevers]

I hope he wins.

[UntamedDarknes]

I know so I can download at my nice speed of 700kbps again instead of 150kbps-max

[DanielleD87]

comcast throttling has nothing to do with your download speed only your upload seed when not downloading. it attempts to make your upload 0kB/s while seeding on private trackers.