PHILADELPHIA, PA — Comcast is rapidly replacing AOL as the butt of internet-related joked and consumer complaints. Accused this past summer of establishing and harshly enforcing mysterious maximum download limits that even chief executives can’t define, the cable and broadband giant is now being accused of blocking certain kinds of peer-to-peer traffic.Scholars from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford have joined with members of the SaveTheInternet.com Coalition last week to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission concerning the practice and requesting redress.
The SaveTheInternet.com Coalition was formed in an effort to pressure Congress and the FCC to enforce and reinstate discriminatory actions on the part of broadband acess suppliers.
The move is a response to the Associated Press’ discovery that several Comcast broadband connections block BitTorrent traffic. The AP’s independent research bolsters the claims of Comcast subscribers who have reported that their attempts to connect with BitTorrent have been unsuccessful.
Although Comcast insists that it is not blocking any kind of content, including BitTorrent, it does maintain that it has the right to do so. “As the FCC noted in its policy statement in 2005,” Comcast executive vice president David Cohen remarked in a prepared statement, “all of the principles to encourage broadband deployment and preserve the nature of the internet are ‘subject to reasonable network management.’ The commission clearly recognized that network management is necessary by ISPs for the good of all customers.”
Protesters are not impressed, however, insisting that “No plausible technical or economic reason suggests that blocking particular applications is a reasonable way to manage a network.”
Furthermore, petitioners contend that any blocking of BitTorrent or other traffic violates the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement, which ordains that consumers have the ability to access all legal services, content, and applications.
While some point out that laws already exist to punish Comcast if it is, indeed, denying users access to internet destinations, the groups insist that it is important for the FCC to make clear its policy and reassure consumers that ISPs will not be allowed to intentionally degrade applications or classes of applications as a justification for maintaining “reasonable network management.”
Although still anecdotal, some Comcast Mac users report that many of their functions, including iChat audio and video, are inoperable for them when accessed via the provider, but not when the same systems access the internet via other means.
