The FCC announced a formal
investigation into Comcast’s controversial practice of “data
discrimination” in response to a flood of complaints from consumers
and Internet groups.
Last October, users discovered that Comcast employed a novel
implementation of traffic shaping against its subscribers, which
impersonated subscribers' machines in order to trick their P2P
software into disconnecting. While this form of traffic shaping met
Comcast’s objectives – to control the massive bandwidth sink that
results from illegal P2P use – it also affected legitimate P2P
users, as well as unrelated services, like the network features in
Lotus Notes.
User suspicion eventually culminated into an investigation by the
Associated Press, of which the results were
released last October. Shortly afterwards, testing at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation reached a similar conclusion, and as a
result released the “Test
Your ISP” project – allowing users to see for themselves
whether or not their ISPs implemented similar practices.
At the heart of the matter is whether or not Comcast’s “data
discrimination” is permissible under the FCC’s guidelines of
“reasonable network management,” and whether or not the practice
is a violation of the current rules on network neutrality and service
availability. Speaking Tuesday at CES in Vegas, FCC Chairman Kevin
Martin told consumers that the FCC will “investigate” the matter
in order “make sure that no consumer is … blocked.”
“The question is going to arise: Are they reasonable network
practices?” said Martin. “When they have reasonable network
practices, they should disclose those and make those public.”
Comcast’s PR team was caught off-guard by the initial turn of
events in October, as even after the practice was outed by the
Associated Press, Comcast continued to deny any kind of
manipulation. However, facing the wrath of an increasingly
angry Internet mob, Comcast’s tune quickly changed to a coy
comparison of its actions with that
of a busy signal, like one hears over landline telephones.
Complicating an already messy situation, a California man filed
a class-action lawsuit against Comcast last November. In it,
plaintiff Jon Hart accused Comcast of breach of contract, as well as
violating the Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing, the Business
and Professions Code, and the Legal Remedies act by throttling
bandwidth and “transmitting unauthorized hidden messages” to
subscribers’ offending software.
“Comcast plans to work with the Commission in its desire to
bring more transparency for consumers,” said Comcast executive VP
David L. Cohen. “We do disclose in our terms of use our right to
manage our network for the benefit of all customers.”
