Sunday, October 28, 2007

The "Comcast Blocking BitTorrent" Story Continues

Since I wasn't blogging while this was happening, I missed discussing this story initially. However, like all good juicy stories, this one keeps on giving.

Earlier this summer, there were reports that Comcast was blocking BitTorrent traffic. Comcast offered a denial that basically said they didn't monitor what types of traffic it's customers were using, but that they did reserve the right to shut down people who hogged bandwidth. More recently, the AP investigated and found some fairly conclusive proof that, contrary to what Comcast said, it sure looked like they were sending spoofed messages that appeared to be from the downloader to the seed host to stop sending. (Summary here)

Consumerist subsequently received some internal emails from Comcast that indicates that their official line is now that they are not "blocking access" to BitTorrent users. Which, in classic hair-splitting language, is arguably true. They're not technically blocking anyone's access, they're simply telling the seed file hosts to stop sending. The reps are being told, very sternly, not to deviate from their scripts, so I can't imagine there's some extremely precise legal arguments being utilized here.

And then, from an update in that same consumerist post, it is discovered that the software Comcast denies using to interfere with BitTorrent traffic is available as a choice on their internal troubleshooting system.

We'll be watching this one closely...

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