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Tell Comcast: Honor Net Neutrality or Lose Your Customers |
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Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.
The Internet has always run on the concept of Network Neutrality. Without Net Neutrality, ISPs can charge website owners more or less depending on whether or not they agree with the content. For example, in an Internet where Net Neutrality is not the standard, Comcast would undoubtedly charge The Seminal a ton of money for providing content like this.
Congress is not moving fast enough on Net Neutrality. With this new evidence of data discrimination it is clear that we must elevate this battle now in order to Save the Internet.
Here is what you can do:
Tell them that if they won’t operate their business under the principles of Net Neutrality you will stop using their service. Tell them how long you’ve been a customer, how much you pay them per month, and how upset you are.
Ask them what their official policy on Net Neutrality is. Ask them how they intend to address your concerns.
If/when you get a response, email me at josh@theseminal.com and let me know what they said.
Free Press, through their microsite, Save The Internet, is leading the fight on this issue. Please use their Action Alert to contact your representatives today.
3. Spread the Word
Tell your friends and family about this. It’s time to put some serious pressure on both Comcast and Congress to do the right thing here. The future of the Internet as we know it is at stake.
As Free Press likes to say, Let’s Use the Internet to Save the Internet.
I got in touch with them. Got back boilerplate BS.
Here’s the canned response I got from Comcast:
Thank you for contacting us regarding your Comcast High Speed Internet
service.
I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.
Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent.
We respect our customers? privacy and we don?t monitor specific customer
activities on the Internet or track individual online behavior, such as
which websites they visit. Therefore, we do not know whether any
individual user is visiting BitTorrent or any other site.
We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good
experience online and we use the latest technologies to manage our
network. This is standard practice for ISPs and network operators all
over the world.
We rarely disclose our vendors or our processes for operating our
network both for competitive reasons and to protect against network
abuse.
If you have any more questions feel free to reply to this e-mail, or you
can chat with one of our Online Customer Support Specialists 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week using the following link:
Net Neutrality was a bill that was rejected in the house because it was for regulating the internet. Stop using this term like you know what it means because it’s just frustrating to people who understand it and confusing to people who do not understand it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
The direct email is care_customer@cable.comcast.com.
I got the exact same response as MountainKid got.
I have no choice for broadband. They get to do what they want.
It’s amazing that this would even happen when we’ve gotten so close to net neutrality being passed by congress. - Eric Monse
Geez people! Don’t give up after the boilerplate response. Get some answers! It’s clear that their PR spin on this is to say that they don’t block access to the BitTorrent *website,* which is obviously not the issue at hand. For my part I’m going to keep fighting.
Me too! I’m looking around for an alternative to Comcast and I will switch if I can. More to the point, I will pressure Congress to enact net neutrality legislation (free press is a great resource for this stuff!) and I’ll vote only for a candidate in 2008 who believes in stopping these kinds of abuses.
Comcast is correct in saying that it doesn’t “block” services. What it does is perform a man-in-the-middle attack in which it intercepts traffic between the customer and P2P peers and pretends to be the customer by forging the IP packets and sending false reset data to prevent data from being passed. This is fraud and a Denial-of-Service attack and is very possible in violation of federal and state computer crime laws. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is looking into it and customers should be contacting the offices of the attorney general of their states.