So, it looks like Comcast has finally been found to be ”secretly” (this has hardly been a secret, folks. People have known about this for months now.) cheating their customers out of bandwidth by throttling connections and sending termination packets for any P2P downloads that their subscribers have been receiving, be it legitimate traffic (ie. Linux and other OSS distros are largely distributed via decentralized sources such as BitTorrent anymore) or pirated traffic such as mp3’s, warez, etc. This has long been a thorn in the side of subscribers of any larger-sized ISP (Cogeco and Bell are large culprits in the area where I live). Good luck getting anything via BitTorrent if you’re under the draconian rule of one of these corporate conglomerates. I, for one, loathe it. I’ve been trying to download a legitimate file of about 5GB for over 2 weeks now, because my internet connection is nearly unusable as soon as I fire up uTorrent. Hell, I may as well just rename the uTorrent shortcut on my desktop to “Reduce my internet speed to 14.4! Please!”
copyright George Lucas, Fox Entertainment, and me for the witty bubble content.
It’s pretty damn frustrating, really…it all started when they changed “unlimited bandwidth” in my ISP’s TOS contract to “unlimited* bandwidth”…sure, to somebody who can’t count past 5, 10GB might as well be unlimited…but please, don’t try to insult my intelligence the way you are with this “10GB = unlimited” nonsense. I’m not falling for it.
You don't have to be Einstein to figure this one out.
All I know is that I hope this new development in the US makes its way across the northern border. Until then, please help the cause. There are several non-profit groups dedicated to fighting the web-based oppression that many ISPs nowadays are trying to impose upon us. One of the ones that I belong to can be found at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2257733303&ref=ts (for those of you on Facebook).
Cheers.
2 Comments
Comcast deserved this and we need to continue to fight the fight against the internet providers. I am part of a new Net Neutrality campaign that is pooling people together to switch to the first Telecom that takes the Net Neutrality Pledge. I think this campaign can work along side other petitions and campaigns. It will provide a platform for people to explicitly say they will take their business elsewhere if their current Internet provider doesn’t adhere to the Net Neutrality conditions. If you’re interested check it out here and tell your readers: http://tinyurl.com/6cb5mz
That sounds interesting!