Comcast blocks some Internet traffic

[Hugo Chavez]

"a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks... BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content."

"Comcast's interference affects all types of content, meaning that, for instance, an independent movie producer who wanted to distribute his work using BitTorrent and his Comcast connection could find that difficult or impossible "

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071019/ap_on_hi_te/comcast_data_discrimination

[Al-Gebra]

interesting.  you can't fight the future, imo.  You've got to figure out how to take advantage of it.

[ieffinhatecardio]

Net Neutrality is going to be a huge issue in the next few years and unfortunately at least in the early stages it seems that the ISP's have all the leverage right now.

[Al-Gebra]

ISPs don't have all the power IMO, b/c they don't work together . If comcast blocked me from doing something I wanted, I'd just switch to another ISP.  I'm surprised that Comcast went out on a limb like this . . . they're probably affiliated with some big content provider, and got leaned on.

[ieffinhatecardio]

ISPs don't have all the power IMO, b/c they don't work together . If comcast blocked me from doing something I wanted, I'd just switch to another ISP.  I'm surprised that Comcast went out on a limb like this . . . they're probably affiliated with some big content provider, and got leaned on.

In most area's you have two choices for high speed internet access, those two forms of connecting to the internet are typically controlled by two companies. For example, Verizon and Comcast or Verizon and Cox.

If both Verizon and Comcast choose to block certain ports in order to stop P2P file sharing then there's nothing any of us users can do about it.

As I said, as it stands right now, they hold all the leverage.

Of course you can always go dial-up and spend 4 days downloading a 400 MB file.

[24KT]

"a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks... BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content."

"Comcast's interference affects all types of content, meaning that, for instance, an independent movie producer who wanted to distribute his work using BitTorrent and his Comcast connection could find that difficult or impossible "

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071019/ap_on_hi_te/comcast_data_discrimination

The sad thing is that not all file sharing is "illegal" downloads of movies & music.
File sharing has very legitimate apps, especially for biz docs that often can't squeeze through eMail clients.
As far as I can tell, Comcast has been blocking file sharing since 2004.