[IP] Re: Comcast Admits Interfering with Internet Traffic

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.net>
Date: October 24, 2007 2:21:30 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net, ip@v2.listbox.com
Cc: lauren@vortex.com
Subject: Re: [IP] Comcast Admits Interfering with Internet Traffic

Dave, Lauren, everyone:

Lauren's article is disturbing for a number of reasons.

To claim that optimizing one's network, prioritizing packets, and
preventing abuse constitutes "interfering with" or "tampering with"
Internet traffic is akin to saying that traffic lights "tamper with"
automobile travel by artificially restricting it. Internet service
providers have every right to contractually and technically limit
what people do on their networks so as to prevent abuse, stop illegal
activity, and preserve quality of service. In fact, none can stay in
business if they do not do it.

In the specific case of Comcast, the provider is preventing customer
equipment from acting -- with or without the customer's knowledge --
in ways which would compromise the integrity of the network, hog
network resources, violate contracts (especially provisions which
prevent the operation of servers on residential connections, whose
pricing depends upon this contractual provision) and/or violate
copyrights.

Only when behavior is anticompetitive should it be considered to
be actionable -- and then not by the end user but by the party which
was the victim of the anticompetitive behavior.

--Brett Glass



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