Interesting. So how do folks get around this, outside of finding another provider? It can't be too long before they're all doing it...

this is pretty futile.

Why don't they spend some time and resources blocking botnet drones from spamming - oh right, that might actually *help* as opposed to *hinder*, so it's against their charter.

uh..... i'm kinda shocked BB was so slow on the pickup of this.

either way, what they're doing amounts to breaking the law since they're impersonating a particular person/IP while conversing with the target IP.

most people look forward to FIOS in their area to get away from comCRAP, but as of now most of us have to suffer through it. And I'm saying this from the point of view of a concert music trader on this great sea of tubes, so their actions hurt the legal traffic as well.

I'm no expert, but I can't imagine a method like this not being easily circumvented with another generation or two of p2p programs. I mean, sharing files is the essence of the internet on a base level, right?

Yeah, while it's good to see this issue in the mainstream press and that the AP did some independent investigation, there's no scoop here. It's a good piece, providing context and geek-to-human translation, but I didn't read anything I didn't already know from this Slashdot post about Comcast's shenanigans.

It would be one thing to block p2p traffic, but it seems on my connection I basically loose access to all net traffic, until I power cycle the modem. Oddly enough I can download p2p data as much as I want, so its killing my ratios on all decent p2p trackers, so its a indeterminate outbound traffic killer.

The good news is the utorrent is already working on a circumvention.

Yeah, this is an old story -- well, old in internet time, and it does seriously suck for those of us affected by it.

I'd like to get the latest Ubuntu, but I won't be able to share the image out. Nice, eh?

Comcrap, of course, denies everything, but we've known they're full of shit.

As for easily circumventing it? Not so easy. They're using a piece of hardware that basically snoops the packets, then sends out a spoof saying there was a disconnect. Way illegal, but hey, corporate America does what they want. If you don't like it, too bad for you!

Comcast has been messing with my Bittorrent traffic for a few months now. A fix? If you're using Azureus you can turn on transport encryption and require all connected peers to do the same. Everything will be somewhat back to normal... your speed will dip a bit due to having to only use other clients using encrypted transport.

In fact, your overall speed will probably be slower, due to the fact that Comcast only mucks with your uploading. Leeches won't have any problems with Comcast's policies, but those of us who try to keep up a good share ratio have to use the encryption.

Encrypt your torrents. Don't use trackers that allow unencrypted connections. I've had no problems whatsoever.

Is Comcast just sending RST packets both ways? If so, it shouldn't be that hard to get software to ignore them.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this one of the tactics China uses to censor internet traffic?

This is reprehensible. There are legitimate, licensed, even commercial uses for the bit torrent program. For instance, in addition to the officially licensed downloads sold at Bit Torrent.com, the anti-spyware program Spybot Search & Destroy offers downloads through bit torrent. Also, a number of online games have used BT to distribute their installers, particularly for beta tests but sometimes permanently (where their business model does not charge for the game software, only for the online account). This isn't just like having an operator bust in and say "sorry, have to go" to two people conversing; this is like it doing that in the middle of a call to HSN where someone's placing an order.

So they somehow have the technical expertise to do this, but they somehow can't fix the fact they're one of the top 10 spamming networks on the Internet? (And one of the top 5 in terms of spamming my servers).

If they stopped all those spurious messages going out from their networks, they'd probably save multiple amounts of the traffic that people generate bittorrenting.

My brother tells me that, the day after the Sprint patent decision after Vonage (which he uses), Comcast called him to offer VOIP service. When he declined, they became aggressive: "Are you getting a cheaper service? Are you using Vonage? They're going to go out of business, and what are you going to do then?" Clearly, they'd been tracking that my brother uses Vonage.

Here's what's going on: Comcast is databasing all the infomration -- IPs, ports, and the contents of the packets themselves -- and treating them as if they were their property.

It's as if the phone company were listening to your calls, and who you called, and using what you said and who you talked to as part of their business plan. "Woah! No more calls in from that subversive Xeni Jardin! She undermines our business plan."