Shaped at customer premises
"any security scheme that relies on control of the end point is ultimately flawed anyway. AFAICT this is just a case of the cable company in question being to lazy or cheap to buy and install proper back-end bandwidth throttling tools anyway"
This is true. I think cable cos assumed they would own the modem and rent it when this whole scheme was designed, whereas now everyone has the option of purchasing instead. Surprisingly (at least it surpises me though), this is normal industry practice -- cable companies do not shape the customer's connection to the rate they've paid for, they rely on the cable modem to do it. Even when Comcast was interfering with people's traffic, I doubt the hardware was shaping NORMAL traffic, just injecting false packets into torrent connections (and a few other types it misdetected as torrents.)
"A cable subscriber has every right to own their modem, and as their property they have every right to modify it however they want. If they have modified it for purposes of fraud, then by all means bust them for it,"...
That's the jist of it. This guy IS being busted for mass modifying these modems for the purpose of fraud. Now, the case MIGHT be tricky -- his intent is clear, but if he did not thieve service himself, and phrased his advice so he did not advocate theft of service, then he was possibly within his rights to purchase off the shelf hardware, modify it, and resell it. He'd need a good lawyer to argue this though.
@Chris211 "Jail the fucker",
I don't think anyone's disagreeing with you. People are not saying just expressing surprise that with a whole hybrid fiber coax network full of equipment, backend full of routers, etc., that no traffic policy is implemented except by the (possibly customer-owned) customer premises equipment. I mean, I can't get free phone service by mod'ing my landline OR cell. I can't get free DSL by mod'ing a DSL router, OR get faster speeds by changing it's parameters (without someone at the other end changing them to match). I can't just flip the "evil bit" on my wifi and get free access to encrypted access points. Even with satellite being 1-way, it's very difficult to mod a satellite receiver to get free channels. The cable co.s are unique in having just some file stored in flash on the cable modem that determines the speed it gets.