* Posts by Otto

1 publicly visible post • joined 24 Jan 2008

Hogging the Trough: The EFF Strikes Back

Otto
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Truth in advertising...

Richard said: "1. Comcast doesn't advertise an unlimited service, their Terms of Use say you can't run file servers from a standard residential account. BitTorrent running as a seeder is in the category of prohibited applications."

Until 2004, they absolutely did advertise the service as "unlimited". They don't any more, but they also don't tell you that there is, in fact, a limit, because they don't have one. They have a nebulous soft limit, which is whatever the hell they say it is.

Also, their Terms of Use basically states that you give them money and they don't have to provide you with anything at all. Not one byte of data. Heck, their acceptable use policy even prohibits you from downloading porn... which is like 80% of the network, you know.

Like all Terms of Use policies, it's a complete joke. It's basically their fallback position. "We canceled your service because of this policy" is easier to say than "We canceled your service because you're costing us more money than you're making us, thanks to our complete lack of a business plan and reasonable pricing. We like to market things we cannot provide, so as to draw in all the suckers willing to overpay for what they get. Good job, eh?"

While I understand your argument about them controlling their network, there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to do that, and spoofing packets is *never* acceptable. Not that it helps them, of course, because every Comcast user is simply using encryption on their BitTorrent sessions now, which they don't reset because they cannot recognize them anymore.

Bottom line:

If they offer me a speed instead of a limit, then I will adhere to that speed and not to a limit. If they sell me 4 megs down and 384 up, then by god I should get 4 down and 384 up, period. 24/7. All the time. If they cannot provide that, then they damn well should not have sold it to me. If they actually provided what they *claimed* to provide, then they wouldn't be in this mess. If they can't provide it, then they cannot claim it. Truth in advertising is the law, and I really truly hope that the FTC bitch slaps Comcast for their false advertising.