Mounting Peer-to-Peer Pressure for Comcast

Comcast's traffic-filtering efforts are the subject of FCC complaints and a lawsuit. At issue: ISPs right to control the flow of data over their networks

by Peter Burrows

Comcast Chairman and Chief Executive Brian Roberts, May 8, 2007 Larry Burton/Bloomberg News

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Comcast (CMCSA) is overstepping its bounds when it comes to controlling the flow of certain kinds of traffic over its high-speed Internet system. That's the assertion made by a growing number of consumers and advocacy groups fighting practices they consider illegal via the courts, regulators, and some controversial, behind-the-scenes methods for masking Internet content.

The brouhaha followed an Associated Press report that Comcast has been interfering with particular sorts of bandwidth-hogging traffic. Within days of the Oct. 19 story, consumer advocacy groups lodged a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission to force Comcast to stop. And on Nov. 13, San Francisco Comcast subscriber Jon Hart filed a class action claiming a litany of charges, from breach of contract to computer fraud. The suit demands that Comcast end the practice and pay damages to subscribers who got less than the "mind-blowing speeds" Comcast advertised.

At issue is how Comcast, under Chief Executive Brian Roberts, treats peer-to-peer traffic, so named because it is passed among millions of PCs owned by people who agree to share their bandwidth rather than by way of a company's servers. Comcast denies it has blocked any traffic outright, but admits to using "network management" techniques to handle the rising tide of peer-to-peer traffic, and thereby maintain service for all of its other customers. "What we're doing is pro-consumer, because we're protecting the many users whose experience is degraded by heavy peer-to-peer congestion," says Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas.

Legitimacy of Content Flow

The Comcast controversy strikes at the heart of some of the biggest debates engulfing technology, including how much control network operators should have over the flow of information and entertainment over their systems and how aggressively they ought to monitor content and adjust delivery speeds. Comcast's moves reflect a basic assumption that peer-to-peer networks are primarily used to send pirated material, including songs, TV shows, and full-length movies. Specifically, charges have focused on Comcast's throttling of files sent using a peer-to-peer standard called BitTorrent that by some measures is as popular for sending video today as Napster (NAPS) was for sending music in the late 1990s.

But reaching conclusions over the fairness of Comcast's moves and the legitimacy of peer-to-peer content won't be easy, since not all peer-to-peer traffic is made up of ripped-off tunes and flicks. Companies such as Joost, Vuze, and even BitTorrent—whose founder, Bram Cohen, created the original peer-to-peer protocol—have struck deals to use peer-to-peer technology to distribute programming by dozens of mainline content owners such as CBS (CBS), PBS, and Viacom's (VIA) Showtime. These content owners see peer-to-peer techniques as a promising means to go from today's grainy YouTube-quality content to deliver full high-definition resolution to consumers via the Internet.

What's more, many experts contend that Comcast and other network owners will never succeed in accurately filtering out peer-to-peer traffic, and certainly not just the illegal stuff. Files can be easily disguised to avoid detection with a few programming tricks—say, adding some descriptive bits to make a movie clip look like an e-mail.

Blocked by Encryption?

Some players go further still. When it began to see increased filtering by Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast a year ago, Vuze started including encryption code in its software that essentially makes it impossible for any network—or potentially a movie studio or even law enforcement—to know the nature of what's traveling over the Internet, says CEO Gilles BianRosa. Today, Vuze uses only a thin layer of encryption, enough to throw off Comcast's bit-sniffing technologies. Think of it as the software equivalent of Groucho Marx glasses, rather than, say, plastic surgery and admission into a witness protection program.