Miro

On April 17th (Thursday of next week), the second public FCC hearing on net neutrality is slated to take place at Stanford University. In the mean time, read up on the Chronicles of Comcast.

8/17/07 Comcast throttles and blocks bittorrent traffic, claims TorrentFreak:

ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for almost two years now. Most ISPs simply limit the available bandwidth for BitTorrent traffic, but Comcast takes it one step further, and prevents their customers from seeding.

8/21/07 Comcast denies allegations of throttling, as reported by CNET:

Comcast on Tuesday denied rumors that the company is filtering BitTorrent traffic running over its network.

10/19/07 AP tests confirm that Comcast does block traffic, as reported by the AP:

Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

(more…)

ROFLCon is a crazy event that I’ve been planning with some of my friends at Harvard. It’ll be happening on the 25th and 26th of this month, on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA.

I lined up a PCF/ROFLCon partnership, and we’ll be sponsoring the Screening Room.

The Premise:

Mix up a bunch of super famous internet memes, some brainy academics, a big audience, dump them in Cambridge, MA and you’ve got ROFLCon.

It’s a group dissection of internet culture. What makes it work, why it works, how it works. We’ll talk about where internet culture has been and where we think it’s going.

Guests include: XKCD, Homestar Runner, Tron Guy, Dinosaur Comics, I Can Has Cheezburger, Chuck Norris Facts, Brad Neely, Leeroy Jenkins, Rocketboom, JibJab, and so many more.

Unfortunately, the whole thing has been sold out for a while now… but, as a sponsor, PCF does have access to a couple of free passes. We still haven’t decided what to do with them, but are considering a contest/giveaway if people are sufficiently interested (please comment, if you are!).

NewTeeVee wrote this awesome article that describes 5 ways to know if your internet provider throttles P2P.

NewTeeVee has an interesting write-up on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) recent foray into the world of legitimate bittorrent distribution.

The CBC released a full episode of their show, Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, with no DRM, in full-resolution, via bittorrent. As soon as it was made available, Canadian viewers began complaining about extremely slow download times. The amazing thing is that Bell Canada (one of the huge Canadian ISP’s) just came right out and said, yep, we’re throttling.

This type of throttling —where most users are totally unaware of it— has a very negative impact on people’s overall perception of the targeted technology. When a person’s first bittorrent experience is slow and unsatisfying, they assume the technology itself is broken or lame (even when it’s certainly not the case).

This is a crystal clear example of why net-neutrality is so important. The situation would be better if there were competitive markets for internet service everywhere in the world AND customers were well informed on the traffic shaping habits of their local providers. However, at this point it appears that legislation might be the best way to ensure a neutral and non-discriminatory network.

I encourage everyone to get involved.