Print 19 comment(s) - last by fox12789.. on Dec 30 at 9:38 AM

You may be entitled to $16 if you are a Comcast customer whose traffic was throttled

Over two years ago, in October 2007, Comcast was caught slowing down the connections of customers who were using popular P2P programs like Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FastTrack or Gnutella P2P protocols.  Comcast didn't admit, at first, that it was doing this, but when it finally acknowledged the practice it argued that filesharers put an unequal strain on its network and it had every right to throttle their connections.

It wasn't long before the company was slapped with several class action lawsuits. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission also opened an investigation into the internet service provider's "data discrimination".  Comcast continued to defend its practices both in court and to the FCC.

Now Comcast has at last given up one of those court battle and agreed to settle to the tune of $16M USD payout.  Unsurprisingly, despite essentially losing the suit, Comcast won't say it did anything wrong -- it says it has every right to "manage" its traffic and says the settlement was because it wanted to "avoid a potentially lengthy and distracting legal dispute that would serve no useful purpose."

Nonetheless, the good news is that Comcast subscribers who "live in the United States or its Territories, have a current or former Comcast High-Speed Internet account, and either used or attempted to use Comcast service to use the Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FastTrack or Gnutella P2P protocols at any time from April 1, 2006 to December 31, 2008; and/or Lotus Notes to send emails any time from March 26, 2007 to October 3, 2007" are entitled to a $16 piece of the settlement pie.  The settlement should cover about a bit less than a million customers, the estimated size of the class.  While that may be a pittance, consumers who feel they were wronged should relish the chance to nickel and dime Comcast.

There are several other class action lawsuits that are still ongoing, surrounding the data discrimination.  They accuse Comcast of violating its own Terms of Service and breaking consumer protection laws by advertising its network as fast.

The settlement site can be found here.

Comments     Threshold


I wonder...
By DuctTapeAvenger on 12/24/2009 11:11:02 AM , Rating: 3
Does every check mailed out comes with a free Federal Agent?

If I were a paranoid crazy person, I'd say that it's much cheaper to offer $16 a person to get them to rat themselves out, instead of paying much more to have people perform investigations and track them down.

RE: I wonder...
By bigboxes on 12/25/2009 9:49:39 AM , Rating: 3
I don't know about you, but I was throttled downloading linux updates. :p

RE: I wonder...
By CommodoreVic20 on 12/28/2009 10:38:44 AM , Rating: 2
As an example, lots of games use P2P to distribute patches, World of Warcraft being one of them. You seem to be confused about the difference between the technology and how some people 'may' have misused it in some specific cases.


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