[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It'll continue until enough people take them to court.

From the NY Times of 28 Mar 2008 - or about 12 months after Bruce posted this:

Comcast Adjusts Way It Manages Internet Traffic
Comcast ... said on Thursday that it would take a more equitable approach toward managing the ever-expanding flow of Web traffic on its network.

The cable company ... has been under relentless pressure from the Federal Communications Commission and public interest groups after media reports last year that it was blocking some Internet traffic of customers who used online software based on the popular peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol.

Comcast said it would change its fundamental approach to playing Internet traffic cop. Instead of interfering with specific online applications, it will manage traffic by slowing the Internet speeds of its most bandwidth-hogging users when traffic is busiest. ...

The change was part of an announcement by Comcast on Thursday that it had been working with BitTorrent ...

The companies said they have been working together for the last year on ways to optimize BitTorrent applications for the Comcast network. They said they would publish their findings to Web forums and standards groups so that other software makers, peer-to-peer services and I.S.P.’s could adopt them. ...

Comcast and BitTorrent said their collaboration showed the corrective power of the market and obviated the need for further federal oversight. But in a public statement, the commission chairman, Kevin J. Martin, vowed continued scrutiny and expressed concern that the old filtering practice would continue at least through the end of the year.

Marvin Ammori, general counsel at Free Press, ... “The only reason Comcast came to the table and made a deal with BitTorrent is because of the unrelenting pressure,” he said.