Copyright Law

Comcast Settles P2P Class-Action Lawsuit

Agrees to pay up to $16 million dollars to customers affected by its BitTorrent-throttling network traffic management program, each receiving a share not to exceed $16 dollars.

Comcast has agreed to settle a class-action over its throttling of BitTorrent traffic that had users rightfully so angry back in late 2007.

“We are pleased to have reached a settlement in these consolidated class action lawsuits,” said Comcast in a statement. “Although we continue to believe that our network management practices were appropriate and in the best interests of our customers, we prefer to put this matter behind us and avoid a potentially lengthy and distracting legal dispute that would serve no useful purpose.”

Under terms of the settlement Comcast has agreed t o pay up to $16 million dollars, less attorneys’ fees and other settlement costs, to those customers who were affected.

“If you submit a valid Claim Form, you will receive a share of this amount, not to exceed $16.00,” says the designated settlement website. “The Settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by any party.”

Comcast is still the target of at least 2 other class action lawsuits for falsely promising “unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications that the Internet has to offer,” with some even comparing its “clandestine techniques” of traffic interference with that “used by totalitarian governments to censor the use of the Internet.”

The latter comment may be a tad melodramatic, but the anger is correct in that customers don’t have the luxury of choosing a different ISP thanks to the existence of regional monopolies.

The FCC said as much when it formally found Comcast in violation of the agency’s principals for throttling BitTorrent traffic in late July of 2008 when its Chairman Kevin Martin stressed his belief “that (it) is imperative that all consumers have unfettered access to the internet.”

Comcast ended the practice of throttling BitTorrent users back on December 31st of last year, opting instead of protocol neutral practices targeting users who exceed a "User Consumption Threshold" of 70% of their upstream or downstream bandwidth bandwidth and enacting a monthly data cap of 250 GB.

“This settlement is a great result for Comcast customers,” said Mark Todzo, a partner at a Lexington Law Group, one of the lawsuits co-counsels in the case. “It creates an efficient and effective mechanism that will put money back in the customers’ hands without them individually going to court.”

I don’t think customers will care very much about having $16 more dollars in their pockets, nor will Comcast miss $16 million dollars very much when it makes billions annually, but either way it’s nice to learn Comcast is getting punished for interfering with BitTorrent traffic.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on December 26, 2009 (boomark / email).