California user takes a legal shot at cable giant...
A California man filed suit in state court Tuesday against Comcast for their throttling of BitTorrent traffic, a practice we highlighted over the summer, but received national attention thanks to the Associated Press
last month. The fantastic
Wired News Threat Level blog has the skinny, and a
copy (pdf) of the suit:
Plaintiff Jon Hart, represented by the Lexington Law Group, argues that Comcast's promises of providing internet connections that let users "Download at Crazy Fast Speeds" are false and misleading since Comcast limits downloads by transmitting "unauthorized hidden messages to the computers of customers" who use peer-to-peer file sharing software. Hart wants the court to force Comcast to stop interfering with the traffic.
In the suit, Hart says he upgraded to Comcast's Performance Plus service in September specifically to use the "blocked applications," and that nothing in the 22-page terms of agreement with Comcast indicated that the company throttles traffic.
A lawsuit for false advertising was probably inevitable. While Comcast stopped
advertising "unlimited" service several years ago, the company hasn't been exactly forthcoming with precisely what they're doing even in the face of evidence, leaving the door open for legal action. Whether the suit will force Comcast to change their ways however is anybody's guess.
This thread in our Comcast forum is where it all began.
