Comcast performs Denial of Service attacks against it's customers.

Recently there has been some huff in the news about torrent users getting shutdown. Not police raids, or lawsuits, but by their ISP. It isn't that Comcast is simply traffic-shaping the internet communication of its customers in order to achieve performance standards. It turns out that Comcast is using dark-arts techniques in order to silence data traffic that it doesn't like.

The recent case was an attack against P2P, which is traffic that you and I may share when transferring files between each other. A good portion of the time, this file-sharing technology is used to trade copyrighted media between consumers. However, it is a legitimate technology for sharing files nonetheless. We don't ban the use of money simply because people can buy illegal drugs with it, nor should p2p traffic or torrents be singled out. For example, most of the open-source, free linux distributions are very large; and the most efficient method of sending and receiving them is by sharing it between consumers, instead of everyone downloading it at one central point and 'clogging the tubes'. This is a great way of conveying data, and it doesn't rely on a single point of distribution, but fully independent cells who share information.

So what is the row about? Comcast is sabotaging the communications between users, sending 'disconnect' notices by impersonating the people who are sharing files. Sabotaging 'undesirable' communications is typically done by countries engaged in military warfare, or more recently by hackers attacking computer networks or services. This technique is called Denial Of Service. It is used to disrupt internet communications, often by causing traffic jams. The analogy was well made that if Comcast was a phone company and didn't like what you were talking about, it might break into the conversation and impersonate your voice, telling the other party you had to go and not to call back.
The most interesting thing about this story is that Comcast originally lied about using the tactic of impersonation, then got busted, lied again, and now they have switched tunes and are admitting to it, calling it 'delaying'.

Does this technique benefit Comcast? Obviously so. Is it legitimate, or even legal? Probably not.

UPDATE: Comcast Internal PR-Spin Memo Leaked