BitTorrent and Comcast Sitting in a Tree…

BitTorrent and Comcast are working together. I hate to make a David and Goliath reference, but that’s like the two just giving up the fight, looking into each others’ eyes, and well, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. “We believe that P2P technology has matured as an enabler for legal content distribution, so we need to have an architecture that can support it with techniques that work over all networks,” Comcast CTO Tony Werner said today. Oh, come on, I agree P2P technology has matured, but BitTorrent, the company, has been around since 2004 and selling legitimate media like TV shows and music since February 2007. The real issue sprouted when Comcast and other Internet service providers, decided to slow down—and even block—subscribers that were using BitTorrent to download legitimate, paid-for (not pirated) media. My bet is this occurred because Comcast wasn’t sure which torrent downloads were coming from paid-for sites and which were pirated. Of course, sirens went off all around when the stoppage was brought to the light of day after a California man decided to sue Comcast back in November of last year for its blocking practices. Comcast, meanwhile, adamantly denied the issues to Wired, stating, “Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services.” Then the FCC started investigating. So what really happened today? Comcast, afraid of a belt from the FCC, made friends on the playground with BitTorrent to cover its own interests. Luckily for the consumer, that means there’s going to be improved talks between P2P providers like BitTorrent and Internet providers, in turn leading to better solutions for consumers—for example, the increased upstream capacity and the deployment of the Docsis 3.0 standard Comcast has said would be available to some customers by the end of 2008.