TorrentFreak

Starting 24 hours ago, nearly all Comcast subscribers were unable to access The Pirate Bay. Although Comcast is not the only ISP affected by the connectivity issue, the problems appear to be most widespread in their network. In an effort to resolve the problems, Comcast has offered The Pirate Bay assistance from their engineers, to get to the bottom of the issue.

During the last few hours reports have been trickling in from Comcast subscribers who are unable to access The Pirate Bay website. Although there is no sign that Comcast is actively blocking user access to the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, something is clearly not in order. The Pirate Bay team have confirmed that they are not the ones who are blocking, and they’re investigating the issue.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has overruled FCC’s decision to sanction Comcast for unfair treatment of BitTorrent users. The ruling, which may also effect FCC’s Net Neutrality regulation, means that Comcast could go back to throttling BitTorrent users.

Together with Cox and Warner Cable, Comcast has aided in the development of a new piracy tracking tool. Named BitStalker, researchers claim it can effectively collect evidence on millions of file-sharers with relative ease. Operators of large BitTorrent trackers have their doubts.

A few weeks ago Comcast decided to settle one of the class action lawsuits brought against the ISP in response to its BitTorrent throttling actions. Affected users can now claim their part of the $16 million fund that was setup, but only if they state under penalty of perjury that BitTorrent was never used to download copyrighted content.

Comcast has decided to settle one of the lawsuits brought about over their use of the Sandvine BitTorrent throttling hardware to ‘manage’ their network. For those who were affected, there is the possibility of receiving a payment from a $16 million fund set up by the Internet service provider.

Comcast doesn’t really have a good reputation in the BitTorrent community and it’s getting worse by the day. They now have plans to cooperate with the RIAA and disconnect alleged copyright infringers. A worrisome development, especially since they have a tendency to accuse innocent customers.