Comcast Sued for Turning Home WiFi Routers into Hotspots

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Comcast-sued-for-turning-home-Wi-Fi-routers-into-5943750.php

by windexh8er • 12 years ago

15 4 12 years ago

i remember filing this under "dubious but probably legal b/c of some ridiculous ToS bullshit" when i first saw comcast's announcement about this a while back. the electricity angle seems pretty interesting-- no matter what arguments comcast could plausibly make about it not affecting your personal bandwidth it's pretty much impossible for them to argue that they're not essentially "stealing" electricity to subsidize their wifi network.

ianal, but the two keys here appear to be that the customers affected seem only to be people leasing equipment from comcast (ie the customers don't own the routers) and the opt-out nature of how the network is currently set up, as compared to a (kinder) parallel universe where such a network would be opt-in.

as to the latter point, i'm not sure if there is any difference in terms of legal doctrine but it definitely speaks to comcast's greed / customer hostility that they felt entitled to make the customer subsidize them, instead of, say, giving the customer a discount on their bill if they chose to opt in to providing a base station for the network.

TrevorJ2• 12 years ago

I'd also argue that charging you a rental fee for the modem and then turning around and selling access to the device again is shady as hell.

TrevorJ2• 12 years ago

So many things wrong with this:

-Comcast provides a device to me and charges mea rental fee then turns around and profits off of it at no benefit to me. The modem even requires batteries which I have to pay to replace for God's sakes.

-Legal implications of other users potentially accessing illegal materials over a device located in my home.

-The Modem/Router combo supplied by Comcast is a piece of junk, and barely works for home use, let alone handling traffic created by strangers connecting.

I can confirm that Comcast does indeed turn this on without your permission. Furthermore, unless you pay attention you may not know that it is even happening. You can't disable it through the router administration either, you have to go through Comcast's website to find the setting and opt out.

All in all it's kind of a slap in the face after suffering through years of sub-par service and borderline abusive business practices.

Sarkie• 12 years ago

BT have been doing this for years in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FON#BT_Fon_Community

Comcast Sued for Turning Home WiFi Routers into Hotspots

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