If Net Neutrality Dies, Comcast Can Just Block A Protest Site Instead Of Sending A Bogus Cease-And-Desist

from the comcastic dept

Tue, May 23rd 2017 3:00pm — Mike Masnick

It appears that a vendor working for Comcast sent a totally bullshit cease-and-desist letter regarding a pro-net neutrality site: Comcastroturf.com, created by our friends over at Fight for the Future. The Comcastroturf website was set up as a tool to see if someone filed bogus FCC comments in your name. As you probably recall, there is a bot that has been flooding the FCC comment site with bogus anti-net neutrality comments, filed in alphabetical order. Reporters contacted some of the individuals whose names appear on these comments, and they had no idea what it was about. People are still trying to track down who is actually responsible for the bogus comments, but Fight for the Future set up this neat site to let you check if your name was used by whoever is behind it.

And, of course, the name "Comcastroturf" is pretty damn clever, given the topic. Kudos to Fight for the Future for coming up with that one. It is, of course, totally legal to use the domain name of a company that you're protesting in your own domain. There are numerous cases on this issue, normally discussed as the so-called "Sucks Sites." There's clearly no legal issue with Comcastroturf, and any reasonably informed human being would know that. Unfortunately, it would appear that Comcast hired a company that employs some non-reasonably informed humans.

The cease-and-desist letter was sent by a company called "Looking Glass Cyber Solutions" (no, really), which used to be called "Cyveillance" (only marginally less bad). We've written about Cyveillance twice before -- and both times they were about totally bogus takedown requests from Cyveillance that caused serious problems. The most recent was the time that Cyveillance, working for Qualcomm, filed a bogus DMCA notice that took down Qualcomm's own Github repository. Nice move. The earlier story, however was in 2013, and involved Cyveillance -- again representing Comcast -- sending a threatening takedown demand to some more of our friends over at TorrentFreak, claiming (ridiculously) that public court filings were Comcast's copyright-covered material, and threatening serious legal consequences if it wasn't taken down. Eventually, Comcast stepped in and admitted the cease-and-desist was "sent in error." You'd think that maybe this would have caused Comcast to think twice about using Cyveillance for such things. But, nope.

The rebranded Looking Glass Cyber Solutions has told Fight for the Future that "Comcastroturf" violates Comcast's "valuable intellectual property rights" and that failure to take down the site may lead to further legal action around cybersquatting and trademark violations. (Update: Turns out it wasn't a "rebranding" but Looking Glass bought Cyveillance...).

Of course, there's no way that Comcast would actually move forward with any legal action here. In fact, I'm pretty sure it already regrets the fact that the numbskulls at this vendor they hired to police their brand online just caused (yet another) massive headache for their brand online. Maybe, this time, Comcast will finally let Cyveillance/Looking Glass Cyber go, and find partners who don't fuck up so badly. Meanwhile, the fact that Looking Glass Cyber can't even figure out that Comcastroturf is a perfectly legal protest site makes the company's website -- which is chock full of idiotic buzzwords about "threat mitigation" and "threat intelligence" -- look that much more ridiculous. The only "threat" here is Looking Glass/Cyveillance and their silly cluelessness sending out censorious threats based on what appears to be little actual research.

Of course, without true net neutrality, if Comcast really wanted to silence Comcastroturf, it would just block everyone from accessing the site...

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Filed Under: cease and desist, comcastroturf, cybersquatting, net neutrality, takedown
Companies: comcast, cyveillance, fight for the future, looking glass cyber solutions

58 Comments

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Vidiot (profile), 23 May 2017 @ 3:15pm

They MUST be experts in The Cyber! They have it in their name(s)!

Proof of a better world through online $29 Incorporate-Your-Own-Business kits. Just add Cyber!
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Ryunosuke (profile), 23 May 2017 @ 3:16pm

The fact that Comcast is even remotely named as a client, says a whole lot more than anything they have said themselves on net neutrality.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 3:28pm

Fun searching for submissions -
It appears Mr. Obama is unhappy with his own administration:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filing/1051157755251

(and needs to update his home address)
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 23 May 2017 @ 3:28pm

"Looking Glass Cyber Solutions" How quaint, how 1991.

Valuable intellectual property rights... really, one might thing Comcast would just rebrand, like someone else did, and let everyone play with their thoroughly muddy name until they forgot where the word originally came from. In ten or fifteen years people could write short articles explaining to the younger crowd that the root word "comcast" was actually the trademark of a real corporation.

Of course their new name would be equally recognized as attached to a horrorshow of bad service in short order, but rebranding apparently works to confuse enough people enough of the time.
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 23 May 2017 @ 3:33pm

DNS
While I guess Comcast could do some kind of blocking at their own routers, or their own DNS system, how would they block someone with a VPN or who used Googles' DNS, or Open DNS, or some other? I don't doubt they would try, just, how successful could they be?
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 3:51pm

Comcast now has the distinction of having created the longest four-letter-word in the English language.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 3:55pm

While the name "Comcastroturf" is obviously such parody as to itself show the request was scummy, the Ars article on this has an update with a statement from Comcast that says the site was registered May 14, and the C&D letters started to be sent on the 17th, at which time Comcast claims the site did not yet have any content.
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Duh, 23 May 2017 @ 4:05pm

They could have picked a different domain name
I think this is being overblown, but perhaps that's the point and the purpose of using comcast in naming the domain as it is - it gets attention - but makes the domain holder look a little dumb IMHO.
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Thad, 23 May 2017 @ 4:12pm

Re:

the 17th, at which time Comcast claims the site did not yet have any content

If only there were some way to know for sure.

Oh right, there totally is:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170517212808/https://www.comcastroturf.com/

Well would you look at that. Comcast said something that isn't true.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 4:23pm

Re:
If there was no content, what was there to cease & desist?
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 4:34pm

" if Comcast really wanted to silence Comcastroturf, it would just block everyone from accessing the site... "

Comcast could theoretically block access to a particular site and/or domain, however - that would be limited to their customers. I imagine that collusion among ISPs is already common so they would just develop a black list for all to block. This would heralded among the internet illiterate as the best thing since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Eventually this corruption and abuse of monopoly power would make its way through the court system and possibly end up in SCOTUS where the light of day may .... nah, they will enshrine it and make everyone kneel.
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Thad, 23 May 2017 @ 4:37pm

Re: Re:
"Comcast" in the domain name.

Wouldn't be surprised if it was an automatic C&D sent by a bot that just looks for "comcast" in recently-registered domains.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 4:38pm

Re: Re:
Depends on who you ask. A Comcast lawyer: the sites name contained "Comcast." A reasonable and intelligent person: nothing.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 4:46pm

Companies sending a C&D for a URL containing the company's name reminds me of this gem of a story from a while back: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140929/11112928663/domain-name-registration-triggers-cd-instagra m-which-triggers-weirdly-wonderful-backlash-filled-with-duck-drawings.shtml
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 4:52pm

Re: DNS

While I guess Comcast could do some kind of blocking at their own routers, or their own DNS system, how would they block someone with a VPN or who used Googles' DNS, or Open DNS, or some other? I don't doubt they would try, just, how successful could they be?

Assuming they stay on the North side of the ethics boundary (so no DNS poisoning or anything nefarious like that), they could block the IP addresses of those servers. While it wouldn't be perfect they would still be very successful.

Comcast wouldn't be able to stop everybody, but they would be able to prevent ~24 million people from using their service to access sites they don't like.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 5:47pm

I would've thought these companies that exist purely to send bogus take-down requests would actually be for net neutrality. If net neutrality doesn't exist, and ISP's can just block sites they dont like (which they will most likely do together) why do they need bogus take-down companies?
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 5:58pm

No worries
Due to the same laws applying to internet service as apply to telephone service, Comcast could no more block traffic to an internet site it didn't like than it could block telephone calls to, say, some competitor it didn't like.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 6:24pm

>Assuming they stay on the North side of the ethics boundary

You are talking about Comcast, the black hole of the ethical universe. You could get fired for even thinking about the outside of the event horizon.
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My_Name_Here, 23 May 2017 @ 7:13pm

You see disaster. I see retribution.
The truth is that most Americans don't care about net neutrality, but Techdirt makes a huge deal of it because it means the pirate sites they love so much could be easily blocked. This is revenge for SOPA, Masnick, and it's long overdue.

But go on and hide my messages. It won't be long before Shiva takes your entire pirate cesspool down, and I'll be laughing long and loud.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 8:05pm

Where's an article on everybody's hero Kim Dotcom? He's had an interesting week.
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Ryunosuke (profile), 23 May 2017 @ 8:17pm

Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.
i see a govt sanctioned 1st amendment violation. I don't know which ISP provides your rose-colored glasses, But I suspect they aren't nearly paying you enough money than they should be paying you.
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Killercool (profile), 23 May 2017 @ 8:40pm

Re: No worries
I can't tell if you're some new form of sarcastic, or just oblivious, but the Title 2 classification that makes internet service like telephone service is part of what the new FCC boss is trying to roll back.
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JoeCool (profile), 23 May 2017 @ 8:42pm

Re: No worries
They won't block it, they'll just throttle it down to 300 baud.
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Rob Speed (profile), 23 May 2017 @ 9:12pm

Re: Re:
The first capture of the site was at 9:30 PM. So it's entirely possible that the site was empty earlier in the day when the C&D was sent.
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Rob Speed (profile), 23 May 2017 @ 9:24pm

A pretty basic fact slipped past you.

It is, of course, totally legal to use the domain name of a company that you're protesting in your own domain.

That would be true if Comcast had been indicated as the source of the comments. So they aren't actually protesting Comcast with that site.

And honestly, it doesn't make any sense to implement an astroturfing campaign in such an absurdly obvious way unless it's a false flag.
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David, 23 May 2017 @ 10:07pm

"Block a protest site"?
You apparently have a lack of imagination regarding worst-case scenarios without net neutrality.

"Oh, you haven't been able to sign up to Google Fiber on the Internet? Because its site is dead-slow and only intermittedly available if at all? Well, sounds like you are lucky to have noticed in time before ditching your Comcast service."

This is going to become one cesspool of competition.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 10:14pm

Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.
Fake nuck. Comments posted wirhout delay so its not the real poster.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 10:55pm

Re: Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.
Or it's posted from a VPN IP address, plus other posts under the same nickname have similar lacks of "delays".

Your constant attempts to portray My_Name_Here as some sort of martyr are sad. Really sad.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 11:10pm

Re: Re: No worries
It really doesn't matter. Blocking sites out of spite or for business advantage would land the whole deal in front of the FTC.

It would be an illegal or unfair business practice.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2017 @ 11:27pm

Re: Re: No worries
The law's the law. The FCC can't change the law.
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William Braunfeld (profile), 24 May 2017 @ 12:12am

Re: Re: Re: No worries
Right, they can only change who it applies to.
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PaulT (profile), 24 May 2017 @ 12:54am

Re: Re: DNS
Exactly. They don't have to block 100% of everybody for the effect of censorship to be effective, and most of their customers aren't going to be aware of the existence of the block, let alone the options to bypass it. The people who know enough to do this are not the people who the blocked site is trying to educate in the first place.
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PaulT (profile), 24 May 2017 @ 12:56am

Re: "Block a protest site"?
"You apparently have a lack of imagination regarding worst-case scenarios without net neutrality."

No, it just means that this is the subject of this particular article. There's hundreds of other articles if you want to read them - enough to warrant a special tab at the top of the page.
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Chuck, 24 May 2017 @ 1:17am

Waste of Money
"There's clearly no legal issue with Comcastroturf, and any reasonably informed human being would know that. Unfortunately, it would appear that Comcast hired a company that employs some non-reasonably informed humans."

Really? Why? Comcast is packed to the ceiling with non-reasonably informed humans already. Why would they bother outsourcing this when they could just have everyone pick a number or draw straws and save a boatload of money?

I mean, I guess if you're Comcast you have money to blow, but still. So wasteful!
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 4:23am

It would be easier for side with Fight for the Future...
...is they weren't spamming assholes.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 4:46am

Re:
As fragile as looking glass, and just as transparent.
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Anonymous Champion, 24 May 2017 @ 6:08am

what idiots do it business in the usa
subject says it all
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My_Name_Here, 24 May 2017 @ 6:17am

Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.
What I see is someone from the Techdirt staff either posting as me, or allowing someone else to do it to try to discredit me.

Sorry guys, it's won't work out. It does however make you look petty.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 8:02am

Re: Re: Re:
The name itself is still fair use, even without content.
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Thad, 24 May 2017 @ 8:57am

Re: Re: Re:
Fair point; thanks for the correction.
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Thad, 24 May 2017 @ 8:59am

Re: It would be easier for side with Fight for the Future...
Fight the Future was still way better than I Want to Believe, though.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 9:29am

Of course Comcast court filing's are copyrighted.

Why else would they relocate employees accused of rape and murder?

A few dozen paedophile engineers later, and blam! they CREATED that list of criminals....
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 10:10am

Re: Re: Re: No worries
"It would be an illegal or unfair business practice."

Not if they fail to prosecute (cough..banksters..cough)
Not if they create a new law removing the old law
...
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 10:11am

Re: Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.
" try to discredit me."

too late
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 10:11am

Re:
try the internet, they are known for such things
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 10:30am

Re:

"Looking Glass Cyber Solutions" How quaint, how 1991.

"Cyber" is actually mid-80s. A story named "Cyberpunk" was published in 1983, and Gibson's stories a few years later. By 1991 it was getting ironic.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 11:35am

Re: Re: Re: Re: No worries
Ain't selective enforcement great?
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This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 11:45am

Re: Re:
Masnick should really step up here, don't you think? He worships Kim Dotcom.
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William Braunfeld (profile), 24 May 2017 @ 1:11pm

Re: Re: Re:
There are worse people to worship.
Nearly everyone in positions of power in America, for example.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 24 May 2017 @ 1:54pm

Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.
most Americans don't care about net neutrality, but Techdirt makes a huge deal of it because it means the pirate sites they love so much could be easily blocked

The possibility does exist that “pirate sites”—however you define that nebulous term—could be blocked by ISPs if Net Neutrality were to be dismantled. But that is not the only possible consequence.

If Net Neutrality is dismantled, ISPs could…
- …throttle or outright block traffic to any given site, thus determining what sites that customers can access.
- …install explicit data caps, then tell customers that going to “zero-rated” sites (i.e., sites that the ISPs approve of or own) will not count against the caps and thus keep customers from incurring a “you used the Internet in a way we don’t like” tax (i.e., overage charges).
- …use the points above to help shape the Internet into a cable TV-style service where accessing certain sites at normal speeds (or at all) will cost customers an extra fee for that site’s specific “tier”.
- …use all of that power listed above to all but blacklist any website that does not “play nice” with ISPs and skew the Internet's surfing habits toward specific sites chosen as “winners” by the ISPs instead of Internet users.
In other words: Comcast could block you from ever seeing Techdirt on the basis that it disagrees with everything Techdirt has ever written about the company, which means all your trolling would be stopped unless you paid extra to access the “unfiltered” Internet—if Comcast even offered that as an option, that is.

…huh. Maybe we should rethink that whole Net Neutrality thing…
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 7:25pm

Re: Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.
FTC.

Each of the actions you list would be anti competitive especially with a monopoly or a duopoly. Quite simply it would be an illegal business practice.

So before you go off consider that the US has more than 1 law and 1 set of rules.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2017 @ 8:45pm

Re: Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.
Just how many IP addresses do you have crammed up your ass, bobmail?
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 25 May 2017 @ 1:21am

Re: Re: Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.

Each of the actions you list would be anti competitive especially with a monopoly or a duopoly.

Yes, and? The major ISPs could argue that, since they all compete with each other on a national level, none of their actions would technically be illegal—even though lots of places in the United States are served only by a single ISP. Those corporations also have shitloads of lawyers on hand to make arguments such as those in front of judges and juries and (most importantly) politicians.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 May 2017 @ 2:46am

Re: Re: Re: Re: You see disaster. I see retribution.
Not a really good argument. The FTC can quickly move to squash such moves and get injunctive relief while completing the case.

None of the major companies would be stupid enough that might lead to anti trust issues and potential forced breakup or network sharing.
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William Braunfeld (profile), 25 May 2017 @ 6:44am

Many Re's: You see disaster. I see retribution.
Bet you a dollar the FTC does sweet F-A.
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Steve D, 26 May 2017 @ 4:19pm

Private censorship
What exactly is the difference between Comcast shutting down a site it disapproves of and a blog banning someone they disapprove of? In both cases someone is using their superior power to silence disagreement. The time has come to call BS on private censorship. It violates free speech no less than government censorship.
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PaulT (profile), 28 May 2017 @ 3:58am

Re: Private censorship
"What exactly is the difference between Comcast shutting down a site it disapproves of and a blog banning someone they disapprove of?"

Several major, fundamental differences. Firstly, a blog is a single platform for publishing content, that provides a method to comment. If the owner of the blog decides to remove the ability to comment, you are still able to view the blog you've simply been asked to not participate in the comments. You're free to discuss elsewhere, even if the platform owner has asked you not to do so on their premises. You have many, many other blogs to choose from, and other ways of communicating., Furthermore, the ability of a blog owner to decide to remove toxic participants from a conversation is as much an aspect of free speech as the ability for the troll to comment in the first place. They have as much ability to remove bad actors from their site as a coffee house does to reject people causing trouble on their premises.

The ISP provides you access to millions of such services. Them having specific control over which ones you can access gives them a greater control over your speech than any single blog owner can do. Not happy with that? Well, many Americans don't have a choice so cannot move to a more acceptable competitor. They will also be able to restrict access to competitors' content, something that I believe many site owners wish they could do, but none can.

"The time has come to call BS on private censorship. It violates free speech no less than government censorship."

Absolutely incorrect. But, even if you buy that, then surely you must wholeheartedly approve of net neutrality? That's the mechanism to prevent carriers from censoring you, after all.
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Anonymoose Custard (profile), 1 Jun 2017 @ 9:02pm

Comcast seems to be blocking archive.org already.
I've been hearing from a number of sources that people on Comcast can't access archive.org, and traceroutes stop after 2 or 3 hops, indicating that packets are being dropped at a Comcast gateway.

I wish I could get another ISP.
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