In a move that maybe should have been done years ago Comcast is testing out a new automated service in Denver called Comcast Constant Guard. The idea being that as the IPS they will be able to detect much easier unusual spikes in activities from particular IPs they can warn their customers of possible infections.

The alerts are triggered when computers on their networks are found to be doing activities that are commonly associated with botnet style activity. As well customers will be notified if their IP address is identified as the source of spam on an industry span list.

Customers in Denver are set to begin receiving notifications that their system may be infected with a virus or other malware via a pop-up message in the browser, as part of the new free service, called Comcast Constant Guard. The "Service Notice" will include a link to a Comcast security Web site where customers can follow a set of instructions to remove the malware from their computer.

If customers don’t have antivirus software, they can download McAfee Internet Security Suite for free. Comcast also offers a Comcast Toolbar that includes spyware detection and removal, a pop-up ad blocker, antiphishing software, and antispam protection for e-mail.

The company first started notifying customers about the security issues about a year ago, with support representatives calling customers on the phone, Opperman said.

"We learned that customers love it," he said. "We wanted to reach more people and to automate the process."

Source: cnet News – Comcast pop-ups alert customers to PC infections

The new service will eventually be rolled out to the ret of the country and replace the current practice of contacting the user by phone.

Image: cnet News

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Like others in old media cable companies and media content producers are in a race – a race for survival in a world that they show just about every day that they don’t understand. A perfect example of this is a joining of Comcast and Time Warner to their cable content to the web but under restrictions that are designed to maintain, or increase, the revenue streams for their programs.

Their thinking is that if they provide “television” shows of their choosing from their various networks or cable suppliers under a subscription basis, and as long as you are already a cable subscriber, you will be willing to fork over extra money to watch those shows from the web. This will over course require some sort of authentication method to guarantee that non-cable subscribers will be able to see those same shows on the web.

With the pervasiveness of broadband and easy availability of tools that allow web video to leap onto your television, cable companies see that their video distribution pipes are becoming less relevant. So they want to control how you watch premium content online and want to impose fees via an authentication system.  Time Warner and Bewkes have been championing this concept — essentially an authentication system that requires viewers to have cable, telco or satellite subscriptions in order to watch certain premium content online or on other platforms. Bewkes recently said he wanted to launch the system during the second half of 2009. (NewTeeVee has just published a great FAQ on TV Everywhere.) Time Warner spun out its cable business as a separate company. Time Warner owns premium services such as HBO.

Source: Om Malik – GigaOM :: Comcast, Time Warner Team Up to Control TV on the Internet

Authentication. Hmm … I wonder how many times we have heard this battle cry before?

How many different DRM methods, which really is authentication under a different name, have we seen come and go in the last few years. They arrive with much trumpeting and fanfare proclaiming a new era in safe media that can’t be pirated by those nasty consumers out there that want to be able to use the media they pay for as they wish. Then just as quickly those great new methods fail leaving those nasty consumers with unusable media as the authentication engines are turned off.

No matter how many time or how many different ways old media tries authentication, or DRM, won’t work for one simple reason – they no longer control the exclusive access to their products. In the past if you wanted to watch a television show, listen to music or watch a movie the only access you had to that content was through corporate controlled access points. These might have been a television with a cable box, a radio station dictating the playlist, a store selling CD or a movie theater picking what gets played.

The only problem is that now these old media content providers are discovering that just because you make the content it doesn’t mean you control the distribution of that content anymore. All it takes is one person with a TV capture card and access to that show is now Internet wide. Sure it’s illegal but when you place onerous restrictions on content access there are those who will rail against it. As hard as old media might try to control their content the harder the consumer will fight against that control, and today they have tools that are as good as old media’s.

But this is only one reason that old media wants to bring its content to the web because not only can they make increased profits from that addition web distribution but they also increase their profits from the additional demands on their pipes. We have seen an attempt recently to bring back speed and data caps on broadband access. Comcast likes to suggest that even at their top tier no-one would likely every go over those caps of 250 gig but it only takes some simple math to show the bullshit of this idea.

I asked Comcast CEO Brian Roberts if the content being streamed as part of this new effort would be free from the 250GB-a-month bandwidth quota his company has started imposing on this customers.

His answer: No. You’re not going to get close enough to hitting the monthly quota anyway, he said, so why worry? We (and many of our readers) disagree. We feel that while 250GB might look very generous today, it isn’t much when you start streaming or downloading HD-quality video.

Source: Om Malik – GigaOM :: Comcast: TV Everywhere Will Eat Into Your Metered Broadband

A quick check of the file size for a DivX version of an hour long HD television show (which is actually only 40 minutes or so if you’re lucky) can run anywhere from 1.5 Gig to 2.0 Gig. If you move up in video format quality (H.264, HD .ts, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) you will start seeing file sizes ranging from 2 Gig to over 5 Gig for a regular one-hour television show. All these files sizes count against download cap you might have.

So assume you want to watch your regular television show via the web and on an average of two show a night, 7 days a week, and 30 days a month you would watch a total of 60 shows. Now your watching all these in HiDef at 5 Gig a show only to find yourself now at 300 Gig for the month – you’ve gone over your cap for which you will be charged extra on your Internet bill.

So on top of that nice extra subscription that companies like Time Warner and Comcast what to charge you for the privilege of watching regular television on the web you stand a very good chance of blowing the bottom out of your Internet access bill. For what?

As much as companies like Time Warner and Comcast like to think that their are in the content providers driving seat the fact is – they aren’t. Just as authentication has failed for other types of content providers on the web. In the end the consumer will decide how they want to access their content on the web and if past experience is any indication this is just another attempt that will fail.

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Broadband providers are always crying the blues and how they need to institute things like caps in order to provide fair service to all along with how expensive all this stuff takes. Every time they do though very smart people who have a solid understanding of the business, and the business of numbers, point out how much FUD is being spread around.

Nate Anderson at Ars Technica has just done that with an excellent post that breaks down the money being made by these self-same companies that are crying the blues. In the post Nate takes each of the major players and takes a look at how they are in fact making a lot of money while at the same time some are even cutting back on investment in broadband. It is well worth taking the time to read the whole post but here’s a short breakdown of some of his points.

Comcast

• Revenues for Internet access is up, jumping from $1.57 billion in the first quarter of 2007 to $1.75 billion in the first quarter of 2008 to $1.91 billion in the first quarter of 2009.
• Expenses for “High-speed Internet” have consistently fallen from 2007. It cost $142 million to deliver Internet access in the first quarter of 2007, $138 million in the first quarter of 2008, and $120 million in the first quarter of 2009.
• Comcast had an operating cash flow margin of 39 percent in the first quarter of 2009, up from 37.8 percent a year earlier and 37.4 percent in the first quarter of 2007.

Time Warner

• also posted very good number for the first quarter
• Overall revenues were up five percent from a year before.
• When broken down by category their Internet business did much better – 11 percent higher.
• Time Warner indicated that its Internet expenses had dropped by about 12 percent, even as revenues increased.
• By the first quarter of 2009 Time Warner substantially cut its capital expenditures, from $846 million a year ago to $769 million for the last three months.

Cablevision

• Internet revenues are up
• The company has already spent most of its money for its DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades.
• Cable television (includes data, voice, and TV packages) was 29.5 percent higher in 2008 than it was in 2007.
• Its business Internet service, Optimum Lightpath, operating income was up by 129.8%

AT&T / Verizon

• Both companies have reported healthy growth in their broadband business, especially among the U-Verse and FiOS services.
• AT&T’s wireline business increased by $300 million in broadband revenue

The end line

When it comes down to it all these broadband providers hare making a lot of money providing sub-par services when compared to the rest of the world. When they do decide to allow us to have comparable services they charge completely outrageous fees. Users are being treated as nothing better than a trough where these dollar flush pigs can constantly gorge themselves.

Unfortunately about all we can do is howl at the moon because they don’t give a shit past doing only what they have to in order to keep questionable government regulators happy.

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3. Metered broadband will kill online video

Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm yesterday received a lot of attention for a post she wrote arguing that that metered broadband suffers a “Twilight Problem” based on a series of calculations based around downloading the movie Twilight. Our own Steven Hodson said that it highlights that “metered broadband will kill online video.”

As I’m lying here typing this, with my son and friend in another room streaming a movie, and my wife lying next to me in bed streaming a TV program, all on one of these “evil” metered plans, I though I might take a look at these “online video” ending statistics.

Higginbotham uses as her example the HD version of Twilight that she clocks in at 3.8gb. I doubt very much if Apple is the most efficient at file delivery (and I’ve argued before that scarcity drives innovation, in this case more efficient delivery) but lets use the 3.8gb as our starting figure.

Higginbotham says that a user on Time Warner’s cheapest plan of $15/ month for 1gb, with $2 for each additional gb will pay a headline grabbing $20.60 in download costs.

Sounds scary doesn’t it. Only two tiny little problems: first, she presumes people who download movies would be retarded enough to sign up to a 1gb plan to begin with; it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out that if you’re renting movies online, that you’d be better off on a higher plan. But here’s the even better part she didn’t mention.

That 1gb/ $15 plan only comes with speeds on 768 KB/128kbps. Even presuming that you got precisely the maximum 768kbps on your download (and I’ve never seen an internet connection yet that delivers the maximum it promises), this poor person paying $20.60 for their download would also have to wait 11 Hours 48 Minutes 22.28 Seconds (calculated here) for the file to download. Even allowing for a stream starting while the file was still downloading, you’d still have to buffer it for 9 hours to watch it in one sitting.

This is not to say that there are some severely mentally challenged people out there who would find this acceptable, but for the 99.9999% of the population who rents movies online, this is not going to happen because they wouldn’t sign up for it. Nice headline figure, complete BS in real world application.

Hidden Costs

Higginbotham then goes through and allocates the costs of downloading Twilight based on other plans, simply by allocating the percentage of the cap used by the download against the total cap cost.

There’s a problem with that: it presumes that the cap will be used in full. Example:

we’ll use AT&T’s U-verse rate of $55 per month divided by the 150 GB cap it’s said it will implement. That nets out to AT&T charging 36 cents per GB, which means the bandwidth for “Twilight” will cost $1.37. Adding in that $3.99 rental fee means my vampire fixation will cost me $5.36 to watch without leaving my couch.

The problem is that caps rarely are used in full, particularly at this level. Comcast claim that only 0.1% of their users use more than 250gb per month. One figure quoted regularly (example here) says that the average user uses only 2-3GB per month; obviously that won’t be a person who regularly downloads HD movies, but it’s an important point.

Pinning down average downloads of movies is a statistical challenge; in Australia for example, one major online DVD distributor says its “up to” 5 videos a month. If that applied to downloaded movies in the AT&T example, that’s 19gb per month. If it’s 10 movies, that’s 38gb per month. 20 goes to 72gb, 40 goes to 144gb, so you’d be watching 1.3 HD movies every day downloaded from the net to get up to your cap. Given that for a select few 40 movies a month is unlikely, the real cost of each download is actually higher, because the cost of the download would be the percentage of data used for the month, not the cap.

But the same economics apply for unlimited plans.

The equivalent 10mbps unlimited plan on Verizon costs nearly the same as AT&T’s 150gb capped plan (AT&T is $59.90, Verizon $59.90 without phone, $57.90 with phone without a one year contract.)

The only way you would save with the uncapped plan is to watch more than 40 HD Twilights, or to consume enough bandwidth doing other things (online gaming is surprisingly efficient despite claims otherwise) to use MORE than 150gb.

And yet this is what Higginbotham writes:

Verizon: Since Verizon doesn’t meter or cap its service (or plan to), the cost to watch Twilight only reflects the $3.99 rental fee. A user still pays for broadband (as they do even without a metered plan), but without a limit on data downloads, its impossible to calculate a per-GB cost for downloading content.

You can calculate the cost if you make a presumption about how many movies will be watched and draw a figure for non-movie consumption, not exactly challenging stuff, particularly given the other presumptions. But here’s where it gets better. Lets say you only want to watch your five movies (presumably all in HD), do some regular surfing, maybe some VOIP. Will you still save money with a uncapped plan?

Time Warner offers its Road Runner Standard package for $31.95/ month unbundled, or less in a bundle. It comes with 40gb per month. If you downloaded 5 HD movies, played some games, did some surfing, watched some videos on YouTube, you might just get to 40gb if you were trying really hard. You instantly save $28 over the “uncapped” plan with Verizon.

But is 40gb a month enough? As I’ve written previously, despite living in a house with 3x more internet connected devices than people, waking up to streaming radio on my Chumby, working from home online, including uploads of videos (note in Australia they count uploads to a cap), my son comes home from school and watches YouTube videos and plays online games, and then nearly exclusively we only consume online media of an evening, on a busy month we might hit 50-60gb. On average we do 30-40gb per month. But we’re not average: very few households would have anywhere near the non-stop internet usage we have across as many devices.

The world is not ending, and statistics can always be what you want them to be if you ignore certain facts that get in the way of the picture you are trying to paint, as is the case of the Twilight problem stats.

In an ideal world, there would be no caps; however in a free market where the cost of wholesale access is not unlimited, retail providers are free to pick their models. If people really feel so strongly about the rates being charged, don’t pay for them; if you’re in a large city, you’ll usually have a choice. But note this one thing: a one size fits all isn’t necessarily the superior model for all consumers. Uncapped plans can actually end up costing significantly more, and I’m yet to see a decent argument stating why users who consume the most should be subsidized by those who use little.

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Coming soon to your favourite cable internet provider – the Comcast Secure Backup and Share. As a way for their customers to make sure that their data is always safe Comcast’s new service will come in three different levels of storage space. The basic level will cost you $4.99 per month for 10GB. The middle tier will cost you $9.99 per month for 50GB and finally at the top end you can spend $19.99 per month for 200GB.

As the folks over at DSL Reports are reporting

Once the service is purchased by a primary Comcast account holder, everyone in the family can use the service with their own individual "lockers," though their use contributes to the storage total. If the Comcast broadband account is canceled, users have fourteen days before all content is deleted permanently.

When it comes to music though you will be able to backup the files but you won’t be allowed to share them as you can other files in the new service. Here’s the kick in the ass part of the deal though – these backups and restores will count against your new 250GB monthly cap that Comcast is also introducing.

Yes folks just another way in which Comcast shows it really cares about its customers.

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Issues with the Comcast Cable network are blocking and disconnecting users of popular online game World of Warcraft.

It’s not clear at the time of writing what was causing the issue, with a notice on the World of Warcraft forums noting only that Blizzard was aware of the issue, and was attempting to contact “appropriate sources” for further information. There may be more details on this thread, but at 133 pages long at the time of writing it’s difficult to tell. The thread also notes that Verizon customers may also be affected.

The news comes on the same day widespread internet issues were reported across Asia and the Middle East after three major cables were severed, however despite Blizzard’s strong Asian presence it has over 200 servers (”realms”) located in the United States for local World of Warcraft users.

Comcast’s Phone Number for those wishing for direct details is 1-800-COMCAST (1-800-266-2278).

More if we get it.

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The International Data Corporation on behalf of Zeugma Systems survey of a very small sample size of 787 people found that 81% of Americans do not like the idea of establishing a bandwidth cap and charging for use above the cap, and that 51% would try to change service providers if their ISP imposed bandwidth caps.

Fighting numbers, but the telling result was the next one: 83% say that do not know what a gigabyte [is] or have no idea how many gigabytes they use.

As I noted August 28, the Sky is Falling. The idea of internet usage caps has become the gun control of the internet; any limitations are bad and rob the average person. The staggering thing is that the anti-cap message has gained such wide acceptance, and if there’s a win here, it’s for the anti-cap crusaders.

But lets think about this rationally. Comcast says that the 250gb a month cap will affect exactly 0.01% of all their users. Not 10%, not 1%, not even 0.1%, but 0.01%. Lets crunch the numbers some more: 51% may switch based on the notion that an infinitely small number of them may face cap issues, but the survey also found that 95% of “those surveyed said that they would happily pay for more premium bandwidth services if they can get it for services such as video, VoIP, gaming and telecommuter VPNs” despite only 5% saying that “those who use more should pay more.” 54% “would switch service providers if a competitive service offered a premium tier,” although strangely only 26% “said they would pay their service provider an additional fee for premium bandwidth services.”

Let me say upfront that I’m not personally in favor of internet caps as a broader idea, and I’d love nothing more than to have the ability to sign up to an ISP that offered unlimited internet access. There’s a half reasonable argument around caps limiting innovation in online service delivery in the future, even if evidence would suggest that markets respond to caps by innovating to deliver content more efficiently, and as in the case of Australia, content providers do deals that see cap exemptions for their content. However, what we see here is a fear campaign based on ignorance as opposed to fact. 99.99% of people will never be affected by Comcast’s cap (there are different rates with different ISP’s, so the rate may vary), and there is absolutely no reasonable argument I’ve seen yet that justifies the notion that users who use 1TB or more a month should be subsidizing those who use 1gb. Bandwidth costs money based on throughput, so a high end user DOES cost more money to supply than a low end user, so I’m at a loss to understand any argument that suggests that both should pay the same for their internet access.

See also Everyone needs to calm down about Internet Caps for more on how internet caps work for most people.

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There is a case in terms of limiting future growth in online content delivery; as we switch away from heritage media, the more content we consume online, the more data we use. But that time isn’t now, at least for the vast majority of users, because even with streaming content, most will never hit the 250gb cap. There are some exceptions, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Living with a cap

The above shot is from my iiNet toolbox showing my volume usage from August 28, the starting day for the monthly calculation of my use cap, which is currently 65GB peak (noon-2am) and 65GB off-peak (2am-noon). 11 full days into the month, I’ve used 10gb peak, just over 2gb off peak, and 3gb in the free zone.

Now perhaps I haven’t downloaded a lot this month, so these figures may not be completely typical, but they are close enough, and my biggest month so far totaled 50gb. Consider the usage scenario: we rarely watch broadcast television, and on a typical night will stream one to two television programs. Other times we might rent a movie or stream some podcasts via our Apple TV, and if you note the freezone figure for the 6th, we purchased 300 on iTunes (it wasn’t available for rent) and watched it, resulting in a 1.5gb figure for that day. I’m also in front of a computer at home all day, and I regularly download content, and at least three times a week I’m playing online Poker as well, so there is a gaming component. Notably these figures include uploads as well, although it’s not clear whether the Comcast cap counts uploads. Our house has more internet enabled devices than people: three computers in regular use, Apple TV, two iPhones, and a Chumby used day in, day out.

Lets presume the average Roku box user watches one video every night. At 30 days in a month x 1.5gb per video, total use will be 45gb for the month. Lets presume that Netflix isn’t as efficient as iTunes in movie delivery, and each movie is 3gb. Lets presume you’re an addict, and you watch two movies every day. Still only 180gb in a heavy use, high bandwidth scenario, with 70gb to spare.

Comcast states that only 0.1% of their users use in excess of 250gb a month, so 99.9% of users will never have an issue, and that includes many early adopters and those working in the tech/ web space. I could try harder to use more bandwidth, but never being offline is all I can manage, at least for now.

Market Forces

Lets presume that with the rise of digital content delivery, usage rates increase, and more people get closer to the cap, or exceed it. Demand usually results in supply, and presuming that 250gb is the end of the matter ignores alternative ISP’s or distribution deals.

In Australia, as you’ll note in the image above, ISP’s do deals with content providers so that downloads aren’t counted towards a cap. In my case, the iiNet Freezone includes content from iTunes, and a number of other services. iiNet even offers a variety of internet radio stations for free, so when I wake up to the sound of 977 The 80’s Channel on my Chumby of a morning, it’s via a local iiNet stream of the station that doesn’t count towards my cap.

Providers such as Apple, Netflix and others will cut deals in the United States in the same way they have in Australia, both as a marketing tool and as a way to overcome any cap fears that may slow usage rates and consumer uptake. ISP’s like these deals as well, as offering unmetered content from large players is a selling point.

The Exceptions

There are of course some that will lose out under these caps: extreme high end users, large families or group homes, heavy BitTorrent users, and addicted online game players. Some have a reasonable case to complain, but others, for example those who use a residential connection to run a business where many people use that connection every day, or even use the connection as a web server (remarkably some people still do) need to accept up to the fact that if they want unlimited bandwidth, they should pay for it. Comcast business plans are not currently capped, so there are alternatives, even if they do cost more.

Conclusion

I don’t like caps, and having been on the wrong end of usage before and having my connection shaped, I’d consider switching to an unlimited plan tomorrow if I had the choice. Caps do have the potential of constraining growth in digital media delivery in the future, replacing a free market with one of deals and artificial supply constraints. And yet, for the negatives, the sky isn’t falling, it’s not the end of the world, and most Comcast users will never notice the introduction of a cap. It’s not unreasonable that people pay more relative to the amount of data they consume, and that heavy users should not be subsidized by light users. The market will respond, the drive towards more efficient delivery of digital content will increase, and we’ll still be streaming and downloading content tomorrow and into the future.

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The battle began when reporters discovered last year that Comcast was limiting or even blocking BitTorrent transfers by its users. Just weeks ago, FCC commissioners ruled that was a violation of a communication law requiring any ISP to offer unrestricted Internet access. The panel said Comcast’s actions were “discriminatory” and “arbitrary” and pointed out the recent law making it illegal for an ISP to “slow any specific applications.” The company was told to stop immediately and to hand over detailed info about all its traffic management tactics.

Now, though, Comcast has filed an appeal against that ruling, saying it did nothing wrong and has the right to limit traffic as it sees fit. An executive went as far as to claim the FCC’s decision was “legally inappropriate.”

Yeah.

Regardless of what happens here, Comcast is already moving forward with a plan to implement bandwidth caps for all users. Residential customers will be limited to 250 gigs of transferred data per month starting in October. The company’s also eyeballed a system that’d slow down connections of anyone using a lot of bandwidth during busy times. But all that, evidently, isn’t enough. Comcast wants to go after BitTorrent, too.

If have a problem with the idea, you can schedule an appointment to voice your concern. Someone will get back to you Monday between either 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Please make sure you’re home and available during both time windows or you might miss your chance.

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Let me say upfront on a less serious note: You’ve got caps! Welcome to my world, one where I pay a small fortune for my 130GB a month on one of the largest cap plans available in Australia. Most people suffer on less than 15GB.

From a user viewpoint, I understand where Om and MG are coming from. Caps may limit online innovation by restricting the free market for unlimited content, particularly as we move to HD video that is seriously bandwidth intensive, and that’s not a positive thing.

And yet, bandwidth does cost money. We accept when we sign up for hosting that most providers cap the data our sites can use, and charge us more as we consume more, because they themselves are paying for data on a measured basis, not an unlimited one. The economics for an ISP are the same: they have to pay for data throughput, so the more you use, the more the wholesale cost of providing that data increases. It is not unreasonable to suggest economically that those who use more data pay more for it. Why should the person using 2GB a month subsidize the person using 2TB a month when we know that the higher use costs more to provide.

How many individual users would really use 250GB a month? It’s not 100% clear, but it would appear that (unlike with my account in Australia) uploads won’t be counted towards the 250GB a month, so even BitTorrent users who tend to leach a lot in terms of uploads, or even people live streaming 24/7 won’t be affected.

I looked at my usage figures for July 2007, a month I was home the entire time, and I just scrapped over 40GB for the month, although I have had some months closer to 50GB. This in a house with three times more internet connected devices than people, where I download a fair bit, I stream HD on my Apple TV, and even my alarm clock streams internet radio when it wakes me up in the morning. Of course this figure is creeping up, and will continue to do so, but as someone who is in front of a computer every day at home, I’m yet to go close to 100GB, let alone 250GB a month.

There’s also the presumption that capped plans will stifle areas like HD streaming, but it ignores the fact that these limits will simply create innovation in compression, so that the bandwidth required to deliver a HD movie is less tomorrow as watching a video online is significantly more efficient today compared to 4 years ago or further. You’ll also likely see distribution deals in place between content providers and ISPs that will create exemptions to the cap, for example anything I download now from iTunes isn’t counted in my iiNet cap. It’s not great level playing field innovation, but now caps are in, on Comcast at least, providers will be thinking about these very things today.

Comcast’s decision to impose caps is the end of the free honeymoon for internet users artificially brought about by an excess in bandwidth following the first internet crash. As we use more and more bandwidth, more pipes are required to meet demand, and somebody has to pay for it.

Related posts:

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3. Lies, Damn Lies, and Twilight Download Statistics

So, what is this — some kind of misguided Internet tax system? The more you use, the less you get?

Remember, now, that Comcast first made waves over reports last year claiming it was intentionally slowing BitTorrent transfers to improve its overall network speed. The FCC formally issued its penalty just a day ago, saying that was a violation of communication law and requiring Comcast to disclose detailed information about its other practices. The newly passed regulation makes it illegal for ISPs to “slow any specific applications.”

The user-targeted tactic, then, wouldn’t technically be a violation, since a user isn’t considered an “application.” But give me a break…is it any better? It seems to me to be violating the same principle that led to that law — just doing so in a workaround, loophole-type way.

Comcast says it only seems “fair” to go after the people who are using the most bandwidth. Sure…if by “fair,” you mean “absolutely out of line.” Someone paying for access deserves to get it equally, whether he’s sending five e-mails a day or transferring 20 videos an hour. If Comcast can’t build a network that can handle that, maybe it should just stick to screwing up cable service and let someone else deal with the Internet.

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The company said the Daily Candy purchase fit well with its cable television properties, including the Style and E! Entertainment channels. Founded in 2000, Daily Candy delivers its email newsletter to 2.5 million subscribers. It was sold by founder Dany Levy to Pilot Group Ventures five years ago for $3 million.

“We’re trying to build a large presence online as more and more of our customers look to the Web for entertainment and content. Daily Candy fits right into that strategy,” said Sam Schwartz, executive vice president of Comcast Interactive Media.

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1. Comcast Acquires Plaxo
2. Departed Yahoo Exec Joins Comcast
3. Comcast issues block World of Warcraft Users

“We are preserving the open character of the Internet. We are saying that network operators can’t block people from getting access to any content and any applications,” Kevin J. Martin, the FCC’s chairman said.

Aside from putting an end to the practice of blocking, the FCC also ordered Comcast to provide details about its Internet practices. No monetary fines were imposed.

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thePlatform will collect and publish video content for the site and provide its playback systems as well. HBO, CNN, and Showtime all feature material on Road Runner.

Just last week, thePlatform bought out social media company Chirp Interactive — creator of Chirpscreen, a utility that integrated Facebook and Twitter content into a screensaver. The company indicated it would use Chirp’s models to further develop its own products.

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Gilford — whose departure from Yahoo just became known a few days ago — will be in charge of growing Comcast’s online entertainment presence. As the title suggests, one of her main responsibilities will be developing Fancast, the company’s online video service.

It’s a role Gilford knows well: Her job at Yahoo was VP and general manager of Yahoo Entertainment, meaning she oversaw services such as Yahoo Movies, Games, and Music. She also headed up the relaunch of Yahoo TV, leading it to double its previous traffic and revenue.

A replacement at Yahoo has not yet been named.

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Chirp Interactive built applications for social networks, namely its Chirpscreen utility that functioned as an interactive screensaver with content from Facebook and Twitter. thePlatform says it plans to discontinue all of Chirp’s past services and instead focus on using Chirp’s systems and staff to create new applications for its own products.

“Select personnel” will make the move over to thePlatform during the transition, with a series of new hires being planned as well.

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Fandango offers ticket purchases from 15,000 theaters across the U.S., while Movies.com focuses more on content: reviews, DVD release information, etc. Fandango has already expanded its ticket sale service to Movies.com as of today.

Disney says no layoffs will result from the sale. The exact terms of the deal, however, are not being released.

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The start-up is called GridNetworks and uses peer-to-peer technology to distribute video programming. It has branded the process “GridCasting.”

In an interesting twist, it’s worth noting that Comcast has recently come under fire for blocking its customers’ ability to use file-sharing sites over its internet connections. It is currently being investigated by the government.

Comcast hasn’t revealed how much its GridNetworks investment is worth.

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According to CEO Ben Golub, Plaxo will remain an independent operation in Silicon Valley, reporting to Comcast Interactive Media, the division of Comcast that develops and operates Internet businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication.

Plaxo and Comcast have worked together previously, with Plaxo providing the universal address book for Comcast’s SmartZone communications center, and Plaxo hosts all of the address book accounts for Comcast webmail users.

Mountain View based Plaxo has taken $28.3 million over four rounds. The acquisition price was not disclosed but previous rumors have priced Plaxo at around the $150-$200 million mark.

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Broadband Reports quotes a Comcast insider as saying the company may instate monthly data caps for its internet users. Right now, the insider says, executives are looking at limiting you to 250 gigs per month, then billing you $15 for every additional 10 gigs you transfer.

It wouldn’t be the first time such a plan has been tried. Verizon recently added new plans that charge by the meg, albeit only for mobile broadband customers. And Canadian company Rogers Communications already has caps for its home- and office-based DSL customers.

The Gannett News Service predicts more and more providers will soon look at similar restrictions. One expert they spoke with compares the concept to other common household billing procedures.

“If you use more electricity, you pay for more electricity,” GNS quoted Internet Innovation Alliance Co-Chair Larry Irving as saying.

“This is no different,” he added.

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