A simple test by the AP last October has found that Comcast appears to interfere with the BitTorrent traffic in ways which poses ethics questions and also probably costs the company a lot of money. Specifically, instead of throttling BitTorrent traffic, the company appears to create spoof peers which interfere with the normal peer-to-peer transfers and significantly slow down or even kill some downloads. Furthermore, their test has shown that Comcast appears to "impersonate" existing peers to divert packets.

This is the most serious and concerning example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider because, according to AP, it involves company computers masquerading as those of its users. This technology requires costly resources, and it would probably have made more sense to invest the money in upgrading the network capacity.

Comcast Corp. admitted to hiring people to fill seats at the Federal Communications Commission hearing last week at Harvard Law School, thus limiting the public access to the event. It is a fairly common practice, although not exactly ethical, but Comcast said the move was made after the advocacy group Free Press urged people to attend in its behalf. The result was a room packed with sleepy people ever since the doors opened at 7 a.m., who’ve kept the seats warm until Comcast employees arrived at the scene.

“First Comcast was caught blocking the Internet. Now it has been caught blocking the public from debate,” said Timothy Karr, director of the Save the Internet campaign, in a statement. “The only people cheering Comcast are those paid to do so,’ he added, after almost 100 people have been turned away from the meeting.

The company’s explanation at the hearing was very simple: some broadband users utilize immense amounts of bandwidth which overwhelm the network capacity and threaten to harm the online experience of other users. After Monday’s six-hour public hearing, FCC chief Kevin Martin said he did not make up his mind yet, and it is impossible to predict what the Commission’s decision will be, but pointed out to the necessity of acting as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Free Press, two of the most prominent anti- Internet limiting groups, filed reply comments with the FCC, blasting "technical-sounding nonsense" which Comcast has spawned in its defense.

"As a matter of policy, it doesn't matter if investment [in network infrastructure] is slightly more expensive than throttling traffic," said Free Press.

"It doesn't matter that cars with airbags are more expensive than those without or drugs with child-proof tops are more expensive than those without. Consumer welfare and our global competitiveness requires open, high-capacity networks, and government encourages investment in such ends, not in tools that block and discriminate against innovation and competition," the group underlined.