Comcast owes P2P users $16; yes, they should take it

Robb Topolski, the man who helped unearth Comcast's peer-to-peer (P2P) interference, wants Comcast customers to opt out of the $16 they have coming to them from a class action lawsuit. But Eric Somers, the lawyer leading the class-action case, just can't understand the sentiment.

"This is a good settlement," he told Ars. "If you opt out, you're basically giving that money to Comcast." At issue is the settlement of the Hart v. Comcast class action, a resolution three years in the making. When John Hart noticed that his BitTorrent connections would "hang" -- sometimes for an entire night -- he called up Somers and asked if he knew anything about it. Comcast was still denying that P2P upload blocks were in place on its network, and it took the legal team time to figure out what was happening. Hart's case was the first one filed, and his lawyers were eventually certified as counsel for the entire class of affected Comcast users. Since 2008, Somers and his team have argued that Comcast violated the FCC's Internet Policy Statement (PDF); the FCC famously agreed. Comcast agreed to settle the class action suit rather than proceed to trial. The deal puts Comcast on the hook for $16 million, plus up to $3 million extra for the lawyers. That $16 million will be split up between every Comcast subscriber who was affected, with a cap of $16 per person -- but no one gets any money unless they sign onto the class at the official settlement website. Any unclaimed money goes right back into Comcast's coffers.