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“This settlement is a great result for Comcast customers,” enthuses lawyer Mark Todzo, one of the lawsuit counsels in the Comcast vs its Users case.

“It creates an efficient and effective mechanism that will put money back in the customers’ hands without them individually going to court.”

He’s quoted in the Zeropaid post on the traffic throttling settlement.

However, the $16 mil amounts to little more than a PR bill with the lawyers in the class action being the principal beneficiaries.

Because in ‘What relief is provided to Settlement Class Members?’ under Benefits of the settlement -  what you get claimants discover they’ll get only a few dollars.

Says the document >>>

Comcast agrees to credit or refund some current or former High-Speed Internet service customers. Comcast agrees to pay up to $16 million dollars, less Settlement costs, to eligible Class Members. If you submit a valid Claim Form, you will receive a share of this amount, not to exceed $16.00. The Settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by any party.

A paltry 16 bucks for all the agro they’ve endured? So is there any advantage to going through the application drill?

Perhaps, if the intent is to make Comcast sting a little; as a class act of vengeance rather than a way for individual class members to gain compensation. And even then, $16M amounts to little more than pocket change for a company of Comcast’s ilk.

‘Clandestine techniques’

At this point neither the .pdf or online request forms are available. They’re promised for  early January and while would-be claimants wait, perhaps question 21 should be added to the FAQ >>>

21 What will happen to data submitted by claimants once claims have been met?

We are, after all, talking about Comcast. And there could well be lots of highly valuable user information provided free and, presumably, without qualification, in the claim submissions.

Meanwhile, Comcast is “still the target of at least 2 other class action lawsuits for falsely promising ‘unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications that the Internet has to offer,’ with some even comparing its ‘clandestine techniques’ of traffic interference with that ‘used by totalitarian governments to censor the use of the Internet;,” says Zeropaid, adding:

“The latter comment may be a tad melodramatic, but the anger is correct in that customers don’t have the luxury of choosing a different ISP thanks to the existence of regional monopolies.”

If you care, you’re a settlement class member if you “live in the United States or its Territories, have a current or former Comcast High-Speed Internet account, and either used or attempted to use Comcast service to use: The Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FastTrack or Gnutella P2P protocols at any time from April 1, 2006 to December 31, 2008; and/or Lotus Notes to send emails any time from March 26, 2007 to October 3, 2007.”

Click here for the court documents.

Stay tuned.

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