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A reader emailed Comcast to complain about its blocking the Bible and received back a typical PR-speak response. Within was this gem: "We have a responsibility to manage our network to ensure that our customers have the best broadband experience possible." Aha! I hadn't realized the "best broadband experience" excluded BitTorrent. That's Comcastic! Also a nice touch: Dismissing a story that ran over the Associated Press wire service as "web gossip." The full email after the jump.

Thank you for your message. My name is Lindsay, and I appreciate you taking the time to contact Comcast.

I understand you have some concerns over recent web gossip that has suggested Comcast is blocking or hindering customer access to BitTorrent. I will be happy to assist you. We do not block access to any P2P (Peer To Peer) applications, including BitTorrent. We respect our customers' privacy and don't monitor specific customer activities on the Internet, or track individual online behavior, such as which websites are visited. Therefore, we do not know whether any individual user is visiting BitTorrent or any other site.

Additionally, Comcast does not "throttle" bandwidth (limit throughput on the network). Comcast also is not traffic shaping or packet shaping. We have a responsibility to manage our network to ensure that our
customers have the best broadband experience possible. That means we use the latest technologies to manage our network to provide a quality experience for all Comcast subscribers. This is standard practice for network operators around the world. I do not have specific information to provide to you regarding the details of how we manage our network, or vendors that may be used.

If you have any more questions feel free to reply to this e-mail, or you can chat with one of our Online Customer Support Specialists who are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at

http://www.comcastsupport.com/chat

To assure the proper tracking of this issue, we have created the following customer service ticket: ####.

Please refer to this number should you contact us regarding this same issue.

Thank you for choosing Comcast.

Sincerely,

Lindsay
Comcast Online Customer Support

(Photo by AP/Douglas C. Pizac)