FCC Net Neutrality Policy Would Permit Providers To Block BitTorrent
The Electronic Freedom Foundation points out that the proposed FCC net neutrality policy allows the same thing they stopped two years ago -- namely, the lawful use of downloading services. They're asking us to sign a petition:
Remember what put the debate over net neutrality into high gear? In 2007, EFF and the Associated Press confirmed suspicions that Comcast was clandestinely blocking BitTorrent traffic. It was one of the first clear demonstrations that ISPs are technologically capable of interfering with your Internet connection, and that they may not even tell you about it. After receiving numerous complaints, the FCC in 2008 stepped in and threw the book at Comcast, requiring them to stop blocking BitTorrent. The Comcast-BitTorrent experience put net neutrality at the top of the FCC agenda.
Yet now that the FCC has formally issued draft net neutrality regulations, they have a huge copyright loophole in them — a loophole that would theoretically permit Comcast to block BitTorrent just like it did in 2007 — simply by claiming that it was "reasonable network management" intended to "prevent the unlawful transfer of content."
You heard that right — under these conditions, the new proposed net neutrality regulations would allow the same practices that net neutrality was first invoked to prevent, even if these ISP practices end up inflicting collateral damage on perfectly lawful content and activities.
When we saw the loophole, we had to ask ourselves, "Is this real net neutrality?" And the answer was simply, "No." The entertainment industry is already pressuring ISPs to become copyright cops. Carving a copyright loophole in net neutrality would leave your lawful activities at the mercy of overbroad copyright filtering schemes, and we already have plenty of experience with copyright enforcers targeting legitimate users by mistake, carelessness, or design.
If net neutrality regulations are to be taken seriously at all, then the loophole must be closed. Sign the petition to demand real net neutrality from the FCC.
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I happen to know first hand that Comcast has helped significantly to increase the functionality of bittorrent. I'm curious why there is such an issue when the only reason they stop anyone is because the take more than 250 gb in a month. If you're doing that I'm going to call a horse a horse, you are a thief. I don't necessarily agree with their ability to do it freely, but they have only exercised it when you have exceeded that cap. I'd like unlimited internet to, but if you have business needs for more bandwidth, pay for it. That's the way people should do things whether you agree with their monopolistic stranglehold in your respective markets or not.
Will bandwidth restrictions prevent the guy in the video clip from
sticking his face right in his camera or will it just prevent me from hearing him slurp his tea?
Kidding aside, there is an issue because, as the EFF notes, the DRAFT regs could THEORETCALLY allow something. Therefore, instead of asking us to act to oppose this loophole, we must sign a petition to demand the REAL and stop the theoretical.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Yeah, this is really annoying. He really needs to stop trying to act in this video and just get to making his point. Drink your tea after you finish making your video.
on You Tube. I think Susie was the first to watch one and went right ahead and posted it.
I am partial to the one about the Pittsburgh cops.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Using more than 250 Gb / month? Really?
Shoot, I just downloaded a single game as a legitimate purchase, and it was 8.8 Gb. As content becomes more involved, more complex, I can easily see bandwidth caps being exceeded.
Watch where you're pointing that 'thief' label.
And do you see the problem wherein you assert that bandwidth = money? We're already in a position where elections require million-dollar war chests. A bandwidth throttle is not 'free market' - it's the exact same nonsense peddled by people like Rush Limbaugh, that his ideas Must Be Right Because He Has Market Share.
Me, I'd love to see someone run a totally digital campaign - social networking, videoconferencing instead of jetting about the country ... but a bandwidth cap would make that impossible. More than that, it would enable Comcast to decide whose traffic is legiimate and interfere with it.
The FCC is technically ill equipped to even know how to regulate the Internet, they should stay away from what they don't understand. Bandwidth increases have come often enough to make this entire debate moot. It wasn't even 5 years ago we had 5 Mbps to residences, now 10 Mbps, and now just hitting the scene 20 Mbps.
Hell the fastest base-band communication in the 90's was 10-base-t on the LAN, now here we are getting speeds double that in broadband. Unreal.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
... 'screaming fast' was 300 baud.
Overall, the problem with Pawn's argument is the presumption of guilt and then ceding regulation to Comcast.
People smuggle things by car, but we don't have laws requiring people to buy SmartCars and MiniCoopers, and we don't make the assumption that everyone with an SUV is a runner for the Medellin Cartel.
he means all blogs critical of Obama are far left.
That is why I get all my substances from Cartel Cartagena. They are merely liberal and drive hybrids.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Like I have a choice if I want cable.
My concerns with this, aside from 250 ending up as 'nothing' is they'll start lowering the ceiling. to 100. or less.
Last month, I used 10 gb. I don't bittorrent, or game. I had my computer off for more than I usually do, and used 2gb more than in Nov and Dec, probably listening to music available from the artists on my space, or the record labels on YouTube. I'll assume since that is offered by the owner of the copyright and no one is asking for $$$, I'm not a thief
When you buy a software key, don't you burn up bandwidth downloading it? what about SP 2 for XP? That mother took ages to download on highspeed. I'll just assume it burned up loads of bw.
You aren't necessarily thieving because you use band width.
me-oww!
Anyone downloading that much per day should probably get a commercial account. There a lot of companies that don't do that kind of traffic per day.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
I just tested a 720P HDTV stream, and it was going around 4000 mbps (mega-Bits). I think there may be better compression technologies that could reduce that speed, but I can see where usage could skyrocket with HD streams. So, I can see traffic shaping once certain bandwidths are reached. Needless to say, Google and others want a free ride. However, on the other hand, I am concerned that access to low bandwidth streams (500kbps) and so forth would be caught up in restrictions.
I want this thing resolved in a manner that preserves a "wide diversity of viewpoints from a multiplicity of sources". And that means access to multimedia sources (that needn't be hi-def) so that people can access non-corporate news.
BTW, here's the DemocracyNow bittorrent site.
http://ewheel.democracynow.org/
That's about a 400MB (megaByte) file for an hour of viewing, last time I downloaded it.
But typically those that are using over 250 gigs is stealing music, games and movies. I've been monitoring my usage after a warning was received and without any sort of downloading outside of web useage, which includes streaming music and videos, I use 75 - 80 gigs a month. I agree that we need to do something about the issue before us, but we also have be realistic with what our situations are today. By all means, sign these petitions, call your legislators, and tell them they need to guide FCC policy on this. 250 gigs is becoming obsolete, and it shouldn't become a cornerstone. Regardless, are you really downloading over 25 games a month? If you are, I'd like to know your occupation to afford this habit, and where you get the time to play them.
I agree 250G per month is an awful lot
... that considers people's right over those of corporations?
Corruption favors the wealthy.
but can't do a thing about cable TV/Fux propaganda bullshit?
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
... as opposed to real security that would prevent/reduce piracy.
And, really, all it's going to take to bust this kind of nonsense is a bunch of hackers sending perfectly legal data and waiting for Comcast to shut it down. If they don't, then Comcast is intercepting the data; if they do, then Comcast is acting unilaterally without any actual cause, just a suspicion that all torrents are piracy.
from Media Matters. Prior to that, I received much from them. I have repeatedly tried to contact them, but nothing happens. I think Verizon is blocking them. Anyone else having problems? It is not anything I am doing. I know how to manage filters, etc.
... at the public library?
First thing to try would be to send from a location other than your 'home' location and see if that gets through.
Can you visit the actual MMfA website?
address that is a local provider from downstate to receive their response. So far, she hasn't received anything, but I sent the original e-mail. It may never have gotten to MM. I will have her send one for me. If that doesn't work, I'll try a library computer, but if Verizon is blocking MM maybe that won't work, either. I'll keep you posted about this. It's really pissing me off.
... contact your either your city's district attorney OR local television station and speak to their consumer advocate and see if they'll look into things for you.
I want to stack up some evidence first. I should say more evidence. The DA here is not someone I would rely on to fix this. There are a few good consumer advocates, and the local newspapers can be quite thorough. Thanks.
posted it to Facebook. Which should generate about a million more signatures by the end of the day, the FB crowd really likes their downloads.
I think the internet, the airwaves, the water, and the utilities should all be free to everyone though, so I must be one of them lefty radicals.
or maybe just a crafty dry land irrigation farmer.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
"The entertainment industry is already pressuring ISPs to become copyright cops."
This is already going on. I know someone who received a letter from his ISP. Columbia Pictures was upset about a download and contacted the ISP based on the torrent info. The ISP, Suddenlink, sent a letter to him threatening legal action and threatening to discontinue internet service if he should continue to download. The threat still stands if it was someone else downloading from his open wi-fi signal.
This is already happening folks.
What this means is that your ISP is watching the content of your internet usage. All of it. And they are willing to share it with another private company. This is more than the domestic surveillance to counter terrorism.
PS I signed the petition. Thanks!
Three things:
One. It might be all hippie and everything to provide access to your neighborhood with an open connection but for me it's WPA+PSK, non-broadcast long public name, a damn long genuinely random seed and MAC handshaking to allow access. Anybody who runs an open connection is a moron -- plausible deniability be damned. If your neighbor is downloading kiddie porn on your modem, whose door are they going to break down?
Two. Your ISP may or may not be watching you. People are usually exposed because they downloaded a poisoned clip that was infected in a way to broadcast their address back to the monitoring organization.
Three. It is no mystery why repressive governments would love to help corporations supress P2P. Torrents are theoretically the most democratic media since the invention of the printing press. _Creating_ and _editing_ a radio or TV program is almost trivial in expense and expertise today. [Sure, less trivial to do it _well_ but you get my point.] What's hard is getting something _distributed_ -- and that includes political reasons why a mass media in bed with government would censor media they don't want to see the light of day. Torrents are genuinely free, as in open, mass media and that is an amazing thing. So before you get too excited about protecting Mickey Mouse for another generation of purchasers, think about what good is destroyed by eliminating torrents.
... a couple of books in the same general area of interest:
Privacy on the Line by Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau. Essential reading for addressing the FISA boondoggle.
Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier. Takes a good look at how we think about security. Ever notice that when a security measure doesn't work against its proposed vulnerability (wiretaps to catch terrorists) it gets retasked and praised as being effective against something else?
Thanks shadow, along the lines of the point I made above.
It is one thing to have the government spy on you. It is another to have corporations, or individuals spy on you. They opened up a Pandora's box when they broadened eaves-dropping.
... I recommended both of these titles during the whole FISA dustup on a subgroup of the Obama website.
Crickets. Not even 'hey, thanks, I'll check 'em out'.
They were big on blogswarms and planning a Facebook 'night of action.' But when it came to actually stating reasons and understanding the key issues - blank stares.
The progressives need to be better than wingnut lemmings.
Who's Bit Torrent
Buzz Lightyear's kid side-kick?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Okay, that is a really weird coincidence, as my daughter and I are watching Toy Story right now.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rachaels-Equine...
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
They're coming to take web away, ha-haaa!!
They're coming to take web away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa
To the MSM. Where life is beautiful all the time and you'll be
happy to see those nice young folks in their clean pressed clothes and they're
coming to take web away, ha-haaa!!!!!
No stone will be left unturned. You were warned.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
I'm willing to bet there's not a single person associated with this blog that actually understands the TCP/IP and UDP/IP behavior of your average BitTorrent client within a Cable Company's network.
Not defending Comcast's behavior here, but...there are times when managing the traffic flowing through your network is a necessity.
As a network engineer for the bankrupt Adelphia Communications, we did just that using the exact same technology Comcast was using.
What we didn't do was kill BitTorrent altogether like COmcast did.
We Studied the traffic for a year before defining policy. And then our policy only affected the very heaviest BitTorrent users. those sharing very popular stuff and who's BitTorrent clients were wide open.
If you download new ISO's weakly, or the Warcraft patch, you'll never notice.
if you shared the most popular movies and songs with a wide open BitTorrent client, you'd notice some disconnects.
It really is possible for a handful of users to negatively impact the shared network experience of everyone else within a Cable network. And it's never the bandwidth. It's always CPU and Memory as the local layer 3 device does not usually have huge memory or CPU to track the hundreds of thousands of simultaneous connections that are associated with a handful of wide open BitTorrent clients.
Comcast fucked up by using a Hammer instead of a scalpel
You never ever heard these complaints About Adelphia, because we studied the traffic before implementing the policy.
Is bandwidth even an issue in Japan or Europe? Those countries have a lot of bandwidth to share and see speeds as much as 20 times what an American sees.
Just like their cell phone coverage is more reliable, seamless because they share all towers.
Built as much or relied as much on Docsis Build out.
And BOTH relied heavily on Government investment in backbone infrastructure.
In the USA, post ARPA Net, all investment has been private money.
Do you want your government to own the fiber?
Just askin
Look at the difference in access between the US, Europe and japan. Remember, just because you are a have does not mean that you can't at least consider the have nots.
Also, didn't Adelphia go bankrupt in a blaze of corporate malfeasance, and sell off all of its cable assets? I'm just saying.
End of line...
Adelphia went bankrupt aft6er 2.3 Billion worth of debt was found to have been hidden from investors.
Does that influence the point of the above post?
Comcast used a hammer when they should have been using a scalpel.
It doesn't. It is so difficult to keep track of all of these companies. Some get bought, others die, still others shoot themselves in the face.
Net neutrality is unfortunately a pipe dream, unless there is true competition, not Republican brand competition. Diverse options are what prevent this kind of thing from happening, not legislation.
However, because our infrastructure is cobbled together by various competing interests, legislation is required to ensure that all traffic is treated fairly.
Why not treat each network packet as a tiny morsel of free speech and therefore it is illegal to abridge it in any way? Citizens essential said that it doesn't matter who is speaking, just that they are. Corporations are controlled by humans, just as computers are therefore as Corporate speech is protected so is my computer speech.
Yes, i am aware this is far-fetched, but admit it, until last week no one thought that non-person legal entities were entitle to 1st Amendment protections either.
End of line...
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/fabric_of_the_c...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
There should be no federal restrictions on municipalities offering wi-fi. Seems to me, the last 50 years or so of communication policy has been restraint of competition.
Yes, to hammer/scalpel.
Of course you have to manage traffic, but .. here are the two things I care about as a consumer.
1. the arbitrary caps, for instance RR has this "boost thing" you can pay for to temporarily evade their shaping. From what I can tell, it does little to help your real bandwidth but makes the on-line broadband tester apps make your connection look fast. Heh. They then started testing a cap. One friend is being capped, I am not .. yet. Arbitrary protocol ban-hammers are included here.
2. How many layers down are you looking to decide how to shape. Yes, I sometimes run TOR, and sometimes work with others to try to test this. If you do go down more layers than I like, who else has access to that equipment, and how programmable are its search features?
More programmable is good for the ISP sure, but it also means its good for the eavesdroppers. I don't trust a warrant to be obtained if the eavesdropper is the government, hopefully this is a temporary political problem, but I'm still not happy. And of course, high programmability makes it easier to police for content that has a financial conflict with the carrier.
I really think if people understood the invasion of privacy involved in many of the packet-shapers there would be more revolt. Right now the only ones that know are the pirates, and they aren't a group that has a lot of sympathy with the rest of us.
That's simple traffic shaping. I can completely understand a large-scale ISP needing to do Quality of Service traffic shaping in order to optimize bandwidth. What I can not tolerate is a company that is willing to spoof RST packets, essentially modifying the data in transit. That scares the hell out of me. That means the ISP could subtly alter things I'm seeing on the net, or block certain political views they deem unacceptable. And I don't buy the argument of "if people noticed censorship they'd choose another provider" because there isn't one for a large percentage of the population.
it's just photos of the sets with tape recorded dialog?
what have I told you in the other thread?
you start with regulation preventing ISPs doing X, Y and Z and you end up with regulation that forces ISPs doing what the most influental industry wants them to do.
it's the same thing every time. you want to empower the poor - you end up with a mortgage gambling scheme. you want to save greenhouse gases - you end up with goldman sachs and GE speculating with carbon futures. you want to reign in the banks - you end up with a system that protects the big banks with a revolving door between goldman sachs and the treasury.
government regulation is the answer, huh?
oh, right. it's just not the RIGHT regulation, but once a democrat is president and congress is controlled by barney frank that'll change.
oh, wait.
and subcribe to cable? BLEAH!
Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/obam...
Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty a ‘National Security’ Secret. That's the ACTA treaty.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/obam...
UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, ‘driver’s license’ for Web users.
Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, ... ... He also called for a "driver's license" for internet users.
"If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance."
From Microsoft, on Craig Mundie: "...in April 2009 was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology."
End of Net Neutrality today - Fritz chip tomorrow.
P2P works for live streams. While this technology is used right now mostly to stream sporting events, this technology would allow anyone with a web cam and a microphone to be an ad hoc internet television station, with near unlimited scalability.
http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Stream-...
There's other P2P streaming apps out there, TVants, Sopcast to name a few. This kind of technology is an IP solution to the high bar that the FCC imposes to establish a traditional TV station.
Bittorrent is where it starts. But where does it end? Hulu, WWITV? The trouble is that the ISPs are also trying to sell an outmoded model where people buy a lineup of channels, many that aren't useful. Instead, people could, with internet technology, select the programs useful to them. WWITV has a number of off-shore links.
But, I'm also concerned about the domestic news, brought to you by the pharmaceutical industry. Here's a story I heard on Russia's RTTV that I didn't hear on domestic television:
Specifically "The Council of Europe's Head of Health also claims the World Health Organisation colluded with major drug companies and changed the definition of pandemic."
http://www.youtube.com/russiatoday#p/u/94/3ha...
I see net neutrality curtailing the bandwidth (500 kbps) necessary to access off-shore sources of news. RTTV has a live stream. France 24 has a live stream.
I gotta say, I've had a TV-out on the computer since 2002, and love it.
read the FCC's proposed policy?
It does mention "reasonable network management," but it also mentions full disclosure as far as what the ISP can actually block, and it specifically states that the ISP cannot single out and block any particular content. It expressly speaks out against the illegal distribution of unlawful content, but says nothing about torrenting.
If you took time to read the bill, you would find that it doesn't so much prohibit the mostly unrestricted use of the internet as it does embarrass whoever proposed the idea of restricting it in the first place. To be honest, I find that the proposed policy seems to be written by someone with very little knowledge of the internet, or a whimsical ideology of how it works.
I play the MMORPG World of Warcraft -- the largest online game of its type EVER. And Blizzard, the makers of the game, distribute patches and updates through Bit Torrent technology. This isn't about copyright infringement. If someone is found distributing a copyrighted file, then take them down -- file charges against them, etc.
A software pirate could distribute his illegal software via email. Does anyone seriously suggest that we permit ISPs to block email to/from your computer? Indeed -- that same software could be distributed via HTTP (web pages). So we should allow them to block all of your web traffic as well?
I have been fighting Bell Canada for a while. We've gone throught the whole petition shtick, which hasn't seemed to make much difference. What did make a huge difference in my case was when I threatened to take them to court over money they said I owed them. My response was that they in fact owed me money since they were charging "Hi-speed" rates but delivering 'normal' speeds and in fact making it impossible to achieve the speeds they advertised and I paid for. This was through no act of God or internet overload--they intentionally restricted the download speeds during "peak hours". I then informed them I will adjust the billing to reflect these (intentionally) lower download speeds while paying for hi-speed.
I went with another provider, leaving just over $400 "owing" to Bell
I think I scared them.
They never called me back to retrieve the money they said I owed...I suppose they didn't want to go to court.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine"
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