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Could This Be The End Of The Internet?
ll0yD asks: "There is an article at Security Focus blowing the horn on network security companies working to stop file sharing over the Internet and private networks. The main reason they are working on this is to combat Napster and other related "evil" network programs. I understand the need to protect copyrighted material, but this looks like it is going a little too far. If someone can stop MP3's from moving around the net what stops someone from stopping your electronically filed taxes or the bills you pay online? Besides isn't file sharing what the Internet is about? What are your views?" This disturbs me. The Internet is all about sharing, but not just files, but ideas, be it via Napster, or a browser. Now I'm worried that some fool will start making noises about banning FTP.
Ignorance like this really salts my pork. Have you even been to a dick measuring contest?
Remember when email and news first came about, they were only envisioned to move text around, not binary files (like software). So uuencode/uudecode was created to turn binaries into a format suitable for transport. So unless you're planning to shut down all net connectivity, then whatever connectivity remains can be used to encode binaries into and transport them. NOTHING WILL CHANGE! Clueless legislators. The net will SHOW them how futile their task is. They stand before the wind.
Personally, I think that this is a sweet idea whose time has come. If used correctly this could solve a good portion of the QoS problems that plague bandwidth-limited organizations.
I mean really, why should students be able to slurp up all of the bandwidth at a university at the expense of legitimate services like the campus web server? Sure students (or whoever) should be allowed to use Napster (or whatever), just not at the expense of the legitimate functions of the network.
The beauty of shaping is that you can do this without having to descriminate between multiple network segments (i.e. the student dorms are universally bandwidth controlled for every protocol). So you don't have to screw over certain people entirely (just screw everybody partially) in order to achieve the desired result.
Cha-ching!
I hate you dsl users so much :)
F0 07 C7 C8
That ought to do wonders for enrollment. I seem to remember a slashdot article where it was said that fast access was touted as an important benefit of living on campus. If they ration or cut the wire, I will be very interested in seeing the effect this has on either enrollments or housing trends.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
The problem lies in mechanism used by Gnutella and Napster - they return remote users' IP address instead of routing pieces of information thru network, i.e. if user alpha@fsb.ru sends request to it's closest Gnutella node, russia-relay@eff.org, node returns IP of the machine that has data requested. FreeNet, on the other hand, relays data thru network. For example alpha@fsb.ru requests file elections.html from russia-relay@eff.org, who requests file from vpupkin@cityline.ru and passes it to alpha@fsb.ru. That way every user is not aware about any node other his/her neghbors, and could not determine from which node material originated. That seems to be a comparably good solution, given that encryption is strong enough and protocol does not record any extra information.
Obama 2012: our incompetent asshole is slightly less of an incompetent asshole than the other incompetent asshole !
They'll get my FTP client from me when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Time to start hoarding cans of tuna fish and briefcase nukes.
--
--
The internet is about sharing information. Because of it's digital structure information can be transmitted and reproduced at amazing speeds and without any loss of the original information. This is a great thing for many reasons yet...
For a long time there have been businesses which made money delivering information to the public, the movie industry, book and periodical publishing houses, and even software companies. These businesses rely on the fact that with their resources they can deliver something to you which you could not get without them. For instance the movie industry could deliver a full length movie onto a big screen at your local theater. Before VCR's this was the only way to see a movie and the movie industry was happy. But consumers have always wanted more options and more control, so soon came the VCR. Now this obviously made the movie industry frightened, people could watch movies any time they wanted. The commoners gained some control; the movie industry lost some control and and with it there profits fell. Yet the movie industry found ways to cope, they release movies into the theaters first before making them availiable on VHS, they try to enhance the theater experience with digital sound and soon digital video. But sure enough consumers are on their tail again with DVD's and surround sound systems at home.
The movie industry has created a business model in which they control the access to information, yet now the internet offers a way around the industry. This is happening to a number of companies and they are frightened. They are losing their liveyhood.
Iowa State just implemented a proxy server within the last six months, so it wouldn't have been in place when he was there.
The readership of /. must have enough system and network administrators to balance this sort of rubbish. I'm all for the use the network to connect people and so on, but if I run my own network, you better believe I have the right to stop bandwidth hogs from ruining it for others.
In a word, I'm a NIMBY. The phrase comes from the late 80s when people cared about cleaning up pollution, but really they just didn't want sanitation services near their suburban homes, hence Not In My Back Yard. Well, I don't want these creeps in my Bandwidth Yard and I would personally filter and boot them in order to serve legitimate uses on the network.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
At my old college, the students paid for a majority of the internet access through manditory "Computer fees"
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
Again, not what I would write. But you might get there someday. Please look up steganography and consider the implications for surreptitious exchange of data no matter what is used as a protocol. Perhaps you might want to lecture us on it a bit, too.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Go ahead, outlaw napster, I'll just write a program that implements the highly sophisticated "Hyper-text Transfer Protocol" and use it to share my files. Then I'll write a bloatware client that can even be used to *search* for the files I'm looking, even *based on content*!!! Oh my god!
Clearly, Napster is nothing new. it's just a specialized web server/client.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
The article, if you actually read it, is about technologies that are currently being developed, designed to allow those who pay for connectivity to control what that connectivity is used for.
I don't think anyone here can say that they don't feel that a company that pays thousands of dollars a month for a network connection has the right to control how it is used. Or a school. Or a shared business office.
It would be different if this article was saying that major ISPs (like Earthlink) were going to be using these technologies to stop their customer bases from using these "undesirable" tools, but the article didn't say anything of the sort.
End of the internet? I think not.
Say, I wonder if those tools can be configured block my access to slashdot anytime something this inflamatory was posted. Problem is, nowadays, that would mean that I would never be able to access slashdot.
In a few years, we'll have to reverse-engineer and hack our access device to stop it from uploading browsing data to our provider (or even better, send fake data). People will have all their request identified by "digital signature", wich will help advertiser target their ad by cross-referencing demographic database. If you have any traffic remotely objectable, sending it over encrypted channel (disguised as streaming media, to be less suspect) will be mandatory unless you want your transmission to trigger automated sniffer (Echelon anybody ???). Router with built-in URL detection will throttle traffic to/from your carrier competitor, balkanizing the Web in the process. Backbone provider will coerce small ISP in submission with unfair routing practice, and we will be back with telecomm being controlled by an oligopole of big business. The list could go on and on.
...
I don't want to sound to pessimistic, but it's where we are going
:wq
It doesn't say anything about "security" companies trying to "end" file-sharing on the Internet. I don't know what the hell that description was based on. The article was simply about bandwidth management and a few applications that tend to abuse this bandwidth. Sounds legitimate to me, particularly in the case of the PacketShaper product. Or would you argue the tyrants who blocked network Doom when Doom first came out were trying "end file-sharing"?
Who came up with this description?! Didn't anyone at Andover actually READ this article?
StickBoy
--- "The problem is not that the world is full of fools, it's that lightning isn't being distributed correctly." -- Mar
Posting from work,
Josh Hinman
Make no bones about this, it's war. The controller types want one thing and one thing only: absolute dominion, as slow or fast as they can grasp it. It's a power game, and the simple fact is that dominion will not co-exist with thought. A fact that they know well.
:-)
This is not a conspiracy, it's the only possible outcome when these people give up on their own mind and lean on "what people say". Their only trusted means of perception is the words in our mouths. They don't want truth from us, they want their whim to define truth. The voice they fear, because it destroys them, is the free mind that sees the Emperor naked, and says so unafraid. The internet is too free; they hear the echo of that voice.
This will get bloodier before it's over. They probably will try to push through all sorts of internet controlling laws - which will promptly be routed around. They'll lose, but they won't lose gracefully.
Watch and enjoy; if nothing else, at least it will be pleasantly epic
Imagine waiting for each packet to be run by the Supreme Court for a decision on whether or not they're obscene.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Once again, I (along with a few others) are forced to wonder if we are the only people reading the articles referenced on Slashdot. Frankly, it looks like the blub posted here was based on the subject of the article on SecurityFocus, which was fairly off the mark to begin with... The post on /. refers to security _companies_, and makes it sound as if there were tiger teams out there devoting themselves to eliminating file sharing. ...yet I look at the posts below and see hundreds of angry articles written by people who CLEARLY didn't read the article, but are commenting freely upon it, based on this erroneous assessment. For crying out loud people, it's not like it's going to make you go blind to stop looking at pretty pictures and read an actual 3k of text every once in awhile. ..certain people at Slashdot would do to take a little more care to not post inflammatory one-off summaries of things they're linking to as well. The article, for those who STILL haven't read it, details news of two QoS/policy enforcement devices that have just hit the market. One is essentially a firewall with traffic shaping capabilities, and the other is a monitoring/enforcement box, similar to a dozen other products that I know of. GRrr....
If free, then, sure, you do have the right and I back you 100%.
However, if you are charging me for access, then it is me who determines what kind of traffic I want to transmit/receive. Of course, if I start using far more than my share of the bandwidth, then there is a problem that needs to be worked out.
if we can eradicate disease, then let's get rid of disease centers. if we can abolish the need for record companies, then....
i mean, i'm sure that the census bureau and the irs have some wonderful people that work for them, i just don't think that justifies their emplyers loathsome existence.
or Direct Connect, or Imesh, or Audio Galaxy.... really, there is no limit or squelching it, information wants to be free.
matguy
matguy(.com)
a lot of places pay for bandwidth by number of bytes, so when their bill skyrockets, then they care.
matguy
matguy(.com)
Some places don't need massive flow of traffic, but need high speed small times out of the day, so it doesnt' make sense to pay for a full bandwidth of a T3 full time, so they pay in tiers, they pay for the physical T3 (or whatever) and then pay for the bandwidth they use. It makes a lot of sense for a lot of businesses, belive me, I've been there. If trees made bandwidth with no human intervention, I might agree with the oxygen analogy.
matguy
matguy(.com)
This article is about QOS, not banning Napster...
All in all, it addresses the fears mentioned in the above ask slashdot article, and addresses the problems of filesharing apps eating up bandwidth.
Remove the DON'T-SPAM-ME. part to email me.
This is pure scaremongering and a complete waste of Slashdots bandwidth.
Was the world a little short on real stories to publish today?
Macka
> Now students could not chat (ate to much bandwith)
Chat uses too much bandwidth? People have been chatting before 300b/s modems, haven't they?
I bet Bob Metcalfe wrote the headline.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Whoever is "editing" this thing needs to post an update, a retraction(?) or a correction, followed closely by actually reading the article to which it is linked.
Slashdot's rep in the world seems to zing back and forth between cutting-edge and crank. This is definitely push things towards the crank end. Clean up your act!! You are too valuable to be self-marginalizing.
heh, just like cyberfucknutnanny is SUPPOSED to stop kids from seeing porn. LOL
:)
That is exactaly what I was thinking of
Finkployd
hmmmm. You might be right there.
Either way, I still believe file sharing tools will stay many steps ahead of anti-piracy tools.
finkployd
I got a totally different impression from reading that section - it sounded like the author was saying that he specifically wrote his program to not return Napster names/gnutella IPs, so that the program will remain an anti-piracy tool (presumably as opposed to being used for piracy).
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
(config-if)#rate-limit input access-group 101 8000 8000 8000 conform-action transmit exceed-action drop
I do this to ftp (not so harsh, I allow a higher throughput and burst) to keep rougue sessions from getting out of control. I can't afford the speciality boxes, and I'm kind of leery of yet another box to look after. I'm sure they're cool, though.
The tricks swb mentioned, like domainjacking, makes it tough for the (l)users to break your network, and gives the appearance of complying with corporate legal contracts. But the open nature of the internet still allows determined intelligent users to continue using the internet. Domainjacking is easily defeated by users who either stuff their own hosts file with the address of napster, or run yet another DNS server which ignores the 'jacked one, or tunnel around the firewall block.
I wouldn't even pretend to want to try content-manage dataflow on a semi-public network like a University (OK, I would for the challenge, but I'd be a BOFH and break a lot of legit traffic). We make some of this work by refusing DNS queries to the outside world except by our servers, which makes domainjacking hard to avoid. Knowing all the possible host->ip translations that napster is using is probably impossible without grepping the binaries for hostnames and hoping that napster doesn't change 'em that often.
I guess if you had a real hard-on you could set up a tunnel to another machine and change your IP settings to use the tunnel far end's DNS, but we block ssh, GRE and PPTP as well. I suppose you could use the web to look up names (if you knew them) and use hosts locally, but all of these methods, even if they work, are well beyond the skill level of the lusers here, and even if it wasn't we're a lean enough organization that everyone *should* have enough work to do that by the time they got done beating me at the job I get paid to do they'd get canned for screwing off..
Eventually the firewall people will come out with "signatures" for datastreams much like they do for virii; you won't block TCP port 6699, you'll block streamtype "napster".
The reasons are entirely logical; we don't want to piss off the people who have veto power over our ability to license their intellectual property. You may feel secure thumbing your nose at RIAA, BMI and ASCAP -- you don't require their acquiesence to run your business, do you?
Since RIAA isn't on a tear to ban tape recorders (anymore), and no one is going to copy a book with a pen, we're not terribly concerned about those. They are pissed at napster -- rightly or wrongly, it doesn't matter -- and we don't want to get caught in that pissing match lest we damage our own business.
Is that clear enough? Sure, we've had several people use your pedantic logic, and some still work here even after I sat down and explained what was going on to their supervisors.
And then there's DePaul, where they keep getting new T1's until the saturation disappears. It's not bandwidth that's the problem here. It's the routing. For whatever reason, DePaul's class B gets dropped from various routing tables around the net from time to time. And it sucks. Hard.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
True, this has been going on for a long time, before Napster even. There have been battles about what is allowed on the internet and what isn't. The truth is the courts do a fairly good job, but yes, they are human and make mistakes. I think they will make some big mistakes that it will take many of us to join and fight against, but it will be fine. It will be impossible to stop mass distribution of anything on the internet. __They can not ban everything.__ They will learn that somethings they will just have to stop fighting and find better ways of protecting what they need to keep from being undistributable. Just like CD burners. They were very contriversial at the begining but not they are accepted. I see this happening with the internet.
We, as internet users, need to let congress know that we don't want to be banned from doing stuff on the internet. Have congress tell people "well, you made something that could be put on the internet and distributed, that is your fault, you should have been smarter. True, that isn't totally fair to someone trying to protect their company, but you also can't say "You can't use Napster to trade mp3's, but you can use Netscape."
I really believe the constitution is going to be challanged with the internet. As US citizens, or for other nations, let congress know what you want. That is what they are there for.
--Brandon
If someone knows of the story a few weeks ago about Napster, it talked about how RIAA considers napster a direct attempt to damage the record industry. They mentioned that they know about gnutella, httpd, nfs, etc. They are going after Napster because it is an Index that can speed up huge mass distribution. Gnutella uses peer-to-peer, and not a main index. RIAA has said that gnutella isn't a threat yet, but if web, nfs, and gnutella become wide-spread, THEY WILL seek the courts to shut down NFS, HTTP, and gnutella projects.
I personally would like to see them try to shut down NFS and http. There is no way they can do this. That is something that they can not say that "It does more damage than good" Courts will simple have to tell them, "We know it's hurting your industry, but we can not shut them down because they do far more good than bad. You (RIAA) will have to find a better way of protecting your media."
As for gnutella, honestly, they have a good reason to shut it down. People are breaking the law. However, before they will get a court ruling, chances are a new and more powerful way of getting mp3's will be created. They probably see Napster as something that will stay for a long time, and more importantly, it's easy to use (I've never used it, just seen it) It's a huge threat to the recording industry and Sadly, I think it's good they get it shut down, but in the end, they may loose still.
Personally, I don't see where the issue is. The article doesn't talk about stopping file transfer. In fact, the whole first half of it is about PacketShaper which allows administrators to control bandwidth usage without blocking content. As an administrator myself, I understand how frustrating it is to see my T1 saturated by RealAudio streams and not being able to do much to get "legitimate" traffic through.
As for the second half of the article, it also doesn't talk about stopping file sharing. It talks about ways to stop piracy. While I am all for open source, there are plenty of people who aren't, and until IP laws change, we need to respect the wishes of those who publish without an open license. Therefore, stopping piracy should be respected. I do think that Media Enforcer goes too far, though, by denying access to the application entirely. Where is the happy medium? How do we protect IP without blocking "legitimate" use of software like Napster? The fact remains that Napster-like tools are used to trade legally as well as illegally.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
The users of the college/university/corporate network know that their access is designed for educational/business purposes.
There's no reason for them to complain about PacketShaper. It's simply doing what they should be doing: prioritizing network use.
I wouldn't worry about someone banning FTP or basic services. A lot of powerful companies would object to that. My biggest worry is that they will push for some way to log ALL transactions easily, completely destroying any semblance of privacy on the net. Yes, I know the net isn't truly "private," but do we have to make it EASY for people to track us?
- Free tabletop fantasy gaming! Grey Lotus
Right now, the answer most people give is to invest in more bandwidth. So, you supplement your existing connection with another one just like it. Problem is, an underutilized (and thus, usable) T1 is, well, underutilized. Upon seeing this newfound wealth of fat-pipedness, you push more through it, the network saturates, and you invest in more bandwidth [rinse, repeat]. This cycle is fine, until one reaches the point that additional bandwidth is not affordable, or is simply unavailable (the entire population of the world does not reside in San Jose). So, the present situation is that eventually most organizations will run out of bandwidth and not be able to aquire more. They're left with three options: Live with saturated, almost unusable links, start murdering TCP connections that appear of a shady or gluttonous nature, or accept that the line is saturated and take appropriate measures to make it at least feel speedy (which is quite enough for most instances).
There's no reason why a saturated T1 needs to be unusable. Folks run rc5des and seti@home, 24/7 with no percieved sluggishness from their system, yet these programs occupy every spare clock cycle they can grab. If the same ideology as nice(1) were applied to a network connection, nobody would have anything to worry about in terms of bandwidth.
Suppose you've got a network - it doesn't matter how fast it is. You've got people using it - it doesn't matter how many. They're doing one of four things with it, and it doesn't matter how much of any of them that they do.
These four things can be surmised as follows, in order of decreasing priority:
Nothing. This is what most computers do, most of the time, and the same applies to bandwidth usage. Nothing gets the best priority, because it's the least expensive.
Telnet and other protocols/things which require low latency, but not a lot of bandwidth. HTTP GETs would perhaps fall into this category, for instance.
Games and streaming media which require low latency and a fair amount of bandwidth. Quake, Realaudio, et all. It'd be nice from the PHB standpoint to say that Halflife and Art Bell are not important, but they're a decisive part of what the Internet /is/ for a large percentage of the wired community, and they're (for the most part) simply unusable without two scoops of bandwidth and a low-latency connection.
HTTP/FTP/NNTP/Napster/GnuTella/other bandwidth-mongers. Some may argue that HTTP needs to be of relatively high priority, but that's just not the case when there's legitimate companies delivering files of tens of megabytes in size using the protocol. Or, suppose HTTP is given higher priority than FTP; FTP will slowly be displaced by HTTP to an even greater extent than it already has, and so any such change will be self-defeating. Further, all of these should be of lower priority than streaming media, because you can still *accomplish* web browsing on an overladden link, which is not the case with Realaudio.
It could be argued that there should be a fifth layer of stuff, for Napster, Gnutella, et all, but I'm not sure if that's the case. If Napster packets were dropped to the lowest priority, people would just use FTP (or HTTP) to steal songs instead, and the prioritization would be once again self-defeating. Already, GNUtella gateways exist which will deliver files from the network, directly to your web browser via standard HTTP.
I want bandwidth management for myself. I've got a slow connection at home (2x28.8 modems hung from a FreeBSD box doing multilink PPP), and every fucking file I download hoses everything else that I want to do. If I could just prioritize incoming packets, I'd be more-or-less happy with my slice of bandwidth. I don't care how long a download takes, I care how long it makes my connection useless for telnet, streamed media, Quake and IRC. Folks say IPv6 will fix this, but others seem to be in no hurry to implement it on any scale (and without scale, it's worthless).
Are there any IPv4 packet prioritization programs which work well enough on incoming data that a saturated modem connection will be usable for things other than 8,000-millisecond pings?
Kid-proof tablet..
While it is possible for ISPs to block packets (such as Napster or Gnutella packets) based on their content, that could break some of the ISP's legal protections. Most of them enjoy common carrier status - meaning they're not responsible for the content of data transmitted through their equipment - much the same way that phone companies aren't responsible when customers make drug deals over the phone. If ISPs or backbone providers start blocking packets based on content, they step into a legal minefield as they become responsible for all of the content passed through their systems - as they are exercising editorial control over that content.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
*Fawking DSL!!!*
Karnal
Yeah, I meant the "Slashdot takes kickbacks" as a parody of Cliff's comment on the main story. I have nothing to back it up with, but the point was really that he didn't have anything to back up his comment with either (sorry Cliff ;-P). -d
Short version:
"Please, let's go back into hiding before we actually have to confront our fuckwitted government."
Looking at the span of history, I see the present as the first time free people have ever privately possessed the technology to *stay* free. I don't plan to walk away from that for any reason, lest my children call me a coward and a hypocrite.
MJP
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
I get the last word: Misspelling, dude.
MJP
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
3 Mbps is perfectly adequate for 3600 users if those 3600 users are doing what a typical student would need to do for their schoolwork. It only starts becoming inadequate if those students start doing stuff that has nothing to do with education, like downloading lots of music files, or pron.
You are forgetting one important fact: a large part of those 3600 users are students who live on campus. So in addition to doing schoolwork, these students sleep, party, watch television, eat meals, and heaven forbid, play on the net.
However, these paying students are usually the first to get restrictions on net use, often in lieu of putting restrictions on faculty and staff (you know, the ones that get paid to be there).
Well, the folks down here at Drake place blame on the same shoulders. It's not hard to see why given those graphs on netview. I heard some vicious rumors running around about ICN maybe getting some lines through *gasp* a different provider than PSINet. Doesn't it just seem logical that a large provider like ICN should have multiple service lines?
As far as ISU's connection, they also have some service coming in that's not ICN, for instance, Inet2. *That's* bandwith.
Drake has a very similar situation, 2 T1 lines for a few thousand folks. Not only are our lines fairly saturated, but out provider's lines can also get pretty darn soaked. And no, our lines weren't limited before the whole Napster thing. You could tell when the Journalism folks were sucking down their massive RealAudio feeds, but the only real peak time was over the noonhour. So, 2 T1 lines can service that demand, so shelling out the $ (something that's in quite a rarity around here) isn't going to happen.
Hey, I noticed that some of them are blocking RealVideo, etc... as well as Napster/Gnutella. That is much more disturbing. Those are vital for information sharing and broadcasting, such as online radio shows (Geeks in space!! :)
Which leads me to wonder if they blocked the Microsoft media player as well.... I doubt they did.
Let's review how the net works - you pay for a connection to an ISP, which uses the money you pay to pay for their connection to an upstream provider, who connects to the backbone. Your data passes over networks owned by private companies, who have every right to decide what sort of information they want to carry. If you don't like the service, take your business elsewhere. An uncensored net connection is not a right.
I'm not a "corporate tool". This is just how I see things.
Well, I know one of the first things I do when I pop up a server is drop all the remote FTP and telnet, that's for darn sure.
So, by doing that, I'm denying file sharing. Is this bad? Maybe. But first, if a user wants this, they have to come up with a reason. Then, maybe we set them up with a special server or something.
On the other hand, if someone here was using up 10 percent of the bandwidth to share files, and there wasn't a good reason for it (e.g. they want MP3 files), why not shut them down.
The other extreme is an OS or standard setup that makes it impossible to ever share files. That's just plain evil. They should have their boxen hacked to small teeny bits, IMHO.
Will in Seattle
For subscribers, they also have a very good article briefly explaining distributed storage systems like Gnutella, and why they're so important. This is unlike the Security Focus article, where you get the impression that the writer didn't quite get what he was writing about.
I absolutely agree!
Nobody is talking about banning anything. What this looks like to me is a product aimed primarily at universities and other fairly large networks to prioritise bandwidth usage.
Being able to do that is a very useful and powerful tool, and yes like other powerful tools (including the internet for example) it is open to abuse. That doesn't mean its bad.
It's already common practice on many routers in some establishments.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
heh, just like cyberfucknutnanny is SUPPOSED to stop kids from seeing porn. LOL
I noticed your sarcasm
Colleges havent promoted thought and freedom in a long time now.
agreed
how in the world would any companies manage to actually stop file sharing? i mean, suing napster and running them out of businees and thus forcing their server to go down is one thing, but the is no legal action anyone could take to stop other protocols. and even so, how would they do it? the major backbones would all have to have restrictions over what ports/protocols could be used. given how even script kiddies seem to ger around things like napster bans and whatnot, it seems like companies would have to invest more manpower (and thus money) in keeping people from xfering files than it would be worth... even if they are the companies being hurt by piracy. This story looks like so much typical slashdot FUD. oh no, your rights are being taken away. big brother is watching everything you do. yeah, right. as if i'm important enough. c'mon, this is ridiculous.
I know the answer!
Microsoft.net!
All we have to do is turn control over every known protocol to Microsoft, and then life will be peaceful, easy, and decent (at best) for all.
VAXman wrote in his Talkback - er, um, I mean post:
They do not understand the issues they are discussing, but they know when they put up articles about hot topics, that it will line their pockets even further from all of the click throughs.
So, what you are saying is, we are witnessing the birth of another ZDNet?
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
the failure of various software packages to effectively classify network flows based on content (for the purpose of QoS) shows how difficult it is to do something like this. Simple pattern matching ain't gonna do the job, and more complex heuristics would still be error prone, and less efficient. How do you identify a Napster packet from any other, which simply contains two 16-bit shorts with a command and length, and a payload? Search for two sets of 16-bit shorts at the start of a packet which are within a given range? What happens if I happen to be transferring a binary file that looks like that? Do I get blocked? In other words, this ain't an easy job.
Yes! It seems I recently read about some fabulous new technology that is able to detect "excess fleshtones" (and thus, supposedly, pr0n) by examining a binary stream. This could never work! But that doesn't stop CorporationMan{tm} from pitching it to a clueless public.
On the other hand, wouldn't it be funny if Word 2002 documents turned out to look in binary exactly like a damp, sweaty orgy?
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
People predict the end of the internet all the time.
So far, it's been a lot of... well, not worth
paying much attention to.
IMO, if the internet dies, it'll be because some slimeball company replaces it with something proprietary (that doesn't gateway), or because somebody decides it'd be a really neato marketing campaign to have a big chunk of the internet called something other than "the internet" in order to drive up sales.
Consider the "internet2" project, intended to give people experience with higher bandwidth than the internet. It's still basically the internet, just by another name.
Not true. Those 24-25 users would have to be attempting to use as much badnwidth as possible. It's not like the dialup case, where users don't share each other's bandwidth.
I once worked for a company with something like 600 employees with net access and a single T1. I often got download speeds over 1Mbps.
The cake is a pie
I was wondering, everyone is so eager to prove that Napster isn't simply a means of pirateing music, so why hasn't anyone taken a bunch of political speeches, presidential debates, etc... that are available on tape and put them into .mp3 format. Then you could propgate them throughout napster etc... Then someone would be using napster for an educational purpose. You could even justify it to your college admins, 'I have this poli-sci test next week and I need to find the bush-clinton debate from 1992, I HAVE to be able to use napster!' Really that's not a half bad idea... I wonder how many I can find... and what's the best way to encode a tape without really screwing the quality...?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Those places need to fire their provider and find one a bit less brain-dead and greedy. As the prosperity and well-being of us all is increasingly dependent on information flow, paying by the byte for information is like paying by the breath for oxygen.
Are you sure about that? If the network is the only way to get to a certain location then its private ownership seems analagous to a toll road or bridge. The owner of such might charge a fee but generally they cannot discriminate at will against who uses the road.
The internet is more likely to change peoples ideas about sharing, instead of the other way around. The Internet is already too big, with too much money and too many people banking on its success, to be subject to things like "banning FTP" or any such nonsense. The internet is alive, and it will not be contained. If the internet causes us to face abandoning our previous notions of what can and can't be shared, then so be it.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Like they will stop me from sharing files on MY PRIVATE network. ha
Well the article clearly meantioned stopping file transfers ON PRIVATE NETWORKS. So they care, dumbass. And the other poster is right too; thats what the internet is, a bunch of private networks linked together.
--Mike--
kudos! this is the funniest thing i've seen all day! laughed so hard i almost puked!
(of course, i just woke up about an hour ago....)
pax
"If there's RTFM, there should be RTFA: Read the F* Article."
:-(
Yup - the article clearly describes a program designed to allow one to _deny service_ to others by spoofing reset packets. There was nothing in the article to indicate that this would not be set wild.
D.o.S. by _breaking_ your TCP/IP sessions. Only "evil" gnutella sessions, of course.
Hmm, my browsing success lately indicates that live field testing has been going on
(And this in comparison to my normal best-of-class 9K baud _average_ goodput)
-- Butlerian Jihad NOW!
who said I'm an ISP? maybe I'm a college providing bandwidth to students. I don't see what the big problem here is.
For Crying Out Loud. Had anyone at /. actually read the Article? It's not about banning EITHER Napster nor Gnutella. It's about allocating a network's priorities where it should be. A College/University's responsibility is to Educate The Students, not to give free bandwidth to MP3 traders! Fascist admins aside, I tend to agree with the intent of this software. Having a University's bandwidth go to pieces because of Terabytes of MP3's being sucked down a T-1 is *not* supposed to happen.
/. is below the level of yellow journalism, it smacks of *trolling*.
They even have the right to block port numbers greater than 1000, as was done at one point at the University of Rhode Island, because chats and muds were not considered "Educational". Whether you agree with that or not, it's still the way things are run at Universities because it's thier JOB.
The same can be said for private industrial network hookups to the Net. You're supposed to be working, not surfing for pr0n.
They're not even talking about banning *any* peer-to-peer file sharing. They're trying to give the OWNERS of the PRIVATE NETWORKS control over their bandwidth!
This sorry excuse for a headline at
Read the article. A product mentioned in it seems like a good idea - instead of blocking certain things, it just gives them a lower priority. PacketShaper seems to act like a smart filter: instead of banning Napster, it allows admins to simply limit the amount of bandwidth given to it. This seems to be the wave of the future.
Of course, for colleges with bandwidth problems, the only real solution is to get more. As time goes by, files keep getting larger, and people keep getting less patient. If they have bandwidth problems now, how about 5 years from now? By then, a sizable portion of their students will have had broadband connections at home.
--Jeff
What happens if I happen to be transferring a binary file that looks like that? Do I get blocked?
More than likely, they (referring to those doing the agressive filtering) don't really give a royal crap what they kill as long as the Napster / Gnutella packates aren't getting through. Much the same as most censorware filters things like birth control and any content dealing with homosexuality.
--Eil.
I can't rememberit the last Ask Slashdot post which was about something worthwhile.
Then what are you doing here? Why are you reading this? Why do you waste your energy and others' bandwidth if you don't like the content? Why must you troll with such newbieness?
Imminent Death of the Net Predicted is about S/N ratio, not people arbitrarily blocking programs they don't like. But I think we're crying wolf about that...
Why shouldn't data be posted anonymously. It's easy for you to say that everybody should own up to what they say, but what if it could get you killed or in more trouble than is justifyable by your actions?
Most governments are not perfect in regards to the treatment of their citizens. Even mostly benevolent societies like those found in the US and Europe have been known to trample the rights of individuals on a whim or at the behest of powerful entities.
Anonymity allows for a certain measure of protective freedom to say what you think without having to worry about being crucified for it (assuming you're appropriately cautious in your anonymity).
While most of us do not need this anonymity right now (possibly ever), do not discount it's importance to the repressed.
Anonymity will certainly be used by assholes and jerks worldwide. The "responsibility avoidance" you mentioned does apply. However, there is no reason to assume that just because the majority of such traffic is inane, that it does not have legit uses.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Gnutella is better than napster for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that it will share any kind of file, not just MP3's, and you can configure the port it uses, so it is hard to block with packet filters. Also there is no central server so there's no chokepoint of control like there is for Napster.
It is a public protocol and implementations of it are available on most platforms in common use (Java, *nix, MacOS, BeOS, Windows). Source code is provided for some versions.
The homepage for Gnutella is http://gnutella.wego.com. The download page that lists all the available versions is here.
I find that gtk_gnutella works well on Linux. It is a work in progress so it doesn't yet implement sharing but it does search for an download files well. It is under the GNU General Public License and its homepage is http://gtk-gnutella.sourceforge.net/
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
"...network security companies working to stop file sharing over the Internet and private networks."
Please... This line is pure sensationalism
While network security companies may work to stop file sharing on public networks, the very roots of the Internet is based in the idea of file sharing, and of idea sharing. It would be almost impossible to re-architect this.
Think about it..What is a web page? It is a text file with some markup language inserted.
I believe we will see a big push towards the ability to trace online interaction, however. Accountability, and not active content blocking, will be the wave of the future.
That having been said, I am a full supporter of anonymous browsing (and posting).
-jerdenn
I feel like I read a different article. Nothing new here. The universities are overwhelmed with napster eating up bandwidth. They are looking into priortizing the apps. The first company in the article states emphatically that it is NOT interested in content. I don't see anything wrong or incorrect in this. My work site doesn't like napster or read audio streaming either. It eats bandwidth. We can listen to CD's on our computers with no problem.
people will trade MP3s after napster. The eradication of a novel medium is a mistake and should be fought at every turn.
perhaps creating a microve relay internet on the unregulated(if there are any, I know nothing about wireless protocol and airwave regulation) spectrums, with no controlled choke points.
$var = <STDIN>
$var =~ s/\\$//;
this is slashchomp
Why are you all getting your panties in a twist over this? It's nothing especially new nor it is about blocking off things. IF i want to stop my users from using napster or any other "file sharing" i can do that using current firewall/router technology.
First off that university really needs faster connections. I have a 1.5 mbps ADSL at home and i can normally have it going full once every few days. So the real problem is cheapo university with cheapo IT department.
Second of all traffic shaping has been known and done from the world go on the internet. I can do that right now. And sometimes wish i do with my sister using up bandwidth. So it's nothing to cry foul about.
Read up man.
While I am against censorship, if I am responsible for running a network with limited resources I think it's perfectly appropriate to block applications and content that degrade performance. If I'm a company or university or whatever paying for this network so that it can provide access for certain purposes, such as access to corporate applications and files, then any threat to that functionality needs to be dealt with. Simply saying "I want my MP3" is not good enough reason to oppose bandwith management. I don't think these devices should be implemented at an ISP level, though, as that would be like the phone company blocking all personal calls, but within a corporate or university network it's perfectly appropriate. The network is in place for the company, not the schlepp in the cube sucking down porn and music.
Well, okay. Your first post sounded like you were trying to speak for the whole net, that's all.
--
--
Wait a minute, this sounds like rock and/or roll. - Rev. Lovejoy
Oh, crap. It's no such thing. The variety of potential protocols is infinite, so this to decry some people's response to a particular kind of data transfer as "the end of the free internet" is just so much doomsaying hogwash.
Colleges who once promoted *thought* and *freedom* are now going to regulate what you can do over the internet.
In your dreams. Americans always think that they own the net. They don't. Whatever a college or even a court in America may think about something, it has absolutely 0% bearing on what I, an internet user in London, will ever do in the future.
--
--
Wait a minute, this sounds like rock and/or roll. - Rev. Lovejoy
(1) his post was redundant. it said NOTHING. At All.
/. (which, btw, is dwindling by the seconds).
(2) The whole Anonymous Cowards scheme should be banned instead. If people have something to say... LOG IN OR SHUT THE FUCK UP. It's that simple.
It'd probably help somewhat on the maturity level here on
Voting Moo Anyway!
muhaha i did steal head server of Internet. If push "power" button the hole net will be shutdown. i hate all you Quake Playas!! !! !! uu!! And If i push reset button the whole internet going to DIE
Voting Moo Anyway!
What about the FTP sites?!? That's used for warez! kill it! KILL IT!
:)
Okay, i'm better now.
Voting Moo Anyway!
Moo?
Voting Moo Anyway!
Hey, it'd be worth a try.
If people had to log in, maybe they'd think twice before even thinking about responding to anything here... I've refrained from posting stuff here more than once by just sitting back and thinking "is it really necessary? will I contribute anything useful by responding?", and most of the times the answer has been "no".
Of course, then there are the AC-route, which enables people to get their rocks off quickly, without anybody knowing them. Pity, really.
Voting Moo Anyway!
Fine. s/redundant/useless/
Now find the Useless choice on the moderation menu. Oh, wait... you never log in, so you haven't SEEN those. So solly.
Voting Moo Anyway!
Two comments:
(1) Suppressing illegally copied music is hardly impinging on the freedom of the internet. It is such a stretch from banning pirating music over Napster to banning trading ideas on a web page, I'm surprised the poster even tried to make the connection.
(2) About bandwidth considerations: obviously, anyone with bandwidth has to manage it. Whether it requires a little (keep it up, go free for all), or a lot (rate shaping on traffic analysis) is a matter of scarcity.
Count on slashdot to spin any story on Napster into something as preposterously significant as "the death of the internet".
Yes, this is the end of the internet. You should sell the slashdot domain name while it's still worth something.
... who does not understand the purpose and the power of these systems (networks, protocols, software, et al) is compromised by either narrowmindedness or naivety. This is a weakness that can not hold up in political forums. I submit we have nothing to fear.
You can laugh without eating a sandwhich, but you can do both if bring one.
While we're at it, we'll go ahead and ban email ('cause sometimes EVIL stuff gets transmitted through email, right?), mailing lists (Alan Cox can just start taking phone calls... there aren't many messages on the kernel mailing list, are there?), cell phones (They can get email now. see above comment re: email.), cable modems and DSL (maybe if it takes a LONG time, people won't want all this EVIL information and data, right?).
Actually, let's just ban computers altogether. It's probably all their fault that all this EVIL information is accessible... just like how guns kill people.
It's not about people! Just remember that... it's all about the machines behind it. Remember T2!!!
I'll be back [/arnold voice]
-M
Sure, I have a thankless job. That's okay. I have a lot of (non
Since when has napster been evil? It may not be 100% right, but it isn't evil. It helped to spread a file format that everybody and there dog now uses
-TriviaMan
-- TriviaMan "I offered my honor She honored my offer So all night long, I was on her and off her."
You're right, in fact the packet shaper program sounds like a good idea. I was just in a hurry to get the first post(stupid #2 post) that I just skimmed the article.
-TriviaMan
-- TriviaMan "I offered my honor She honored my offer So all night long, I was on her and off her."
Quite recently a swedish newspaper published a short article about how a group of software pirates had been caught, and the paper also mentioned that they had been using a special program developed just to transfer files, and this dangerous program was called FTP!
I bet a whole lot of readers thought that something as dreadful as FTP should be outlawed...
Mikael Jacobson
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Might as well ban all file exchange mediums while there at it, i.e. Floppys,CD-R's......
Consider TimeWarmer/AOL is about to be running the show on the largest cable internet service in the country. TimeWarmer's interest in protecting media from being pirated could be reduced to installing these bandwidth limiting/service blocking boxes to and from napster on their public network.
IANAL nor do I even want to be, so I'm sure there is all sorts of legal issues around this, but who would know anyways? Hmm, shit, Bob can't connect to napster anymore, must be down!
Just like a gun, it's down to the ethics of the person holding the device. Do I protect a resource (such as bandwidth for colleges) or do I protect my commercial interests at the sake of violating the privacy of my customers (timewarmer)?
That depends upon exactly what you mean by regulation. It's already illegal to traffic in MP3s of commercial artists. In that sense, it's already regulated. But illegal MP3s will, at best, be regulated in the same sense that drugs are regulated. Sure it's illegal, and people get burned every day at all levels for breaking drug laws. But just how hard is it to pick up a vial of crack or a couple of doobies (do they still call them that?) if you really want it?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
I would rather be made aware that I am being denied access to certain content (with appropriate reasoning), than be subjected to hidden censorship. IMHO, this is the real threat posed by content filtering.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
This is greatly disturbing... it gets right back to an organization spearheading a (join us, or we're gonna screw you) ultimatum to the rest of the net! I mean we all know how many lost sales Napster is supposed causing. Wooo... the evil corporation?!
kicking some CAD is a good thing
Don't you guys understand? The Napster (ab)users are drowning out the ability of the rest of the people to share ideas with the world. Whatever you feel about copyright, hogging all the bandwidth -- whether by Napster, FTP, or whatever -- is to say the least rude, and entirely against the spirit of the internet. Everyone in the world is on a budget... Even if it does not cost you anything, bandwidth is not free, and using it without discretion hurts everybody else on the network. I was shocked at the poster who suggested that a university should "suck it up and get more bandwidth". Napster users should suck it up and buy their own bandwidth! Now, I don't mind paying for a little more bandwidth than I use, and in fact I love the idea of a system lacking quotas where people behave simply out of respect for fellow users, and when a person really feels they need to make that 2gig download the system trusts their judgment... But when it starts to saturate lines 16 hours out of the day when before it was 0, the leeching has to stop. Napster users are abusing the generosity of their service providers and hurting everyone else in the process. It's certainly unfortunate -- it would be nice to be able to trust them -- but the fact of the matter is, at some point they have to be cut off. If they want to trade these enourmous amounts of information, let them do it on tape backups or CDR. It's not a copyright issue. Bandwidth hogs destroy everyone else's ability to communicate. No one should find this acceptable.
All I can think of on this is Dana Carvey's 'Cranky Old Man' skits. I can actually hear him say "Bahhh!, we didn't have any of this funny 'World wide web' stuff when I was a kid, all we had was tin cans strung together with barbed wire to keep the cows in. And if you tryed to move one of the cans the farmer would come out and blow your leg off with a shotgun!! And we LIKED IT!!!" Same basic consept.
Bad User. No biscuit!
It effectively works out that a T1 is roughly equivalent to 24 dial up phone lines. 64Kbps per channel, 24 channels. In other words, if you have more than 24-25 users on at once, you are getting worse performance than a dial up. Several hundred people on a single T-1 is going to kill it, no way around it. There are methods to minimize the impact, but you are still limited to 1.544 Mbps.
Yes, you could download at that speed with that many users. For one thing, they are not all going to be actively downloading or browsing at one time. As for the 24-25 users, of course they all would need to be actively doing something (downloading or whatnot) at the same time. That does not mean that my frame of reference is incorrect. You can easily have multiple computers run off a dial-up connection as well. The point is that the T-1 is roughly equivalent to 24-25 users all downloading at once on dial ups. That has not changed. And, yes unless measures are in place, each users computer will automatically try to use maximum bandwidth available.
I, personally, have lost all faith in Slashdot. Like so many sites now, it has sold out and reverted to producing mindless drivel for the sake of content. I just don't have the time anymore to waste on articles which are given fear-mongering headlines just to generate hits.
Anyone looking for a REAL news site might consider GeekPress (fairly technical) or NewsTrolls. (more socially oriented, but still relevant) These sites focus more on providing useful news with a objective point of view, and less on filling up space.
You keep reading the crap, they'll keep spewing it out.
Why pay for sex when you can buy the cow and get it for free?
Laws to enforce open communications help, if nothing else they give you a hammer to use when the authorities attempt to obstruct and censor; this may be somewhat effective against other governments through public pressure.
But when it is the government itself that puts the controls in place, usually for "national security", "stopping crime", "enforcing common morality", or "fighting heresy", then the law will be on the side of the blockers.
The companies that own/run the backbone tend to be multinationals. This makes them a little less interersted in local government regs that makes the companies' operations more complicated. But it's not easy to hook directly to them to cut around local routing that may be more annoying to end users; the backbone sells access as tens or hundereds of MB/second. And those big companies are likely to increasing become more tied to media companies, perhaps finding that "revenue lost because of Napster" is important to them
IMHO I think that there needs to be ways to get around the existing `Net. Freenet, encryption in general, real echash, alternative networks for neighborhood level distribution (helps fight traffic analysis), alternative distribution methods that pay the creators of arts better and people who actually support such alternative methods and buy stuff. The user who's sig is "I bought the CD after hearing the MP3" is on the right track. If you can show that the alternatives are fitting into the economy, ie generating jobs and tax revenues, then the government may listed to your argument that your are just replace the buggy whip way of doing business and not stomp on you.
There is signs of a protracted battle in the future, if it happens then "Music should be free and you can't quote my messages in a book" isn't going to cut it.
If you can't code, then document. If you can't do that then learn and spread the ideas.
I don't neccesarily believe them... just saying what they said in that slashdot interview (i'd paste the link but i am too lazy)
What private networks does my information go over?
By definition, if my information as a public citizen is going over a connection, unless I set it up through a VPN or such, it is a public connection. Through a public network. Big companies with routers and such do not let the net traffic go in to their company networks. That is what VPNs and firewalls are for: to seperate a private intranet from the internet. My traffic is on completely public lines, and it doesn't matter who owns them.
The owner can choose what to put on the network, but if my packets don't go through, TCP/IP will pick another path to get there.
So my ISP can easily censor my traffic, but then I would switch ISPs. And how can I "take my business elsewhere" when I don't decide where my packets go?
Learn how the network works before flaming off, corporate tool.
But even while they are private, censorship would be in the form of packets not getting through... and another route would be used. There are always ways through censorship like that...
let's just hope it never come to that
sorry for calling you a tool
"The Internet finds censorship and routes around it."
But can it? Groups like L0PHT say that they can take down the entire internet... and now companies are trying to stop certain kinds of traffic.
I think that this would be accomplished by scanning a selected number of ports for nap protocol traffic at a router.
Solution?
Make the routers free. Who owns them right now?
Telcos, in much of the world. Possibly government.
There needs to be ruling passed from government that traffic can not be censored at a non-authoritarian point: in other words, a company i am not affiliated with can not stop my traffic.
Becuase why should anyone but the government, and I don't want them doing it either, but if they already don't censor traffic... no company has the right to.
I don't believe a thing like this could ever happen on the internet. If backbone providers charge by the megabyte, gigabyte, etc. there will be no way to financially compensate the amount of dollar loss the prevention of large file (i.e., mp3, iso, what have you) transfer. And, as a server owner with a direct T3, This will NEVER happen on my server. The internet WILL find a way. It always happens. Corprations can not stop it, governments can not stop it, only the people can. But the people never will. Corprations may try, as well as governments, but they haven't even slowed the internet. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN! IF YOU EVER SEE A SUPPORTER OF INTERNET CONTROL, TELL THEM TO GO F*CK THEMSELVES AND GO PIRATE SOMETHING WORTH MOR THAN $500! And This is my insane rant of the day. Direct your hate, love, and death threats to jbelusko@pdx.edu
Let's see, that's about 600bps per student. Even if only a moderate fraction are on line, a single T1 for that kind of population is ludicrous. No wonder they wail about Napster.
The bandwidth argument is going to go away someday for all sorts of things. Napster happens to be an early example of why everything on the Internet will eventually be a server; the "family sitting around passively consuming TV" model of use just does not apply, intrinsically.
Software and devices that claim to be a solution for this sort of "abuse" are a wonderful way to suck money from vulnerable IT budgets. Gee, it's not working so well six months after the check's cleared due to revs in Napster? Well, looks like you need to upgrade to Version 2.0. What? There's a whole new problem that the product you spent your wad on last year just doesn't address at all? You're in luck, because our new product suite will get you back on track. And of course our Professional Services team can provide you with the expertise you need to tune it up for your own particular problems.
Cha ching.
Oh, crap. It's no such thing. The variety of potential protocols is infinite, so this to decry some people's response to a particular kind of data transfer as "the end of the free internet" is just so much doomsaying hogwash
Let me clarify: I am talking about the "free spirit" of the internet being demolished by court case after court case and regulation after regulation *in America* today. In the old days, many things just appeared on the internet freeely (as in "information sharing") even if the information wasn't particularly "socially acceptable" to a wider audience. I agree that there has to be some regulation of the internet, however, you throw out the good with the bad. On top of that, introduce commercialism and patents and you've got a much more restrictive net then before.
Again, this particular article is just showing that when some (good) things (file sharing) get extremely popular in a (anti-RIAA) bad way (mp3's) then they want to restrict and regulate all file sharing.
restriction and regulation = = not free
Americans always think that they own the net. They don't. Whatever a college or even a court in America may think about something, it has absolutely 0% bearing on what I, an internet user in London, will ever do in the future.
You may be right, however, I'm commenting on the court case, which is in *America*, thus my comments fit into the in the context of American colleges (which are regulating bandwidth, not taking it away).
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
This isn't the end of the internet. It's just the end of the **free** Internet. Colleges who once promoted *thought* and *freedom* are now going to regulate what you can do over the internet.
This isn't the 60's
I guess it all goes into the pile: Some people abused bandwidth and now we have to punish everyone else.
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
If we banned porno why would we go on-line? Besides, that would be censorchip. And pop-up adds, though we hate them, pay for some sites to be online.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
I think Napster should bow out to preserve the net as we know it
I really like Napster and I think it's really a good idea
But at the cost of our rights online?
I don't think so
Admittedly, if we didn't have the bloodsucking lawyers and politicians of the world
We wouldn't be having this discussion
But the world is as it is and all we can do for it is pray
Pray and support the Open Source movement!
-KillerPenguin
tcd004
This 'Ask Slashdot' is really a psych test, to see how many people read the article before posting...
Damn you, you clever bastards!
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
I know you are trying to stimulate discussion, but image the hoopla this would cause if it were on the front page of a newspaper.
Think, now, seriously. How could any piece of hardware, any judges, juries, or courts decision kill the internet? Think of the thousands and thousands of companies that depend on it simply to survive. Think of the billions that would be lost. And think, seriously, would anyone in their right mind (even a laywer, a politician, or a greed-driven rock band) purposely destroy the internet?
There's just too much to loose, for everyone.
Comments? I'm sure there are some. :)
--
Daniel Zeaiter
daniel@academytiles.com.au
http://www.academytiles.com.au
ICQ: 16889511
My suggestion, mr. or ms. iritant: re-read message and grok the part about how the internet remains free even if your local net chuy (aka sysadmin) starts stepping on the product.
cat
"The Internet is made of cats."
The two parties that make up the government of the US are very much in partnership with the ruling party, you are right; but strictly speaking, they are separate parties, kinda like the Crips and the Bludz. They are essentially in the same business, but they are not the same entity (at least last I heard People and Folk hadn't merged, that could've changed, I suppose).
I do think there is a ruling "party" that governs the two party system, though. They are the ones who choose the 'candidates', determine the 'winners', design the 'spin', and write the 'histories'. fwiw.
"The Internet is made of cats."
Sounds like they mean a TCP RST. That works on everything. Except say, a hacked Linux kernel. (Hint Hint. :)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Also, what if the person trying to kill a protocol wasn't someone with network authority. We already have Media Enforcer to rat out Napster users, what if some disgruntled musician writes a Gnutella killer?
Also, people get a lot of sympathy when they themselves are kicked off a network. If you can't run Napster people might not care. If you do and are banned from your ISP, people often see it in a different light.
Finally, each person kicked off a service is one less customer and less revenue. Can't do that too much and survive in today's ultracompetitive ISP market.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Interesting DoS attack on that system. I'd have my machine and that of a friend just send "banned" packets between each other at full speed 24/7. Enough people do that and they'll need a huge server in order to keep up with the load. Or they don't keep up and some banned packets get through.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
1. That Packeteer bandwidth allocation product mentioned in the article sounds a lot like the Linux kernel traffic shaping and QoS system. 2. It could be a good thing, limiting bandwidth is much better than banning stuff. Even the most die-hard Napster fans among you must seriously consider, should Napster be getting 90% of the bandwidth?! Hell no! If it was held down to 10% of the total bandwidth all but the most unreasonable people must say that's fair.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
This "sharing software" (i.e. napster, gnutella, etc) is quickly turning into an arms race. The folks at HavenCo have one possible solution. But Freenet (slashdot interview) Sounds like a good way to protect the freedom of data. Once we come up with a way to anonomously post data to the net, and have it live there independent of the server/ISP and other "real world" associations. It can be free.
Obviously, big media industry is already scared of this, given the attacks on napster and gnutella; however, if true data freedom is achieved it will be much more than big companies who will be cheesed off, it will be big COUNTRIES, who have a lot more to lose.
Imagine people blowing the whistle on governemnt coverups. It could open the world to new forms of esionage and the like, but itstead of stealing secrets to hide them, people will post the anonomously and freely to the world.
Imagine today's political campaigns being "mud slinging pissing contests" magnified about a thousand times. If data lives freely people will abuse the system, especially those who are most threaten by it. (Govern't, Big Industry, etc)
Imagine the FUD appearing. This will spurn a whole new filtering x-referencing technology to screen potential lies and unsubstanciated rumors.
And another round will take off.
I'm not sure where I really stand on this isssue. I believe information, should be free. I don't believe in National Security, when it cost so much in terms of unaccounted black budgets, and the overhead associated with those secrets, but then again, I don't think nukes in every country is a good idea either.
In this context spreading a few pirated MP3's seems like a rather small issue. I think we need to look at the big picture and think how to best protect our freedoms.
-MS2k
Add that the need to do this for lotsa and lotsa packets from users all over the world, and, well? Plus I don't see how this is technologically feasible. With tunneling, and things like non-symmetric encryption, how /are/ they going to know what I'm sending?
If the government makes Napster-like programs (especially Gnutilla-like, since they are non-corporate and decentralized) illegal or restricted, then the Internet is not over, but instead stunted, restricted from evolving from a WAN to a LAN. It will not evolve from a "luxury" item (like a Palm, cell phone, etc.) into a "near necessity" item, like a car, TV, or computer.
It will be as sad day in history if this happens. We will read about it in history books and wonder what happened to America and freedom.
If Slashdot is where the spelling-challenged go when they die, I'm in heaven.
Ok when I read this headline I almost died laughing. The internet isnt going any where! We are fools to even think that this is possible. Now back in the 60's/70's phone phreaking was a big thing.... Did they get rid of the telephone? Um ... NO. They wont do that here either... FTP might get a little more restrictive, but thats just Uncle Sam being controling ... and in my eyes fuck Uncle Sam. I will just find another way just like every one else. This is no issue to get upset about just relax nothing is going any where... yet everything we have now might become more restrictive. Enjoy your knowelge 2001: A Space Odyssey-----an excerpt----- "Dave, I know that you and Frank were planning on disconnecting me, and that is something I just cannot allow to happen." Maveric
Maveric
Wow. Here we are, just got done mapping the human genome, and people still manage to cling to extreme alarmist attitudes. Hey /users/chickenlittle, the sun doesn't seem to have burnt out just yet, at least from my point of view. I think you people need to realize just how deeply you've entrenched yourselves in paranoia. Try a refreshing mug of reality instead of beer next time you declare the end of the internet.
Then again, paranoia sells news, and garners publicity for slashdot, and I believe a wise man once said, there's no such thing as bad publicity.
I know of a large company that banned napster on their network and literally saw a performance improvement of 60x on their internal network and ~10x on their external network. Bandwidth control, especially in a corporate environment is an extremely vital management task.
Now imagine how fast some of the internet would be if we banned pop-up ads and pornography!!
Isn't that called Facism?
A friend of mine stayed in China for a year, and noted that cnn.com as well as a whole host of other news sites throughout the world were entirely blocked from the general populace.
To summarize, I think this falls under the "slippery slope" heading.
That must be some awesome AI running MediaEnforcer if it can tell whether or not a song is being distributed illegaly.
yes, the net is dying, maybe not literally, but yes, the concept of the internet was to connect, and it is gradually being taken away. I'm at a boarding summer school right now and their network has blocked everything except email and websites. no IRC, no ICQ, no AIM, no Gnutella, no hotline, no nothing. It's really pissing me off, well, anyways, if any of you have any suggestions for how i can hack around the restrictions please tell me. I'm so isolated.
-"Hey, Baby. It's not a rash, it's textured love."
Your point (b) is irrelevant since most enterprises don't need a multigigabit router to get to the Internet. A Cisco can do very close to line rate up to about OC3 in either a 7500 or 7200. Also see Turbo ACLs, which cost O(c), and are available on GSRs, 7500s and 7200s.
Were I an enterprise administrator I would be a little concerned about GNUtella, since silly people can download binaries with all sorts of fun stuff. Even though they may find other ways to infect their disks, as an enterprise administrator I might be inclined to at least make it inconvenient for them to do so.
Napster is a horse of a different color.
You're always gambling on idiots from the Hill, no matter what you do. I say get your agenda out there, take safety in numbers, and always make them think there are women and children with you so you can escape without being bombed :)
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
OH NO! They're going to actually limit my bandwidth based on *HOW MUCH I SHOULD BE USING*! Fuck. Call Cletus and tell him to bring the AK's, it's gonna be a long standoff. Seriously, though- I'm beginning to doubt that anyone actually reads the articles that this supposed weblog brings to our attention. All any SD editor has to do is couch an article in "THE GOVERNMENT IS COMING TO KICK OUR ASS AND THEY ARE ALL OUT OF GUM" rhetoric, and suddenly everyone comes out of the woodwork screaming. Excuse me, but I actually thought the stuff in that article was good for the networks involved. It confronts the technical issue that is beyond the copyright- for what purpose are these students sucking up 1000 times the bandwidth they really should be? The admins mentioned don't care about the copyright issue. They just want a network that can be used for something other than Napster. If people leave trash in the park and piss all over the monuments whenever you let them in, you start looking a little more carefully at the entrance after a while. And if people can't keep their Napster use in check for a network that isn't specifically for that, then they shouldn't be using it! I have no compunction about using such entertainment-based services from my home, but I eschew them from the T1 in my warehouse nowadays, simply because there are other real people on that network that have real work to do, and I'm not going to shit on them because I want some Autechre remix that I have at home already. I love MP3s, and I have a warm, lovely place in my heart for piracy, but geez! Have some perspective, it's free!
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
this is a redundant comment by now, but why the hell is slashdot posting an article with the title 'the end of the internet' when all it is about is schools using traffic shaping? traffic shaping and other QoS mechanisms have been around for YEARS. not only is the article just about traffic shaping, but it is about doing it in the LAN and in the uplink to the WAN, it is not like it is about ISPs doing major traffic shaping to throttle napster across the backbones or naything. i wish that /. articles themselves could be moderated down so i didn't have to go read the link it was pointing to and find out it has nothing to do with the slashdot summary of the thing.
if I owned a t1 and I allowed other people to use it, I should have the right to determine what kinds of traffic I will deliver to my users
If said users are paying you for the right to use the T1, you don't have the right to determine what kind of traffic get's through. I suppose you do have the right to limit bandwidth, if a user is abusing bandwidth to the point of hurting other's access.
Welcome to the new millenium, where information packets and bandwidth are more important than real estate and precious metals.
I wonder if something like this could be used to nullify the /. affect... worth thinking about < EG >
The chains are broken
Loki is free
Ragnarok is at hand...
There is nothing new here! Sure, only a select subset of the geek population has a clue what a network is, for that matter what the Internet is. So what? How many of you understand what a fuel atomizer is or, for that matter, what an external auditory meatus is? You probably wouldn't want to live without either of them, I promise. What's the point? Get off your 'elite techno-nerd' high! This doesn't diminish your point, but the tone is a bit pompous. People are so illiterate when it comes to the Internet and what an open society' is, that they are automatically fearful of it. We like to think we are living in an enlightened and open age, but we are far from it. Serious network and open-x enthusiasts do not have a voice that can be heard on a mass scale like network television. So what you have is the beginnings of a technological revolution and no means of getting the word to the masses. There is no organization dedicated to bringing the message to the people. You can't depend on the media - there isn't a celebrity trial or political lewdness involved. The whole matter is pretty cerebral, which Americans hate. More attention is devoted to business interests on the Internet than there is education on what the Internet's potential is. The Internet has been a boom - not for information or ideas, but porno and consumer goods. It's a big strip mall! So what about open file sharing? Businesses hate it for obvious reasons. It is the curse of an open society: everybody loves it until it cuts into his or her profits - then it's 'evil.' Today it is Napster and tomorrow it will just be someone else. Too late to do anything about it - the Internet is practically a public utility (as it should be). Rest assured that government will try to secure business interests, but it won't be very effective. Laws will be passed and hackers will get thrown in jail - so what? Nothing new there either! We love to stomp on little people.
i really doubt the maturity level of slashdot will ever decline far enough for you to balance it from immaturity towards maturity.
Don't be mean or my friend Oog will smash your head
A single T1 between ALL of the 20ish campuses? I really don't think so. Now a single T1 up at University Park yeah, I can see that (and it's absurd). When I was there 2 years ago (with 40,000 other people) they had a good amount of OC-3 lines in, plus an OC-3 connect to vBNS. The net was never slow for me ^^
You want regular swiss cheese?
With all that fat and cholestorol?
No,no! No,no! Not In MY Deli!
I'm giving you (brand name)
because I care how YOU and YOU eat!
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
If a university or business doesn't want people using up bandwidth for Napster, it is their right.
Everything in this post is false.
I have been trading mp3s and other files using irc for at least five years. If they take out napster and other file sharing programs, we'll still be.. and no one cares. IRC is faster, more realiable, and you can actually RESUME files. Just because a few happy windows kiddies can no longer trade files won't put a dent in the net.
Perhaps he can even make a Beowulf cluster of them.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
It should be clear to anyone that this is, in fact, the end of the internet. To me, it's sort of sad: now I have to get a real life, figure out how to work on a carbeurator, and adjust to occasionally being in the sun.
Well, it was inevitable that something like this "shutting down illegal trading of copyrighted material" would signify the end of the internet. I mean, there were dozens of things that I've been reading about that had the same effect. Privacy violations. Corporate-owned backbones. Pop-up ads.
R.I.P., internet. I will miss thee. Maybe I should get a cat.
In conclusion, these headlines fucking suck and you should all go to hell.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
If a service provider's network produces a large volume of SPAM, no other providers will be willing to peer with them. As a result, they will effectively be removed from the Internet at-large.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
I read the entire article and couldn't find one mention of banning file sharing! Did anyone at slashdot even read the article? What they do discuss is monitoring programs that allocate bandwidth, hardly the same thing.
sig this
Again, my point.
Other persons here are taking issue with the statement "2 T1's for 3600 students" - The concensus here is that is not enough bandwidth.
The complaint is not about the internal network, but the WAN link not being robust enough.
My question again: What goes on in college today that determines the need for relative student bandwidth? Are there that many projects, papers, etc being completed and researched outside of the campus by so many students it requires a large amount of bandwidth?
Thanks
"so the 100mbit line my college put in from the school to its observatory to do remote astronomy really isn't necessary, even though a single video/control feed saturates the line?"
That does not sound like WAN traffic to the Internet at large, but rather an internal network issue - sounds like it doesn't even go out to the Internet.
"Doh! Of course, I suppose our connections to cerfNet and to Caltech probably aren't necessary, either, I mean, how many students do research projects for JPL and NASA involving -=enormous=- data transfers?"
I have no idea, I don't know where you go to school, what people study, etc. That kind of answers my question though, "What goes on in colleges today that requires so much bandwidth?" If students are having to spend so much time online (off campus), then maybe the campus should close?"
"Put in a firewall and then spend $5 million on a MS Exchange Server array..Especially since it will cost an additional $500,000/year to maintain, with periodical $2million upgrades every couple of years."
Ye gods! I wish I had that contract! So much money! I setup a multi-site, order and maitenance system on a set of 10 Sun 4500's, with a half dozen EMC's, running Sun OS 2.6 and Oracle and spent a fraction of that amount. Sounds like your schools Purchasing Department is getting fleeced.
"Try uploading the data from your protein research projects.."
"Try collaborating with other members of the human genome project (to use a keyword of the day"
Wow, alot of people do that at your school? Where do you go to school?
"try handling 5000 people downloading the Lord of the Rings trailer,"
"watching the Phantom Menace trailer over and over and over again"
You are a ringer. You must go to Geek U. Is this normal for most colleges?
"I have not been in college since 1994 .... there is not much time for gophering and ftping the 'Net]"
Rewind.
I have not been in college since 1994, but for all of my classes, even my CSE core classes, we never used the Internet; only the lab network - [it would have been neat, but if you have ever taken an EE course, you would know there is not much time for gophering and ftping the 'Net]. In other classes we attended lectures, read books, wrote on paper and studied in the library.
Have colleges changed that much that students do all of their work online, remotely, via a public network which precludes the need for large amounts of computing power and bandwidth for each student?
This is not sarcastic but completely serious, is there a REAl, daily need for fast Internet access in order to complete most, higher education majors? It seems that most of the responses to this thread deal with complaints about a lack of bandwidth at several major schools. What do you do with it?
Thanks
no one shut your precious BBS's down. who's stopping you from using your little utopian text-based neighborhoods? don't like most of the WWW? Then DON'T USE IT. good lord.
use ICQ and send some mp3s to your friends if your ISP starts regulating Napster or Gnutella traffic. regulating bandwidth is a hell of a lot better than shutting it off completely.
So what if network admins on a private network decide that Napster et. al. isn't the best way to utilize network resources? They have every right to control what goes over their network. The admins at my school had the guts to just block Napster instead of messing with prioritization. A few lusers started whining about first ammendment rights on our local flame newsgroup, but they were quickly flamed into submission. If it takes blocking Napster and the like to keep legitimate uses of an academic network going smoothly, then I'm all for it. As for getting more bandwidth, most decent admins at schools that aren't swimming in money are constantly trying to increase bandwidth. The problem is that there isn't always enough money at small schools for high speed connections between buildings and T3 lines to the outside world - even at a tech school we can't get all of these things at once (new fiber links went in two years ago, a T3 is always on the horizon). If we all had infinite bandwidth, Napster would be left to the lawyers (we need something to keep half the world's lawyers busy).
I think the subject line says it all. How stupid are you people? As long as the fascists rule by pretending to be democrats, this sort of thing will always happen. Note that these days, in many "civilized" countries, whoever runs the country doesn't matter. Nothing but a puppet for the industry associations and the monopolies. If this sort of thing continues, soon we will be treated as nothing but property of the businesses we work for.
It's time to rise up and fight. Unless you're stupid shits that don't care about being slaves to the system.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
If you read the article, the security company Packeteer wasn't about blocking access to Napster or Gnutella, it was about freeing up bandwidth because the two have an uncany ability to be pigs about it. This is unfair for the other users who also need that bandwidth to do work, research or whatever. The main complaint was that Napster and Gnutella were making the network unusable because they took up all the bandwidth. On the other hand Palisade Systems had made a product to block them out completely. Could this be the end of the net? No, I don't think so and it doesn't help to run around screaming that the sky is falling either. The companies that offer the most options are going to be the winners in this game. People are too vocal for the worst to happen. I'm for a device that keeps Napster or Gnutella from hogging all the bandwidth. its more fair to everyone. As far as a full cut off. Thats going to be up to the isp to do that and basicaly they'll just suffer when people won't sign up because they can't do what they want.
Ok, so your pr0n and mp3s are going to take longer to download - those aren't the Official Reasons the schools hooked up to the Net in the first place. An awful lot of people don't seem to realize they don't really have a "right" to internet connection through their Institute of Higher Learning - and would you rather have them ration bandwidth, or cut the wire and say, "Do without"?
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
What is wrong with that?????
All this free speech nonsense is well and good until they start ripping you off.
What will you do if I make an exact copy of Slashdot and put it under a confusingly similar name. How about slashdor.org, that is an easy to make typo? Then you would be on to your lawyers in no time.
MP3 ripping is against the law, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. It is as simple as that.
And NO, no-one is out to kill the internet, make TCP/IP illegal or ban FTP as they make far too much money out of it.
Stop panicking and get a clue!!!
Feh. Up until a few years ago, Penn State University, with approximately 70,000 students had one (1) T1 connection.
Your point is well taken. But what if TimeWarnerAOL buys some legislation allowing them to block some content (e.g., suspected pirate material) while not taking on common carrier status? I would not discount this possibility.
Unfortunately not. Most sites which the majority visit often are dynamically generated pages which are not cachable. For example, CNN returns a Last-Modified header of what appears to be the current time. Search engine results clearly can't be effectively cached, nor can Hotmail.
Yeah. Did you? It's about allocation *and* blocking:
"It [PacketShaper] analyzes traffic patterns and measures response times, enforces bandwidth allocation and implements service-level agreements and generates reports on application behavior."
"Another solution is PacketHound, developed by Palisade Systems Inc.. It's a software and hardware solution that allows administrators to block a number of bandwidth-eating applications, including Gnutella, RealAudio and RealVideo and Napster."
I don't want to, like, dis' you at all, but if you're going to criticise other people, make sure you're right.
Michael Tandy
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Yay. The truth.
It is unlikely that such control schemes will succeed in the near future. Maybe in china, but not here- there is already too much momentum in our favor.
What I mean is that unrestricted file sharing is already the norm. The current infrastructure isnt build around restricting the behaviour of the end-users. Its built around reliability and speed for the most part, not whether Joe Pirate is giving away the latest zero-day. Restrictions are pretty much taken care of by individual entities around the internet such as individuals or companies- they each monitor their own users and take care of their own security/access schemes.
Those who wish to restrict the end-user and the consumer are fighting an uphill battle. Most of the talent is playing for our team. We do this for fun. We arent in this for a short term gain or for some financial goal- we are in this because we enjoy it. We dont need any reason to go on except that we are having fun.
The corporations have been asleep the whole time this "problem" has been percolating right under their noses. It is only a matter of time before they realize that it is already over and that the revolution has already happened.
Wired News: RIAA: No Hyperlinking Allowed
It was meant as a joke, and for that I get -1?
Oh, well, there goes my faith in intelligent moderation. If I had posted it as an AC, that would be ok, but I LOGGED IN. Why would I have done that if I was trolling? Think before you auto-mod a post down just because it's the first.
Not like I'll come back, anyway. I've realized this is just as much a hotbed of illiterate dick-waving as any other site out there.
-subtraho
Ah, but, for this to really be a threat (which some folks are suggesting) there would have to be wide adoption of this (or similar) technologies. However, I suspect most ISPs would be a little leary when they find out that the blocking software prevents download of the latest version of Netscape/IE/your browser of choice, causing a zillion service calls by the customers, and resultant loss of business once the people find out the reason they can't download the latest version of their favorite browser. :)
No, not for the reasons cited by all those "but they're just shaping traffic" posts. Rather, if it takes off, it'll be that much more of a push towards encryption other real privacy- and security-enhancing techniques.
Heck, it's even easy to do now: use SSL on port 443, and nothing mentioned in that article could tell the difference between red-blooded consumerism and red-faced pr0n.
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Mabey the only way to share files will be to actually write out the code and mail it to someone.
linux=punk rock
Lastly, the deployment of these boxxen on networks could be challenged under the First Amendment by a particularly talented ACLU/EFF type law team.
the first amendment just prevents the government suppressing speech. any private company could put these boxs on "their" bits of the internet. publicly funded universities probably could not.
- I fail to see how this is any different from alt.binaries.* on Usenet. Plenty of companies and universities no longer carry them (or any newsgroups for that matter) for the exact same reason sites now wish to restrict bandwidth used by Napster: It uses up an inordinate amount of bandwidth at the expense of those who wish or need to do real work.
I don't agree that this is the same. As a sys admin in a University I would say the main reasons for providing alt.binaries.* newsgroups are to do with (i) storage space on the news server and (ii) not wanting to be see hosting pr0n newgroups. All that ends up happening is that the students point their news readers at external sites which do hosts these groups and read them from there. This will actually require more bandwith as articles will be downloaded every time a user reads them, rather than just once overnight when our newsfeed comes in."Is this the end of the telephone network?"
"Is this the end of atmospheric oxygen?"
"Is this the end of humanity as we know it?"
STUPID ARTICLE.
STUPID STORY.
STUPID THAT IT GOT WRITTEN UP HERE.
STUPID. STUPID STUPID STUPID.
DontBlow.com is an absolute good.
Seriously, though, this is old news. Firewalls have sorted and prioritized or trashed packets based on application for years. Back in '96 I remember hearing a Check Point presentation on "stateful inspection" and why it was so nice; and on virus checking (clearly an application level service) and so on.
Sounds like they added Napster and Gnutella to the filter list and issued a press release. Big frickin' deal.
Now if an ISP were to filter based on application, then that would be outrageous. But once you do that, you stop being a common carrier and open yourself up to all sorts of liability (think viruses). And you lose all of your customers, which can't be fun.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
How is the internet about sharing??? Where does anyone get that? And I would note here that sharing is a polite way of saying "steal some ones property and give it away to any sucker who wants it for free."
Oh get a life, QoS is not a dick measuring contest. Without QoS you won't ever have such things as reliable and jitter free Voice over IP or Video On Demand. Most people use a QoS service almost every day, telecomm backbones use ATM which has Quality of Service; if it didn't, especially long distance phonecalls suffer from jitter, lost connections and so on.
Once, it really wasn't much fun. Too much pointing and laughing for my taste.
The last time we did any measurements (informal at best), we determined that our newsfeed consumes almost an entire T1 when articles are streaming (which is most of the time). We don't even take a full feed either, just the Big 8 and alt.*. As the original article points out, there are still a lot of university sites out there using a single T1.
Furthermore, it's been my experience that Usenet users at a particular site generally generate less total network traffic than the upstream feeds themselves. This might be different in a university environment, but I have a hunch it isn't.
Napster users are abusing the generosity of their service providers and hurting everyone else in the process?!?!?!?!?!
It is the service providers job to make bandwidth available to those it serves. If an ISP wants to limit the bandwidth to a user or group of users, they have every right to do so. And you have every right to find an ISP that won't do this to you. I can imagine a system where users pay a premium for "unlimited bandwidth internet" and a connection limited to say, 500k/sec is much cheaper (just like modem dialup is cheaper then cable or DSL).
But nowhere in this does generousity play into this. It's Business.
What if im an isp trying to make some money and I decide that if XXX corp pays me a small fee monthly I will make connections going to ZZZ corp somewhat slower. This could be used as a very subtle marketing scheme. No content would be blocked but it would be made inconvienient to access some sites or use some software services. Of course ISPs would _probably_ need to include this kind of thing in the terms of service but no one reads those anyways. Linux is my friend...
Theres one problem with all this, and it's not with napster. It's with the musicians. so they loose , what, maybe 10, 15% of their million dollar profits? thats greed for you. But the internet is changing the world. Hundreds of new artists make their debut online, and it makes it much more easier, not to mention affordable, for small, little known bands to make a name for themselves using the intenet. And soon, i do not doubt, the entire music industry will be forced to change over to a internet based system, where music is cheeper, but more have access. Of course though so many people would be affected by this change. Gone would be the millions of dollars gained from way overpriced CD's, gone would be the mony collected from the selling of players for those CD's, gone would be the mega superstores that make a majority of their profits in CD's. and it is this change that is the reason for so many people fighting it. Yet i belive this change is enivitable. Napster may go down in flames for it, but sooner or later the change will come, and all of the music industies best efforts will fail to stop it.
Upeo
Funny, but I have the sense that no matter what anyone does to try and regulate the Internet, it'll all be just fuel to power the creative curiosities of those who enjoy breaking software. In other words, it'll be hacked. There isn't anything made nowadays and for a long time that won't be cracked open and laid out for all to peruse. Kinda negative, I know, but you gotta be realistic about these things.
The play was The Rivals, written by Sheridan in 1775.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
T1=1.544Mbit=~175kbytes/sec
175/5k per user = 35 simultaneous users at
http/email speed (not frp/streaming etc
35 users * 50% active= 70 users
Assuming a half normal rate = 140 users
Cut that by a third to get crappy service The lowest feasible connection is 1 T1 per 200 users. Assuming your a monopoly and can screw your students, er users, 1 T1 per thousand people, since you'll just say names V-Z can use the internet between 4 and 6am, etc.
Incidentally, 5 T1's cost more than 1 burstable T3 link.
email:addy good, domain bad. Use domain decryption "Pig-Latin" to resolve.
Like Amazon's "one click" (cookie) technology. This is why there are such concerns, you give millions of stupid people computers and then throw them on the biggest network this world has ever seen, there will be security concerns.
The day star is just Gods way of shining
a floodlight in your eyes.
The day star is just Gods way of shining
a floodlight in your eyes.
Dr4g0n_v2
Yo, the internet is a tool for communicating ideas, thoughts, culture, etc. between many people over the entire world. The internet is what makes this large world much smaller by making someone 10k miles away seem to be in your living room. To take away FTP (our means of communication) is the same as if they take away our ability to speak. The "MAN" and his system are just trying to control the general population and censorship is just the beginning
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
But these manufacturers of bogus net filters will probably get some fools to invest in them. Maybe that's what the publicity is for.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
several years ago i heard that either someone on the committee setting up ipv6, or someone petitioning it wanted to have a flag in ipv6 packets that would say whether the packet was obscene (or had obscene data).
wow.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I hate to slam the /. editors, but
"never attribute to malice what can be accounted for with stupidity"
(or something to that effect.)
yeah, I mangled it, but you get the gist...
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
The answer is for gnutella to communicate tunnelled over https. Because https is encrypted it will be impossible to tell whether a packet is from Gnutella, or from somebody shopping online. Or at least it will be more difficult.
Alternatively you could tunnel gnutella through ssh, which was designed for this sort of thing. But https might be more fun - can you imagine the headlines if 'ISP accidentally blocks e-commerce'?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
A file is no more than data stored on a computer. There is no way to totally block file transfers. it would undermine the very principle of free speech.
We need to keep an eye on this, though. I am positive it will not be the end of the Internet because of the huge negative feedback and resistance - but that's why we need to keep an eye on it: we *are* the Internet. Not those silly computers that are connected. No, us, who have been around here a while and share ideals and principles. It is our job to make sure we protect those interests.. and because we will, this will not be the end of the Internet.
I wouldn't allow it to be. Would you?
Iowa State didn't have a proxy, or, more accurately a caching server when I was there. I graduated in 1999. UNI, however, does have several of Cobalt's raq caching servers in place to cache, the ICN or Iowa Communication Network added caching servers this spring also. It's kind of a pain when you are authoring web pages on an off-campus server. Even with those caching servers in place, it's still slow.
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
The University of Northern Iowa, where I work, has only 5 T1 lines for it's 13,000 students. I think our net connection is slow as hell. The network admin guys blame the Iowa Communication Network, and their connection to PSINet. Iowa State University, where I got my degree, goes through the same connection, and it was never this slow.
Interested parties can see connection information here: http://netview.cc.iastate.edu/cgi- bin/selectline
As I am not really experienced in large network design, how many users per T1 should a person expect typically?
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
- sigh -
The article talks about packet-sniffers who basically delay packets based ont the nature of the protocol (say, like port number used, or maybe even what is within that packet - "Hmmm, looks like a Napster packet, so, I'm gonna put it on the back-burner for a little while...").
So, the next logical step with Gnutella is to use an innocuous protocol, say, like SMTP, where two Gnutella-NG server/clients transfer the warez using SMTP... The program could even break the big file in several manageable chunks, and re-assemble them. It could also "encrypt" the packets with a simple randomly-generated packet at the start of the transmission (sent by another method) to fool packet sniffers/delayers...
Imagination will route through the most stringent censorship methods...
--
Here's my mirror
You're comparing apples and oranges here. I know; let's play a game. I want you to pick out which one of the following doesn't belong, and explain why not:
The answer is the fourth one, because it's illegal to pirate music. Sending email and conducting ecommerce are perfectly legal (right now), as are downloading MP3s that the artist is specifically giving away.
Hey, I love free music as much as the next guy, but don't kid yourselves. The situation of pirated MP3s is similar to that of child pornography on the Internet; it's just milder and more widely accepted. People have been cracking down on net kiddie porn and has that killed the Internet? Hardly.
So no, this is yet another false prediction of the Imminent Death Of The Net (as another ./er posted).
--
Actually (and you would know this if you read it) the software they were focusing on is SUPPOSED to (I have my doubts) block certain packets on ANY port, based on content. (IE it claims to be able to identify a gnutella packet and kill it)
Finkployd
Besides, people will want to do video conferencing and other data intensive services. If the current crop of ISPs don't provide those services, others will. After all, we went from no commercial ISPs to a thriving Internet economy: widespread demand will be satisfied.
We don't employ geeks other than me and my department coworkers. Everyone else is your standard office drone, for whom the PC is a tool to do the job they're paid to do, not a toy.
And you must have missed the part in my original post where blocking access to napster and napster-like services we're trying to keep our company's relationship with the recording industry as favorable as possible; our business DEPENDS on the ability to license for exclusive use all kinds of intellectual property (film, video, music, photos, likenesses) as well as create our own.
Compromising our legal obligations and the requirements of our licensors is cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Intelligent use of proxy servers for most services (I am a biased in favor of proxying in general) could help alot. When 500 users click on cnn.com in the morning only 1 copy of the page will actually need to be fetched. The majority of users go to a few sites often (Hotmail/Yahoo, CNN, etc.) unlike admin types who will probably be sucking down ISO images and big source downloads. For basic web browsing, 2KB/sec per user or so should be ok, if slow.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
First, the intro given is misleading--the concerns are valid. This in NOT just about turning intRAnet filesharing down, it's about limiting high-bandwidth apps, like Napster and Gnutella.
Second, this is not a bad thing. The clients demanding these are primarily bandwidth-strapped small universities, companies, etc., who have the complete right and often responsibility to make sure that the bandwidth is not saturated by mp3 downloads, but rather more useful pursuits. Y'know, thesis and dissertation research. Not to say that there aren't theses that use napster for real and valid research, but these will not be the norm.
Now, this is a slippery slope and some ISPs will use it to slam their users. Users will move to less restrictive ISPs and the market will continue.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
And given that gnutella uses straight HTTP to do the actual file transfer, well, I'm sure the implications are obvious.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
But then that leads to the inevitable cat and mouse game where the gnutella people continuously reinvent the protocol and the blockers continuously add blocking hueristics. Until they start accidentally blocking other traffic that just gets caught up in the tangle of blocking criteria.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
It's not the end of my Internet.
If enough restrictions are placed on what can be done over a network, new networks without such restrictions will pop up, possibly using different protocols.
Fundamentally, Internet can happen with or without current protocols..
This disturbs me. Slashdot is all about community-responsible news reporting, but not just profits, but honesty, be it via the NYTimes, or Security Focus. Now I'm worried that Slashdot will start bribing my friends to hype news in their emails to me.
This is one reason that we need to go ahead, bite the bullet, and implement IPv6, so that we can get applications to use QoS more than they currently do. I mean, admin types don't like Napster/Gnuella/whatever when they are using 30%+ of their available bandwidth, but if you are running at low priority and are guaranteed not to be draining bandwidth from important applications, who would care?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The /. summary talks about "killing file-sharing" but the article is about bandwidth allocation. This are so different that either the /. link is wrong or the editors just got trolled big time.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
If you read the article, you discover that the single biggest reason why people are fighting this is net congestion. This all points back to Napster.
If you take your dog into the woods and it attacks the cute fury little rodents and eats the birds and chases the deer so that nobody else can see nature in all of its glory, you shouldn't be surprised when somebody tells you you can't take your dog into the woods anymore.
If you utilize Napster to download a huge hoard of music onto a machine you probably don't own, on a network you are basically borrowing, at a University where they have better things to do than stand idly buy why you use the available bandwidth of the school to download music you shouldn't have anyway, then you shouldn't be surprised when they put blocks on how much bandwidth you are allowed to use.
If you work for a company and behaved this way most companies would just fire your Lilly White B---.
Another example would be people who smoke cigarettes. You sit at a table smoking a cigarette and then you blow smoke into the face of the person sitting next to you who still might be eating. If he/she asks you to quit you whine "you're infinging on my right to smoke." This person should not be surpised when somebody finally says, "Fine, but I'll make it against the law for you to smoke where I eat. That'll solve my problem."
My point is: Behave responsibly and people around you won't have a problem. Behave irresponsibly and people around you will find a means of forcing responsible behaviour.
By the way, the Internet isn't about free speach, its about communication. If you are alway shouting then you should be surprised when somebody muzzles you.
Beware the wood elf!!!
This disturbs me. The Internet is all about sharing, but not just files, but ideas ...
... but now it's all about commerce which is generated by allowing ACCESS to files and ideas.
In the early days yes, the Internet was about sharing files, ideas, etc.
I have no opinion on the banning of file sharing (although I do have my opinion about Napster) but to assume that today's internet is the same internet of last year is just naive.
The internet is no longer about the free flow of ideas en masse, it is about the profitability of the product of content which is comprised of files, ideas, and other media. I don't see this as 'sharing', it is simply providing access at a fee (banner ads cost me bandwidth, screen real estate, and my eyeballs).
While many of us would like to go back to the days of old where only "geeks" knew how to maneuver around gopher, do we also want to go back to the days of 14.4 modems and T1 lines being the end-all be-all in bandwidth? I mean come on guys, someone has to pay for the OC-468 line across the Atlantic!
Imminent Death of the Net Predicted is about S/N ratio, not people arbitrarily blocking programs they don't like.
But the blocking being talked about isn't arbitrary. Aside from Media Enforcer, the products discussed are being used to attempt to ensure that there is enough signal (the protocols the people funding the bandwidth are expecting to be able to use) amidst the noise (additional protocols used by those who aren't footing the bill). This isn't any more ominous than news servers refusing to carry binaries groups, or postmasters fighting spam, because of the bandwidth consumed by those practices.
If this turns into ISPs blocking Napster, or backbones fighting Gnutella, then we have a major problem, but students and employees don't have unfettered rights to the bandwidth of their educational institutions or employers.
An old lawyer joke:
Q: What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 80?
A: Your honor.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
They would be relying on 1/3600th of the bandwidth only if all 3600 students were sending/receiving data continuously. In reality, not everyone is using the network all the time, and when they are, much of the traffic consists mostly of bursts, rather than sustained data transfers... So it's actually quite feasible for 3600 people to share 2 T1s, and much of the time the troughput is very good...
As mattdm pointed out in an early post, its "the imminent death of the internet" :-) slashtroll style.
:-)
All the article talks about is bandwidth shaping by products like Packeteer, who make a cool little box. I regularly put in packeteer boxes to shape bandwidth so legitimate customers get what they pay for, and the bandwidth hogs are throttled back to reasonable rates. Although the box can be configured as a firewall, it really shines in packet shaping. I can easily configure it to choke every flow from every user, then open up bigger pipes for legitimate applications. The whingey napster users still can DL their metallica, but it takes them longer than going out to buy the CD
The university mentioned in the article is doing just that, limiting napster without breaking it, which would have the students screaming at them for censorship.
The tricks swb mentioned, like domainjacking, makes it tough for the (l)users to break your network, and gives the appearance of complying with corporate legal contracts. But the open nature of the internet still allows determined intelligent users to continue using the internet. Domainjacking is easily defeated by users who either stuff their own hosts file with the address of napster, or run yet another DNS server which ignores the 'jacked one, or tunnel around the firewall block.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
well, 1800 on one T1 might be really slow, 3600 on 2 might be slow too but less so, but 36000 on twenty t1s is gonna be almost useable. This is because most users will be doing very bursty things, so even though they'll want quite a bit of peak capacity -- so that the page loads quickly -- they really don't want that much bandwidth on average during the day.
It would actually be interesting to see how much external bandwidth an average person uses during a working day. Does anyone have any info on this?
Of course, I'm excluding people like myself who like to run X from home, or run any sort of trafic analysis countermeasures (cryptonuts, mostly) or who routinely suck in the whole kernel instead of the diffs... So I guess that's pretty much everyone but my mom.
so users on your network are prevented from using napster to trade music. but napster in itself is nothing, and an MP3 is not by definition illegal. It may be legit to block napster at work, since napster is not necessary for work, especially if it takes up 95% of available bandwidth. But the reasons you cite are not very logical unless you also forbid employees to use cassette recorders and pens (they can copy an entire book using just a pen, some paper and a little time!)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I did put it a little black-and-white... but here in europe companies can't just disallow their music(all music) because some entirely legal thing isn't to their liking. Especially record-companies. If a radio-station pays their dues for music, they can play music, whether BUMA/STEMRA (dutch organisation for collecting cash for music) wants them to or not. And luckily it isn't so easy for european employers to fire their employees, but that doesn't have anything to do with this.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
>audio files, listening to streaming audio and
>downloading a video file, and websurfing, all at
>the same time.
>Yeah, that sounds what the typical user does...
Well, subtract the big honkin ISO download...
(but then who knows, I might change my mind about Mandrake and go go back to Red Hat. I only have CDs up to 6.1, and RH's @ 6.2 now, so...)
... and you *DO* get my typical computer useage; that's when I'm physically at the terminal, at least.
Now, that's obviouslly gonna change over time. Once my server is up, so will be the bandwidth useage, especially when I'm logged in via X remotely. But once I'm done building my MP3 library...
(I'm in the process of "converting" my entire CD collection (400+ discs) to MP3 format. Even with a (nearly) saturated connection, a 640Kbps connection and Napster/Gnutella is faster, easier, and more convinent than dragging the discs out and ripping them myself)
... that useage is gonna go down.
But you see my point... yes? I'm ONE user on 640Kb dedicated to MYSELF, and it becomes inadaquate with annoying regularity, even with typical useage. In fact, a number of my friends and co-workers have mentioned similar situations to my own.
>3 Mbps is perfectly adequate for 3600 users if
>those 3600 users are doing what a typical student
>would need to do for their schoolwork. It only
>starts becoming inadequate if those students
>start doing stuff that has nothing to do with
>education, like downloading lots of music files,
>or pron.
Which would be all well and good, if the schools were providing that bandwidth FREE of any additional cost. But at my school at least, we had to pay something called a "technology fee" which was supposed to PAY FOR our bandwidth. Oh, and that's not even mentioning that you have to PAY *EXTRA* to live in the "wired" dorm...
... And now, even living in San Francisco, home of some of the most ridiculously high rents you've ever seen, when you add up my rent, utilities, AND my DSL connection; I am, in fact, paying *LESS* per month than I was the year I lived in the dorm.
And in return for LESS money, I get MORE privacy, NO stupid rules, NO intrusive RAs and *MUCH* MORE bandwidth.
So, ultimately, especially given the money that colleges charge for it, 3Mbps *IS* absurdly insufficent for 3600 students.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Really! Please tell us. I know sure as HELL that I'd never want to work for, or even grace with a resume, such a putridly dictatorial, big-brother-esque orginisation as you've described in your last couple of posts.
>but all of these methods, even if they work, are
>well beyond the skill level of the lusers here,
>and even if it wasn't we're a lean enough
>organization that everyone *should* have enough
>work to do that by the time they got done beating
>me at the job I get paid to do they'd get canned
>for screwing off..
Two points on this one...
1)
When you put in 10-12 (or more) hours a day, as mant geeks are wont to do, I certianly don't think it's out of line to take the occasional break to check personal email, read slashdot, listen to some music, etc... My employer agrees; and we have pretty much free reign so long as we get our work done. Sad that employers like yours exist who are not so enlightened. Who was it again that you work for, so I can avoid ever sending a resume?
2)
Now this is the odd bit...
A) you expect that your geeks are smart enough to turn out quality code in a timely manner (despite what must be horrible morale, given your oppressive practices), yet you expect them to..
B) be "lusers" who are too dumb to know how to do IP tunneling, use anon proxies, forge IP headers, etc...
???
Who do you work for again. I hope I NEVER have to have ANY dealings with a company such as the one you've described.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Downloading a huge software package, a bunch of audio files, listening to streaming audio and downloading a video file, and websurfing, all at the same time.
Yeah, that sounds what the typical user does...
Hell, I rarely saturate the 384 kbps line I use, and I download quite a bit myself.
The trouble is that you are confusing your maximum use with your average use. I'd be willing to bet your average use is <50kbps.
When you add more people to the pipe, how adequate it is depends on what the average person does. If the average person only downloads large files 1% of the time, then 640 Kbps will only seem marginally slower with fifty people than with one. And in fact, a 1 Mbps line with fifty people may well seem faster than a 640 Kbps line, depending on what those users are doing.
3 Mbps is perfectly adequate for 3600 users if those 3600 users are doing what a typical student would need to do for their schoolwork. It only starts becoming inadequate if those students start doing stuff that has nothing to do with education, like downloading lots of music files, or pron.
Yes, I know that some of those students will need to download Linux distributions. However, the number of those students that need to will be low. The number of students out of 3600 trying to download a distribution at any one time will likely be on the order of 1 or 2. That's fine for a 3600 Mbps line, as long as 800 other students aren't trying to simulataneously download the latest Metallica album.
The cake is a pie
If your ISP starts killing your packets, change ISP's. I wouldn't think an ISP like that is going to stay in business very long anyway.
This sounds great now, but I worry about down the road. What happens when the RIAA gets some tech ignorant judge to rule that major ISP's have to use this kind of thing, in order to protect the recording industries intellectual property. It may sound far-fetched, but so does patenting hyper-links and being held liable for linking to a site with DeCSS, and those things happened.
Still, the internet is all about file sharing. Hell, a web-page is a file. And it seems that it wouldn't take to much to hack something up that would confuse the filtering software. But for the average user, getting around this might be more difficult. Thankfully, that scenario is all hypothetical now.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
This is the mispelling thread, right? Non sequitur, dude.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
No, it's not. I decide what flows over my connection. if you don't like it, go get a new provider. this isn't real complicated.
did you know that theres some kind of governor on your car that limits you from driving over a certain speed? my mom's volvo tops out at 125, if I remember correctly.
when I sell you software, I dont have to give you the source. I can, but I dont have to. and I can give you interface documentation or an API and documentation for that, but I dont have to.
when I sell you a steak, you dont get the entrails of the cow.
if I sell you bandwidth, I can set the terms of this sale to be ANYTHIGN I WANT. I dont want to serve you porn? fine. I want to limit the speed that your napster goes over the line? fine.
there are limitations put on things that you purchase, whether they are built in limitations or limitations imposed after the fact. deal with it. if you dont like the limitations, buy another fuckign product. welcome to real life.
if I owned a t1 and I allowed other people to use it, I should have the right to determine what kinds of traffic I will deliver to my users; I shuold also have the right to throttle their bandwidth or to delay their transmissions long enough to prevent congestion. and if they didn't like it, they could go somewhere else for their fuckign bandwidth.
I really dont understand why so many people here find it surprising that the real world works this way.
I come to slashdot to get informed without the alarmist attitude and the manufactured headlines.
:-P
"Could this be the end of the internet?" Bah.
How about, "Companies improving methods to limit bandwidth" or something.
Slashdot: save that headline for a relavant story, guys. You're sounding too much like the mass-media built-to-sell-more-copies drivel that abounds today. Write about stuff that might be interesting to geeks, and be accurate. That's all I want. I'll turn your pages and click your banners for that. Please don't try to play the creative-headline game. Or the tease-buzzword game.
yeah, yeah, moderate me down. But you know you feel the same way.
I thought this would make a nice song parody, but I didn't have time to make up tons of verses. So in true, slashdot spirit, I figure we could all come up with some
It's the end of the Internet as we know it!
9 o'clock surfing hour,
Doubleclick -- hide and cower,
hosts file, junkbust, cookiekill and hide!
Microsft and antitrust,
dot com's turn to rust,
Lars' Urlich really sucks,
look at our Dew-swilling, Pizza-eating, programmers' guts!
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Interestingly, most of the hot software found in such boolean searches as:
is on public webpages like freeyellow and geocities, and most of the sites are shut down before you get there. But for any shrink-wrap commercial software product you can name, it doesn't take more than an hour or two of searching to find a good download for it.
It happens that Microsoft has a full-time staff doing searches such as these with their own spider to find stashes of Windows 2000; I understand they find and shut down something like 100 sites a day. (Sorry, I tried to find a news report about this to link to and couldn't.)
Maybe Microsoft is able to minimize the impact of piracy this way, but I don't think they can completely eliminate it. Any normal software company simply doesn't have the resources to search out and elimate the warez like Microsoft tries to.
How could anyone hope to control something as popularly appealing and easy to obtain and use as music files?
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
I worked at a colelge that was worse off (a single T1 line for over 1000 active systems, both student & staff used the same line).
First I had a key & could let myself into the palce early (otherwise my boss might have had to get up 4 hours earlier than normal & come in at 5:30 am like me which had a snowballs chance in hell of happening). So I used to have a T1 to myself until students would arrive (& after I unlocked the doors for them) & man was that sweet... I used to do ~100 Mb downlaods & store them on zip at work before people would come in because they would take a couple minutes or so...
Now students could not chat (ate to much bandwith), play games (was considered to eat to much bandwith), & could not download any real files (they were not given zip drives). & the network staff was required to enforce these rules, so very little of it happened. Oh btw we also couldn't let students view porn (to many female staff complaints & upset parents), so none of that either.
On the other hand the staff refused to cooperate & would force the dean to allow them to do whatever they wanted as logn as they didn't damage the network (that we could prove). I watched a couple of teachers play Quake (none of our machiens had 3d graphics cards, so anything to much better was out), search for porn (god we did *.gif/*.jpg/*.mpg searches over network file storage every so often & teachers have some sick ass fetishes... yuck...), download huge files (saw a teacher dl all of a redhat install & copy it on to a CD from the staff CD-R), & chat with anyone (you don't want to even hear some of those stories) all at prime hours (bewteen 10 am & 2 pm when the most people are at the campus using the labs). Heck 120 virii infections happened that had nothing to do with stuff the students were doing, but still the dean refused to restrict them.
In the case of a network like ours was I can see very good reasons for using this software & in fact it would be a legal way to enforce these things on those damn staff members to.
Btw if I sound slightly hostile to the general staff it's because I am. They used to put us down as 'just students' when they couldn't do half of what we were doing & gave us no respect while we had to play nice. They didn't ever earn my respect as no one should be treated like we were in a professional enviroment (btw I worked their longer than some teachers who were normally the owrst offenders).
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
The content of the article might be interesting enough to have it posted on Slashdot, but I think the reaction here was a little more extreme than necessary. The RIAA and the MPAA are not scared of file sharing in general, they're scared of piracy of material that would otherwise be immensely profitable for them. So they will go after any tool which they think specifically aids such piracy, regardless of whether or not that is the intent of the tool. Does Napster qualify? Sure. DeCSS? Not really, but they think it does. FTP in general? No. The crucial difference is the word "specifically". MiniDiscs, to take another example, are superior in sound quality to MP3s, but noone's going after MiniDisc player manufacturers. Why? Because noone thinks it specifically aids piracy. Now. Do I think it's possible that at some future point organizations like the RIAA are going to go after anything which aids piracy in any fashion? Sure, it's possible. Do I think they'll succeed? Not a chance in hell. Napster has limited appeal. File transfer has much broader appeal, and so anyone who tries to take that away is going to find a much larger set of opponents than the RIAA is finding in its attempts to suppress tools like Napster.
This sounds like those DoS attacks where you can send a forged ICMP "host unreachable" packet to disconnect someone from, say, IRC. Last time I checked, though, this didn't work with the linux TCP/IP stack. Anybody know more about this?
This is an old controversy. I was the first to work seriously on Internet congestion and originated packer re-ordering in routers. There was a worry at the time, mostly from some BBN people, that being able to do this was in a sense, evil. Their concern was that as long as nobody could regulate traffic flows, charging for bandwidth wasn't possible. Cheaper bandwidth made most traffic shaping unnecessary, but now and then, when some new application causes a traffic spike, the issue comes back. Over the last 15 years, cheap bandwidth has always won. This will probably continue until everybody has enough for a few channels of streaming HDTV.
Still, Gnutilla is a bandwidth hog. It looks to me like its directory system is an O(N^2) traffic generator, because it uses a flooding algorithm. Somebody needs to fix that. Soon. Directory traffic should be minimal, and content traffic should mostly be local. Most of the traffic is probably on a small fraction of the content, and that can be handled very efficiently if done right. Gnutilla should be using less bandwidth than MP3.com.
You totally missed my point. People started ragging on BBS's because they didn't know what was going on in the news, but nobody in power really did much to impede on us using them, that's what I'm saying dude. They want to do that here. There's a lot of hype around the net, and everyone wants a piece of the action, and part of that mean that people with real power are going to take notice and try to shut us down. Chill man.
Eh...
Remember the BBS days? People understood what was happening in their system then. The whole system was about sharing. It wasn't as fast as the internet, but you were more likely to find what you wanted. This is an example of what is wrong with the internet. Too many idiots. Everybody who doesn't even know how to turn on a computer wants to be in control of it and tack cyber onto anything that they say to do so (i.e. "Become a cyberwhiz"). I think that if you want to talk about something, and control it, you should at least understand it enough to understand what you are saying and the full implications of it. I avoid being wrong by keeping my mouth shut when I don't know what I am talking about, perhaps some of these people who want to regulate the whole net should do the same (no offense to anyone in particular).
Eh...
One can always encapsulate a banned protocol in an allowed protocol. FTP could be encapsulated in SMTP if it came to that. Inefficiently, etc, yes, but possible. I have successfully run SLIP and PPP over telnet connections before. Also one can "hide" an MP3 in what appears to be C source code. There is almost always a way around restrictions. Ever wonder why B-level security systems (mandatory access control and multi-level security) are so complex? It is hard to stop people from sending information. And then there are covert channels and all sorts of hard to detect and hard to stop methods of sending info that someone wants to suppress.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
That's the whole point, isn't it? Why is it that these things always get the whole community all fired up and worried? We can fight it, we know this. Yes, it's a bad thing that we HAVE to fight it, but at least we CAN. Finkployd got it right: we have the best and brightest (if not the most, then at least the most dedicated) people on our side. Even IF the big shots decided to go with packet blocking, there will be ways around it. If not, we'll find ways around it. Nothing like this ever lasts. It's almost foolish of us to get worried over nothing.
--Forager.
student of animation and the fine arts
Lars would.
Regardless of who would care, its irritating that anyone would try to say that my data is less important than their's is, and thus should be sent to Japan before I get the packets. I would think that it is in everyone's best interest, in a technical sense, for all data to spend as little time in transit as possible, thus freeing bandwidth for more data.
That's vile, it starts with a monopoly trial,
Rights to free thought, and public files.
Eye of a mastermind, listen to his work burn.
World serves its own needs.
Dummy, don't you know what the web breeds?
Fear, fight, downright hype.
It's a conspiracy undercutting all that the world holds dear -
No fear. We'll stop 'em yet.
See how far they get.
"You vitriolic, unpatriotic, think-you-know-it-all kids!"
It's the end of the internet as we know it...
It's the end of the internet as we know it...
It's the end of the internet as we know it, and I feel fine...
The other night I dreamt of wires,
Cut apart and lit afire,
Microsoft again conspires against Linus T's desires.
LinuxFest blown amess, MacOS and the rest.
Lines stripped, bandwidth crippled, kill slashdot, battle, uh oh...
This means no surf, off my turf, Bill Gates is nothing worth.
Community, community, community of lies.
Offer me websolutions, offer me software alternatives, and I decline!
It's the end of the internet as we know it...
It's the end of the internet as we know it...
It's the end of the internet as we know it, and I feel fine...
I admit, it's pretty weak and lame (and perhaps uninformed), but I gave it a shot! ;)
-heidiporn
heidi
Exactly. "The end of the internet?" Uh ok. This title to this news story indeed does sound like trolling.
The internet is too important to businesses to simply go away. Commerce seems to dictate the way that laws go nowadays, unfortunately. I will be interested to see how businesses try to stop information sharing among private users while still keeping the connections open between themselves and their credit-card using buyers.
Banning FTP? Ridiculous. If any governmental entity attempted to ban FTP, people would simply develop a new standard which operated on a different port.
Well, thanks for taking my typo and making it into jargon...
;-)) came from? A 17th century play (can't remember the name) featuring a certain Ms. Malaprop, who constantly spouted non sequiters like this. Anyway, a little literary sidebar...
Incidentally, do you know where "malapropism" (to correct YOUR typo
640K ought to be enough for anybody. ;-)
--
--
"'quines' quines" quines "quines"
I am *so* sick of "End of Internet" postings, I have been seeing them for fifteen years now.
Non sequitur, dude.
"I said quod erat demonstrandum, baby
Ooh, you speak French!" - "Airhead," Thomas Dolby
This proves my law about spelling flames, which is that all spelling flames have to include a spelling error, and at least half of all grammar flames have to spell it "grammer."
This is already happening with SPAM. If a large volume of SPAM is coming from a particular domain or service provider, other networks will refuse to peer with that service provider or accept mail from that domain. There is already precendent for locking people out of the Internet if the violate the prevailing standard of Internet ethics, and thus removing the offending content from the public Internet.
Lenny
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Couldn't something like this be defeated with Steganographic encryption? (encrypting a file inside another file, so that the cover file is still functional?)
My spelling may be way off here, because I don't really follow it, but I have a program that will automatically split a file into specified file types of specified sizes, and build HTML indexes for them so they can be easily downloaded. For example, a 600k bitmap, that appears to be a single black pixel, but contains 1/6th of an MP3.
Perhaps if a packet filter identified the file by taking samples of the content, it would allow a file like this to be sent?
Not too likely. I fail to see how this is any different from alt.binaries.* on Usenet. Plenty of companies and universities no longer carry them (or any newsgroups for that matter) for the exact same reason sites now wish to restrict bandwidth used by Napster: It uses up an inordinate amount of bandwidth at the expense of those who wish or need to do real work. If this is the monumental civil rights violation you make it out to be, why aren't you up in arms about office dwellers and university students not getting their Usenet pr0n?
Quite the converse. My fear is that file sharing, media streaming, bandwidth hogging applications will not be stopped. The developers of these applications are under no obligation to stick to their current easy to recognise ports and protocols.
This is a treand that has already begun thanks to mis-configured firewalls. I maintain the code for a tcp based client/server communication protocol used by my companies products. When choosing port numbers for the servers I cannot choose whether to use ports between 0 and 1023 or 1024 and up based on any criteria more rational than "how much chance does this port have of successfully negotiating any firewalls between the client and the server?".
I am under a lot of pressure to simply throw in the towel and recast the entire protocol as HTML over HTTP so it can at least escape networks that have a proxy. My boss unfortunately has heard of XML - I can see the end comming.
In the long run it seems that all protocols will converge to running over port 80 looking enough like HTML that these so called smart filtering firewalls can't tell the difference.
And that will be the bad thing. Every grey featureless protocol looking like every other grey featureless protocol. Bloated with loads of headers all telling lies. A great loss to the richness that the internet once was or could have been.
I still imagine a world where many different protocols exist, each suited to its task. Sadly this seems to be becomming more and more of a pipe dream.
--
I'd install FreeBSD before I'd install Linux.
Exactly right. From a business point of view my company has the right to re-prioritize or shutdown any non-business related activities. As stated in the appropriate use policy. Nothing in the article leads me to believe that the Internet is in danger - be serious! However, the use of some networks is a privilege, not a right. Corporations have the right to enforce that.
how in the world would any companies manage to actually stop file sharing? i mean, suing napster and running them out of businees and thus forcing their server to go down is one thing, but the is no legal action anyone could take to stop other protocols. and even so, how would they do it? the major backbones would all have to have restrictions over what ports/protocols could be used. given how even script kiddies seem to ger around things like napster bans and whatnot, it seems like companies would have to invest more manpower (and thus money) in keeping people from xfering files than it would be worth... even if they are the companies being hurt by piracy. This story looks like so much typical slashdot FUD. oh no, your rights are being taken away. big brother is watching everything you do. yeah, right. as if i'm important enough. c'mon, this is ridiculous.
Just as auto-racing pushed the limits of cars, creating faster, safer cars. Just as the massive amounts of people wanting to fly created bigger and safer planes. The main problem is that the internet backbone and the connections people have are way to slow if the internet were faster, if everyone was running at crazy speeds this wouldn't be an issue because people swapping files wouldn't be eating up corporate bandwith. I don't think the whole issue here is the recording industry. If the schools weren't so strapped for bandwidth they probably wouldn't mind so much, they probably wouldn't notice.
It DOES talk about programs designed to kill packets based on content. IE, even though gnutella can run on any port (rendering port blocking useless), this software is SUPPOSED to be able to identify a gnutella packet and kill it.
Finkployd
They killed the Internet.
You bastard!
These people are allocating bandwidth and monitoring their own network. I think that is pretty legal. If you get a service agreement with your provider that they will not do that, then you have legal recourse against them if they implement something like this. I actually would prefer a college to handle Napster, Gnutella, and other programs in this way rather than by blocking ports and whatnot. Haven't ISPs been managing bandwidth already?
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
..as the write up made it sound.
The article just covers some of the more interesting developements as we move to a distributed media environment.
Media Enforcer, written by a white-wearing blackhat it would seem, is a tool for tracking the popularity of media files. Actually fingering individuals is silly, IMHO, but tracking mass usage is a very useful tool in attracting advertisers with real income models.
The bandwidth shaping tools will most likely become a bit more commonplace. You don't want the kids dl'ing mp3s to interfere with your streamed-on-demand newscasts now do you? Kids comps get 128k, dad gets 2mbs. That's seems like normal evolution of bandwidth to me.
I really didn't see any need of fear-mongering from this article. That'll come when TW implements a hardware solution in all their routers to give the highest priority to AOL packets.
--
+&x
It is all about visibility. I seem to remember some article in a local publication talking about piracy, and the growth of an Internet "underground" operating using a system known only as "FTP". They were really sounding like FTP was something that a cracker cobbled together in their basement six months ago to swap copies of that dangerous "Doom" game with. Casual users (and most of the casual technology news media) do not drift through FTP sites, but they can wander around on the web until they find something. The profile and ease of use of Gnutella and Napster are the only thing that have made them cause a stir.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
The reason recording companies whine is because they want to be a middleman. They are obsolete, no longer needed...Remember if a business plan is obsolete, it should die off and make room for improved systems that will benefit people for less effort.
I agree, but try telling that to the fat, wealthy record executive. His fortune is built on this system and he, sure as shit happens, is NOT going to tear down his own empire. Do you think he really cares what the people think? Those guys have the idea in their head that they can tell us what we want. Unfortunately, that idea is not too far from the mark, given the popularity of groups like Kid Rock and N'Sync.
Money is power. If you propose a system, no matter how wonderful, if it does not generate money, it has no power. The file sharing utilities are used by a very small minority of users, and since the recording industry currently has the power, they are using it to squash this new medium.
But progress is a cruel fact of life. Eventually, recording industries will be "selected" out. The smart ones will evolve into something else, and the inflexible will make the transition to the new model as painful as possible as they are sent to the great beyond kicking and screaming. Either this, or there will be a new digital tyranny imposed on us. It all depends how the general public (with their spending money) reacts. The public holds the power, but is largely ignorant of the new technology. The recording industry will try to sell their method. We must sell the alternatives.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Slashdot: you guys need better QC on your editors. This headline/alert was just blatantly wrong and, if you want to retain your credibility, you'd better start taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Considering that credibility is really all you have, you're being awfully careless with it.
Come on, serving 3,600 students with two T1 lines? Who are they kidding? I bet their bandwidth was limited even before the whole Napster thing.
But 3600 people shareing two lousy T1's?!?!?!?
Hell, you may as well just drop the ethernet connection and revert to 56K if you're counting on 1/3600th of 3Mb!
I have a 640/640Kb DSL connection (equivelent to just over a third of a single T1, IIRC) TO MYSELF at home, and I STILL saturate that connection from time to time.
Just last night actually, I ran out of bandwidth. Between downloading the latest Mandrake ISO for my soon to be functioning again web, file, and mail server, grabbing a handful of MP3s, listening to a realaudio broadcast of a radio station I like but get no reception on my stereo, downloading the new X-Men trailer, and casual websurfing on top of all that (Flash and Shockwave sites suck a good bit of bandwidth as well), and you can easily saturate 640Kb! Subtract the ISO download for the average traffic, and you STILL get a hearty chunk of bandwidth. But add the server, and online gameing, and you're right bach up there.
And I'm not even running that server yet! AND I pay the telco a *LOT* less for that connection than I payed to live in the dorms back at school!
We're not just talking about free speech here, we're talking sheer stupidity! Just what kind of neanderthal crams 3600 people onto a pair of T1s? If 640Kbps is inadaquate for ONE user, how the HELL is 3Mbps sufficent for 3600???
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
It smacks of unnecessary alarmism designed to generate message traffic... Trolling, almost.
Correct. What you need to understand is that the Slashdot editors make millions of dollars from stories like this. They do not understand the issues they are discussing, but they know when they put up articles about hot topics, that it will line their pockets even further from all of the click throughs.
Lastly, the deployment of these boxxen on networks could be challenged under the First Amendment by a particularly talented ACLU/EFF type law team.
Incorrect. The internet data lines are owned by private corporations who can do whatever they want and put whatever restrictions they want on them. There is no free speech guaranteed on the internet, since the internet media is not publically owned (like the airwaves, or street corners are).
Yes, this is a problem. The University of Minnesota nearly adopted a no-SYNs policy for the residence halls, where all SYN packets would be blocked. Fortunately, there was a group of individuals who noticed that there were many `legal' services that would break. Identd would be broken, preventing many people from using IRC. Any sort of net phone software would probably stop working (unless they used UDP or something). Even ICQ would have probably stopped working. The staff at UMN is pretty smart, and it's pretty surprising that they even suggested doing that...
Anyway, I am getting concerned about cable and DSL companies that want to take similar policies. I know that many companies scan their subscribers' computers looking for anything remotely troublesome. You could probably get your connection shut off for even having identd listening on an FTP port, even if in.ftpd or whatever is not installed on your system.
I know that bandwidth is an issue, but it will always be an issue.. I think you could justifiably block a service for a certain amount of time, until your bandwidth supply is enhanced, but they should always be temporary things.
Of course, one thing that my family's cable provider (@home) does is limit upstream bandwidth to some pretty low numbers. I think it's sitting at 112kbps right now. Certainly, that's still a pretty good speed, but it does have an impact...
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!
--
The packetshaper and packethound devices aren't nearly the threat this /. article makes them out to be. It smacks of unnecessary alarmism designed to generate message traffic... Trolling, almost. First of all, these devices are hardware, and that means it ain't free, and so it won't "take over" the net. Second, all a qualified hacker/coder needs is intent to defeat this kind of system; I could propose three strategies right away and I've only allocated a fraction of my attention to it. Lastly, the deployment of these boxxen on networks could be challenged under the First Amendment by a particularly talented ACLU/EFF type law team.
I can see the fnords!
After reading the article, I'm not really concerned. It talks about bandwidth limiting that is im place on many campuses (which I have no problem with, napster should NOT be allowed to eat 98% bandwidth that all students pay for). It also talks about some new products that block packets based on content instead of port. This is interesting, but just like net nanny and co, I predict that this will not work perfect and people will be pissed when it starts killing legit packets.
As long as this kind of software is contained to the service provider, and the big backbones don't start trying to kill random packets, we don't have much to worry about. If your ISP starts killing your packets, change ISP's. I wouldn't think an ISP like that is going to stay in business very long anyway.
The last part of the article was about the sad joke of a program, Media Enforcer (remember that, Metallica fans?). The anonymous writer pretty much admits that it isn't effective since napster names aren't returned to it and gnutella ip's can be faked. Trust me on this one, file shareing software will evolve much faster than blocking software will, which side do you think has the best/brightest/most people on it's side?
Finkployd
Learn to read. You fucking dunderheads. The article is about companies and schools blocking access to Napster or trying to save their bandwidth for something that is important. I go to a JC that has two T1's hooked up to the main campus. If you've ever used a T1 all by yourself you might think it is a rather fast little connection. Spread said connection out over an entire campus and you've got the slowest piece of shit ever. My schools is one of those that can't afford to have a bunch of neanderthals running Napster on lab computers. A semester or two ago one of our projects required we get some code from the teacher's webserver at another school. We only had three computers active yet had lots of trouble connecting to the server, then when we finally did get through we were getting a 1.5k download and the .tar was 3 megs. It turns out a bunch of people over in the lab were downloading MP3s and a couple were playing Quake2. Was it the end of the Internet? No but it sure did prove a point. People in the labs wasting money by chatting and downloading MP3s are something that definitely needs to stop. Not all schools can afford an OC-192, neither can busineses. Many businesses have ISDN's that while fairly speedy are charged by the byte for transfers. If you're playing a game or using Napster, not only are you wasting time but you're costing the company money. I'm all for bringing a Zip disk with your favorite MP3s and listening to them while you work. Don't get your fucking panties in a bunch when someone tells you how to use something they own or are paying for.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This is a legitimate tool in private networks. I work in an industry that is signatory to intellectual property agreements with the music industry among others and we have a legal obligation to abide by their usage requirements. This means no napster for anyone. And yet we've got many people who want to use it in spite of their employers obligations *and* their own interest in not seeing their employer sued or lose the ability to license said I.P., which would cripple half our business.
Our strategy for suppressing napster is tough firewalling, user education, as well as what I call "domainjacking" -- making my nameservers primary for off-limits domains (opening www.napster.com gets you the copyright section of our computer policy). Domainjacking coupled with restrictions on what nameservers you can query is very effective as lots of these types of apps have hostnames coded into them that will now never resolve properly.
There are many examples like this where businesses have an obligation to their shareholders, their employees, customers or others to constrain the flow of information they have. It used to be easy to block stuff, but with the advent of gnutella, freenet, etc it's gotten much, much more difficult.
Having tools and techniques to block these applications is important to those of us that have to defend the legal security of our private networks.
I got into this discussion with a friend some time ago, about How gnutella could be touted as a legit peice of bussiness software because it does not *exclusivley* restrict itself to mp3's and that by Napster pandering to the music crowd has brought itself under fire... Of course we both have knowledge of neumerous FTP servers from where we can get just about anything we want. The issue is this, Napster (and even guntella) are high visibility, there have been prominent news stories and articles about these programs, and once the public becomes aware (at large) of something like this, sure as hell, someone is not going to like it. FTP has been around longer then I've been working with cmputers, but it doesn't have the publicity that Napster does (maybe it's needs a better publicity agent..), it also is used legitimatley by as many people who use it for nefarious purposes..(if not more). Those who NEED an "idiot box" client such as napster or gnutella to get what they are looking for will lose out, but to the literate computer users, well, we won't be very inconvenienced at all.
As gfor shutting down the internet... well microsoft claims it would hurt the economy if we just broke them up...
peanuts compared to the damage that would be done by shutting down the internet...now where'd I put that copy of Wildcat BBS...
______________________ There is no
a) It's their hardware and their data connection. They are entitled to do whatever they please with it. If they choose to block traffic I want, too bad. I can choose to vote with my dollars. Anyway, before you cry heresy and mark this flamebait, I would like to point out that this is _exactly_ the argument a sysadmin makes when blocking spam. The H/W is theirs and they don't have to relay for you.
b) They ain't made no router big enough to pass multi-gigabit backbone traffic and filter packets at the same time. Therefore, They ain't no fucking way they can cut off napster and your other favorite apps at the backbone (but please, if you are one of those "pseudointellectius" types, do continue to say draconian, I understand it is a necessary part of your diet :).
I believe point b) entirely mitigates further discussion on this topic. Go home...there's nothing to see here.
cat
Did you even read the article? It's not talking about banning any file sharing, it's talking about allocating bandwidth. If all it does is lower the priority for Napster or other bandwidth hogs, who can complain?