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RoadRunner Blocking Use of Kazaa
An anonymous reader submits: "You should know that RoadRunner is quietly blocking the use of Kazaa in
certain markets. Particularly in Texas, they have some sort of port scanner
in place which scans for Kazaa activity and then disables use of that port,
rendering the program completely useless. Grokster, iMesh, and all other
FastTrack programs are similarly affected. Yet RoadRunner is not disclosing
the practice in any way. Not only that, I'm troubled by the possibility of
them arbitrarily choosing to block other programs in the future. If this
becomes more widespread, they will have many angry (and former) customers." The poster provides these four links to forum postings with more information: one;
two;
three;
four.
As a user of Roadrunner in Austin, I don't see that I have much choice. Yeah, I can dump them, but then who do I use for high-speed access? DSL is priced higher, has terrible performance in the area. In fact, most of the DSL users I know have switched to Roadrunner. On the other hand, if they start blocking all the programs that make high-speed access worthwhile, there's not much point in paying $40/month to use it.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
True, but they don't really care about losing file-sharing customers. They eat up a disproportionate amount of the bandwidth, and they probably lose money on most of these customers.
Now I'm not agreeing with this ISP - this action totally sucks for the reasons the original poster outlined. They need a more diplomatic solution... a slightly-higher priced service plan that allows use of such programs, or maybe they could just throttle traffic on those ports. And above all else though, they need to disclose this practice- otherwise it's completely unethical, PERIOD.
But the point is they really don't care about losing that kind of customer from a business sense.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
The discussions are the result of a single post saying it's not working. Most replies to the primary posts say that everything is working fine for them. Other provide technically inaccurate information such as Kazaa "slowing down" before it just completely stops and then attribute that to port blocking. How about some general skepticism here before ranting about some mega-corp stomping all over the end users rights. Here's one of the initial posts:
"The only way i can search is if i log off and on real fast on kazaa. Doing that i can get one search off. I resume downloads fine jus no searches. I'm running XP if that helps. Can anyone please help. Thanks"
Hmmm, XP, and it works for a couple seconds and then stops. Yeah, rights, there's somebody at the RR NOC sitting there watching all traffic and manually flipping a light switch that controls your port 1214.
The second post linked to in the article is of about the same quality only by a jumpy conspiracy theorist. I couldn't stand to read the other 2.
P2P is cool in theory; but in practice people are using it merely to move around huge pirated mp3s and mpegs and as a result a small number of users are consuming a grossly disproportionate amount of bandwidth. It's a tragedy of the commons. See previous /. stories on how this has already played out at college campuses across the US (and elsewhere).
I'm in Austin, and I've actually switched away from Road Runner to SBC ADSL. Why? Because, of course, the bandwidth I saw decreased dramatically over the years since I was an early adopter; and they were charging me too damn much money, anyway. I don't get a ton of bandwidth with my ADSL connection, but the service is more reliable, and it's less expensive. And so far, I've not seen any port blocking or scanning for servers -- something I've been hearing about from the cable side of the fence.
Honestly, I'm ambivalent about a lot of these issues as my idealistic and practical sides of my personality come into conflict. Ideally, I'd like the consumer's access to the internet to be pretty much like what it meant to be hooked up to the interent in the good old days before it became commoditized -- the internet was designed for hosts to be servers, not just clients or even peers. I should be able to run my own web server, my own smtp and pop/imap server, my own nntp server, my own streaming multimedia server, share my filesystem, run distributed applications, network games, P2P apps....whatever. To me, that's part of the whole point. On the other hand, as a practical matter, there still isn't enough bandwidth available for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to use their home internet connections this way. Yeah, there's a lot of dark fiber -- but none of it is the last mile connections. And some people are consuming far more networking resources than they are paying for. That's a legitimate problem, and it certainly can't be justified on the basis of a need to share files that are illegal in the first place.
They are providing a service to their community. Cutting off the bandwidth hogs is going to result in faster service, at no extra cost, to the remainder of the people using the service.
P2P is a cool idea, but face it, the vast majority of it's users are just trying to snag copyrighted material without paying for it. They don't give a damn about the Artist, they don't give a damn about other users on the network, they don't give a damn about any negative effects like DRM that may result from their activities.
Nice rant about companies persuing profit. How about the profit the "pirates" are making. Songs that would have cost them thousands of dollars. If they can download $100.00 worth of songs a day or $3000.00 a month that gives them a profit of $2,950.00 after paying the ISP's bill. Tax free. Funny how I don't hear them being blasted for being greedy little shits who only care about making a profit.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Horrible crimes are committed using the road and telephone system -- crimes almost as bad as file-swapping, such as murder and rape. But the people responsible for the roads and telephone system are not liable for these crimes. To some extent this a question of practicality -- the telephone operators cannot listen in to all conversations -- but more importantly it hard to see how vetting telephone conversations according to there content is compatible with a democratic society.
But somehow, for some greater good, such as the protecting the five major labels' total control of music distribution, this principle is being abandoned for ISPs. I think this is a slippery slope. In a land such as the US, with so many lawyers and politicians susceptible to lobbyists with big cheque books, is hard to believe that other bodies will not want to tell the ISP's what they can deliver to their customers. I am sure there are other forms of content that could conceivably hurt some company's profit margins.
Even if Americans feel they have to violate the principle of non-liability of communications providers for some overriding greater good then they must surely build in some accountability into the system. Internet communication is becoming so important that the terms of service should be regulated. In particular, they should written in such a way that that ISP service can only be denied when the ISP can prove beyond reasonable doubt that some heinous crime, such mailing a friend a MP3 file, has been committed. Just blocking a port because you think that someone might do something illegal on that port should not be permissible.
In general, however, the principle should be defended that communications providers are in no way liable for what is being communicated and they should not be allowed to tailor their service based on the content. If file-swappers hog bandwidth, use traffic shaping to limit their bandwidth (and put this in the terms of service). ISP's should not be snooping on what private parties communicate amongst themselves or otherwise be making guesses about the use of bandwidth -- at least in a democratic society, which the US makes some pretense of being.