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Uncap Your Modem, Get Visit From the FBI
FlightSimGuy writes "The Blade wrote this article about how seven men were arrested by FBI agents with guns drawn and indicted by a local grand jury for allegedly "reconfiguring computer systems to access excessive amounts of bandwidth". Apparently the provider, Buckeye Cable Systems, wanted to make an example out of the men. According to the company's attourney, "Cyber crime is potentially very damaging to society. We are taking a firm position on that type of criminal activity. We hope these cases will have a deterrent value...""
I don't see anything in the linked article about FBI agents pointing their guns at anybody.
Can we quit adding sensationalist crap to story summaries? Please?
Well, being slightly technically savvy myself, I'll point out that it's actually the underlying phsyics of a copper wire, plus the existing POTS architecture that limited things to "56k". Not to mention that the number is 99.99999% marketing hype, and practical use never could realize more than a slight and brief increase over the previous 33.6k... which itself was fairly heavy voodoo.
But yeh... I tend to agree with the sentiment that the FBI goons raiding you for modifying your own property is generally bad. The lesson here, is the internet is too empowering for the common man to be allowed to use it for more than a few small emails (which are safe now that they have carnivore). They'd be happy to let monopolistic market forces price internet service out of everyone's budget, but people who try to avoid that need to be dealt with harshly.
FBI 'raids' have already occured on people uncapping their hardware to take up more bandwidth. And all the same arguments were provided last time this was on slashdot.
Lets sum them up.
1) This is lame, its not like its a real crime!
Answer : This is a real crime. Uncapping your modem increases your use of the ISP's equipment. Not only does this steal from the ISP, it is also detrimental to the other users of the service.
2) Why is the FBI involved, thats Overkill?
Answer: The FBI are involved because the only two agencies with jursdiction in america over Network Crimes which may pass in and out of normal police lines are the Secret Service and the FBI. Who do you prefer to have knocking on your door?
3) I bought this modem, its my property and I am alowed to change the settings on it as I wish.
Answer: Okay, lets make an analogy. I own some magnetic swipe plastic cards. Using a card programer I also own, I program these cards to match other peoples credit cards. I then go out and buy stuff. I've only used my property to do that, so its not illegal right?
4) They can solve this problem at the router side anyway! They dont have to mess around the users.
This is just flat wrong. Any distributed network, especialy wan systems that share contention, can be damaged by individual network stations. There is no way to get around this. You can only stop them off at the network segments you directly control, but by then the proformance of any network segments prior to that may have been degraded. A badly configured modem/home router sending oddly configured packets in an atempt to 'fix' their access can do bad things to a network.
Apparently this is the second time my city (Toledo) has used the FBI for this. Anyways, I'm pretty sure the Blade always has extensive coverage of this because the same family owns the Blade and the local cable company (which has a cable monopoly in Toleod and its surrounding areas).
I suspect your mixing some terms there. A 256kbps is 256 kiloBITS per second, thats the equivelent of only 32 KILOBYTES (which is what most programs measure downloads in) per second. My guess is that you were saying you only get 70-100k (kilobytes, not bits) in which case you're getting much more than your gaurenteed amount.
If you were truly only getting 70kbps or 100kbps, that would be extremely sad. 70 kilobits per second is just under 9 Kilobytes per second, thats slower than shotgun 56k, and just a hair faster than a single 56k modem.
If you're honestly getting downloads at only 9-13 kilobytes per second, then you definately need to find a new ISP and fast.