Slashdot Mirror
OptimumOnline Bans uploads to P2P networks
An anonymous reader writes "In disturbing news this week Cablevision's high speed broadband unit OptimumOnline has sent letters to subscribers warning that uploading to P2P networks will no longer be tolerated. Obviously bowing to record and movie industry pressure the letter includes a link to a page that gives directions on how to disable file trading on 18 P2P services from KaZaa to Xolox. If you don't comply, they will cut the cord. I remember not to long ago where OptimumOnline ran TV ads touting the ability to grab music from the Net. The story on this can also be read here."
It doesn't matter if your right, it doesn't matter if you've done nothing illegal, what matters is who has the better attorneys. The logic used here is the same that is used with gun control. Punish the innocent and the people capable of potentially commiting a crime. Assume they are guilty first, ask questions later.
The cable company capitulated because the legal expenses to fight the threat of legal action is more than sending out a letter to each user. It's really that simple. If this isn't a SURE sign our legal system needs a review, then I don't know what is.
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
This may seem heavy-handed, but most of the stuff they're uploading is probably copyrighted, and hence illegal to share. So, really all the ISP is doing is banning people from breakng the law. Just because you don't agree with a law doesn't make it ok to break it with impunity - if that was the case, nobody would drive the speed limit.
At my present job, we recieve DMCA violation tickets sent to us, which include the ip address of the customer that was sharing files. We then track down the customer based on the ARP logs and issue them a letter notifying them that they are in violation of our Acceptable Use Policy which prohibits the usage of servers on a residential service, as well as our clauses that allow us to terminate a customers service. If we recieve 3 DCMA tickets from a particular customer we permanetly terminate their service. On a side note, due to the asynchrous nature of most cable modem service, as well as the fact that a node is essentially a LAN, I can certainly understand the concern about people constantly uploading files. Saturating the forward path can cause problems with download traffic as TCP requires ACK packets to be sent stating that a packet has reached it's destination, if the ACK packet is not recieved the packet needs to be re-transmited. So the next time you think your not causing any problems for anyone when you spent the last 2 weeks on Kazaa allowing people to leech files think again.
Good information can also be found here , here and here.
Basically, their excuse is security related, which is crap since more security problems occur with Internet Explorer, IIS and Windows itself than with P2P software...
As mentioned at DSL Reports, the upload is being capped at 128kb/s, NOT banned... Here's a quote from one of the links above (by HaveOOLnow)
No, it affects all uploads. If you upload at a certain rate for more than a certain amount of time, you automatically get capped [at 128kps]. But all you have to do is call them to get uncapped. The system is just designed to make people aware of the fact that they might have P2P apps running in the background.
The cap seems to be about 6 hours in length. Quite horrendous, but we all saw this coming, right? To be honest, I'd rather this and have unlimited download/uploads, than both... *shrug* Or, maybe if it only happens when the server is being heavily used (evenings and such).
Im sorry but this article is completely inaccurate. Im an OOL customer and I actively participate in the OOL discussions on broadbandreports. The discretionary cap was put into place because users were clogging upstream channels with p2p uploads. It got so bad that DHCP requests on some nodes (mine in particular) could not be recieved within even a 17 second ack window. It does NOT have to do with pressure from the RIAA.
Here's why: The cap is not a new portblock (they already block 80 to discourage webhosting), but simply a different cable modem config file with a lower upstream maximum. The ordinary config for OOL is 10 megabits down and 1 megabit up. the altered config file is 10 megabits down and only 150 kilobits up.
Obviously this is a solution that was implemented to control bandwidth, not specific applications. If OOL were to start battling p2p apps, it would come in the form of a portblock or traffic shaper - NOT an upload throttle.
To the author of the story, please do your homework. You can start in the OOL forums on BBR:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/cable,opt
Clearly not all shared content is illegal (although there is little doubt that most of it is). Small artists have been able to use it legally for self-promotion, a perfectly legal use that the RIAA is also glad to put a stop to, as it might slightly impeed their ability to steal from artists.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
..let me tell you the service level has dropped off so much it is ridiculous.
First they have been running "brown-outs" in Brookhaven township (Suffolk County, NY.)
Second the Helpless Desk has been telling people to turn of and especially DISCONNECT their routers when they call for outages. They do not explain themselves they simply tell people to disconnect the equipment. Then when the problem is not resolved they tell the customer to leave the Router out of the mix and wait a while. "Do not hook the router back up.," they implore.
Third, and this is just heinous, the cable technicians have been "chopping the lines" of customers they suspect have either extra cable runs, or (God forbid) who have Satellite Dishes. I live in Farmingville and not only has this happened to 6 (SIX) of my neighbors but one of those fukkers was in my yard when they were supposed to be working across the street. My wife confronted the guy and he told her that satellites were unreliable and "anyting" can happen to them and that she should consider going back to cable. I came out and exlained that if he didn;t get off my property I'd bury him in it. I took his plate number and Van number and Cablevision has denied he was even in the neighborhood. We are pressing charges along with our neighbor's who's Sat Dish lines he cut. I doubt we have a rogue installer.
As soon as DSL is on this block we're switching.
This
I can think of two notable exceptions to the mantra that they only use being made of p2p is for pirating. Furthurnet is a p2p network which grew out of the tape trading community which takes copyright and the artists wishes very seriously.
The other example Transmission Films is distributing high quality movies protected by DRM via Overnet.
The Internet Archive has terabytes of share friendly information, they are evalutating several p2p platforms for helping to keep their bandwidth bills down. I've downloaded Redhat ISO's from edonkey, when they first come out the primary distro point and mirrors are swamped for at least a week.
I've been reading Lawrence Lessig's _The Future of Ideas_ and he talked about this and made it clear why it would happen and the inevitability of it. Cable is the closed network of our time. There are far too many controls on it. I wonder how it is that the network providers are so short-sighted that they believe that this model is the way to go.
As for peer-to-peer and that it trades only illegal stuff, well that's hogwash. Yes, p2p is being used for a lot of file sharing right now and most of it is still protected by (an outrageous system of) copyrights. But p2p is an infant and there is no way to tell what it will be used for in even one year's time. I bet that p2p users will outwit the cable companies, bypass them and, unless they open their networks, make them irrelevant.
What will come in the place of cable. Hell, I don't know, but the cable industries stands of today feel a lot like aol's work of yesterday. Aol's dying. Cable will be next. Something else will take its place.
Until then, if you've got access to dsl and you value openness, call Verizon or whoever. The phone companies are the only ones who have to leave things open. Though, that might change. Things are getting creepy under the Generalisimo Bush. Egad.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.