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Comcast Forging Packets To Filter Torrents
An anonymous reader writes "It's been widely reported by now that Comcast is throttling BitTorrent traffic. What has escaped attention is the fact that Comcast, like the Great Firewall of China uses forged TCP Reset (RST) packets to do the job. While the Chinese government can do what they want, it turns out that Comcast may actually be violating criminal impersonation statutes in states around the country. Simply put, while it's legal to block traffic on your network, forging data to and from customers is a big no-no."
So now we get to read all the self-important posts from people who download copyrighted movies games and software complaining because what someone else is doing may break the law?
pot kettle etc.
Nobody who is downloading copyrighted stuff has any right to complain about this. As a content provider, I'm glad this ISP is taking a stand on behalf of people who actually create new content.
I have Comcast have no problems with any type of torrent downloads...as long as there are seeders.
However, I also have no problem with Comcast restricting the type of traffic that comes across their network. It's their network, so they get to decide what they choose to allow on it. It's no different than blocking SMTP traffic to keep people from running mail servers. When you are running bittorrent, you are both a client and a server. If you want unrestricted torrent bandwith, get off your ass and create your own anarchist network. let's see how successful that is.
Let's not pretend that most torrent traffic is legitimate...we all know it isn't. That's like suggesting legalization pot for everyone because it may help with some the side effects of chemo (there is no glaucoma benefit, btw). That argument has nothing to do with the general population.
Frankly, blocking torrent traffic is the only sure way Comcast could secure themselves from lawsuits by copyright holders, which, I am sure, scares them a lot more than some nerds on Slashdot.
How about all the users of bittorent downloading linux distro's and public domain movies convince all the users of bittorrent that download pirated movies/mp3s ripped from CDs/cracked software/etc to stop doing so...then comcasts crap-tastic network wouldn't be saturated with bittorrent traffic and they wouldn't be trying to stop bittorrent at all.
Yeah, not very realistic. Too bad a fuck-ton of rotten eggs are out there ruining it for the rest that want to use the software to download legal software.
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
Which is presuming that BitTorrent is legitimate. It's just a very inefficient version of FTP.
There is no legitimate use of BitTorrent. Anything BitTorrent can do, FTP can do better.