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Congressman Tells Comcast, Hands Off BitTorrent
An anonymous reader writes "Just a few months back, the Net Neutrality debate was all but dead. Luckily for fans of a free Internet, the telcos are their own worst enemies. Recent stories involving Verizon Wireless blocking pro-choice groups, AT&T censoring Pearl Jam's anti-war comments from a streaming concert, and most recently, Comcast finally admitting to using anti-BitTorrent filters. The Net Neutrality debate would appear to be alive and kicking, with Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) being the first politician to make a public statement sharply criticizing Comcast's actions."
Comcast Tesll Congressman: We Own Your Colleagues
Comcast has politely reminded this wayward congressman that in America laws are paid for by bribes. Comcast then offered the congressman a "campaign contribution", silencing his dissent. The system works.
Guys, if we want to win the argument on Net Neutrality, we can't keep confusing QOS with NN. If they want to indescriminantly block bittorrent, that's QOS. Saying that QOS runs afoul of NN means that later Comcast can say, "Look, if you enforce net neutrality, we won't be able to do QOS on our networks which means that internet tv will be bogged down"
NN is preferential shaping based on the source of the data. QOS is preferential shaping based on the type of data.
-Bucky
... the big ISPs are so short-sighted that they are their own worst enemies when it comes to things like this.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Thank God. There is an alarming trend among those who want to see a "neutral net" (a sentiment I agree with) to have "Dr. Government" fix it all. this is a slippery slope in plain sight; the idea of trusting the government to keep the net neutral doesn't appeal to me any more than having Comcast do it. What happens when the next elections come, and a new party/interest is in power? What happens when X lobby group petitions to sway the government's control of the network?
Fortunately, we have this convenient mechanism called the free market, where an outcry of foul play means an increased demand for competition. I realize this doesn't mean overnight those in Comcast-only zones are given an alternative, but over time, it is possible.
Now, when it comes to the infrastructure, the actual physical cables, etc., there's some room for talk as to whether the Government can have some limited intervention there, because we're dealing with interstate business and infrasturcture... but that's another story.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
The monopoly is what irritates me. If someone set up their own ISP without the government, I think they're free to do whatever they want with it. But if we're giving them a monopoly, I think we have some say in the service.
The problem is that broadband providers really do have a monopoly. In any given area, you have dial-up (56k), a single cable (8mbps) provider or a single DSL (768kbps to 7mbps) providers. While every city varies, you can usually get dial-up in 100% of the area, cable in perhaps 70% of the area . . . but DSL in only a small percentage of the area. At least if you want speeds that are even remotely comparable. If you don't live down the street from the local CO, you are going to get speeds that are difficult to tolerate. And of course, phone companies have bandwidth and usage concerns, too. They aren't selling you a dedicated service anymore than Comcast or Cox or Shaw is.
What really annoys me is that my tax dollars are used to provide these "utilities" with a limited sanctioned monopoly for the supposed public good, yet they don't offer services that address the whole public. If you really only intend your $65/mo service to be for grandmothers who use the account for email and checking up on their local church and the occasional amazon service, then offer a more expensive account for people who want heavy use and connect to work via VPN, back stuff up to remote servers, connect to colo hosted systems, use bit-torrent, watch lots of streaming videos, etc.
And for people who want to know "how in the hell do you use so much bandwidth?! 30gb should be more than enough!". Well, just downloading a few popular podcasts will do it. Especially now that they're HD quality. Diggnation, Crankygeeks, DL.TV, Totally Rad Show and a couple others downloaded every week at an average of almost 500mb each comes out to about 12gb per month right there. And that's if you aren't acquiring them via bit torrent where you'd have some overhead as well as at least 6gb to 12gb in upward bandwidth. So right there, you're at 24gb. Just to keep up with half a dozen weekly podcasts.
Throw in a couple people at your address listening to a lot of streaming radio. Watching streaming movies and news. Downloading five to ten gigs of demos on Xbox Live and Play Station Network. Perhaps connecting to your office with VPN and VNC to use your desktop. That's quite a lot of bandwidth. For completely legitimate purposes. And we haven't even touched things like using remote backup services that you can find online or downloading linux ISOs or the other streaming services like Vongo, Netflix and Amazon Unboxed.
> 1. All common carriers must allow other providers to connect to them on a naked pipe
You do realize that ISPs are not common carriers, right?
> 2. All providers must support standard protocols.*
Great, I guess the IETF can disband, since it's now the US congress that really vets standards.
> 3. Providers may only prioritize data/bandwidth based on protocol, not orgin/destination.
So the head end video distributor node can't pre-empt your xbox's background downloads? I'm afraid the reality is more complicated.
> 5. No data/bandwidth throttling, only prioritization.
Guess how QoS actually works?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
From the article, Congressman Boucher said that 'Comcast should "simply tier their offerings and engage in a pricing structure that allocates more bandwidth to those who pay more, and less to those who pay less."' Why the hell should I have to pay more for even more unlimited bandwidth? The issue is not just that Comcast is crippling bitTorrent, but that they are doing so to try to make their false advertising look legitimate.
Cable Companies are not common carriers. They should be, but aren't
Well Net Neutrality has the right goals but goes about it in the wrong way. Instead of trying to control what the monopolies do, we should attempt to foster competition so that the user can choose which ISP they want. Enough competition will eliminate stunts like what Comcast is pulling. Government intervention is required in either case since we are in oligopoly territory right now. I like the one that will offer more choices down the road.
All I can do is cancel the service, and hope others do too.
That's the most likely thing to do, and a very appropriate consumer-level response. If all consumers would take that simple step, then we would even need alternative measures. But since most people are willing to shut up and deal with crappy service and marketing lies, we do have other possible reprisals. For you, you might consider a lawsuit, especially one in small claims court, where (if I understand correctly) you would argue with a regular human instead of a lawyer. Sue for the maximum allowed in small claims court and see what happens.
Or, screw it, just cancel the service and fire off a nasty letter to the company. Also, post to online forums for Comcast service, hopefully convincing other people never to become customers in the first place.
Internet providers are not common carriers. In this case I wish they were.
Question everything
sadly, we live in a facist state. Fascism: A system of government that promotes extreme nationalism, repression, anticommunism, and is ruled by a dictator.
And this is related to corporate purchasing of congressmen how, exactly?
For those of you saying that a Tier based service system is "bad" because it will raise rates, look at it this way. Currently, you are NOT getting unlimited service, you are getting a soft capped service that is labeled as unlimited. The big issue is that you probably don't even know what that cap even is.
Now a Tier based service may "cost more for unlimited" but it might actually BE unlimited.
Simple Question: Would you pay $20 more a month for truely unlimited service of which you could even run servers off of, if you so choose?
I would.
Yeah, too bad that as a VA Comcast subscriber, you might never hear from your congressman again. Not because he's been offed, just because you're probably a Triple-Play (Cable/Voip/Net) subscriber and Comcast now controls everything you see and hear.
Best of luck with that!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
If we want to be able to have a conversation at all, we need to stop confusing QOS with fraud. QOS sets attributes in packets which are designed to establish priority. Fraud (in this case) means posing as the customer and sending a fake message, then lying about sending the fake message.
For example, if a telco decided to cut sampling rates on telephone calls from 8khz to 7.6khz for residential service to customers of other carriers, that would be quality of service (QOS). If, on the other hand, the carrier were to use their equipment to dial everyone who called you who was not a customer of the same carrier, spoofing your phone number on caller ID, and using a voice filter which made their voice sound enough like yours to be convincing, and telling them "Don't call me anymore. Stop. I don't want to hear from you for at least a week. Got it? Yeah, I mean it. Stop calling for a while. Don't take that tone with me. Just stop calling. Yes, this is me. Who else would I be? Now Stop Calling." And then told you that they would NEVER do such a thing. That would be fraud.
Since telcos are being trusted with our identities (phone numbers, IPs, etc), our privacy (which they'd never violate without a warrant, as we've seen), and the functioning, as generally intended and advertised, of the Internet, character means something in this context.
I hope this helps us get our terms in agreement, so that we can have an argument, or even a conversation, on NN.
You know what I find kind of amusing about this whole issue with Comcast and Net neutrallity, and the current Political system?
/. crowd is more likely to pay attention too)..... What is it going to take for people to get the same reaction towards the current Political system?
In many ways when it comes to the Comcast issue, people seem to be falling primarily into 2 main camps. Both are saying what they are doing is wrong, But some are saying "We need Gov'ment for force them to be net neutral." Others are saying "If you don't like it, Let your money do the walking, and go with another ISP."
The funny thing is, that MOST people tend to agree that the current state of the broadband ISP landscape in the US is in sad shape. You basically have 2 options. The Telco or the Cable company. Sure, in some areas, you may be lucky and have a viable 3rd option.... But that is few and far between. It is usually THIS simple fact that we are in a Duo-poly situation that causes most people to say the Gov'ment needs to step in.
What I'm wondering, is do these people that are saying that the fact there are only 2 viable options in Internet providers and therefor the Gov'ment needs to fix the situation even realize, For even a second....That basically our current Political landscape is pretty much in the EXACT same situation? For most of the country, you have 2 options....The Democrats or the Republicans. IF you are lucky, you may have a viable 3rd option, but that is few and far between.
They say that because the Cable Company and the Telco basically only have each other to compete against, and we as a consumer are forced to use one of them, That we can't trust them to change the situation. But the way I see it, we have the EXACT same issue with our political system. We have 2 main parties that basically are only competing among each other, and since we, the citizen, are forced to use them...
So the question now becomes..... When it comes to the Net Neutrallity, what needs to be fixed first? The way the political system works? (Support politics! Buy a politician!) Or the way the ISP's work?
Even more important.... If Comcast's actions in this situation can get so many people fired up like this (even those who are normally could care less about tech issues that the
Ok.... kinda offtopic.... sorry.
The questions are being asked, repeatedly. The executive branch doesn't answer them, or lies. And when the press is lied to it no longer gives a shit.
As a customer of Comcast I *want* them to prioritize packets....
Take three people - have one surf the web 8 hours a day, another play online games 8 hours a day, and one spend 1 hour a day looking for torrents to build up his DVD collection.
Who will use the most bandwidth in a month? Without a doubt, the torrent guy will. It takes just a few minutes to find and begin downloading countless gigs of files and it will run in the background downloading and sharing for as long as the user allows it.
MOST of the torrent related traffic is pirated crap. Sure, you get the occassional Linux distro and some games are starting to use it (like WoW) but, the general idea is that companies that USED to have to host files had to fit the bill for the bandwidth. Thanks to bitTorrent and the like, the bill is passed onto consumers.
A few years back, the number of pirates and heavy users were offset by a lot of casual users. A few years before that you had dial-ups and you paid for what you use. Now, casual users like my Mom can download movies rather than spend the $1 dollar to rent it at RedBox...and why not? It doesn't cost her anything.
Most of SlashDot doesn't care - because we're high bandwidth users. We download things, movies, music, OSes, and applications and we want our torrents to be fast! But the shared nature of the cable modem was built on the idea that not everyone is using their connection all the time. The whole unlimited, always on, thing is bad marketing, I'll admit that, and it's making the problem worse. But the truth is, no cable provider can charge the prices they currently charge and allow all of their users to be downloading 24/7 at speeds anyone would consider reasonable.
As someone who downloads a bunch of crap all the time; I don't care. If my download goes at 100k instead of 200k, I'll just keep downloading, besides which it's the latency that really takes a hit anyway. It's the web surfers and especially the gamers who find their connection unusable. As a priate, so what, it'll take 2 days instead of 1 day to watch my DVD of Spiderman 3. But the people who check their e-mail and surf to mySpace.com are going to notice the slow connection speed. The guy trying to play BF2142 is going to lag and suck.
The simple solution here, is to get rid of the concept of 'unlimited bandwidth' and have people pay for what they use. Then, I'd have a reason *not* to leave my computer on 24/7 downloading movies. Then, lots of people, like myself, would download less and we'd share our connections less. People who don't use the net much...would pay less, and they'd have better connections. People who pirate would pirate less and they'd certainly host files for less time. That means less seeds for crap nobody is willing to pay money to host (games like WoW, would have to go back to the old fashioned system of PAYING to host files for their customers...boo-hoo), most of what nobody would pay to host is ILLEGAL, and it represent a majority of the traffic anyway. So now the asian kid who just *needs* every DVD ever made - even if it means he has to pay more in his cable bill is going to find that there are less people willing to seed the movies he wants. Instead of downloading at 200k, it might crawl along at 75k.
Everyone wins, except the people who are using more than their fair share - they'd pay more, but it'd be fair - everyone would pay for what they use.
I guess I don't understand the usage of this...or the danger of it. I mean, doesn't everyone want their country/nation to come out on top? Isn't that what a nation's government works for (supposedly)?
No, a national or federal government's job is to defend the nation and protect its citizens, but not as a nanny. "You can't do this, you can't eat that."
FalconShould there be a Law?