Slashdot Mirror
Vuze Petitions FCC To Restrict Traffic Throttling
mrspin writes "Vuze, an online video application that uses the peer-to-peer protocol BitTorrent, has petitioned the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to restrict Internet traffic throttling by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Vuze has been keenly aware of Comcast and the "bandwidth shaping" issue. Vuze filed its "Petition for Rulemaking" (PDF) to urge the FCC to adopt regulations limiting Internet traffic throttling, a practice by which ISPs block or slow the speed at which Internet content, including video files, can be uploaded or downloaded. As readers may remember, back in May, Slashdot discussed the issue of packet shaping and how ISPs threaten to spoil online video."
I'm glad to see that someone out there is willing to take on Comcast to put an end to this kind of garbage. They may be doing it to protect their product, but the end result is good no matter who you are. Bravo I say!
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
A Comcast user isn't going to get much traction in trying to sue Comcast over services they were expecting and not receiving. I doubt Comcast has any more legal obligation to deliver "expected" service than Geico has to deliver "an English muffin with butter and jam" - in reference to their commercials.
Now this company might actually have some standing to say their product is being blocked. Unfortunately, I don't think anybody has Comcast (or others) over a barrel quite yet. Comcast never agreed to deliver this content, or any other specific content. What did they agree to deliver? Probably not much, and nothing specifically. You aren't guaranteed email, web browsing, VPN or any other service. They didn't define what services they are delivering, what quantities of these services or anything else.
I think the company already looked at suing Comcast and found out there isn't anything there. The only avenue would be rulemaking or legislation. Probably not much going to happen there either.
Does the FCC have the authority to restrict throttling? I thought wired communications, like cable TV, were largely out of their control?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
You can have my bandwidth when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
How would something like this affect universities which act as ISPs for significant portions of their student population? I remember fondly the days of so much P2P traffic on the network that it became completely saturated and unusable.
that this company thinks that this company thinks that removing P2P throttling will help streaming video?
And yes, I did RTFA and saw that they're delivering streaming media via the bittorent protocol. I say it's they're own damn fault for using a protocol which is well known for huge bandwidth use and no latency requirements to deliver media with critical latency requirements. If you don't want the ISPs messing with your video stream try not making your video stream look like a file download.
Vuze would be the Azureus guys.
Now remove the tag that prominently displays your inability to use Google, you apes.
Vuze is correct in thinking that protocols and the Internet connections as a whole shouldn't be throttled, in theory, however in practice ISPs are limited in how much available bandwidth they have. As much as I don't like it, there is often a requirement that ISPs throttle some of the more bandwidth intensive protocols so that everyone on their network can have an enjoyable Internet experience.
Now, ideally, I think that the ISPs should be actively lighting up lots of new fiber between each other (peering) and lines out of their DSLAMs and Headends but it does take time and as we all know, since they are profit driven, they need to be making lots of money to keep their investors happy.
Lastly, there is a difference between throttling (normal for most ISPs) and what Comcast is doing, actively blocking/sabotage. Comcast deserves to get smacked down hard for what they are doing.
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
don't sell bandwidth you can't supply... what's that, it would be more expensive? awww shucks.
TFB.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
(1) FCC gets petition to prohibit bandwidth throttling
(2) all bandwidth is "unthrottled"
(3) all (at least US-based) ISPs have lack-of-bandwidth issues
(4a) all ISPs revoke any claim to "unlimited bandwidth" in a revised agreement notice upon which you have no say, and begin charging per-kb.
(4b) all ISPs actually perform the service upgrades for which they were already paid years ago.
Methinks that if 1 leads to 2, then it leads to 4a. 4b is there just for giggles. They'll never actually do that, of course.
Definition of an ISP is cloudy at best. Who would be exempt and who wouldn't be exempt?If comcast isn't exempt the could easily create a proxy company or use one between them and who they peer with to do the traffic shaping.
Completely off-topic, but what the deuce is going on with tags lately? To the adjectives absurdly long, meaningless, and obscure, now we can add obscene.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
The truth is that all ISPs rely on the fact that if they are selling 5Mbps t 10 people they don't have to have 50Mbps of available backbone. They assume that web applications are using the connections intermittently or that if you have a long running connection it doesn't matter if it slows down from time to time. If everyone on their 5Mpbs lines was downloading large files the best they'd each get would be something like 500Kbps assuming a 10-1 contention rate and most ISPs are are 20-1 or 50-1.
P2P traffic will slow down if there is a lot of it or if there is other long running traffic, without Comcast doing anything.
The bigger issue is that our connections are a shared resource. I it fair for you to get all of the bandwidth and leave me with slower response for my web traffic just because you want to download movies. Should we all get an equal slice. The only way for the ISP to do this is traffic shape - limiting the amount of total available bandwidth available for high use protocols like P2P traffic. Ding this means that when I try to load my web page or shoot a dragon in my MMOG there is some bandwidth left to give me a decent response.
Now, you could say that all the ISPs should have enough backbone to supply each of us with full time use of the bandwidth that the ISP talks about providing. The problem is that this would cost a HUGE amount of money and your bill would up 10-50 times what you now pay (depending on your ISPs contention factor).
The so called "net neutrality" debate is mis-named. The question is who pays for the cost of infrastructure and who makes the profits?
"Actually, the issue isn't blocking or throttling, it's sending packets telling you to disconnect from the sender, and these packets are constructed by comcast to look like they're coming from the peer you're downloading from. Since it's a fraudulent packet, they could get in trouble for that."
I don't think that argument will hold much water. It may not meet an RFC, but not following standards normally isn't fraud. I think the more important question for networks everywhere and customers is just how much can an ISP do to give an acceptable service to the majority without crossing any legal lines?
"I guess the real problem is that Comcast promised more bandwidth than they could deliver, and now that customers are trying to use it, Comcast is in a bit of a bind."
I disagree because the only promise exists in the mind of those who chose to be commons abusive. Comcasat didn't promise a constant "the whole pipe is yours to do with". It's a shared network and I expect anyone savy enough to use P2P to be aware of that. Not to mention the "running a server" issue.
What the feds should NOT do:
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If we all complain, "Comcast is sending RST packets!" and then eventually Comcast says, "Okay, fine, no more RST packets," and then goes on to do other forms of extreme traffic shaping, then what? No, we want to nip this in the bud: no ISP, Comcast or not, should be allowed to unilaterally decide, "Hey, we don't like this traffic, so I just won't carry it." or "This is for The Good Of The People to Prevent Piracy" (or "Prevent Undermining Our Glorious President" or whatever).
Moreover, people need to know the implications of traffic shaping / net neutrality / dearth of ISP competition. I was very frustrated about how BitTorrent has been marginalized as "something that only pirates would use". The more we show the lay public the many versatile uses for a protocol like BitTorrent (or any other protocol, really), the more we get a public response.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Vuze is commercial arm of Azureus. Uses the Azureus, adds some commercial features which would enable publishers sell (not neccesarily DRM!) paid video on every single platform Java 5+ (or even 1.4?) supports. The pure opensource Azureus is still there at 2.5.x tree.
Now I think I know why Vuze is doing such thing and I am sure it is not about publicity or protecting "pirate" rights.
ISP guys punish money making media companies over P2P, they are selling perfectly legal content, a LOT more legal than Youtube contents which makes money via Google ads.
For example instead of buying overpriced (for now) Blu Ray player, I purchased all 8 episodes of Serenity HD TV series from Istanbul. Other option would be? Piracy since I won't pay $600 for a first generation player and also won't pay $40 to DHL while I pay $30 to media.
While downloading paid Serenity, I noticed lots of guys especially in USA using RC-160 encryption. For a second I laughed at people's paranoia level since the are downloading perfecty legal content from producer. I later noticed it was because their ISP is conspiring their bandwidth since they use P2P Bittorrent protocol.
What if you were Vuze and some users of you gets 56K levels for their paid content? What about those independent companies which sells media? They can't hire Akamai like Apple for sure.
This ISP block/filtering could be part of a much more bigger picture rather than stopping pirates. Notice lots of ISPs have strong relations with Media companies or are actually owned by them. While it isn't exactly some sort of guerilla radio/TV, Vuze offers opportunity to sell/rent your content without expensive hosting fees. People seem to buy them. I think it really pisses some big media companies for that reason. Loss of control, people actually using bandwidth they paid for...
But you need to pay more if you want better QoS. Otherwise bit torrent traffic will swamp the internet and everyone's video will suck. Net neutrality will kill the internet for anything other than email, web surfing, and file transfers that aren't time critical. Everything else will move to private networks, locking out the small entrepreneurs.
People who don't know Vuse should be familiar with the members of "Save the Internet" which launched a similar pettition two weeks ago. No one but ATT wants anything but a neutral network.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'm on Comcast and my bittorent files keep finishing and then failing the checksum and restarting the bad blocks, over and over.
I think Comcast may be actually changing the content of packets as well.
it sounds like you're taking the position that the federal government should have the authority to regulate how networks work. I think that's awful, and endangers just about everyone.
There is nothing new about government regulation of networks. Intentionally blocking competitors on networks is already against the law and has it's roots in common carriage laws that are a hundred years old.
Overall, I'm with you and think it would be great if networks were free. Everything will be cheaper and easier when there are no more broadcast monopolies and other anti-competitive regulations that restrict use of the airwaves or public servitude. Telcoms, broadcast and media companies would be bankrupt in less than a year and all of us would be that much richer. The current cable and wireless monopolies are not natural, they are protected by corruption.
Even in that world, the public nature of networks would require neutrality laws. Networks are public places that only have value when people use them. Without the public, they are worthless. Blocking competitors is worse than bad business, it's immoral and insults the public. The public should protect itself from that kind of criminal behavior the same way it protects itself from other acts of racketeering and vandalism.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I would like to propose for a minute that if everyone has faster connections, and everyone uses p2p protocols to transfer some of their content, that bandwidth peering will go up, and ISPs won't really have to pay a lot more for the OC48s. I realize that a lot of that is in upkeep/exotic hardware.
I guess what I'm saying is that this is a possibility, and a study should be done to see what the REAL effect of p2p is. If I'm connected to 10 other people in the Boston area on Comcast's network, would I REALLY be costing Comcast more money in bandwidth, aside from the fact that I'm using a lot of "last mile" throughput (which yes, I know, costs money to maintain).
--
I reserve the right to be completely wrong *shrug*
when popular Linux distros get released there is no way in hell the servers can keep up with users wanting the new distro that just got released, and BitTorrent is the only way to get a copy, not all BitTorrent users are downloading music & video. and not all music & video is copywrite infringement, and how dare the ISPs tell customers how they use the bandwidth they are paying for!!!
i hope the FCC accepts and enforces this petition...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It has come to my attention that currently in the US there are zero Internet Service Providers who are worth a fuck. Not a one, they all suck donkey dong. That's the problem, here is a solution, here is the business plan even the stupidest manager can work with. Offer a clean fast pipe,and CHARGE by the gigabyte transferred. That's it! The customer gets access to the internet for whatever they want. Simple, to the point, requires very little in the way of fine print on some terms or conditions, and is as consumer friendly as it gets, which means consumers will actually like you if you aren't completely ridiculous on fees. Fair is one thing, gouging is another. This is called KISS principle. No hijacking homepages with your install setup disk, no allowing this or not allowing that, no secret download caps or screwing over this port or that port or telling someone they can't use their internet machine for the purpose the internet sas intended, ie, communications of..who cares! People are all different, let the customers decide. None of that other nonsense that the sucky providers have, no "plans", no hidden rules, no interfering, just sell us the gas for our internet trucks at a fair price, and we'll drive when and where and how as we see fit.
Thank you, potential customer
The only practical solution is to require providers to fully disclose any bandwidth shaping or similar throttling, and regulate the application of such limits to existing accounts.
Such limited service should never be sold as unlimited Internet access. Clear terms, such as limited, shaped or controlled, should be required. Limits should not be added to existing accounts without providing adequate notice of at least 60 days.
Trying to prohibit any type of throttling is a losing proposition that invites many arguments against it; and such legislation would be very difficult to pass. Regulating how networks are managed and Quality of Service is maintained just isn't practical. But it's easy to require any routine application throttling or traffic shaping to be fully disclosed. An informed customer is unlikely to choose such a limited service; it's unlikely they would even be offered.
Speak.to is about communication
If ssh packets are legally exempt from intentional delays, guess what protocol high-bandwidth users will disguise their packets as?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It wouldn't work, simply because in many parts of the country, there is a competitive landscape.
If Comcast said "10G/Month for $40", then Verizon could say "yeah, well, 20G/month for $40". To which Verizon would be forced to say "Okay, unlimited", and then they're back where they started except now they actually have promised unlimited.
And even if they promised 10G/Month, I'm guessing a huge part of their customers are lucky to download 1G/month. These people are the goofballs who get high speed internet to shop at Coldwater Creek and check their email. They could get by with dial-up, but it's less sexy. Comcast (and others) love these customers because they're pure profit. But if you promised 10G/month, then you *actually have to have the capacity to support 10G/month for all your customers*. I doubt they do!
So any way you look at it, they're better off, grudgingly supporting "unlimited", hoping you use 1G per month, and cutting you off if you hit some special, double-secret cap.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"Please. Comcast does not charge cost plus a markup for service. They charge what maximized profit because in many locations they have a government enforced monopoly and because their infrastructure was subsidized by our tax dollars to the tune of billions."
You're confusing the cable company with the phone company. The cable company wasn't funded with your tax dollars.
"Nope. ISPs should, however, be required to advertise what they're actually offering rather than misleading potential customers."
A common excuse on slashdot.So here's your chance to back your statement up with facts. Give us some actual examples of this "misleading" material and lets just hope it doesn't make you all look like idiots because you don't get something that the "common man" gets.
"They don't compete because no one else can get access to the last mile public right of ways needed to lay lines and because the government won't shell out billions more to establish a second player and won't require Comcast share the lines with competitors."
Confusing phone with cable again. No wonder slashdot's so messed up. Besides you can be a player. Got the money? Doubtful if you're complaining instead of doing. Going to dig up everyone's yard so you can "stick it to the man"? Politics makes a poor business.
"Finally, we have granted these big companies immunity from prosecution for breaking a huge number of laws like copyright violation, child pornography laws, libel and slander laws, etc. We grant them this protection under the guise of their being "common carriers" but many of them are not officially bound by the restrictions we place on other common carriers. Instead they have all the benefits of common carriers, but eschew the responsibility (to carry all traffic impartially without censorship or discrimination)."
Oh please! Only on slashdot would the inability to abuse a network to the determent of others be seen as censorship. Besides once again PHONE COMPANY! If you can't even get that right why should the rest be taken seriously?
"This has been repeated a number of times, and I recognize the truth in this, but you need to remember that the bigger picture is that an ISP is trying to change unilaterally how (and whether) it delivers traffic based on content."
So based on the above the person who's getting a movie via P2P is getting throttled while someone getting their game patch via P2P isn't? Oh wait! They're not.
"Moreover, people need to know the implications of traffic shaping / net neutrality / dearth of ISP competition. I was very frustrated about how BitTorrent has been marginalized as "something that only pirates would use"."
More like abused by a large percentage,and those who do use it for good either remain silent on the abuse or give tact approval by bashing those trying to curtail the abuse. Kind of hard to look like a good guy under all that.
"I know...how about they just make people pay for the bandwidth they use?"
Bills would be higher for the hogs. Not a group known for being generous with money. The rest of us wouldn't mind because our bills would be lower because we're not subsidizing the hogs. In a shared network bandwidth isn't the only thing being shared.
Sorry to be the wet blanket here, but this is cut-and-pasted directly from Comcast's AUP: (snip) Prohibited Uses and Activities Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to: run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers; ...
if the Service is used in a way that Comcast or its suppliers, in their sole discretion, believe violate this AUP, Comcast or its suppliers may take any responsive actions they deem appropriate. These actions include, but are not limited to, temporary or permanent removal of content, cancellation of newsgroup posts, filtering of Internet transmissions, and the immediate suspension or termination of all or any portion of the Service. Neither Comcast nor its affiliates, suppliers, or agents will have any liability for any these responsive actions. These actions are not Comcast's exclusive remedies and Comcast may take any other legal or technical action it deems appropriate.
(snip)
Now, any of you with any shred of honesty has to admit that in function, your P2P torrent client is also a server, and that falls under this prohibition. Doesn't matter if you're DL'ing Shrek3, Debbie Does Dallas, or the latest Debian distro -- the program is still a server, and Comcast has already told all of its subscribers what they may do (read the part about "filtering of Internet transmissions...may take any other legal or technical action...").
Don't like it? Unfortunately you agreed to it when you signed up for service. How can this be fraud, when they told you up front they might take this type of action? Unhappy now? Vote with your feet and your wallet, otherwise realize that they own the ball field, the bases, the bat, balls and gloves -- you want to play the game, you have to play by their rules.
Like I said, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm just a messenger.
I would much rather have my ISP do no filtering. I can filter VoIP stuff myself, if I want to.
If there's congestion, they need to move to a metered model and start charging more. Then, either people will stop using so damned much bandwidth on BitTorrent, or the ISP will be able to actually build the infrastructure to support it.
The "need" for filtering/shaping at the ISP level is a complete and utter myth.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If you are a small-volume user and you need to upload a 1MB file right now, and 100 neighbors who are also small volume users decide today is the day they want to download a short 1MB video by torrent, and by coincidence you all start at the same time, why should you get any preference?
The solution to bandwidth hogs is to make them pay for what they are using. Instead of charging $50/month for "all you can eat" 6Mbps Internet, charge $60 for what 90-95% of users use in a month at that speed. Charge $120/month for double that monthly quota, $180 for triple, and so on. Once you reach your quota, you drop down to a minimal speed, probably 2x dialup or something like that.
Between the invisible hand of the marketplace causing some 24/7 torrent-traders to cut back and the extra money your cable company has from the rest to spend on beefing up its infrastructure, it's a win for you.
Another solution is for customers to pay a reduced rate for "curtailment without notice" service, where their per-second speed would be throttled way down in favor of "1st class" customers during periods of congestion.
I can also see a hybrid system, with 3 billing rates:
1st class all the time
1st class until I use SMALLNUM GB/month then 2nd class
2nd class all the time
Some ISPs may opt to only offer the middle grade of service.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"ATT couldn't get away with saying that calls to Montgomery county aren't included in phone service, Comcast shouldn't be able to get away with saying bit torrent isn't included in internet service."
Well except for the fact that one is a switched circuit network and the other is a packet switching network. A VERY important difference (not that this forum is strong on technical issues). Also apparently you all can't keep straight geographic filtering vs protocol filtering.
Similarly, while access to the Internet may not be officially classified as an essential service, its importance in our everyday lives is well known, to the extent that disaster shelters in the Southern California fires have set up Internet access.
I think the agency involved in this case would be the FCC. I wonder if the FTC might be involved --aren't they the ones who get involved in monopoly regulation?
In summary, a company's "right" to compete is balanced by its clients' "right" to to choose that company. Comcast is effectively a local monopoly on an essential service, a situation that should come with restrictions for the protection of the people.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
At the same time, explaining why a monopoly is better for the given circumstances does not remove the fact that it is indeed a monopoly, and that this imposes extra ethical obligations to the general public, which are codified in the laws regarding monopoly. Slashdot has had many discussions on Microsoft's monopoly, so I won't rehash them here, but the gist is that a company can enjoy its monopoly status, and its clients enjoy its services, with some sensible regulation. When that company oversteps its bounds to the detriment of the people, then something needs to be done.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
In theory, I agree with much of what you say -- up to a point.
If the "tubes" are full, one needs a way to prioritize traffic.
BUT, there are some exceptions and questions:
1) Why are the tubes full? Weren't telecom companies given billions of dollars SPECIFICALLYto expand coverage and upgrade capacity? Isn't it true that all of that money was taken and used by the companies, yet there was no measurable increase in coverage or speed to show where the money went?
If telecom companies are given money to upgrade bandwidth, and instead, they upgrade their profit margins and stock value, should they be given free reign to now charge customers "extra" for providing the services that the government (US public) already paid for? How many times do we need to pay for the capital upgrades?
2) Often, the companies that engage in rate-limiting, or auto-termination of streams do so to increase their bottom line without having to spend money in R&D. Do we need to go back to stricter regulation of those who own local infrastructure (probably), to guarantee that some percentage of the money is being wisely "managed" and used in infrastructure upgrades?
I don't know how long it has been going on (maybe forever), but I, personally, noticed it more starting in the 90's: When there was an oversupply of cash and returns were good, companies took those monies and churned them into "profit" -- and *instead* of investing in research, companies (I first noticed it with Sony, but they are not the only guilty parties) invested in "Partitioning available resources and products to create more "grades of service or product" to more effectively extract maximum money from the consumer while providing no increase in value. Instead, companies provide " Negative decreases in functionality".
This is not like computer science where a double negative = a positive; negative decrease != increase. The company designs a high level model, say a "1000 series". The price for the product, as designed, is aimed at $1000 (or Euro, Pound, etc) price point. Their incremental cost for producing each successive unit is $150 (for example). Like disk-drive manufacturer practice of releasing multiple capacities of a drive that have the same internal capacity, but only show "diminished" capacity when bought as a smaller drive. Some drive manufacturers, sell a 100GB model -- say 1 platter. Well, they'll also sell the same drive for 80GB, 60GB and 40GB drives -- just formatted differently with the firmware enforcing the capacity. I remember one manufacturer selling a 40GB, where if you removed a jumper it became a 100-200GB drive. They needed the 40GB to sell into lower price niches or provide replacements for older model disks under warranty.
The bottom line to the consumer -- they don't get any better hardware or product for the higher price product -- it's just the the lower priced products are programmed down in features.
It is the same in the telecom & network provider industry. The provider may have access to 5-10x the capacity, if they wanted to activate all of their "dark fiber". The fiber and connections are already there -- they just have to flip a switch to activate them. But by keeping a large fraction "dark", they artificially decrease supply to convince consumers and regulators that they need more money to provide better service -- all the while keeping 30-90% of their real capacity "off line".
They tell consumers (and federal regulating agencies), that they are operating at capacity. But it is disingenuous. It's the capacity of what they have enabled, but not what what is possible with the currently installed infrastructure.
This is why America doesn't have as much innovation anymore as other countries. In America, prices are set to extract the most money from everyone unrelated to costs to provide those services. The consumer is "ripped off". Rather than telling the consumer (say with "disks"), 1st 500GB platte
I'm going to be a bit blunt here, but I think that what I'm going to say is well-deserved and is certainly backed up by the facts. It appears that Vuze has based its business plan on not buying sufficient bandwidth to deliver its products and then taking the bandwidth from the ISPs of its customers. It states as much in its petition to the FCC, where it writes: "Torrent technologies make use of resources -- bandwidth, storage, and processing power -- on a decentralized basis, allowing large data transfers to be made more efficiently and cost-effectively than ever before. Torrent technologies leverage the power of many individual computers by enabling each computer interested in a piece of content to obtain small pieces of it from multiple other computers, and simultaneously play the same role to others who seek the same content in the future. "Accordingly, a distributor of content need not have many large central servers to store and send a file each time an Internet user is interested in a particular piece of content; instead, the content distributor need only have a handful of servers that operate as initial "seed servers" for the content, and can then rely on the distributed computing capacity of all of the individual user computers (the "swarm") that have that have agreed to be used as a "seed" for others." In the above, it also glosses over the fact that its software turns users' computers into servers, violating -- in the overwhelming majority of cases -- the ISP's terms of service. Vuze then goes on to misrepresent the characteristics of the BitTorrent protocol: "For both downloading and uploading content, torrent technology uses fewer resources than traditional non-P2P protocols such as HTTP because distributed computing permits uploads and downloads to be resumed mid-way rather than restarted, and transmission errors can easily be fixed without resending an entire file." The fact is that BitTorrent is not more efficient than HTTP or FTP. It is sometimes faster, but to attain this speed it consumes more resources than a simple file transfer. In fact, because one must transmit as much as one receives, it at least doubles the use of the ISP's backbone resources and of the user's allocated bandwidth. What's more, due to the lack of caching, it is many times less efficient because the same file must be sent many times across the Internet backbone instead of once. And the assertion, above, that downloads cannot be resumed is flat wrong. Virtually all FTP clients now provide means by which to resume interrupted downloads (which are rare in any case). And because HTTP can be cached, even an HTTP download which is restarted from scratch does not consume additional backbone resources because the cache will have received the entire file and can retransmit it to the end user. Again, it appears that Vuze is so unwilling to "pay its freight" to deliver content to customers that it is willing to file a deceptive -- and, in some places, patently false -- petition with the FCC. Such tactics, in my opinion, deserve no sympathy. --Brett Glass, LARIAT.NET