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Mark Cuban Calls on ISPs to Block P2P

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the point-and-laugh dept.

boaz112358 writes "Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner, HDNet CEO, and noted gadfly is publishing on his blog that Comcast and other ISPs should block all P2P traffic, because as he says, "As a consumer, I want my internet experience to be as fast as possible. The last thing I want slowing my internet service down are P2P freeloaders." He complains that commercial content distributors instead of paying for their own bandwidth, are leeching off consumers who are paying for the bandwidth. As an alternative distribution method (at least for audio and video), he suggests Google video."

7 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. One way to solve this by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A major ISP in the city I resided in in Romania help alleviate demands on bandwidth to and from the outside world by just setting up a DC++ server for their customers where they could share music and movies with other people in the same city. Seems easier to do than trying to ban all manner of P2P traffic. Too bad that sort of thing would never fly in the U.S.

    1. Re:One way to solve this by Enoxice · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Sounds like what happens at various US universities. Students set up DC hubs, the IT dept. looks the other way, everybody wins. The hub keeps file-sharing traffic internal to the school, meaning the heavy traffic is on the intranet (where the school's infrastructure can handle it better than saturating their external pipe) and since no students are using KaZaa, there are no lawsuits.

      --
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    2. Re:One way to solve this by budgenator · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Mark Cuban owns a NBA basketball team and has a flashcraptic web site that distributes video clips. These Pro sports owners think if you pay $50 bucks to sit in the stadium and take a picture of the game you infringing on their copyrights; he'd gladly sacrifice the ability of 100 starving artists to make a buck so his team could get an 8 cent advertising impression. A profession sports team owner is hardly an unbiassed opinion on P2P and network utilization.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  2. Freeloaders? by melted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Excuse me? $46 a month for my Comcast connection is not exactly "free". In fact as far as I'm concerned, that's about $20 too much. Now if I had a free (as in beer) connection, I might give up my torrent rights, but as long as I pay for it (and pay dearly, including through taxes) I insist that I should be able to use it in whatever way I deem necessary. Whether I want to download the latest Fedora DVD, or a gig of porn - I've paid for the privilege.

    1. Re:Freeloaders? by jackharrer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And that's the reason why instead of whining about p2p traffic they should finally invest in infrastructure.

      Do you know how long it takes to download film in Sweden? 15-30min. Why? Because somebody invested in fiber to homes and fast switches. That's the reason they have ethernet straight to home. Yes, ethernet socket at home, 10/10Mb, upgradeable to 100/100.

      And of course everybody knows that if your infrastructure is designed properly most of the traffic will stay local - p2p client usually prefer local fast nodes.

      So you pay for your 'net connection - it gives you possibility to download whatever you want, everybody can. You can download newest Fedora, but your neighbour probably sits 12 hours a day watching youtube. Same IMHO.

      --

      "an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
  3. Re:hold on a sec... by Seumas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    By his logic, we shouldn't be using the internet for VoIP, either. Or watching videos. Or listening to streaming radio stations. Or watching and listening to podcasts. After all, those all consume a lot of bandwidth, even if it's not over P2P. And of course, EVERYONE who uses P2P is a massive multinational corporation that can afford massive bills. Does he not realize that P2P allows a downloader to receive content in return for a small payment of bandwidth to help redistribute the same content to other users, instead of monetary compensation? P2P allows a significant number of small-time content producers to get their content out to a lot of people. Otherwise, they could never afford it and only the big guys would get to play the game.

    And really, if you are only using the internet for shell access and to get your email account and refresh drudgereport, then what the hell are you bitching and moaning about needing high speed for in the first place?!

    And really, if an internet provider wants to give HTTP, POP, IMAP and shell traffic top priority, that's fine with me. That way those packets will not be affected should a heavy load of other use throttle the connection -- and at the same time, a bunch of people just using HTTP and shell accounts isn't going to slow down your P2P or streaming activities by any noticeable amount.

    I don't see why all of this is a big deal. And I don't see why my solution isn't good enough. It allows the content of the supposed majority of users to always get through unimpeded while allowing all other content to cross the wires as the remaining bandwidth (which is supposedly the other 90% of traffic) allows.

    Cuban is a hot-headed little prick.

  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion