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Mark Cuban Calls on ISPs to Block P2P
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."
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.
.. so this assholes logic is his traffic is better then mine? I pay just the same as he does for the service and as long as i use it inside the terms of my agreement he has no right to say anything.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The same argument can be applied to voip and more recently internet television. But it's a logic stance for an established player with enough capital: they have the means to provide enough bandwidth to things in a traditional client-server way.
P2P is only in its infancy. More and more applications are being found for it. Joost is one example, where p2p is used in a way to allow a relatively small player to operate. New uses even bring bandwidth use down, keeping it local.
It would be stupid to kill these opportunities for the benefit of a few big players.
the pun is mightier than the sword
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.
Ok... so now paying customers who buy a service as it is advertised are freeloaders?
This is getting silly..... ISPs should NOT be advertising services they can not actually provide and then blaming groups of their own customers for their lack of infrastructure.
Block HTTP, FTP, NNTP too, that way the tubes will be nice and clear so that you can have a better internet experience. I'd be happy to forgo internet altogether; use my share to build him his own private intarweb.
Requiem for the American Dream
As a consumer, I want my P2P experience to be as fast as possible. The last thing I want slowing my internet service down are regular downloading freeloaders, only getting content from one source, and clogging up the tubes, rather than downloading different parts of my final file from a whole bunch of different (and potentially local) sources. Seriously.
Here in Australia most plans are for so many bits each month. They are my bits as I paid for them. If I choose to use the 480Gbits I have purchased from my ISP for running a P2P protocol that's my business, not Cuban's, my ISP's or anybody else's.
Moving to Google Video... yeah I guess that'd help a lot. Let's centralize everything and see how well that works out for everyone.
Or wait... why was it that this P2P concept was invented again? "Distribute load" or something... difficult concept.
Try again Mark.
Well personally I think the Dallas Mavericks need to improve their front line ball-running and trade players in and out of the game more often if they are to be in with a chance this season. Also, if the Captain Maverick was placed in the middle instead of the front during the offensive plays, they could ensure more runs on the board by getting more stoppages in their favor.
Who are the Dallas Mavericks?
Indeed - maybe he should stick to whatever the hell he's good at, and leave the ISP stuff up to those that actually know what they're talking about.
"And then I visited Wikipedia
Just imagine how fast the internet would be if there were no content to view. After P2Ps gone, get rid of all these freeloading websites, emails, etc. and it will be blisteringly fast.
(in english):
And it's dirt cheap too. 100mbit both directions, full duplex for 200SEK a month, or ~$15.
Why yes, I AM a bastard
Blog -
Yes, the complaint is valid. I do want to get the bandwidth I pay for. But guess what? So does everyone else too. Whether you're streaming porn from xtube or sharing P2P, everyone has the damn same right to use the bandwidth.
What's wrong here is that ISPs want to sell you some fat pipe (to somehow justify being quite expensive for often very little service), but don't want you to use it. They expect you to be a "burst" user. Download a page in 2 seconds, then look at the page for 5 minutes, then flip to the next... and so on. Yes, that's 10mbit you get. For two seconds. And you get it because everyone else is also expected to do that.
They don't expect you to use those 10mbit constantly, permanently, 24/7. But that's as what it is being sold. They promise you 10mbit, but they don't want you to use it.
They're overselling by magnitudes, and of course that doesn't work out in the long run when people actually (gasp!) use what they're being sold. How dare they!
So instead of telling people how to use their internet connection (what makes your traffic more important than mine, btw?), how about telling ISPs to sell only what they got?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mark Cuban is an idiot. You'd think that someone that made most of their money sending media over the Internet would at least understand how it works. TCP/IP itself is a "peer-to-peer" technology. Despite how many ISPs run their service, one of the overarching ideas of TCP/IP is that any machine can connect to any other machine, and if the other machine accepts the connection, can communicate. TCP/IP does not care which machine is the client or the server, and in some cases for some protocols, it is the server that connects to the client. So really, Mark Cuban is against the Internet as a whole, has shown that he is a crackpot, and can rightfully go back to obscurity where he belongs.
Hmmm, do you really want this? Think hard about this... It's a slippery slope...
What you are referring to is breaking of network neutrality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality).
******
The principle of net neutrality and regulations designed to support the neutrality of the Internet have been subject to fierce debate in various forums. Since the early 2000s, advocates of net neutrality rules have warned of the danger that broadband providers will use their power over the "last mile" to block applications they oppose, and also to discriminate between content providers (e.g. websites, services, protocols), particularly competitors.
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So if universities do priorization, why not corporations, why not ISP's?
A slippery slope....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"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 this would make the big guys very happy. I wonder if our Mr. Cuban is a big guy or a small guy these days...
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
In light of that perhaps we should conclude that all free thinking people should boycott his wonderful Dallas Mavericks and any of his other businesses.
It is a wonder he can't afford his own T3 or at least T1.
The big boys don't like it too much when the little boys get to play the game at all. They don't want the advantage their wealth brings them, they want the game all to themselves. No thanks.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
I think the term "business class" means something else when you're a student at a uni.
Anyway, this is a horrible idea. ISPs should just make sure they have enough bandwidth to satisfy everyone at peak time. Not doing so is called being cheap and nasty.
In Australia we have monthly download quotas, which some people hate but seems to actually be a good solution. If you want to P2P 200 gigs a month you can, but you're going to pay a lot more for your access than someone who wants to do 10 gigs a month over their company's VPN. Also, you have a well-defined limit to work to; I've seen quite a few posts here about some ISPs having a seemingly undefined "limit" after which they start asking you to curb your net usage. But if you ask them what they consider acceptable you'll never get an answer, because it's always changing. So, I might only get 40 gigs a month on my account, but I know I'll always be able to use it at full speed because my ISP ensures they have enough capacity to handle peak periods.
There is of course money to be made by catering to the heavy downloaders who don't care too much about performance, by selling them cheap accounts with heavily overcommitted bandwidth. But if you're doing that without being upfront about it, then you're cheap and nasty; and it shouldn't be the norm. If you pay for a X mbit/sec connection, that's what you should get, and the only time you shouldn't get the full throughput is if the host you're receiving data from can't handle it.