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Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade

Posted by samzenpus on from the impossible-task dept.

StonyandCher writes "More and more ISPs are blocking or throttling traffic to the peer-to-peer file-sharing service, even if you are downloading copyright free content. Have you been targeted? How can you get around the restrictions? This PC World report shows you a number of tips and tools can help you determine whether you're facing a BitTorrent blockade and, if so, help you get around it."

53 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Glasnost by Tobenisstinky · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slashdotted already...

    --
    wha'? where am i?
    1. Re:Glasnost by timelorde · · Score: 5, Funny

      Unless, of course, your ISP is blocking that, too...

    2. Re:Glasnost by xXDarkNinjaXx · · Score: 5, Funny

      +5: Creepy...

  2. Australia is lucky by mrbluze · · Score: 5, Interesting

    .. kind of lucky, anyway.

    We have a website which provides pretty detailed information on what the ISP's are up to. Because there are so many members, I think the ISP's are sitting up and paying attention to a degree, because it's really not that expensive to change providers now.

    So here it's just a matter of choose your carrier and tell the other telco's to piss off.

    --
    Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
    1. Re:Australia is lucky by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is nothing lucky about competition in the Australian broadband market. We forced the monopolist to open their network and we enforced the laws to keep the competition healthy. The fact that the USA is incapable of doing this is proof that they have lost control of their political system and they're the first to admit it.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    2. Re:Australia is lucky by mrbluze · · Score: 3, Informative

      We forced the monopolist to open their network and we enforced the laws to keep the competition healthy. That's true, and activism still works in Australia - except in Tasmania, of course (the place where you see bumper stickers reading "Tasmania, Smell the Corruption").
      --
      Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
    3. Re:Australia is lucky by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      speaking of losing control of your political system, how much is the fine for owning a freaking laser pointer in Australia again?

      pot, meet kettle.

    4. Re:Australia is lucky by iminplaya · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They didn't lose control. They gave it up willingly, for the sake of convenience. If they actually cared, they wouldn't keep on voting for the one who can flash the most cash. They would seek out and vote for candidates who aren't so allied with big business. But... it's more convenient to just vote for the guy that mass media presents to them. Then bitch about it till the next cycle, repeat. If they would admit it, they would be on the first step towards a cure. As it is, the 45 year decline will continue for at least four more. There is no end in sight. Australia doesn't really look any better

      --
      What?
    5. Re:Australia is lucky by bsDaemon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You act like we ever had control in the first place. The Democrat Party has a history as far back as the 1840s (at least) of dragooning Irish immigrants and mobsters into their party, offering them city jobs if they'd vote right and beat up anyone who didn't. Once they had the Irish hooked, they moved on to Blacks and now Hispanics... Northern Dems, anyway. Southern Dems are the party of slavery and the KKK, lest we forget.

      The Republican Party has always been the party of big money, cigar-munching industrialists who hire the mobsters that the Democrats didn't get to beat up Democrat-backing union-members and break strikes. It was always free market, industrialist and all that jazz. Lincoln was the first Neo-Con, too -- suspending habaeus corpus in Maryland and locking the state legislature up, invading the Confederacy, etc.

      It wasn't until the 1960s when the Southern Democrats switched to the Republican (Carpetbagger) Party, for some reason which still makes absolutely no sense that the illusion formed that anyone was actually a Republican.

      American politics has always been about whose gang is bigger -- just like Roman politics. Don't like it? Tough. I highly doubt that it's that much different in the rest of the world. You Europeans just have smaller parties and more of them -- but probably no more parties than your country has football teams, because your political lynch gangs are just called "football hooligans."

      Rome's new mayor is of the National Alliance Party, which either is or is allied with MSI and Alessandra Mussolini, Playboy Bunny and Fascist MEP. Boys Roma, one of the local hooligan squads, backs that party.

      Glasgow has battle lines drawn between Rangers (UDA) and Celts (IRA) and has in the past been a spill-over for that whole mess.

      Of course, Latin American political mobs just kill each other outright with bombs and machine guns and deal drugs.
      ----

      My point is, perhaps the only thing we've lost in America is the illusion that "we" ever had a say. But frankly, no one else is any better off either, really.

      Except the Swiss.

    6. Re:Australia is lucky by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not really.

      You have to start with the party and take control at a much earlier stage.

      In america by the time the voting for a candidate in either major party takes place, you've already lost to the corporations.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    7. Re:Australia is lucky by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's the American form of arguing.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    8. Re:Australia is lucky by kylehase · · Score: 5, Funny

      up to 14 years in jail. 20 years if it's mounted on a shark. Probably more if it's on a great white.

      --
      You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
    9. Re:Australia is lucky by fractoid · · Score: 5, Informative

      Some tools ordered high-power (up to a Watt or two, I think) lasers off some website and then pointed them at planes because planes are big and far away and going "yay I can make a dot on a plane" is fun. The pilots, however, thought variations of either "oh shit the world just went bright green and now I can't see" or "we have incoming at two o'clock, prepare evasive maneuvers".

      And in its usual hysterical-nanny way, the government decided to ban ALL laser pointers because apparently it's easier to do that than to try and outlaw 'stupid'.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
  3. The basic problem here is ... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    that the cable companies don't consider (or don't want to have to consider) the consumer of their broadband offerings as their customer. They'd much rather have us be parasites on their network, parasites who happen to be targets of profitable marketing campaigns. The ad injection nonsense that a number of ISPs have launched is indicative of this attitude: we're just eyeballs attached to brains that view commercials.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    1. Re:The basic problem here is ... by grommit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You must understand that the advertisers don't care if we're just eyeballs attached to brains. They're mainly concerned with whether or not we have a credit card to purchase whatever they're selling.

    2. Re:The basic problem here is ... by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Isn't that what all monopolies want us to do? All MS wants us to do is keep paying for needless Windows licences while they don't improve it much, pay for Office because MS can't be bothered to include a decent word processor, pay for Windows OneCare because they can't fix their swiss-cheese OS, pay for DRM-ed music because they belive that all anyone does with DRM-free music is share it (and of course we all know that transfering media from your computer to a CD-ROM/MP3 player/another computer is morally wrong!11!11!) All the oil companies want us to do is pay for the $4/gallon of gas while beliving all the "oil is scarce" nonsense. All the government wants us to do is keep being patriotic so they can go on witch hunts for "terrorists" on American citizens. To keep us in paranoia about how obviously they need to wiretap more American phones because they might be a terrorist. To keep help "keep crime down" by restricting our second amendment right to bear arms. All the record companies want us to do is keep buying a copy of a song for every device we own. To believe in all this "piracy" nonsense and how if you transfer your legally bought CD to a computer/MP3 player/another CD/Home server is now illegal. To believe that fair use is illegal. To make us believe that all "pirates" bring down the economy/cause global warming/are responsible for drownings/deface Internet sites or other outrageous things.

      The fact is, monopolies are much like oppressive governments, they try to make the public not think. But to just exist and "consume" whatever crap they throw at us.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    3. Re:The basic problem here is ... by jamstar7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's mostly because we're not their customers, we're their product. Their advertisers are their customers.

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
  4. Protest by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Protest by paying the bill in pennies or any other kind of creative check-writing various tax departments have been the victim of...

    1. Re:Protest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's been a long time since you could do that. There have been court cases establishing the right of a company to refuse small change.

      However, what you can do is to pay each charge on the bill with a separate cheque, on separate days. One day pay the basic cable, the next day the box rental, the next day, the remote control rental, then the FCC charges, et cetera. And if they ever screw it up and re-charge you for something you've already have paid (which guaranteed won't take long, since their system isn't set up to handle itemized payments), put the money from then on into an escrow account and only send them slips showing the money has been deposited, pending them fixing their error. If they close you down, sue them -- there's no way you're going to lose if you can document that you made all the payments until they started sending erroneous bills, and continued to place money in escrow until they could present a correct bill.

      Or, just abandon the service, since "service" doesn't include service.

    2. Re:Protest by griffeymac · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Great, and then I burn through books of checks at four times the usual rate. Exactly how does paying the cable company in installments inflict harm on them? They get the check for part of the bill, and they reduce that amount from the total amount owed. They get another check, and reduce the amount from the total amount owed. As long as all the checks get there before the due date, they don't care how many checks they get--they have a whole department of people that do nothing but process the checks received in the mail every day.

    3. Re:Protest by dwater · · Score: 3, Funny

      eh? you sent your wallet to the wrong address, and then signed it 'santa clause'?

      Did you miss out some crucial bit of information in your post?

      --
      Max.
    4. Re:Protest by witherstaff · · Score: 3, Informative

      In the US it's against the merchant policies to tack on extra fees for credit/debit. Visa/MasterCard/Discover/Am Ex/etc all are equal to cash.

      But you can give a cash discount. It's wacky and lame and almost no one does that.

    5. Re:Protest by Insightfill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Funny. Comcast charges me $3.95 to pay with my credit/debit card.

      The VISA Merchant Rules (Google cache - I'm having problems with the real link) on Page 15 says that they can't charge extra for a credit card transaction, but CAN charge a "convenience fee" (wink wink), but there are a bunch of rules on when they're allowed to do this. They're probably in compliance with all of them, but there's a small chance they've messed up on this one: "The customer must be given a opportunity to cancel prior to completion of the transaction."

  5. I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No" by JohnnyComeLately · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My PC can run for months/weeks/hours of being on and have no problems with the connection. The moment I run LimeWire, the problems begin. 9 times out of 10 I end up having to reboot my cable modem to get back on-line....despite the fact my cable modem shows normal activity.

    1. Re:I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No" by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Informative

      For what it's worth, the network load induced by BitTorrent can be sufficient to cause (low-quality) cable modems, broadband routers, and similar devices to become flaky, while they are capable of handling the relatively quiescent and straightforward data streams associated with "normal" use.

      --
      The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    2. Re:I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No" by BLKMGK · · Score: 5, Informative

      That may be the hardware and not the ISP. Some modems puke when they get too many connection attempts - Limewire and Bitorrent can cause this behavior. You might want to try a different cable modem.

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
  6. Re:not me by UncleTogie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    now if i started running a bittorrent client all the time i would imagine my ISP would throttle my connection back severely and i could understand why...

    So if your car manufacturer kept track of how many miles you'd driven, then limited either the speed or distance you can travel, would THAT be OK?

    I'm sick of the "now you can download movies and music" commercials that say you can do these things, but don't mention limits other than POSSIBLY in fine print... at the bottom of the screen... in a 2-second flash... in the middle of a paragraph.

    Either sell the service and back it, or don't bother. Sticking it to the customers 'cause you oversold your bandwidth is about as obnoxious as it gets without bein' illegal.

    --
    Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
  7. Re:I feel very sorry... by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, what are you implying? That those who pay for a high-speed connection to the Internet shouldn't have rights to the high-speed part of it? So you are saying because I pay $XX per month to get unlimited access to the Internet at a speed of say ~1.5 MB/Second I have no right to demand use of that unlimited connection? I don't get what you are implying here, it seems like you are saying that what you pay for you have no right to use.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  8. Anti-trust? by hyades1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It will be interesting to see if a major ISP steps forward with an offer to provide completely unthrottled service, perhaps at a premium price.

    Would an across-the-board failure to offer such an obvious consumer winner provide grounds for charges of collusion or racketeering?

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  9. Re:I feel very sorry... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe you'll shutup when they come for your 3rd party VOIP.

  10. Re:I feel very sorry... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He's implying that anyone clueless enough to think they can get "unlimited access to the internet" for a measly ~$40/month deserves to get burned. People that dumb are the ones responsible for the subprime mess.

  11. Verizon seems alright by dave562 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've had pretty good luck with Verizon DSL. For a moment I was considering switching to cable but with all of the horror stories I've seen around here regarding bitTorrent clients I've stayed away from cable. The only time I ever had a problem is when I was seeding some popular, copyrighted music that I pulled down off of a site that I found via a Google Search. It was kind of creepy. As long as I was seeding the file, my transfer rate went down to near zero. Once I stopped, it went back up to my full speed. I tried it out a few times over a couple of days just to make sure that I wasn't imagining things and sure enough, every time I seeded that one file my connection slowed to a crawl.

    1. Re:Verizon seems alright by totally+bogus+dude · · Score: 3, Informative

      You should be able to set the maximum rate your bittorrent client will upload at. If you set it to 80-90% of your maximum upload speed you should be able to surf and download without problems while it uploads. Experiment and see the performance you get.

      You can also do more general traffic shaping, which will maintain a queue at your router and insert 'interactive' traffic before bulk uploads. A bit more complicated to set up but more robust. If you're the only one using your connection though and BT is the only thing you have uploading, using the client's throttle setting is good enough.

      The reason it slows down your connection is that as you're downloading anything (e.g. a web page) you need to send acknowledgement packets to the sender before it'll send the next packets containing the content. Since you're uploading at full pelt, those acknowledgement packets have to wait behind the larger file upload packets before they get sent. Traffic shaping / prioritization lets them skip to the head of the queue.

    2. Re:Verizon seems alright by whydna · · Score: 3, Informative

      Agreed. I'd specifically recommend the "Wonder Shaper" http://lartc.org/wondershaper/ from the kind, albiet insane, folks at the Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control site.

      Careful though; spending too much time there might cause mental grief (for example, go read Section 12.1.3 of the LARTC HOWTO), but I digress.

      On the other hand, if you're fluent in this and/or like working in the kernel networking stack, shoot me an email/message, cause I've got a fun job for you.

  12. Re:not me by rabbit994 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not car manufacturers, it's more like taxing someone who spends more time on roads then someone else, which is something we do already with Fuel Taxes and Road taxes against Semis.

    I agree with throttling, I just wish they would be upfront about it. If they have bandwidth limit, then state it. If they block certain protocols, say so.

  13. Don't elude...get a different ISP by ucblockhead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't have this problem because I am willing to pay more for service from an ISP like Speakeasy that does not do this. If you want these companies to change, you need to be willing to hurt their bottom line even if it costs you more.

    --
    The cake is a pie
    1. Re:Don't elude...get a different ISP by bagboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ISPs are glad to get rid of the unprofitable consumers... You'll be doing them a favor by switching as you'll tax the throttling equipment less and less and leave more bandwidth for others.

  14. Re:I feel very sorry... by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Funny

    Uh, it's more like you purchase said item at the stated price and they bill your card and give you something crappy with a picture stapled to it.

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  15. ISP by codepunk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A friend of mine runs a ISP, he has a very simple policy that works out
    rather well. He does not go out of his way to regulate what people do
    on the network until it causes a issue. Bit Torrent is a bandwidth hog
    and attempts to evade filtering rather well. If he encounters issues
    caused by a Bit Torrent user he just hands them their money back
    for the month and drops them as a customer. This keeps the rest of the
    network clean and the other customers happy. The profit margin on each
    connection is so very thin that it just does not pay to mess with this
    extremely small portion of the customer base.

    --


    Got Code?
    1. Re:ISP by Mr2001 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bit Torrent is a bandwidth hog and attempts to evade filtering rather well. BitTorrent only "hogs" as much bandwidth as the human user causes it to. It's no different in that sense from any other application: other P2P systems, YouTube, email, whatever. If you want to spend all day uploading email attachments at full speed, you can do that, and you'll use just as much bandwidth as if you were seeding torrents at full speed.

      On the other hand, you can set a low rate limit in your torrent client, and/or set it to stop seeding once it reaches a certain share ratio, and you'll only use a moderate amount of bandwidth.

      There's absolutely no need to treat BitTorrent differently from any other application. You don't need to use "filtering"; just limit bandwidth. If a customer is using too much bandwidth, charge him for the overage or lower his cap. It doesn't matter whether he's running BitTorrent, LimeWire, or just sending a lot of emails: all that matters is his total usage.
      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    2. Re:ISP by Mr2001 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You know, you might be theoretically right here, but I honestly don't think you could (and certainly not in any remotely realistic workload) max out any DSL/Cable/+ connection doing email. In a "realistic workload", probably not. But you could certainly put your email client in offline mode, queue up a few thousand emails with big attachments, and then send them all at once. Presto: you're now using up as much bandwidth as you possibly can, at least until the queue is emptied.

      The difference is that it's exceedingly rare--virtually impossible even!--for someone to use up as much bandwidth as they regularly do using BitTorrent/P2P. Thus, the ISPs target the most popular p2p algorithm, bittorrent. Yes, but that's a stupid way to deal with excessive bandwidth use. It's like looking at heavy traffic on the roads to and from the beach, and deciding to "solve" the traffic problem by closing the beach.

      It's stupid for a few reasons. One reason is that it puts the cart before the horse: the network is there to serve users, not the other way around. The public works department needs to adapt to the fact that drivers want to go to the beach, and ISPs need to adapt to the fact that their customers want to share files.

      Another reason is that it's just not a very effective solution. Filtering one specific application is more difficult and costly than imposing an overall bandwidth cap, and it sets off an arms race as new versions of the application evade the filters, and new versions of the filters detect the application again. And if the filter ever becomes 100% effective against one application, people will just switch to another one, starting the whole cycle over.

      If people are using too much bandwidth, then restrict their bandwidth usage or charge them for it. It's just that simple. The only reason ISPs are wasting their time with these filters is so they can keep advertising an impossibly high level of service, knowing that none of their customers will actually be able to use it.
      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    3. Re:ISP by Moridineas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, they are A) enforcing an UNPUBLISHED bandwidth cap, What ISPs have unpublished bandwidth caps? As I noted in a previous post, I ran into some throttling with Cox, but that was their policy after talking to them. Who are the tricky ones to avoid?

      and B) discriminating against a particular protocol instead of considering bandwidth alone. I'm not sure I really see the distinction? Assuming (and it IS an assumption) that the ISPs reserve the right to throttle or cap, what does it matter if its one protocol or the whole connection? Heck, I'd RATHER it be one protocol, so if I exceed my bittorrent allotment, at least web/email/etc are still snappy.

      Or am I misunderstanding what we're talking about ...?
  16. Article Summary by complete+loony · · Score: 5, Informative
    Detecting throttling;
    • Download something popular
    • Call your ISP
    • Read their terms of service
    • Glasnost
    • pcapdiff
    • Vuze plugin.
    Avoiding throttling;
    • Enable protocol encryption.
    • Change the port number to something other than 6881.
    • Tunnel through TOR or some other commercial VPN.
    To which I would add, if you know your ISP is injecting fake RST's filter them out with a firewall rule. A little more complex a task than the expected audience of TFA though.
    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    1. Re:Article Summary by pwizard2 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Tunnel through TOR
      Part of the reason why Tor is so slow is because people are tunneling downloads through it, which kind of ruins it for everyone else.
      --
      "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
    2. Re:Article Summary by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 4, Informative

      Tunneling through Tor is a really shitty thing to do; it's not made to facilitate your downloading, and you put undue stress on people who are running Tor nodes for you.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
  17. In lieu of uploading.... by awarrenfells · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While it does defeat the purpose of file sharing to a degree, but I have found that ISP's can only really detect file sharing through your upload to download ratio. I work for an $ISP, and we red flag accounts with an upload equal to or greater than their download, which sucks for some customers who upload large amounts of information to other servers or sites. I don't agree with it, but I have to pay the bills :P

  18. Switch ISP by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My ISP started messing around with this, I called them to ask about it and they flat-out denied it.

    When I looked on the message boards and everybody else was in the same boat, I called again. This time they said they were throttling, but only at peak hours (not true - but that was the official line).

    Next day I called their competitor. As soon as the line was installed (2 days) I called and told them I was switching, and to who.

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:Switch ISP by MarcoG42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Feeding troll. Your car analogy sucks. Yes, if I bought a car that does 400 mph I should damn well be able to drive it that fast. There are tracks around the country where you can pay to drive as fast as you like. So, yes, that governor on the car I paid my money for is keeping me from enjoying what I paid for.

      That's nice. You paid $5 for a, what?....15 year old movie? Some people would rather not pay $30 for a movie that just came out, though.

      ISPs are obligated to deliver on their promises. If I get a cable internet connection that says it delivers speeds of 30 Mb/s down and / 5 Mb/s up and has unlimited data transfer and no restrictions that's damn well what I expect to get. I don't care if my downloading every piece of free software via bittorrent I can get my hands on is affecting other customers. That's not my problem, it's the ISPs. They need to upgrade their network, not interfere with the service I paid for.

      --
      If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
  19. Re:Printable version by Nullav · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think OP meant Glasnost has been Slashdotted. (Though I almost didn't know that, thanks to PCWorld also being 'dotted.)

    --
    I just read Slashdot for the articles.
  20. They already do by patio11 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Every major ISP sells completely unthrottled, you bought-it-enjoy-it bandwidth to businesses. Get yourself a T1 line, never worry about being throttled again! Prices are quite reasonable starting at about $600 to $1200 per month.

    Its an obvious consumer winner!

    --
    Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
  21. Re:not me by complete+loony · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those ISP's with periodic bandwidth caps, there's already a firefox extension called Net Usage.

    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
  22. Canada is basically monopolized too by tentimestwenty · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you want broadband you've got basically 2 companies to choose from depending on where you live. Both suck. It won't be long before they really put the screws to people. Prices are going up and so are restrictions.

  23. Canada too by phorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For example, look at the recent shenannigans with Bell and those subletting their monopolized line-system. The regulating bodies basically just said that Bell is doing nothing wrong by throttling or otherwise screwing with the traffic of the 3rd-party ISP's customers, because there's no proof it will cause lost business.

    Hello! The ISP's cannot provide the indicated level of services due to the interference of a third party. Screw loss of business, that's a pretty major way of screwing the customers, who now have absolutely zero choice for ISP's who aren't handing it to them up the tailpipe (Rogers, the non-DSL ISP, also throttles). So is it fair that customers aren't "leaving" because they're getting equally screwed elsewhere?

    When I last spent time in Aus, I was amazed by how closely they kept tabs on their politicians and policies. North America in general could learn a lot from them in that regard.