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FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Blocks BitTorrent
master_p writes "The FCC's formally issued draft net neutrality regulations have a huge copyright loophole in them; a loophole that would theoretically permit Comcast to block BitTorrent just like it did in 2007 — simply by claiming that it was 'reasonable network management' intended to 'prevent the unlawful transfer of content.' The new proposed net neutrality regulations would allow the same practices that net neutrality was first invoked to prevent, even if these ISP practices end up inflicting collateral damage on perfectly lawful content and activities."
Obviously, the only use of Bit Torrent is illegal file sharing. /SARCASM
I have a bad feeling about this...
Is this just protocols or also destinations?
Could your ISP block websites which it considers to be involved in copyright infringement?
Might it even only allow you communicate with a whitelist of IP's?
We told you that any government-mandated net neutrality was going to be a lot of fun.
But alas, people continue to live with their idyllic, dog-like trust of government, politicians, and bureaucrats, and didn't listen.
Not to mention the whole net neutrality debate was mostly paranoia anyway. The real solution is for local governments to do something about the monopolies they grant telcos, but it's always easier to pray that god (the government) saves the day.
You expected "net neutrality" regulations to call for actual neutrality? Of course it was going to have some caveat in it to allow ISP's to regulate traffice the government doesn't want to flow.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The irony in all this is that legal file sharers will be harmed, while people torrenting stuff illegally will simply find solutions that are harder to distinguish from normal traffic.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Let's do a little thought-excercise here.
Comcast Guy 1 : Oooh, I see User Joe is running BitTorrent.
Comcast Guy 2 : Why, I think you're right. Let's ban his ass.
Comcast Guy 1 : Now, wait just a minute, Comcast Guy 2.. We don't know whether it's legal or not.
Comcast Guy 2 : Hmm... You may be right about that. Let's ban him anyways, and see if he complains. After all, he might be pirating valuable NBC programming, like the Tonight Show with Jay Leno! And if we don't stop him now, we will cease to be!
Comcast Guy 1 : My God... you're right.
Seriously, do you think, in any plane of the multiverse, that Comcast would do the research to find out if the torrent the user was sending was legal, as opposed to block now and ask question later? Especially with them getting into content ownership, as well as being a content deliverer?
Let's take a look at the DMCA, and see how often companies that send DMCA notices really care about doing the research, and how often it backfires on them. Well, it does backfire on them from time to time, but are there actual consequences beyond Slashdot laughing at them?
No.
Well the old argument was that consumers who use a lot of bandwidth were pirating content.... But the world has changed, For example I only watch TV via the internet now. All 100%, paid for, legal content.
So if they think blocking (slowing down etc) p2p will fix their network problems, think again.
If they block bittorrent, they'll suddenly have millions of WoW players at their main offices with pitchforks and torches demanding to know why they can't update...
If we assume a generalized policy of allowing interference with traffic where piracy is suspected, the logical evolution is that end-to-end communications on the Internet is eventually doomed. BitTorrent is just one technology used to get information directly from my IP to your IP. What happens when an ISP realizes that IRC DCC SEND exists, and that some piracy happens that way? Or that encrypted VPN's have been used for this purpose? What happens as encryption becomes ever more prevalent? Do ISP's block all encrypted traffic between end-user endpoints just because there might be piracy going on?
The way I read this, net neutrality means they not only can't block traffic without proving that it's unlawful, but traffic not proven unlawful should be allowed to block other presumed lawful traffic(pipe saturation). I mean I've not seen anything in there that's not just a fancy way to call QoS. Of course QoS with a 1kb/s class is no fun, and almost blocking it... but unless the legalese actually defines a minimum QoS as "blocking" it's not legally blocking... Also, if a provider like comcat can give a QoS of 10kb/s, and assign all youtube traffic to it unless youtube pays, we're back to the "paying twice for the same traffic" case.
On the other hand, the FCC cannot do what network neutrality proponents most want it to do: mandate network (mostly backbone, but also edge in some cases) upgrades.
So it's mostly a catch-22.
I think the only thing that would work is a law that says a network cannot discriminate by source, target, protocol or source/target ports without proof of wrongdoing is the only thing that would work. Of course, the providers would scream that they can't. What they mean is that they can't without admitting just how poorly provisioned their networks really are.
As per your arguments they can't block... The idea is for a law to tell them what they can't do to unknown traffic. Known unlawful traffic, well they already have other laws for them, they don't need to QoS it, except to protect other customers. If they send the FBI to the tracker's location, you can be sure the torrent won't be on long, in that case though, they need to have(well so far, although they've been exceptions) a lot more evidence than just an overloaded network...
Every time a net neutrality article comes up, I ask the same question--how is handing control of the internet over to the government somehow better than what we have today, as if the government is some incorruptible entity that does everything right? Giving it to the government makes it susceptible to lobbying from groups like the RIAA, and I knew torrent traffic would be the first on the chopping block.
This is sad but funny. Out of some alarmist political agenda scaring people about a problem that doesn't even exist, naive people were demanding that we give the government control of the internet, taking it away from ISP sysadmins based on the usual anti-capitalism arguments. Well, have fun, because you're getting what you want...government control of your once-free internet.
FOSS can be for pay. See RHEL. The F in FOSS is Free as in Speech, as well as in Beer. Yes, ideally, we all want "as in beer" as well, but it's not required for it to be FOSS.
You are not the customer.
If there were true competition in the market, the government wouldn't need to do anything.
Right. But there won't be.
Last mile wiring is a natural monopoly: there's a high cost to burying the fibre that goes to your house. Most likely you're only going to be a customer at one ISP. If you want, say, five competitors, that means four unused wires.
That means each ISP has to charge each customer on average at least five times what it cost to bury the fibre.
It would be much more effective to bury one set of wires, have one organization maintain that set of wires, and then let different companies compete on delivering different services (telephony, internet, television) over those wires.
And if you're the first company to connect a wire to Joe's house, when the first competitor shows up, you could offer Joe free internet until the competitor goes away. Then you could jack up his rates to make up for the lost profit when he's back to being locked in to your service.
If there were true competition, the government wouldn't need to step in. But there isn't. So "We The People" need to step in, using the government as our tool.
Unfortunately, our tool apparently doesn't always obey our commands or do what we want.