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."

Comments

Forget bit torrent.

[HungryHobo]

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?

Re:Forget bit torrent.

[Bakkster]

Of course the ISP can block whatever they want, but they can't control everything or they will have no customers.

Competition only works to prevent this kind of stuff when it exists.

This is the cruz of why America needs regulation like this. Because of the local monopolies, you may not have another choice for ISP. At best, you have the choice of DSL, Cable, and Fiber and each from exactly one provider. At worst, you may have only cable provider for broadband internet. Thus, the providers know that they have a captive public, very few users would voluntarily forego all internet access overall to protest their ISP blocking some of their usage. They can do whatever they want, their customers have nowhere to go.

Re:Forget bit torrent.

[roju]

That won't work at all. It is expensive to lay fibre and silly to have dozens of fibres running to every house. A better solution would be to recognize the natural monopoly in last-mile connectivity: have one regulated fibre provider, and allow anyone to create an ISP at the other end.

We told you.

[MindlessAutomata]

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.

Re:We told you.

[Sinning]

If there were true competition in the market, the government wouldn't need to do anything. People would flock to the ISPs that give them the best service rather than flocking to the monopoly that offers service in their area.

Re:We told you.

[ShadowRangerRIT]

I don't know about you, but I live in NYC, have a choice of at least three different providers (two cable, one DSL, maybe more since I last checked). The policies imposed are nearly identical between the three, and, as in the case of Comcast, I have no doubt that the stated policy and the de facto policy differ. Exactly which one am I supposed to "flock" to?

Re:We told you.

[blueg3]

You're supposed to flock to the theoretical Libertarian ideal that provides exactly what you want at a reasonable price. Barring that, stick with something you don't like and complain on the Internet that government regulation must be responsible for the situation.

Re:We told you.

[gad_zuki!]

>People would flock to the ISPs that give them the best service rather than flocking to the monopoly that offers service in their area.

Newsflash - this isnt happening. Turns out no one wants to invest in another set of wires to your home, so ISPs tend to fall into basic duopolies or monopolies. When both Comcast and AT&T decide to slow down torrents or competing VOIP, which they have done, then there's really no one else to go to. Thus, the demand for legislation.

What the "free market over all" kiddies dont understand is that there are natural monopolies and duopolies. Not everything falls into the 'marketplace' model of having lots and lots of competitors fighting over your dollar.

Re:We told you.

[tlhIngan]

If there were true competition in the market, the government wouldn't need to do anything. People would flock to the ISPs that give them the best service rather than flocking to the monopoly that offers service in their area.

I don't know about you, but I live in NYC, have a choice of at least three different providers (two cable, one DSL, maybe more since I last checked). The policies imposed are nearly identical between the three, and, as in the case of Comcast, I have no doubt that the stated policy and the de facto policy differ. Exactly which one am I supposed to "flock" to?

I've come to the conclusion that competition fails once an equilibrium has been reached. Take a competitive market, say, gas. In most urban areas, gas stations are a dime a dozen, and each intersection probably has two or three. Yet, you'll find for blocks on end, every gas station has the exact same price, maybe wavering a tiny bit. And that prices always seem to jump in unison, and fall very slowly. Yet this can exist without any form of price cartel among stations.

Simply put, what happens is a station wants more profit, so it bumps up the price. Each station nearby sees that, then decide they want more profit, so they bump up their price in short order as well. There may be times when one station refuses to cooperate and keeps prices low, but the other stations get business simply because the price difference isn't worth having to drive to the other station when you're already at the more expensive station. But eventually they'll give in and raise their price too since there doesn't seem to be any harm to business.

Same goes for Internet service. One ISP comes in, implements stupid policy. Other ISPs see stupid policy, also see no mass exodus, and end up implementing same stupid policy to increase profits.

Instead of the ideal that everyone gets the best price and best features, we end up with harmonization of competition - everyone has the same policies, everyone has the same speeds, and there's not much to be gained by dropping prices or increasing service, so you might as well go and enjoy the same profits everyone else does.

Seems to have happened with other products, like netbooks. Other than clearance, netbooks seemed to hover around $300 on the low end, yet you can get netbooks more expensive quite easily. Even counting the fact that a third party artificially limits the specifications, the price on netbooks hasn't seemed to have dropped, other than getting a better one for $300 now than $300 got you last year.

What did you expect?

[Attila Dimedici]

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.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

US Postal system shut due to the ease of transfer copyright material as anonymous.

This will harm legal sharing

[Midnight Thunder]

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.

Re:This will harm legal sharing

[Anonymous Coward]

stop telling me what i can do on the interent and where I can go, I paid my $40 this month

Re:Not all BitTorrent is unlawful...

[PolyDwarf]

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.

Don't worry about it.

[Ant P.]

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...

Re:Not all BitTorrent is unlawful...

[perlchild]

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...

Re:I told you so

[JPLemme]

The alternative is an Internet controlled by the ISPs, which can simply be paid by the RIAA and their friends to shape traffic as they see fit. The only way to prevent people with deep pockets from controlling your network access is to own the network yourself. Hell, if I remember correctly your "naive people" were demanding government interference BECAUSE the ISP sysadmins were blocking paying customers from using P2P protocols -- with no government involvement at all. When you're paying to use somebody else's network you're at somebody else's mercy, period, full stop.

P.S. Don't interpret this post as a defense of government involvement.

Re:Well...

[hairyfeet]

The ISPs are just pissed off that we paid them 200 billion for fat pipes, which they then stuck in their pockets (and if you want to read the bill which gave them the $$$, look up "telecommunications act of 1996" and see for yourself) and now we actually want what we PAID FOR they might not get to keep stuffing money in their pockets and might actually need to roll out some lines. The horror!