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FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Blocks BitTorrent

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-of-course-it-does dept.

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."

8 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. We told you. by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:We told you. by Sinning · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:We told you. by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
    3. Re:We told you. by blueg3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:We told you. by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Informative

      If there were true competition in the market, the government wouldn't need to do anything.

      Absolutely. As we all know, it's only government intervention that causes a monopoly or cartel to form in the first place. Left to itself, a market would never do this, because companies are far too nice and dumb, and would rather compete fairly for equal shares of the market than bribe and blackmail their customers to completely screw over and crush their competitors.

      Also, my doorbell just rang - it's Alyson Hannigan, naked and horny. Riding a pink unicorn. It's OK though - she brought her Evil Twin along for you.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  2. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  3. Re:Not all BitTorrent is unlawful... by perlchild · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  4. Re:This will harm legal sharing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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