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ISP To Court: BitTorrent Usage Doesn't Equal Piracy (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The music industry has long argued that evidence of BitTorrent is evidence of piracy, and ISPs have generally gone along with them. But now, ISP Cox Communications is pushing back against that claim. They have been sued by publishers for failing to halt service for users alleged to have pirated music. Not only has Cox argued that the piracy evidence is invalid, they're also contesting the idea that BitTorrent is only used for piracy (PDF). "Instead of generalizing BitTorrent traffic as copyright infringement, the music companies should offer direct proof that Cox subscribers pirated their work. Any other allegations are inappropriate and misleading according to Cox." The company says, "the Court should preclude Plaintiffs from relying on mere innuendo that BitTorrent inherently allows individuals to infringe Plaintiffs' copyrights."
Aside from file sharing, how many programs use BitTorrent? I'm not challenging the defense here, as I also don't equate BitTorrent with piracy, especially since my main use is personal file synchronization using BitSync and downloading Linux ISOs.
I seem to recall that Blizzard's Battle.net uses it, which I suspect is a non-trivial percentage of traffic. Do any other game management systems make use of it?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I suspect what is starting to happen is COX is starting to realize that before it was fairly passive, all they had to do was hand over info. However, with TIPP and other programs being pushed through it will cost them actual dollars to police for the entertainment industry, payments that can not be so easy to extract from users. They want to now make sure that burden is placed on the entertainment industry and not themselves. There is no altruistic goal here, just who has to pay.
Then you're doing it wrong.
You are welcome on my lawn.