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Europe's 'Net Neutrality' Rules Fail to Ban BitTorrent Throttling (torrentfreak.com)
Europe has finally agreed on a set of net neutrality rules. According to a report on TorrentFreak, these rules offer improvements for some individual members states, various activist groups and experts. But the current language would also allow ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic permanently if that would optimize overall "transmission quality." From the report (edited):"Europe's new net-neutrality rules should ban throttling BitTorrent, but they don't. They leave ISPs a loophole," said Holmes Wilson of Fight for the Future (FFTF), one of the driving forces behind the Save Net Neutrality campaign. "ISPs can say they're doing it for 'traffic management' purposes -- even when their networks aren't clogged, because the rules say they can throttle to 'prevent impending network congestion,'" he adds. In addition to file-sharing traffic, the proposed rules also allow Internet providers to interfere with encrypted traffic including VPN connections. Since encrypted traffic can't be classified through deep packet inspection, ISPs may choose to de-prioritize it altogether. In theory, ISPs may choose to throttle any type of traffic they want, as long as they frame it as a network congestion risk. "So if your ISP is lazy, or wants to cut corners and save money, they can throttle BitTorrent, or VPNs, or Bitcoin, or Tor, or any class of traffic they can identify," Wilson says.
...so excuse the stupid question but I thought that these days everybody was using encrypted virtual networks anyway?
There's a difference between bandwidth hogs and bandwidth abusers. I prefer they could spend a little effort to discern the difference.
Sounds like that's what Europe got.
The laws I hate the most are those which claim (by their name) to protect something and are actually craftily written to do the exact opposite.
Another win for moneyed interests by lobbying.
There are many examples. This is one of them.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Net Neutrality is a word that's used & abused to mean everything these days, including calls to make it illegal to charge for bandwidth usage (imagine how much Hummer H2 owners would like "gas neutrality" to make sure Prius owners pay just as much as they do).
In this case, it would only really be a violation of a stricter definition of "net neutrality" if there were select content providers that were given unfettered bittorrent access with no limits while other non-preferred sources were being throttled. If you want to throttle the whole stupid protocol to keep the network operating for useful purposes and don't make specific carve-outs for "preferred" users then it's not a violation of net neutrality.
Bear in mind that if you want any throttling of bittorrent to be made illegal, it's hard to see how preventing DDoS attacks at the network level or even filtering Spam could be considered legal.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Also funny how a bitcoin logo is being used in a story about bit torrent.
But that's the technical competence level of the Slashdot "editorial" staff, who once again make the case for why the federal minimum wage should be lowered.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I'm not in Europe. But I'd hate if they throttled VPN. I work from home fairly often (one day a week at least) and if they just up and throttled VPN I'd be far less effective at you know - performing my job. It isn't like all VPN access is for pirating or even region shifting (which dammit should be OK). Some of it is just plain WORK. They can't tell the difference - they don't know what the data is in the VPN tunnel. So they shouldn't mess with it.
The only effect that blocking filesharing traffic will have is that people will find ways to disguise filesharing traffic as normal traffic and it ends up adding additional bandwidth overhead for the disguising.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Of course, the regulated corporations will tend to outsmart the regulators.
The only thing that keeps businesses providing good services and offering quality goods is competition...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
look on the bright side, windows 10 telemetry is encrypted, so it will be blocked too! :)
sounds like a win-win
So they can decide what is congesting the network at will. That is pretty much a free-for-all, and as some said here, the opposite of net neutrality. I can see why the UK wants to leave the EU now: with phrasings like this for "net neutrality" bills, it goes to show how EU legislation has room for improvement on legislation. Shame that the reference nation on the English language is now abandoning the union. Furthermore, I would like to know how this affects users who are using paid for services that intentionally congest their network, you know, like the mentioned VPNs, or Bitcoin, or Netflix, or any other demanding service where the heavy throughput is part of the feature. Why must an ISP call dibs on "congestive" types of traffic when that is exactly the reasoning behind fears of the net not being neutral: putting power on the providers instead of the consumer who requests all services.
If an (I)SP prioritizes traffic by type, blocks ports, performs DPI or otherwise fools with bits, then they are not providing an internet service. They should be prosecuted under truth in advertising laws and be forced to call themselves AOL or Compuserve.
Politicians and bureaucrats cannot count these "service providers" when assessing internet availibility and competition.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Europe's new net-neutrality rules should ban throttling BitTorrent, but they don't.
You idiots still do not get it, do you.
What Net Neutrality "should" do from the standpoint of those making the rules, is allow compete dictation of what is and is not allowable by government agencies... they same ones that would rather see bit torrent vanish.
Net Neutrality as a concept is one of the biggest jokes of all time, and the funnies part is the joke is really on those whole clamor for it most, expecting the opposite of what it delivers.
Before Bit Torrent could come and go, sometimes being punished by an ISP, sometimes not... going forward since the rules are codified EVERY SINLGE ISP will be throttling torrents and you can thank your demands for Net Neutrality for making that happen.
Enjoy the future you have crafted for yourself. I don't care since I can afford a truly un-encumbered business line, I'll just laugh as the rest of you suffer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To minimize network collisions you build a fatter pipe.
A more simple rule you will not find.
Obviously the EU is letting the service providers and entertainment industry write the rules
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Stop shilling and help cleaning up the airport.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Isn't this just saying that under the rules ISPs are still allowed to shape bandwidth to prevent one source from degrading other services? Net Neutrality is "you may not throttle based on source or destination" not "All packets are equal."
There is potential for conflict of interest when the ISP is also providing old CATV but under these rules if they need to throttle Hulu they damn well better also throttle netflix, amazon and their in house streaming (including on demand movies to CATV boxes). Net Neutrality does not prevent an ISP from putting VOIP packets at the top of the list as long as they treat all VOIP the same.
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Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Europe is a geographic region, not a country. Who is the article taking about? I'd e.g. Norway included?
I think whether is neutral depends on your definition of neutral.
I look at this as following the post office definition of neutral. I can go to the post office and pay for any of several tiers of delivery speed, but the cost of postage is the same for everyone and they won't reject my letter because someone else has negotiated an exclusive contract. My letter is treated the same as everyone else's once it goes through the mail slot, but the regular mail won't be treated the same as priority post.
The ISPs look like they can discriminate on types of bits, but not based on the origin of the bits. Perfectly neutral? Definitely note. but from the perspective of encouraging competition that's probably good enough for now.
net neutrality only guarantees that the source or destination of your data does not cause your data to be throttled. if they want to throttle all video traffic, they can do that. what they can't do is throttle video traffic from site X while not throttling it from site Y.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Cool the hysteria. Even with the old land-line technology phone companies will deny you a dial tone under heavy loading. Presumably under these conditions hospital, police, etc are given priority.
The disproportionate use of resources on a fixed network is inappropriate. It is idiotic to impede functional work for some geeky hobby like bitcoins or other failed libertarian fantasies.
n/c
The VPN part worries me more, since there are lots of legitimate uses - even business uses - for VPN's (there are legit uses for BT - such as game updates etc - but there's less of a case than VPN).
I remember being on Bell in the east (Canada) and noticing that whenever I opened up an SSH connection to work my traffic would slow to a crawl after a short while. Not just my SSH traffic, but *everything* else as well was being throttled. If they're going to start slowing up connection just because they *might* be related to P2P traffic, that's shit.
For Torrents themselves, I'd be OK if they're throttled to something reasonable so long as one is still getting decent value. Reasonably though, there should be a trade-off. If you want to throttle my P2P or other heavy traffic, then cut out the data limits for my account. There's no point in having a 50MB/100MB connection if they only shit you can do on it is maybe 15MB max and everything else is throttled, but where I am the "fast" packages are also the ones that come with higher caps.
Since I tend towards gaming and streaming of non-HD content rather than massive bandwidth gobbling torrents etc, I'd much rather have a slower speed but bigger cap, but nobody offers that because really they're just trying to offer you the biggest price with the lowest service they can get away with.
A bit is a bit is a bit (from the perspective of the dumb pipe network)
With possibly justifiable exceptions for packets known to be pure DDOS (i.e. entirely malicious, no beneficial purpose to end users).
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
A bandwidth hog is using more than typical for him/herself, a bandwidth abuser is using more than typical to abuse others.
Whatever provisions allow for throttling BitTorrent Traffic can and will be used for throttling whatever the hell an ISP wants.
so a lot of legislation for abso-fucking-lutely nothing