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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.
There's a difference between bandwidth hogs and bandwidth abusers. I prefer they could spend a little effort to discern the difference.
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.
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?
It's the same net neutrality we have.
They can implement QoS. If they can implement QoS they will prioritize some traffic.
Net neutrality says they can't prefer their own voice service over other voice services. It says nothing about making all packets the same priority.
Q: Who would have guessed that giving government authority to regulate a complex issue would have unintended consequences?
A: Many of us. We were called corporate suckups for not supporting giving government more power.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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
You're cordially invited to start an ISP. Preferably where the likes of Comcast have a monopoly. Please do.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.