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Will BitTorrent's Paid 'Fast Lane' Violate 'Net Neutrality'? (torrentfreak.com)
BitTorrent and TRON have an ambitious plan to improve the BitTorrent protocol. Not only will users be financially rewarded for seeding, but they can also pay for faster access. While this may sound good to some, we wonder how this rhymes with BitTorrent's fight for Net Neutrality and its advocacy against paid prioritization. From a report: We ask this question because BitTorrent has been a fierce proponent of an open Internet. It has been a frontrunner in advocating for Net Neutrality, repeatedly criticizing paid traffic prioritization and so-called "fast lanes." BitTorrent went as far as creating the dedicated "internetbetter" website, avenging FCC's plans to meddle with the 'Open Internet,' advertising its campaign on a massive billboard. "The FCC's proposed changes to Net Neutrality would create a preferential fast lane for designated traffic," BitTorrent wrote at the time. "Those with the deep pockets to pay for this fast lane will have the ability to access and distribute content at higher speeds. Those who lack the purchasing power will be disadvantaged. This moves us towards an Internet of discrimination." These efforts didn't prevent the Net Neutrality rules from being repealed in the US, but it appears that BitTorrent's own plans may not be in line with an 'open' Internet either.
Bittorrent isn’t the provider, they're the end-point. It would be different if they were the ISP. (They haven’t become an ISP, have they?) In the highway scenario, where Comcast and AT&T and all are providers of the highway, Bittorrent is the drive-in movie theater... actually that’s not even right. More like they’re a search engine for where little bits of data are located around the interwebs. It’s a bit closer to them being providers but... they’re only providing “where it is” data, not the means to CONVEY that data...
Now that I’ve written this, I’m suddenly not feeling as certain Bittorrent is in the right on this. Hmmm...
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
...new corp doublespeak to set aside all ideals to quant the new CEOs "benefit" to the company.
He's working for himself and this is 100% deception. It won't benefit anyone but the company proper.
That's an interesting question, is bittorrent an application or a virtual ISP? The genesis behind net neutrality is to ensure fair access to monopoly pipes. Can a virtual ISP have a monopoly pipe?
Companies that advocate for net neutrality are the biggest hypocrites. They want to discriminate or charge extra but they don't want to be discriminated or charged extra themselves. And people lap up their PR rhetoric ...
Net Neutrality is dead ...
Follow the money. Make 'murikuh Greedy Again.
Will they be excommunicated from the Internet for their sins against the sacred Net Neutrality?
torrent is still a thing? its 2019. Seriously.
There's no problem with charging more for faster access. The problem is that carriers want to charge both their customers and the businesses whose data they provide to their customers to move the same set of bits.
It sounds like BT is doing the opposite. They will be paying the providers and charging the consumers.
Resource neutrality is not technically desirable. That's why there's quotas for disk usage, schedulers for CPU/RAM, and QoS for netork traffic. Contention due to resource neutrality breaks everything.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
In other words, if you overlay a protocol that can effectively route in it's own way then sell access to data and ensure certain routes in the contract... you have to push that information out to all the peers for it to be possible.
If that information is pushed out to all the users, then it is known and can be explained.
It is always that way.
What you need to understand, is that fiber pretty much grants the bandwidth needed for the "sharing" part of net neutrality to not be much of a concern. The true concern is cutting of packets by the ISP's.
The bandwidth can be said to be a major concern due to abusers that use more than their fair share, but with 40gbps to a neighborhood of 80 homes they are going to have 500mbps available to stream their 2-4mbps high def stream.
With cutting packets however, in other words the isps selling something like "when you press update it just sits there", there is a major problem. That should be illegal because it is effectively standing in a hallway and blocking someone from walking by which nobody is going to agree with.
I think it's more like paying DropBox or Azure for faster downloads. I don't see a problem with it.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Hypocrites!
... that's kinda obvious. Given that it's dead, might as well play by the rules mandated by the American people.
I supported net neutrality, but my vote doesn't always go my way. When I lose, I play by the new rules.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
without there also being a slow lane
Since available bandwidth is fixed, they have to slow someone down to speed someone else up. So yes, that's pretty much the definition of violating NN.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Do as I say, not as I do.
That's not Net Neutrality. Intentional confusion is being introduced.
Bittorrent isnâ(TM)t the provider, they're the end-point. It would be different if they were the ISP. (They havenâ(TM)t become an ISP, have they?) In the highway scenario, where Comcast and AT&T and all are providers of the highway, Bittorrent is the drive-in movie theater... actually thatâ(TM)s not even right.
No, both are problems, but yes they are problems at a very different scale.
Comparing NN to pipes and water leaking:
An ISP throttling you with paid fast lanes is akin to a water main pipe bursting in your basement.
A service online perhaps akin to a drippy sink faucet.
So yes by all means put 100% of your resources and time into fixing the water main, as that is by far a major problem with major coincidences.
No one will fault you for ignoring the leaky faucet during all of that.
But it is still wrong to claim the leaking faucet isn't at all a problem, because it is! It's just a minor one comparatively.
You can always shutoff the valve to that sink and go to a different sink in your house to use for the time being. This isn't *fixing* the problem with the sink, it is *avoiding* the problem with the sink, clearly demonstrating it is still a problem even if trivial to work around while you have bigger things to work on.
I also would say they are not in the *right* for doing this, just like no one asks for a leaky faucet.
It is still not wanted, and still a problem needing fixed.
It's just a problem that *seems* like not worth dealing with right now, frankly because that is true.
That just puts it at the end of the "fix me" list, but it doesn't remove it.
absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality
Having one use pay for speed has never been the issue with NN. It's when both endpoints have to pay the middleman. That is, no one thinks it's strange I can buy gigabit internet access or just 3 megabit. That's what they're talking about. What NN is about is, even though I paid for gigabit, if Google doesn't pay I only stream Youtube at 3 megabit (but still get Netflix, which did pay, at gigabit).
This gets confused by terminology, is a dumb article, and should never have been posted on Slashdot. It either is a dumb person trying to sound smart, or a smart person trying to confuse dumb people.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
It seems that,once again,someone who has no clue about what net neutrality is has gotten an intentionally misleading, or completely ignorant, post to make it to the front page. Honestly, which is it... is the original poster stupid or just a malcontent liar?
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
and they seed pirated content they're going to be eaten alive in court by the RIAA & MPAA.
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Very SLOW traffic BitTorrent violates Net Neutrallity.
It's why the ISP providers make it slow for avoid internet congestion when its hardware resources are very limited.
And everyone want's to be paid. There's no moral side to either side. Everyone's a cunt, get over it.
Not only will users be financially rewarded for seeding
Oh great - I bet Hollywood lawyers are salivating at this. There are many countries in the world where downloads and uploads are no big deal and not criminal - so long as there's no commercial gain from it. "Financially rewarding" people for uploads will criminalize a whole group who currently are not breaking the law.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Shut up, asshole.
Seeing as most of the torrent traffic (other than linux distros) is all pirated movies, TV shows, and music, how is this not trying to set up a honeytrap to catch pirates? Are the MPAA/RIAA and TV networks really the ones behind this?
> letting people organize themselves
You mean, "letting a cartel of a few large corporations organize a racket".
There, fixed that for ya.
Apples and oranges. The opponents of net neutrality want to be able to examine packets and charge varying rates depending upon their contents. Paying for greater bandwidth from your provider (or from a service) is a perfectly cromulent offering. That is not the same as traffic shaping depending upon the nature or provider of the content.
It's old tech. Non-piracy be and affordable a few years ago.
Those corporations are creatures of the government; they derive their monopoly powers from the direct decrees of the Men with Guns.
You don't like that cartel? That means you don't like government.
Next time, build your society around a free market rather than taxation and coercion.
Is it illegal for customers who pay for faster service to get faster service than those who don't?
Gosh, I don't know. Is it illegal for someone who pays for a double cheeseburger to get more meat on their burger than someone who just pays for a single cheeseburger?!
Listen folks, you can't get innovation without letting people organize themselves and their resources however they see fit.
I would totally agree with you 100% if it wasn't for the fact that in huge chunks of the US, there is exactly one hard line service provider of internet.. Typically this is the local cable company. It's illegal to compete with them on equal terms (no access to right-of-way or telephone poles) and often they receive government subsidies. When the government is handing your competitor cash how the fuck do you compete with that?
I'll be fine with ditching Net Neutrality if we also ditch the corporate cronyism. Until such time as we have a situation where competition is not legally prohibited, then said companies can't bitch about the rules / laws placed upon them. Take government money and you don't get to bitch about the government rules.
Fast lanes were never about prioritizing TYPES of traffic for performance reasons, you shill. That shit has been legal FOREVER. Exemptions were always (even under the net neutrality days) given for performance and congestion situations.
Net Neutrality is about prohibiting ISPs from getting to shape traffic for purely FINANCIAL reasons.
They are fine with it because it benefits them. You know when throttling becomes common and acceptable bit-torrent will be high on the list to get kneecapped. Yeah, there are legit uses for bit-torrent, but everyone knows that 99% of its traffic is pirated content, how dedicated to net neutrality can they be?
You know what a corporation with coercively employed guns is called? "government".
You are trying to make a distinction where THERE IS NO DISTINCTION. That is why you are perpetually confused about the sorry state of society. The problem is government; you hate government.
We have a great thing here. Look at the advances we have made. I cant belive how many morons we have in the tech field. Why would you allow any government control over any of it? They will just screw it up as always. I choose freedom and choice any day. If I feel I'm getting over charged, i can take my business elsewhere and have.
If I owned a business what effing incentive do I have to make a better product? Bandwidth isn't cheap. It's a shared resource. If you allow porn sites, large businesses... and so on to use up all of the shared resources, you get screwed. Paying for additional lines and charging more for high bw users is common sense. They get what they pay for and free up resources for the general customer base. Do you commies want bad service across the board, because effing with evolution of the free market is how you get bad service for all.
ISPs goal is to make money. They are a business. That money pays its employees, owners, stockholders and the government, so we all can all make a nice living in this great country we live in. It makes perfect sense to shape traffic which is also for performance reasosns. Some older customers may need cheep access with little bandwidth. Some younger customers need more for youtube, netflix, hulu... and are not on a budge and can afford more. Then you have the power users and businesses that need more. You can't pay for upstream bandwith for all of what is allocated or you would go out of business in a week. This leaves you to figure out how to divide up the various customer types so they get the best performance. Once you get started you can baseline the usage and figure out how many of tear X you can fit on upstream dedicated for the, same for the average user. Businesses and power users may require dedicated or sparse lines that will cost more. Its just how it works. Its complicated and isn't always perfect, but its what has evolved out of experience in the free market. Do you really think the government or a bunch of techs who have never worked in an ISP are qualified to make decisions for a business? NO.
All Net Neutrality does is give the larger providers that already have infrastructure a tool that can be used against competition.
You cannot fix governmental meddling with governmental meddling; at the very best, your gains will be transitory, because your principle remains unchanged: It's OK for the government to meddle in the affairs of The People, and so the circus will continue in one way or another.
Put your resources where your mouth is, and start organizing alternative means by which to network computers. Oh, the horror! You might have to forego watching porn in high definition as you work with others to roll out a more decentralized mesh network, but at least you'll actually be doing something aligned with your supposed principles.
Man up, buddy.
So no, it will violate nothing.
This is far from even being a story. BitTorrent is not an ISP. It is a content provider, and it does not charge for its service. This creates two problems:
1) NN applies to ISPs, not content providers
2) NN can only be enforced where interstate commerce is happening, and since BitTorrent does not charge for its service, there is no interstate commerce, and hence the federal government has no right to regulate it anyway.
You've assumed that which is to be proved, namely that my position is "extreme".
Pointing out that a government is merely an organization of men who use force to impose there will is far from making the statement that the creator of the entire universe will reward you with 72 virgins in an afterlife in exchange for ramming a van into passersby.
Come on, man. You are the one spouting absurdities; you are the one who is confirming the fact that you are, indeed, as suggested, perpetually confused about the sorry state of society.
So youâ(TM)re saying that the ISPs having set a price for their total bandwidth offer rebates and discounts later when more users are signed up ?
Hey dipshit. QOS is a fast lane.
What's the difference with Akamai? Cloudflare?
That's because you haven't got a clue. AT&T tried this shit back in the 1930's (or thereabouts). They actually tried charging more, per call, depending on your target. I don't mean different cities either. I mean they wanted more money based on whom you were calling in the same city. i.e. trying to call the grocery store? that's one price.. Trying to call a hospital? That's a little more.
The Feds shut down that shit under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
THAT is what net neutrality is about. If you don't understand that, then I dunno what to tell you...
You're an extremist; you're a Statist.