Did you not think of the fact that plenty of people have non-commercial reasons for sharing "content" on a small scale?
Have you not read a single word I've said where I've clearly differentiated between public data servers and small-scale private ones?
I run my personal web site on port 80 on my home Internet connection.
Good for you. I run an Icecast server along with SSH on mine. When you start serving media content on a large scale to anyone who wanders by, we'll talk.
Yes you did with your narrowly defined definition of server:
I'm talking specifically about residential cable internet service. If you want to be a content provider, do it by paying the costs of the bandwidth
No, I did not. I did not in any way, shape or form claim that if you were a content provider you could not also be a consumer. You can be one, the other, or both at the same time. (I am currently both right at this moment, which proves that it isn't an either/or proposition.)
What I said, once you understand the concept, is that "if you want to be a content provider" -- IN ADDITION TO ANYTHING ELSE YOU MIGHT BE, since being a content provider doesn't rule out any other function -- you should pay for the services that are designed for content providers.
Downloading a torrent, while not always legal since it involves seeding, does not make you a "content provider."
I did not say it did. Stop putting words in my mouth.
Running a server that provides content DOES make you a content provider. Kinda obvious, huh? If you want to be a content provider IN ADDITION TO ANYTHING ELSE YOU MIGHT BE you should run those services using a business or commercial grade of service that is designed for that.
Do you never wonder why up and down speeds are not the same for almost all residential internet services? It is because those kinds of services are designed for people who CONSUME content and need higher speed down than they need up. There are OTHER services for people who provide content where the speeds are more symmetrical. I know, I have business service at another site.
But see, it's bittorrent so they are distributing the material.
I have not used bittorrent for a long time, but I remember that I could download without being a torrent server. While it may be the default to do both, it is certainly not a given that one requires the other.
And the "no way of knowing the legality" isn't a valid defense
I didn't say it was. I said it was a better way of dealing with the issue if you go after the people who knowingly distribute material illegally and not go after those who have a reasonable assumption that they are getting a legal copy. Or even just no knowledge that what they are downloading is an illegal copy.
If you want to skewer Rightscorp for downloading material not covered by BMG copyright, then we should skewer all downloaders of illegal content, even those who have no way of knowing if what they just downloaded is an illegal copy or not.
or then no one who uses bittorrent would be liable
Nobody who downloads using bittorrent. But those who distribute using bittorrent know, because they know that they don't have distribution rights to something just because they have a legal copy of it themselves.
I agree it should probably be the original seeder of the torrent who is liable but that would kill the 3rd party copyright watchdog business model.
Not sure what the 3rd party model is, unless you mean Rightscorp scanning the net for BMG content. No, it wouldn't kill that business model, since the illicit distributors would be caught and the people who just download would not.
Now, someone else pointed out that newb might not know that their bittorrent client is also serving, but as I recall, that information was made pretty obvious when I tried some torrent downloading. Status showing how many people were connected to my "client" made it obvious. And, of course, if you're just downloading one thing and then exiting the client, you aren't serving. But in any case, a long time ago in this discussion I pointed out that the correct thing for Cox to have done is remind the customer Rightscorp identified (I mean, the account holder of the IP address in question) that running a server on their residential service violates their contract, which would be a big clue the the customer that they're doing something they didn't realize they were doing and should fix it.
And continuing with that, yes, a "server" is technically a server, whether it is SSH or VPN or whatever. But, the difference between public servers (like the ones Rightscorp downloaded things from) and private ones (SSH or nannycam) is significant. Also significant is that I didn't say that anyone should be shot or have their service terminated just for running a "server", only that it serves as a handy talking-point when dealing with copyright infringement issues and lawsuits like the one here. Cox chose the "say nothing" option, which has resulted in a large civil award against them.
You spend a huge amount of time arguing something I didn't comment on. I simply pointed out that taking action against someone for nothing more than suspicion of wrongdoing was hardly a new activity, as opposed to the sudden appearance of a new phenomena that the GP claimed. I used the examples I did to show that this isn't even new based on the "-- on the internet!" rule being applied to many patent claims.
That's all.
As for your argument that Rightscorp was violating other people's copyrights, well. Could be. They aren't distributing the material, just getting a copy. They have no way of knowing the legality of the distribution of non-BMG material.
I think I like a world where the recipient of a copy of something from a source that could be legally providing it is held harmless for copyright violations by the distributor. I.e., if I buy a copy of a program disk from a store that I assume has the rights to sell it, and then it turns out they're duplicating them illegally, the store should be the target, not me. Doesn't that seem like a better way to do things, to? (I didn't say BEST.)
And it is up to the people whose copyrights are being violated to deal with the matter, not ours.
The problem is that Rightscorp had "NO" proof. Period.
Uhh, what? They downloaded 150,000 copies of material from places that had no authority to distribute that material.
IP address does not equal person. In many cases a single ip address hides dozens if not hundreds of users.
Two problems with that argument. We're talking about residential cable internet service. "Dozens" is a stretch; hundreds is pretty ludicrous. Most cities have zoning laws that limit the number of people who can live in a residence.
But more important, BMG doesn't need to know the name of the specific person running the server. They have the IP address. Cox is providing service for that IP address. Shut off service to that address. It doesn't matter if there are three, eight, or twelve people, or what their names are. It's on an account.
No, if you were talking about a legal or civil proceeding against the PERSON running the server, you'd have more of an argument. There would have to be a connection shown between the IP address and the account holder. But this was a civil matter against Cox, not the customers.
Cox was in the right to basically tell Rightscorp to go fuck themselves.
Certainly not legally in the right, nor would they be in the right using your technical arguments.
Completely unconscionable terms in any Internet contract, even if they're omnipresent.
No, actually, it isn't. Cox is offering you a service that is designed for residential and not commercial or server use. They're pricing that service based on costs, and if everyone started running file servers and such on their home systems the the costs go up.
And if you don't like the terms, don't agree. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.
The Internet's a two-way street (like telephone, common carrier). Let's not have people on Slashdot advocating truly turning the Internet into a consumption-only medium.
Oh, please. I said nothing of the sort. I'm talking specifically about residential cable internet service. If you want to be a content provider, do it by paying the costs of the bandwidth instead of trying to get your neighbors to subsidize you. It's like, wow, $120 a year for a relatively expensive server host. That's less than my monthly cable bill for residential, only twice the internet part of that, and about the same as my business class cable internet service per month. (I.e., that server is one sixth to one 12th as expensive as doing the same thing using cable.)
For one, you could be running a "server" just because you ran software that does UDP hole punching.
We're talking about people who are deliberately running bittorrent feeds of BMG licensed content, not a newb who plugs his PC in and doesn't know better. There is a difference, both in intent and in traffic levels.
And that's to say nothing of home security cameras, remote desktop, and even just SSH to your own personal server or personal VPN connections to home.
All personal services that won't consume much, and operating at a different level than someone trying to run a public file or data server on that residential line.
If B turns out to be someone testing if they can download something from A that A is making available, and A's IP address is available, then the encryption is irrelevant.
Well, D'oh, if you're encrypting something and you give everyone the key, then you're not hiding anything by encrypting it. I think that's my point as I made it elsewhere. And that fact, combined with the fact that ISPs have nothing to do with end-to-end encryption, is why the comment I replied to is such a nonsequitor.
That provides a massive barrier to entry. Any competing firm would need to pay up who knows how many millions of dollars to get approval to make their own version of the identical drug.
Uhhh, patent free means they don't have to buy the rights to manufacture it. They have to get FDA approval, but that's something different.
For such an infrequently prescribed drug, that makes it economically unviable.
That's a different argument, and yes, I agree. You can't make a pill that costs $1 if you only sell ten of them a year. Someone has to pay the fixed costs, and if there aren't a lot of someone's then the price is going to be high.
Blame the ludicrous FDA approval system for not allowing generics to be manufactured for free,
I'll blame the real world for not allowing anything to be manufactured for free. I'll blame the FDA for not allowing fly-by-night profiteers to claim they're making the same drug in the same strength but cutting corners so they can make a buck. There's a reason you can buy Cialis online for 38 cents a pill, and it isn't because the manufacturer is a kind fellow with a heart of gold who just wants people to be happy.
as long as they're the same drug.
So you'd just take the word of the manufacturer, I guess. Who else would vet the process and the processor?
If you've got a manufacturer who is trying to make a pill for as close to free as he can get -- which will never be totally free -- then you really do need someone to make sure the corners he's cutting aren't required, and that the product he's making that is different isn't different in a significant way.
After all, if the product was such a loser, the proper thing to do would be to allow the market to take over and allow the company to fail, no?
What more needs to be done to "allow the market to take over" when a drug is "not subject to any unexpired patent"? (ref) Any company that wanted to cut into the market could have started manufacturing and selling it for less.
I'm going to go ahead and ask for a citation showing that there's a CEO of a major corporation who's not a "greedy bastard who would do anything to take one dollar more".
You want someone to prove a negative. Honest, decent business owners are not news, which means they must be the norm.
I mean, for chrissake, it's in the job description.
Only in the fictitious "job descriptions" that you write in your head to justify your hate for them. In the real world, no, that is not "in the job description".
This is what we've all been afraid of because it seems to open-up the possibility that the maker of the modem is liable,
Hardly. The maker of the modem does not retain control of that modem such that they could prohibit the illegal use. To have them be liable, they'd have to have a backdoor into it so they could monitor and then disable it.
We need to really limit this definition of "material contribution."
We need to limit our imaginations as to what could potentially be called "material contribution" to actual, material contributions based on a reasonable expectation of control over those contributions. Saying that the modem manufacturer is a "material contributor" in this case is like saying that a gun manufacturer is a "material contributor" to a Columbine-type mass shooting incident. The modem maker has just as much control over the traffic going over the modem as a gun maker has control over who the guns are pointed at. I.e., none.
I think your notes are fascinating. Cox bought themselves the lawsuit when they decided the appropriate response to DMCA notices was to block the email that contains them.
Clearly rightscorp is downloading enough music every day to justify cutting off their service.
And just as clearly Rightscorp has a contract with the copyright holder authorizing that action. Do you want to get people's service cut off for legal downloading of content?
I have never seen anything like this, where someone who suspects wrongdoing is allowed to set a punishment outside of the judicial system.
I have been a webmaster for twenty years and I have absolutely no limitations on who I can block from accessing my servers based on nothing more than a suspicion that they might be up to some wrongdoing. The University where I work can "trespass" someone from the campus (legally prohibit them from setting foot on site) for reasons no more specific than suspected wrongdoing. I can tell you to get off my front lawn with even less cause. Stuff like this goes on all the time.
The DMCA has been around for years. The problem isn't that Cox didn't cut the customers loose, it is that they did nothing at all.
You didn't lose MILLIONS of dollars just because this one dude downloaded your $1 song.
The case was not about one dude downloading one $1 song. It was about one company downloading "more than 150,000 copies of their copyrighted works" from Cox subs, but they only sued over 1397 of those.
Either fight for the customers (end to end encryption so they don't see anything,
Exactly what do any of the ISPs have to fight about regarding end-to-end encryption? That's an issue for the ends, not the middle.
I have SSH tunnels that have end-to-end encryption and my ISP has nothing to say about it.
Does Cox have the Balls to just block all traffic to BMG label sites and any other commercial entities with a presence on the net that are even loosely related to BMG?
Uhhh. If you were a Cox customer legally accessing content from a BMG site, wouldn't you be a bit pissed at that kind of blocking? I'm going to make a wild-ass guess without checking that Amazon is one large source of BMG content, and I don't think you'd have a lot of happy customers if you blocked access to Amazon.com.
More important, it might be possible for Cox to determine what sites are official BMG "label sites", but how the hell would they identify all the "loosely related" sites? Remember, Rightscorp could be accessing the torrents from just about any address on the net. They could be coming out of the Amazon or Google cloud, or from a DSL line in Swampy Bottom, AL.
But most important, the issue wasn't that Cox users were downloading content from BMG sites illegally, but that they were running torrents DISTRIBUTING BMG content without authorization. Cox would have to block all torrent traffic or have some way of identifying a torrent that was distributing BMG content for carpet blocking to have any relevance here.
A much more appropriate response would have been to verify that the customer was running a bittorrent with what looked like BMG content, and then gently remind them that their contract (almost certainly) prohibits operating servers using Cox residential internet service. And then, if the server stayed up, put a block on torrent connections to it. The customer could still access torrent feeds, but nobody would be able to connect to his server to pull content.
The franchise is for access to the public rights of way. Note that Comcast uses the same rights of way, the same fibers and cables, for Internet and TV. The claim was that nobody regulates them, and that's not true.
If they say you used 100TB, then you used 100TB - period.
Well, apparently not, since this guy got the typo and bill corrected.
There's no proving otherwise, and no legal entity will even bother to listen.
I've already listed two, and the FTC would be a third.
I'm pretty sure that just because you don't have the FCC or State Utility Commissions breathing down your neck,
The FCC still regulates Comcast, just not the content part.
The state PUC or Attorney General is quite interested in Comcast and having them follow the laws, like not fraudulently billing people.
And our city, at least, has a franchise authority that is quite interested in poking Comcast when they do something stupid. For example, half an hour after I chatted with my franchise specialist about Comcast promising services at one rate and then refusing to provide them, I had the Comcast state consumer affairs manager calling me to work out the problem. Which she did.
Start by making sure everyone lives within walking distance of a supermarket. Then people don't have to buy gigantic portions on weekly trips and have half of it get spoiled.
The members of the Amalgamated Grocer's Union of Montana, Idaho, and New Mexizo loves you; Frigidaire hates you.
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We're talking about mass-shootings. Less than 15% are stopped by "Good guys with guns."
Perhaps that's because the majority of such incidents take place where the law prohibits the good guys from having guns?
Did you not think of the fact that plenty of people have non-commercial reasons for sharing "content" on a small scale?
Have you not read a single word I've said where I've clearly differentiated between public data servers and small-scale private ones?
I run my personal web site on port 80 on my home Internet connection.
Good for you. I run an Icecast server along with SSH on mine. When you start serving media content on a large scale to anyone who wanders by, we'll talk.
Yes you did with your narrowly defined definition of server:
I'm talking specifically about residential cable internet service. If you want to be a content provider, do it by paying the costs of the bandwidth
No, I did not. I did not in any way, shape or form claim that if you were a content provider you could not also be a consumer. You can be one, the other, or both at the same time. (I am currently both right at this moment, which proves that it isn't an either/or proposition.)
What I said, once you understand the concept, is that "if you want to be a content provider" -- IN ADDITION TO ANYTHING ELSE YOU MIGHT BE, since being a content provider doesn't rule out any other function -- you should pay for the services that are designed for content providers.
Downloading a torrent, while not always legal since it involves seeding, does not make you a "content provider."
I did not say it did. Stop putting words in my mouth.
Running a server that provides content DOES make you a content provider. Kinda obvious, huh? If you want to be a content provider IN ADDITION TO ANYTHING ELSE YOU MIGHT BE you should run those services using a business or commercial grade of service that is designed for that.
Do you never wonder why up and down speeds are not the same for almost all residential internet services? It is because those kinds of services are designed for people who CONSUME content and need higher speed down than they need up. There are OTHER services for people who provide content where the speeds are more symmetrical. I know, I have business service at another site.
But see, it's bittorrent so they are distributing the material.
I have not used bittorrent for a long time, but I remember that I could download without being a torrent server. While it may be the default to do both, it is certainly not a given that one requires the other.
And the "no way of knowing the legality" isn't a valid defense
I didn't say it was. I said it was a better way of dealing with the issue if you go after the people who knowingly distribute material illegally and not go after those who have a reasonable assumption that they are getting a legal copy. Or even just no knowledge that what they are downloading is an illegal copy.
If you want to skewer Rightscorp for downloading material not covered by BMG copyright, then we should skewer all downloaders of illegal content, even those who have no way of knowing if what they just downloaded is an illegal copy or not.
or then no one who uses bittorrent would be liable
Nobody who downloads using bittorrent. But those who distribute using bittorrent know, because they know that they don't have distribution rights to something just because they have a legal copy of it themselves.
I agree it should probably be the original seeder of the torrent who is liable but that would kill the 3rd party copyright watchdog business model.
Not sure what the 3rd party model is, unless you mean Rightscorp scanning the net for BMG content. No, it wouldn't kill that business model, since the illicit distributors would be caught and the people who just download would not.
Now, someone else pointed out that newb might not know that their bittorrent client is also serving, but as I recall, that information was made pretty obvious when I tried some torrent downloading. Status showing how many people were connected to my "client" made it obvious. And, of course, if you're just downloading one thing and then exiting the client, you aren't serving. But in any case, a long time ago in this discussion I pointed out that the correct thing for Cox to have done is remind the customer Rightscorp identified (I mean, the account holder of the IP address in question) that running a server on their residential service violates their contract, which would be a big clue the the customer that they're doing something they didn't realize they were doing and should fix it.
And continuing with that, yes, a "server" is technically a server, whether it is SSH or VPN or whatever. But, the difference between public servers (like the ones Rightscorp downloaded things from) and private ones (SSH or nannycam) is significant. Also significant is that I didn't say that anyone should be shot or have their service terminated just for running a "server", only that it serves as a handy talking-point when dealing with copyright infringement issues and lawsuits like the one here. Cox chose the "say nothing" option, which has resulted in a large civil award against them.
The Internet is NOT just "content providers" and "consumers".
I didn't say it was, so I'm not going to waste time responding to the rest of your rant about something I never said.
As for your argument that Rightscorp was violating other people's copyrights, well. Could be. They aren't distributing the material, just getting a copy. They have no way of knowing the legality of the distribution of non-BMG material.
I think I like a world where the recipient of a copy of something from a source that could be legally providing it is held harmless for copyright violations by the distributor. I.e., if I buy a copy of a program disk from a store that I assume has the rights to sell it, and then it turns out they're duplicating them illegally, the store should be the target, not me. Doesn't that seem like a better way to do things, to? (I didn't say BEST.)
And it is up to the people whose copyrights are being violated to deal with the matter, not ours.
The problem is that Rightscorp had "NO" proof. Period.
Uhh, what? They downloaded 150,000 copies of material from places that had no authority to distribute that material.
IP address does not equal person. In many cases a single ip address hides dozens if not hundreds of users.
Two problems with that argument. We're talking about residential cable internet service. "Dozens" is a stretch; hundreds is pretty ludicrous. Most cities have zoning laws that limit the number of people who can live in a residence.
But more important, BMG doesn't need to know the name of the specific person running the server. They have the IP address. Cox is providing service for that IP address. Shut off service to that address. It doesn't matter if there are three, eight, or twelve people, or what their names are. It's on an account.
No, if you were talking about a legal or civil proceeding against the PERSON running the server, you'd have more of an argument. There would have to be a connection shown between the IP address and the account holder. But this was a civil matter against Cox, not the customers.
Cox was in the right to basically tell Rightscorp to go fuck themselves.
Certainly not legally in the right, nor would they be in the right using your technical arguments.
That's already happening: the ones letting RC have a copy they legitimately have right to are being sued for letting them have it.
That's right. Because having a legitimate copy of something does not mean you have a right to produce copies for other people.
RC are making the copy. they have the right to make the copy (you claim)
Yes, they have the right granted by the copyright holder. The person making the copy and distributing it does not.
and then they want to sue someone else for the legal copy they made?
Except the copy someone else made wasn't legal.
Completely unconscionable terms in any Internet contract, even if they're omnipresent.
No, actually, it isn't. Cox is offering you a service that is designed for residential and not commercial or server use. They're pricing that service based on costs, and if everyone started running file servers and such on their home systems the the costs go up.
And if you don't like the terms, don't agree. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.
The Internet's a two-way street (like telephone, common carrier). Let's not have people on Slashdot advocating truly turning the Internet into a consumption-only medium.
Oh, please. I said nothing of the sort. I'm talking specifically about residential cable internet service. If you want to be a content provider, do it by paying the costs of the bandwidth instead of trying to get your neighbors to subsidize you. It's like, wow, $120 a year for a relatively expensive server host. That's less than my monthly cable bill for residential, only twice the internet part of that, and about the same as my business class cable internet service per month. (I.e., that server is one sixth to one 12th as expensive as doing the same thing using cable.)
For one, you could be running a "server" just because you ran software that does UDP hole punching.
We're talking about people who are deliberately running bittorrent feeds of BMG licensed content, not a newb who plugs his PC in and doesn't know better. There is a difference, both in intent and in traffic levels.
And that's to say nothing of home security cameras, remote desktop, and even just SSH to your own personal server or personal VPN connections to home.
All personal services that won't consume much, and operating at a different level than someone trying to run a public file or data server on that residential line.
If B turns out to be someone testing if they can download something from A that A is making available, and A's IP address is available, then the encryption is irrelevant.
Well, D'oh, if you're encrypting something and you give everyone the key, then you're not hiding anything by encrypting it. I think that's my point as I made it elsewhere. And that fact, combined with the fact that ISPs have nothing to do with end-to-end encryption, is why the comment I replied to is such a nonsequitor.
That provides a massive barrier to entry. Any competing firm would need to pay up who knows how many millions of dollars to get approval to make their own version of the identical drug.
Uhhh, patent free means they don't have to buy the rights to manufacture it. They have to get FDA approval, but that's something different.
For such an infrequently prescribed drug, that makes it economically unviable.
That's a different argument, and yes, I agree. You can't make a pill that costs $1 if you only sell ten of them a year. Someone has to pay the fixed costs, and if there aren't a lot of someone's then the price is going to be high.
Blame the ludicrous FDA approval system for not allowing generics to be manufactured for free,
I'll blame the real world for not allowing anything to be manufactured for free. I'll blame the FDA for not allowing fly-by-night profiteers to claim they're making the same drug in the same strength but cutting corners so they can make a buck. There's a reason you can buy Cialis online for 38 cents a pill, and it isn't because the manufacturer is a kind fellow with a heart of gold who just wants people to be happy.
as long as they're the same drug.
So you'd just take the word of the manufacturer, I guess. Who else would vet the process and the processor?
If you've got a manufacturer who is trying to make a pill for as close to free as he can get -- which will never be totally free -- then you really do need someone to make sure the corners he's cutting aren't required, and that the product he's making that is different isn't different in a significant way.
Same difference. Many CEOs also own the company. You're demanding that someone proves a negative because you cannot prove the positive.
After all, if the product was such a loser, the proper thing to do would be to allow the market to take over and allow the company to fail, no?
What more needs to be done to "allow the market to take over" when a drug is "not subject to any unexpired patent"? (ref) Any company that wanted to cut into the market could have started manufacturing and selling it for less.
I'm going to go ahead and ask for a citation showing that there's a CEO of a major corporation who's not a "greedy bastard who would do anything to take one dollar more".
You want someone to prove a negative. Honest, decent business owners are not news, which means they must be the norm.
I mean, for chrissake, it's in the job description.
Only in the fictitious "job descriptions" that you write in your head to justify your hate for them. In the real world, no, that is not "in the job description".
Nothing prevents one from being both.
That would make them a schizophrenic.
This is what we've all been afraid of because it seems to open-up the possibility that the maker of the modem is liable,
Hardly. The maker of the modem does not retain control of that modem such that they could prohibit the illegal use. To have them be liable, they'd have to have a backdoor into it so they could monitor and then disable it.
We need to really limit this definition of "material contribution."
We need to limit our imaginations as to what could potentially be called "material contribution" to actual, material contributions based on a reasonable expectation of control over those contributions. Saying that the modem manufacturer is a "material contributor" in this case is like saying that a gun manufacturer is a "material contributor" to a Columbine-type mass shooting incident. The modem maker has just as much control over the traffic going over the modem as a gun maker has control over who the guns are pointed at. I.e., none.
I think your notes are fascinating. Cox bought themselves the lawsuit when they decided the appropriate response to DMCA notices was to block the email that contains them.
Clearly rightscorp is downloading enough music every day to justify cutting off their service.
And just as clearly Rightscorp has a contract with the copyright holder authorizing that action. Do you want to get people's service cut off for legal downloading of content?
I have never seen anything like this, where someone who suspects wrongdoing is allowed to set a punishment outside of the judicial system.
I have been a webmaster for twenty years and I have absolutely no limitations on who I can block from accessing my servers based on nothing more than a suspicion that they might be up to some wrongdoing. The University where I work can "trespass" someone from the campus (legally prohibit them from setting foot on site) for reasons no more specific than suspected wrongdoing. I can tell you to get off my front lawn with even less cause. Stuff like this goes on all the time.
The DMCA has been around for years. The problem isn't that Cox didn't cut the customers loose, it is that they did nothing at all.
You didn't lose MILLIONS of dollars just because this one dude downloaded your $1 song.
The case was not about one dude downloading one $1 song. It was about one company downloading "more than 150,000 copies of their copyrighted works" from Cox subs, but they only sued over 1397 of those.
Either fight for the customers (end to end encryption so they don't see anything,
Exactly what do any of the ISPs have to fight about regarding end-to-end encryption? That's an issue for the ends, not the middle. I have SSH tunnels that have end-to-end encryption and my ISP has nothing to say about it.
Does Cox have the Balls to just block all traffic to BMG label sites and any other commercial entities with a presence on the net that are even loosely related to BMG?
Uhhh. If you were a Cox customer legally accessing content from a BMG site, wouldn't you be a bit pissed at that kind of blocking? I'm going to make a wild-ass guess without checking that Amazon is one large source of BMG content, and I don't think you'd have a lot of happy customers if you blocked access to Amazon.com.
More important, it might be possible for Cox to determine what sites are official BMG "label sites", but how the hell would they identify all the "loosely related" sites? Remember, Rightscorp could be accessing the torrents from just about any address on the net. They could be coming out of the Amazon or Google cloud, or from a DSL line in Swampy Bottom, AL.
But most important, the issue wasn't that Cox users were downloading content from BMG sites illegally, but that they were running torrents DISTRIBUTING BMG content without authorization. Cox would have to block all torrent traffic or have some way of identifying a torrent that was distributing BMG content for carpet blocking to have any relevance here.
A much more appropriate response would have been to verify that the customer was running a bittorrent with what looked like BMG content, and then gently remind them that their contract (almost certainly) prohibits operating servers using Cox residential internet service. And then, if the server stayed up, put a block on torrent connections to it. The customer could still access torrent feeds, but nobody would be able to connect to his server to pull content.
(hint: the franchise is for TV services)
The franchise is for access to the public rights of way. Note that Comcast uses the same rights of way, the same fibers and cables, for Internet and TV. The claim was that nobody regulates them, and that's not true.
If they say you used 100TB, then you used 100TB - period.
Well, apparently not, since this guy got the typo and bill corrected.
There's no proving otherwise, and no legal entity will even bother to listen.
I've already listed two, and the FTC would be a third.
I'm pretty sure that just because you don't have the FCC or State Utility Commissions breathing down your neck,
The FCC still regulates Comcast, just not the content part.
The state PUC or Attorney General is quite interested in Comcast and having them follow the laws, like not fraudulently billing people.
And our city, at least, has a franchise authority that is quite interested in poking Comcast when they do something stupid. For example, half an hour after I chatted with my franchise specialist about Comcast promising services at one rate and then refusing to provide them, I had the Comcast state consumer affairs manager calling me to work out the problem. Which she did.
So do I. But they make me fatter.
And they make it harder for me to control my blood sugar.
Start by making sure everyone lives within walking distance of a supermarket. Then people don't have to buy gigantic portions on weekly trips and have half of it get spoiled.
The members of the Amalgamated Grocer's Union of Montana, Idaho, and New Mexizo loves you; Frigidaire hates you.