This story is a few days old but its a very important story and should be read and circulated as widely as possible in my view.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13883For the past while Sympatico users have been complaining they were being throttled to 30kB/s on torrents. But, all that’s been said is: it’s the user’s problem or not enough seeders.
But a couple of days ago it came to light what’s been happening. Sympatico is now throttling (’traffic management’) and also degrading users’ speed profiles for anyone they deem ‘network abusers’ in undisclosed areas, and any time of the day they deem fit to throttle.
Bell-Sympatico is now doing two things: following the Rogers lead: Traffic shaping/throttling and degrading users speed profiles. A brief description of what’s going on is described below along with the letters being sent to ‘Network Abusers’.
Is it fair for an ISP to set "demands" or "clauses" in their contracts and not keep their end of the bargain ?
Recently we saw Comcast on the receiving end of a class action for interfering with traffic passing through their hands in breach of the FCC guidlines, but it turns out that this is a general trend we should all be on our guard against, sitting meekly by and allowing them to abuse us will only lead to the demise of any independent social networking that they cannot monetise, this could be whats in store for the future if we dont make a loud protest each time we see this backdoor activity and shame the culprits.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13873Consumer groups and legal scholars today formally asked the Federal Communications Commission to stop Comcast from tampering with file sharing.
“Two of the groups are also asking the FCC to fine Comcast $195,000 for every affected subscriber,” says Associated Press, continuing:
The petitions will be the first real test of the FCC’s stance on “Net Neutrality,” the principle that Internet traffic be treated equally by carriers. The agency has a policy supporting the concept but its position hasn’t been tested in a real-world case.
The long-standing industry practice of treating Internet traffic more or less equally has started to fray. In tests spanning several states, The Associated Press found that Comcast hindered file sharing by subscribers who used BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing program. The findings, first reported Oct. 19, confirmed claims by users who also noticed interference with other file-sharing applications.
Comcast says it hasn’t actually been blocking file sharing: it’s merely delaying it a tad.
But the subject has become so sensitive the company is said to be threatening to fire staff who talk about it to reporters.
Following the AP revelations, “we’ve been running our own tests” and, “Comcast is forging TCP RST packets which cause connections to drop (a technique also used by Internet censorship systems in China),” said the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Seth Schoen.
Its quite clear you cannot claim "common carrier status" if your altering the traffic passing across your service network, not only are they putting their heads on the chopping block for the media industries who can now claim they are allowing the trading of copyright files, but they will lose customers, are they really this stupid or is this a policy of short term profit ?
Whats really needed is investment in new network infrastructure and it is very important that this takes place, already countries who are not re-investing in keeping up with the demand are falling behind those that do and lets be fair what country would you decide upon in locating your factory or plant, one with a 100M fibre line or the one offering you the equivalent of 56k because they "dont cover the area" you need ?
