On Fri, 19 Oct 2007, Tom DeReggi wrote:
Interesting arcticle.
Certainly it was. It was well written BS!
My belief is that any ISP has the right to control usage of their network. But this arcticle was most interesting because it was addressing what are the ethical ways to accomplish that. The last
We are in agreement on your first sentence, but the second begins the "issue" I have with what appears to be a stance that I would disagree with.
few sentances summarizing of the arcticle homing in on the issue. Basically bringing out that Comcast's action are unscrupulous because the actions are happening behind the scenes, hiding that
This part I agree with, too. If they are attempting to "hide" the fact that they are doing it, then that is, in my opinion, a poor decision. These days, you can't get away with that sort of thing.
they are the cause blocking the peer to peer trafic. They are misrepresenting their identity on the PCs (identity Fraud). But
This is an inaccurate assumption and application of the term "identity fraud". What they are (most likely) doing is sending a TCP reset packet, which is the best way to accomplish the task.
most importantly, they are intercepting someone else's data communication stream and barging in on the conversation (Invasion of Privacy).
Get real. Invasion of privacy? You are serious? This is in NO WAY close to invasion of privacy. They are simply interrupting a communication that they do no wish to transport on their network. If they were capturing the data, parsing it and looking to see who was talking to who and what they are saying, then I'd be more inclined to agree. Is running a proxy server on your network an invasion of privacy? Log files from a squid server get closer to permitting a true invasion of privacy that what Comcast is doing.
For example, simply blocking a BitTorrent or slowing iut down would be OK, as you aren't joining the conversation, just blocking it. But jumping in on the conversation and sending back false information across someone else's Bittorrent conversation is clearly a violation of privacy.
That is is a "violation of privacy" is not so clear to me. In fact, I can't even stretch and say that I think it is remotely similar to invasion of privacy. This is simply a "non-issue", unless they are parsing the data of an individual subscriber, which they MAY be doing, but it is another topic that is not related to their handling of Bittorrent.
Wait until they decide its a good idea to apply the same principle to Email delivery. Scary.
Hmmm...I have done something similar with email as well. Mail destined for my mail server where the rate of new connections exceeds a threshold from a single IP will get you in an address list of folks that will see nothing but tarpit responses from my firewall. Does this qualify as scary?
I think you are WAY over the top on this one, Tom. I generally appreciate your reasoned responses, but this, IMHO, is a bit too much. I did not intend to be offensive in my responses, and I would ask that you accept my apologies offered in advance if they come across that way.
These are the things I hate most. Companies blocking, but not being man enough to step up to the plate and tell their client base how they are blocking it. They are deceiving their clients. But yet,
If they are deceiving customers, then the market will discover this and they will pay. I am not so certain that they don't disclose this to new customers. For me, we always notified our customers that running a server on the network was not allowed, and even included a reference to fileshare apps in that paragraph of the AUP. Any changes I made to the network usage policy, could (in some cases) require an update to the AUP, which was available online and was made available to new subs. I did not, however, inform customers when this policy was updated.
consumers are jumping to sign up, not being aware how they may be limited once they do.
Most users don't understand the issue at all. Many of them are completely unaware of the harm they are doing to the network, and are, generally, understanding once it is explained to them. Comcast is simply turning off the ability for users to UPLOAD via bittorrent. This will affect a small number (percentage) of users, and is well within their rights to do. If they pay a price in attrition, then it will prove to be a bad choice, but I, for one, think they will gain rather than lose as a result of this choice.
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