NTCA uses RIAA blitz in traffic throttling war
p2pnet news view P2P | Freedom:- Major US cable companies are using Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s sue ‘em all marketing campaign against American students to try to prove it’s acceptable to use traffic throttling techniques against P2P file sharers.
It must be OK, says the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
After all, major American universities, do it.
Don’t they?
The RIAA has issued more than 5,000 subpoenas to American students across the US, accusing them of “devastating” the multi-billion-dollar corporate record companies by sharing music online.
School authorities have responded by imposing various music industry initiated anti-P2P practices on students.
In a Re: in the Matter of Broadband Industry Practices, WC docket No. 07-52; to the agency, “In previous comments in the above referenced proceeding, NCTA explained that network management techniques that particularly address and affect peer-to-peer protocols were both necessary and reasonable to prevent congestion that would otherwise seriously degrade the quality of service for all high-speed Internet customers,” says the trade organisation.
It goes on »»»
In fact, as the attached chart shows, virtually all of the top national universities, as ranked by U.S. News and world report, restrict users’ ability to engage in activities that cause excessive congestion. These restrictions specifically include prohibiting or limiting use of P2P protocols over the Internet accessed from the universities’ campuses. the one thing that they all appear to agree on is that networks need to be managed in some manner, and all of them except MIT either prohibit, restrict, or manage their employees’ and students’ use of applications or services that cause excessive congestion.
For example, Princeton University prohibits the installation and use of P2P software on its computers and provides the personal computers connected to the Princeton network ” that serve files to the Internet must limit uploads to only one file at the time”. Columbia University imposes hourly band which quotas on downloads and uplands, and if they are exceeded, a users’ speed is throttled. Columbia expressly warned students, ” if you find that your host is often exceeding either quarter, it could be due to [the fact that] … [y]our host is running a p2p applications such as KaZaA or Morpheus, to generate a volume of traffic that cripples other users’ network access.”
Further down it states »»»
Like colleges and universities, wireless phone carriers also have no apparent anticompetitive reason to manage P2P traffic flow. Yet, like colleges and universities, they, too,used even more restrictive techniques and practices at issue in this proceeding.
Definitely stay tuned.
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.Stumble It!
New York Times – New worm transcodes MP3s to try to infect PCs, July xx, 2008
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July 28th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
well, the minute the cable coms give their internet customers EACH the ability to use a fat pipe as fat as those pipes that universities allow theri studwents to use, then they mgiht come again with the right to regulate that one customer does not use this 1gigabit line on full speed p2ping.
Until then they are offering only an limited “smalband” (compared to 100/100 megabits lines that are considered Normal in industrialised countries elsewhere!) for their customers and if the usage of such a throtled smallband in its full potential as it is advertised to the customer produce problems for them, then they (the COMPANIES I mean here!) should be punished for fraudulent advertising and all that stuff)
“those pesky 5%…”
July 29th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Sharing does nothing to the cartels, except increase their prices. But that stupid greedy tactic can’t work in this case.
It gives ISPs a contrived excuse to throttle bandwidth but in reality it’s what they always do out of lying, thieving, swindling business practice. That’s what makes them and the cartels such good bed buddies. Perhaps they’ll try getting the oil and tobacco cartels onside also.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
“Like colleges and universities, wireless phone carriers also have no apparent anticompetitive reason to manage P2P traffic flow”.
Selling prioritized content isn’t reason enough? Look at virgin media; they eagerly accepted the enforcer role because their interests are aligned with the BPI / RIAA / MPAA etc. How can they possibly compete with free? they don’t need to, instead they just block / restrict all other content except their own. US carriers are looking over the pond at virgin media and are envious. It’s only a matter of time before they implement the same policies. After all, they want to sell their own content, get paid for selling user data to advertisers, as well as charge exorbitant prices for a crippled service don’t they?