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Toledo Uncappers Getting Shafted
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Nov 21, 2002 08:25 PM
from the mountains-from-molehills dept.
from the mountains-from-molehills dept.
Jacob writes "Broadband Reports has a well written article detailing the plight of those Ohio cable modem users who found themselves facing gun wielding FBI agents for uncapping their cable modems. Buckeye Cable has clearly crossed a line and the tech community and consumer groups should be all over them like a wet, angry rag. Kudos to Broadband Reports for not letting this thing die." Granted, those who were indicted were violating their service contracts, but having their posessions siezed by FBI agents is overkill.
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Move to New Zealand... (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't this America? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a sad state of affairs.
Re:Isn't this America? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I do indeed love this country.
Parent
Re:Isn't this America? (Score:5, Insightful)
The civil forfeiture laws are worse than a lot of the laws we bitch about on here. The War on Drugs opened the door for this, and believe me, they will try to extend it to any area they can. Allowing the police to profit from confiscating property only gives them incentive to manufacture crimes where there are none.
The current civil forfeiture laws are horrible, but law enforcement will fight tooth and nail to keep them in effect. The potential for these laws to be abused makes the DMCA look fairly innoccuos in comparison.
FEAR.org [fear.org] has some info regarding these laws as well.
Don't think that just because you're not a pot-head or a "hacker" that it can't happen to you!
Parent
Re:Isn't this America? (Score:5, Insightful)
So is summary execution.
Rarely is either justifiable.
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Re:Isn't this America? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this America? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Isn't this America? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm certain that's a comforting thought to Jose Padilla [wtnh.com] who's been imprisoned since May [stanley2002.org] without a trial, access to a lawyer, a telephone call, or one moment without bright lights shining down on him. Yes, the man has to learn how to sleep with the lights on in his tiny cell in a military brig. Anyone who's read 1984 [online-literature.com] will recognize the rooms with the brights always on with no windows as belonging to the Ministry of Love [online-literature.com]. I've got news for you; our rights have been eroding for some time, and Sept 11 gave the resident president all the power he needed [eff.org] to bring about a landslide. I hope to God there's a major backlash and soon, or there won't be much left [cornell.edu] of this country for our children. They'll have to read about it in books, so long as the books they're reading don't make the government suspicious [philly.com]. Perhaps my children will one day turn me in [online-literature.com] to the FBI [villagevoice.com] for being unamerican [washington.edu].
Parent
Re:Isn't this America? (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, the agents may have been abusing their authority by taking the VCR, for instance. Or the warrent could have been too broad, or the items listed on it may have included things that have no bearing on the suspected crime, in which case the judge who signed it made a mistake. But the fact that they siezed private property is nothing unusual.
Parent
Re:Isn't this America? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the War for Southern Independence, when Lincoln "stuff[ed] the Constitution in a hole" (his words, not mine). We ceased to be a Constitutional Republic at that point and our rights have suffered ever since.
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Re:Isn't this America? (Score:5, Insightful)
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While you were sleeping (Score:5, Interesting)
"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation," the leader of another country once wrote. "We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."
That was Adoph Hitler, writing about creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.
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I'm not scared (Score:5, Funny)
I'm all over the internet like a cheap suit now.
Buckeye Cable just doesn't get security (Score:5, Insightful)
A simple example is CGI scripting. When a client uses their cgi-bin to store scripts, they are putting at risk the contents of their webspace if they are insecure.
The hosting company is relying on the first level of protection for their server being well written secure scripts (this being the site owners only level of protection), but this is out of their control. The second level of protecting their server has is the restriction and security of what client (especially the scripts) may do in their webspace.
Buckeye Cable needs to stop getting the FBI to cover up their lack of security.
-----
hack this site. Get 'em boys. [wallpaperscoverings.com]
Parent
Astounding.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Astounding.. (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno man...if that's juvenille, than I don't know if a word exists for what passes for conversation here sometimes....
Parent
Re:Astounding.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Huh? It's their network. It's outright stupid for them to not understand exactly how their network behaves. Security-by-lawyer really isn't that good of a network protocol...
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Re:Astounding.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is yet another example of how far out of control the FBI has become. This is an abuse of power as frightening as Ruby Ridge or Waco. More so - more so, even. At least in Ruby Ridge and Waco there was at least a pretense that the subjects were armed and potentially violent. These people were just ordinary people working in their homes. It's not like they were distributing child porn, or soliciting 13 year old girls to have sex, or stealing credit card information. They were, in effect, eating "too much" at what was advertised as an all-you-can-eat buffet. The FBI has no business whatsoever being involved here. At most, Buckeye should have sued these people in civil court for breach of contract. Unfortunately for all of us, the cable companies bought themselves laws which basically makes the police their contract enforcement agency.
Shit like this just reinforces my belief that our legal system is broken beyond repair.
Parent
Spinning bodies (Score:5, Funny)
I think we can add the Founding Fathers to that as well.
let's explain that, shall we? (Score:5, Interesting)
John Weglian, chief of the special units division of the prosecutor's office, offers no apologies for Buckeye's unusually harsh treatment of the uncappers. "Cyber crime is potentially very damaging to society. We are taking a firm position on that type of criminal activity. We hope these cases will have a deterrent value, given the cost factors for the defendants in successful prosecutions."
The cable operators claim a loss of $11,000 for each of the 23 offenders and absurdity at best as the operators had the power to kill service at anytime, if indeed such losses were occuring. The uncpping was detected and the ISP could have terminated the contract with the individuals in question and fined them the cost of the modified equipment.
Now why is this a bother to Orwell and the authors of the US Constitution? Because it is a great step towards the end of free publishing in the US and towards the thought control of 1984. Violating a "service contract" with a monopoly ISP has been equated with serious law breaking. The same service contract includes prohibitions on running "servers" or electronic publications. Prohibiting electronic publications on a monopoly service ammounts to denial of first amendment rights to free speach. The internet is a public place, built largely from public networks on public land and supported by monopoly structures. The implication is that US citizens in the future will be felons if they attempt to express themselves in the electronic commons by runing their own news servers, email, or web servers.
Some people can't stand any competition, but the Founding Fathers knew that that's what a free press is all about. These services are against the wishes of their monopoly ISP wich also happens to be the monopoly telco or carrier of CableTV and all other significant electronic publications in the area. From the publisher's perspective, this is a nice step towards criminalizing competing with them. Not being able to run a free press is something the Founding Fathers would not find funny at all. The first amendment [archives.gov] to the constitution puts free speach and press in the same class as religion and free assembly - inviolate. They also debated extensivly on the evils of exclusive franchise that copyright grants and how to balance that with the good that it can do to promote the useful arts - 14 years only, thank you. They could never have imagined a world of only one large press organization, AP, five music publishers, three broadcast networks and the technological steps those entrenched intersts would take to preserve and extend their power.
Orwell precicted such control through technology and it's ultimate results. These "untaper" federal cases combined with Paladium, are a great step towards 1984. Paladium, with its concept of "trusted computing" will assure that personal computers will spy on their owners, who can only use them to recieve official propaganda. Orwell saw it comming.
The stage has been well set by the large publishers and you are discredited. They have issued a long string of kiddie porn arrests and news storries about the demise of music publishers. These storries have convinced the public that the free internet is responsible for the demise of popular music and an increase in child molestation. "Hackers" have been equated with child molesters, warez losers and other "pirates" and parisites. this wired story [wired.com] does a good job of demolishing the connection between child molestation and the internet, but the readership of Wired is nothing compared to MSNBC/Time-Warner/AOL/McDonalds/AP/Conglomoram/GE. Your neighbors may not pitty you when the FBI coyly knocks on your door. "Why esle would anyone want to have all that bandwith or run a server?" a clueless populance will ask. You have been painted as some kind of pervert that treatens the great public circus, home, harth and the whole "entertainment ifrastruture" without which the US economy would obviously colapse.
I invite one and all to see exactly what I want to do with my internet connection [68.96.149.199]. It's simple, I want to share my life with relatives that live in different states and my interests with anyone who cares. There's nothing Earth shattering here, not even bad music.
On December 1st, my modest site will go black when my contract with Cox Cable expires. The nose has tightened slowly, every six months brought some new loss of service and increase in costs, and it is now intollerable. I'm not willing to pay $75/month to simply surf the great corporate billboard nor am I willing to give money to a company with the same contract terms and philosophy as Buckeye.
Don't worry, I'll keep posting here on Slashdot. Now you know who twitter is.
Parent
The article looks to be getting Slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
For the record, uncapping ( hacking your modem in order to gain access to untapped bandwidth) is not legal. Those who perform the practice can expect retaliation from their broadband provider, and should expect serious repercussions for doing so. That said, one Ohio ISP has taken punishment for the practice to an unprecedented level that should raise the eyebrows of providers, customers, and concerned citizens alike.
The Block family is the Rupert Murdoch of Toledo, Ohio. The company controls several major area newspapers (including The Toledo Blade), one of the area's television stations (TV5 Toledo), a dial up provider, Buckeye Cable, and much more. As such, their control over the political system in the area is considerable, a fact that may under-ride the horrifying journey several individuals are taking through the area's legal gauntlet because they uncapped their cable modems.
Paul Shryock, vice president of information technology at Buckeye Cablesystem, discovered that twenty three of his subscribers were getting more juice from their connections than they paid for. According to an interview in a recent Cable World article, Shyrock noted that one subscriber had "altered his modem to handle 100 megabits per second, up and downstream", though the company could never realistically even obtain such speeds.
Shryock also confirmed the company wasn't sure how customers were getting the extra speed. "We don't fully understand how they're pulling this off just yet, but we're learning more every day."
While the methods Shryock used to discover the offenders who weren't going download crazy is somewhat of a mystery, a greater mystery is how Shyrock came up with the cost impact numbers he would later use to nail subscribers to the wall with the help of the FBI.
The FBI's computer crime department needs computer offenses to total over 250,000 dollars before they'll get involved in local crimes. Conveniently for Buckeye cable, Shryock "guesstimated" that the 23 total offenders contributed to more than that amount in bandwidth theft, nearly eleven thousand dollars worth of bandwidth theft per offender.
Instead of disconnecting service for uncapping (as is the case with nearly every provider in the U.S.) Buckeye Cablesystem decided to get the FBI involved. Of the 23 who were to be served search warrants, 17 actually received visits from the FBI and local law enforcement. Seven actually found themselves indicted by the local grand jury and currently face fifth degree felony charges.
One of several defendants we spoke to places his estimated lost income and hardware at over half a million dollars. Brandon Wirtz, who operates more than one business out of his home, was on the verge of releasing a Smartcard based DRM solution for Windows Media Player to several different companies before his life was turned upside-down. Wirtz is a respected young writer, consultant and tech wiz in the industry, and In April will be Awarded a Microsoft MVP award for his involvement in the Windows Media Community.
Thanks to local construction, Wirtz, who never signed a contract with Buckeye, claims his broadband connection was incapable of achieving speeds higher than 128kbps down. By utilizing a Cisco configuration file, he uncapped his Motorola Surfboard modem to 2.5MBps, for what he estimates was no more than a total of 16 hours, and only when he needed to move large files. The worst that could happen to him, he figured, was that his ISP got angry and disconnected his service. He couldn't have been more wrong.
It wasn't long before twelve plain-clothed officers greeted Wirtz at his front door with a search wcoyly asking "Is there anything interesting about your cable?" The officers wound up taking every computer in the house, ironically excluding the PC in his living room that actually installed the uncapping software. Wirtz and his roommate lost at least 8 PC's total, even those who were behind firewalls and incapable of benefitting from the uncapped modem. Law enforcement confiscated all of the hardware from the companies Wirtz built, which contained his work, client contacts, and a book he had written.
Wirtz even lost his VCR in the deal, and Sylvania Township police debated confiscating his Xbox gaming console, but decided to leave it behind. The officers confiscated his legitimate CD copies of Windows Office and several operating systems, all of his burned CD's, and a security card writing machine instead.
Wirtz and several others now face a December 13 court date to determine if they qualify for "diversions", a twelve step program for non-sexual criminal offenders. If Wirtz passes a series of background and substance abuse checks, he may be qualified to pay $3400 in fines and have his record wiped clean if he attends the program. His possessions, client contact information and computers may never be returned, and Wirtz finds himself in a serious financial hole thanks to frightened clients and mounting legal fees, though he's yet to give up on broadband. He's now a happy Wi-Fi customer.
John Weglian, chief of the special units division of the prosecutor's office, offers no apologies for Buckeye's unusually harsh treatment of the uncappers. "Cyber crime is potentially very damaging to society. We are taking a firm position on that type of criminal activity. We hope these cases will have a deterrent value, given the cost factors for the defendants in successful prosecutions."
But not everyone in the region agrees that the case is entirely about bandwidth theft.
George Runner, among those indicted by the grand jury, has had a long history of disagreement with area officials, the Block family included. Runner, a former Lucas County assistant prosecutor, left the area after being accused of stealing county supplies, an act which was caught on videotape by a hidden camera.
That camera, which was illegally placed, forced the resignation of village police chief Lance Martin, and added fuel to the fire of disagreement between Runner and regional officials. According to area locals, the Block family patriarch Paul Block had always disliked George Runner, who the Blocks claimed was overly secretive of details in cases he was prosecuting for the county.
Runner will most likely not be offered the chance to attend the diversions program, and was one of the only offenders forced through booking (mugshots, fingerprints). While it's pure speculation to link Runner's legal problems with his area disagreements, it's something that begs asking. Calls to Runner's attorney's office for comment were not returned by press time.
When the Block family first came to Toledo, Paul Block was rumored to have said he was going to "rip down Toledo and rebuild it in his image". The behavior of Buckeye Cablesystem has many wondering exactly what kind of image he had in mind.
[It ain't karma whoring when posting anonymously]
Where are the guns? (Score:5, Insightful)
Violating Service Contracts? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, that the FBI got involved at all is an embarassment. No wonder that DC sniper took so long to find: the FBI is too busy holding the dicks of mega-corporations while they pee on the little guy.
Re:Violating Service Contracts? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think the individual(s) at Buckeye should be held accountable for their estimate of $250,000+ in damages, assuming that the figure is inflated (and it seems that it is). What if my neighbor was being too loud when I was trying to sleep, and as a result, I called the police and reported multiple gunshots and screams coming from his house? While this case isn't perfectly analogous, the desired result seems to be the same. In essence, I'd be "teaching him a lesson." Unless this quarter of a million dollar figure is accurate, should someone at Buckeye not be held responsible? The FBI is not at the beck-and-call of every mid-size corporate goon with a bone to pick.
Parent
Lost Revenue (Score:4, Interesting)
It will be very interesting to see how long it is before Bucksnort..er, I mean, Buckeye loses the remaining client base it has. I am sure everyone is in agreement that sending in armed FBI agents over a breach of service contract is overkill. I doubt the intent was to scare away any other customers they have (and potentially could have had, because they overreact. But that's exactly what's going to happen.
What do they do if your bill is two days late? That would be on my mind, even though I tend to pay a hair early just to be on the safe side.
Due process? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah well, so much for the right not to be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
Seriously...
Re:Due process? (Score:5, Informative)
Anybody with an IQ over 100 and a copy of the Constitution can tell you that law enforcement agencies should not be able to do something like this. Yet they do it all the time, even when they have absolutely no intention of pressing charges againt the people they do it to.
If you are suspected of being a drug dealer, you are in danger of having property such as your car or house being seized by police and auctioned off to the highest bidder, even if you are never officially charged.
There are some links to info at the LP homepage, I believe (http://www.lp.org).
Parent
Re:Due process? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now the fear mongers are talking up the terrorist in an effort to promote an agenda of world domination [sundayherald.com]. In the process, they are holding persons, sometimes U.S, citizens, indefinitely and without charges. Furthermore, torture is being seriously discussed. The recent U.S. election shows that the majority of the U.S. supports these suspensions of due process. Money is being diverted from domestic social programs. Again, under the assumption that the vast majority of Americans can consume and exist without worry of being subject to these new laws.
And we have the gall to complain that a few people have been arrested for stealing bandwidth. We expect to be taken seriously when we say we believed the laws would only apply to real criminals. Sometimes the hypocrisy of the country is beyond even my cynical belief.
A quote comes to mind
"First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."
Niemöller.
When we are willing to really willing to move beyond our fear, then we can talk about how bad it is the goverment has the power to take stuff without due process.
Parent
What's next? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uncapper Virus... (Score:5, Interesting)
"No officer, I didn't uncap my modem speed, it must have been that virus that has been going around..."
Re:Uncapper Virus... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Another Step in the Wrong Direction (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again, we see an example of people doing something that is relatively harmless and given an unusually strict punishment simply because it is labelled as "cyber crime." The people who create some laws seem to have little understanding of the technologies that we use and their lack of knowledge is leading to some sort of irrational fear of any individual who commits any sort of crime using technology that they don't seem to understand. However, what makes this so disturbing is that modem capping was not said to be illegal in the article. It was referred to as "not legal." So has there been any legislation against this? Anytime? Anywhere?
And of course, even if there were then we should be disturbed. Was this "crime" any reason to confiscate so much of the offender's equpiment? Even a VCR was taken, but strangely, an XBox gaming console was left behind. I'm not sure what exactly it is that's motivating these steps in the wrong direction. Is it some sort of irrational fear that leads to those that commit computer crimes being put in the same category as terrorists (which they have been, BTW) even if their crime is simply that of "stealing" bandwidth? Ignorance may be bliss for those at Buckeye Cablesystems and other corporations and the governments that make laws protecting them, but it certainly isn't for the rest of us.
This is bad news, people. It seems that if you're committing anything that can be labelled "cybercrime" you can be given absurdly strict punishments just because your crime has that label.
Terrorists (Score:4, Troll)
Overkill (Score:5, Interesting)
FBI agents busting down the doors of Spammers?
Surely spammers with a 28.8 modem waste more resources than people that tweak a cable modem.
Scary (Score:5, Interesting)
Living in a share household bills sometimes went unpaid and Optus@Home 'disconnected' our service, meaning they disabled the dhcp account. We continued to get internet access for the next 6 months until someone finally tweaked that we hadn't got any bills for a while and called Optus. Boy were they mad, but at least we only got billed for the 6 months (honesty is not always the best policy kiddies).
All this crap, same with uncapping modems, could easily be prevented by the ISPs. If it's such a huge problem for them, why don't they take steps to prevent it happening? Insurance companies wont pay up if you forget to lock your car and it gets stolen
Contact the FBI. No, Seriously (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds like this guy is the victim of abuse by a local government official. When that happens, it's a job for the FBI. He's in pain now, but if the FBI investigates and determines that local officials have overstepped their bounds by destroying the guy's business for having commited an offense that should probably result in a small monetary fine, then the local goverment official could actually be prosecuted. Following conviction (or even following acquital, as in the OJ case) there could be civil penalties. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they do grind.
I can't help but be reminded of Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard. In real life, the Dukes could have the FBI take him out.
The same thing has happened in real life with a lot of cases, most noteably civil rights abuses in the South where local governments committed crimes against Blacks.
What were the actual loses?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The cable provider has a certain amount of bandwidth they provide their customers to the outside world. This is what they pay for. They pay that amount regardless of WHO is using it and when. The only loses the cable company should be able to claim is from the customers who cancelled their services because they were not getting expected rates and it can be proved these rates were lower because of a direct result of what these 11 people were doing. That is a very hard thing to prove. Compare the cancels/month directly related to bandwidth concerns before, during, and after these offenders were uncapping. If they are no different, there is no loses.
Even if they were originally capped at 1.5/128. The most you could really get out of a CM is what? 5mbit/500kbit maybe? The have the potential to get roughly just over 3 times what they were paying for. Divide this extra 3.5mbits among say 5000 subscribers and you get a potential loss of 700bit/sec per customer or roughly
Okay its late for me and my math may be off so please be easy if I made a dumb mistake and fell free reply with a recalc with your estimates if I am grossly underestimating something.
I am not saying what they did was justified, but the damage estimates are WAY off..
one question (Score:4, Insightful)
Not Well Written! (Score:4, Interesting)
Exhibit #1:
For the record, uncapping ( hacking your modem in order to gain access to untapped bandwidth) is not legal.
Not legal? It's called ILLEGAL. Uncapping your modem is ILLEGAL. "Not legal" is trying to cover it up.
Exhibit #2:
As such, their control over the political system in the area is considerable
No examples, no proof, just innuendo and slander.
Exhibit #3:
a fact that may under-ride the horrifying journey several individuals are taking through the area's legal gauntlet because they uncapped their cable modems.
More speculation and innuendo. "Legal gauntlet" - what they are the victims now? Oppressed? They broke the law and must now fact the music.
Exhibit #4:
discovered that twenty three of his subscribers were getting more juice from their connections than they paid for.
Getting more juice. What a joke. They were stealing bandwidth from other customers. And not paying for it.
Exhibit #5:
According to an interview in a recent Cable World article, Shyrock noted that one subscriber had "altered his modem to handle 100 megabits per second, up and downstream", though the company could never realistically even obtain such speeds.
So the fact that there wasn't enough bandwidth makes this better? Okay? They basically modded it to use as much bandwidth as possible, to the detriment of others.
Instead of disconnecting service for uncapping (as is the case with nearly every provider in the U.S.)
Its obviously working very well!
companies before his life was turned upside-down
Passive voice. He's just a victim! Its not his fault! All his neighbors say he's a great guy!
The worst that could happen to him, he figured, was that his ISP got angry and disconnected his service. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Bummer. It was just a little mistake. No problem!
This article can be summed as: "No fair! We weren't expecting to get caught!"
Lets be real people. You can't steal bandwidth. If you modify your equipment to take more bandwidth than you are intended to have by your provider, you may end up in trouble. It doesn't look any of these people are going to jail. They got indicted, have to go to an "aversion" program, and pay some fines. The equipment - that which isn't illegal modified or containing illegal materials - will be returned. If they aren't the defendents should get lawyers.
The reprecussions suffered by the criminals is what happens when you break the law and get caught. Bummer. Don't break the law, or if you have a problem with it get it changed. Each defendent consciously knew what they were doing was wrong, and one even admits that he gambled that the consequences would be minor. Friggin' bummer. You gamble long enough and you will lose.
Power? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm tempted to order cable internet just so i can let the guy show up, balk at the draconian contract, and tell him to shove it. Luckily i don't have that much time.
Re:*SIGH* (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm sure he called for lots of backup and confiscated your car, too, right? The problem is not that the law was broken; the problem is that the tactics used were those akin to what would be used against a terrorist, when in reality the suspect was nothing more that a petty thief.
Parent
Re:*SIGH* (Score:5, Funny)
Its called Excessive Force.
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Re:*SIGH* (Score:4, Interesting)
A while back near here (central NC) some poor turkey was pulled over by the local sherr'f depptiy because he was driving a truck with a stolen lawn mower or some such in the back. Said master criminal ran into the woods to get away. Unfortunately for him a van full of SWAT team types on their way to a training class saw the flashing lights & pulled over. Called their buddies in another van and a K9 unit that was also headed to the training class. Borrowed a helicopter from the highway patrol that just happened to be completing repairs at an airport nearby. Finally the couple dozen cops, deputy dawg, and bear in the sky flushed a very scared petty thief out of the woods. If I were him I'd have been peeing in my pants too, wondering if they had mistaken me for an escaped child murderer or CEO or some other completely vile creature to be spending this many resources on hauling my butt out of the woods. Moral of the story - it wasn't excessive force, just excessive zeal on the part of a bunch of cops who decided they'd rather chase a bad guy than go to some ol' training class.
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what about worse crimes? (Score:5, Insightful)
And how many Enron executives were arrested by the FBI at gun point?
A crime is a crime, isn't it?
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Re:Stealing is wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Stealing is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Two words for you. <b>Shared Bandwidth</b>. If bandwidth was *really* that expensive, you wouldn't see 3MBit DSL connections for $70 CDN/month, including the modem rental.
Parent
No. Cable only, and here's why (and how). (Score:5, Interesting)
With DSL, there is a direct physical line from the subscriber to the ISP. By capping the maximum speed their network device will exchange data on that line, the ISP can effectively control your net access speed.
With cable, it's different. There is a single wire (a loop actually) that runs through the neighborhood and each user taps into that line. A certain frequency block on that wire is set aside for cable, and the bandwidth provided by that frequency block is shared among all the cable modems connected to it. When you hear DSL ads bashing cable companies for delivering shared net access that slows down when too many people in your neighborhood sign on, this is what they're talking about.
Up until a bit ago, this was very valid criticism. Typically, one node could provide 30Mbps to a neighborhood, and a single cable modem could snatch up a max of 10Mbps of that for its own use. It was a lot like being plugged into a hub. When usage spiked, you were in collision city. However, cable providers have started sending out configuration files to cable modems telling them to only snag a certain amount of bandwidth. This allows them to provide tiered service on a shared medium. What the people mentioned in the article did was send their modems an alternate configuration file saying "Hey! I know I (the cable company) previously told you that you could only use 128kbps of bandwidth, but now you can take as much as you want up to 2.5Mbps!" Since the cable company victims only did this when they "wanted to transfer large amounts of data quickly," they generated usage spikes way beyond normal, especially considering how much bandwidth they allocated to themselves.
So why crack down so hard on someone whose actions didn't cause any real and lasting damage to the company? The simple answer is that broadband ISPs are in the business of charging as much as they can get away with, and trying to get you to use as little as possible. Their business models depend upon subscribers buying "high speed internet access" and not using it. Simply put, if you're really a "power user" and want to do any of the things you see on "lightning fast internet access" commercials such as downloading digital video or transferring large files, broadband ISPs don't want you on their network. You're belong to a class of customers that uses what it pays for, and not the vast majority who just chat online and check their email twice a day. The fact that they could scare others into lower usage levels by bringing in intimidating government forces was just a plus.
The only difference between this and the (RI|MP)AA sueing their fans or the BSA sending out "You have ten days to buy our software or we'll audit you and possibly take legal action," letters is that cable companies are prosecuting based on the contents misguided contracts and the (RI|MP)AA and BSA are prosecuting based on the contents of misguided US law.
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Re:No. Cable only, and here's why (and how). (Score:5, Informative)
And putting the throttle in the equipment at the customer end of the cable was a big mistake, opening a major can of worms. (Especially given that some customers own their own equipment...) Makes it vulnerable to tampering, leading the company into playing "whack-a-mole", in this case with a BIG mallet.
The proper solution is to do the throttling at the head end. Downstream you can limit bandwidth with a subscriber management box between the head end and the backbone. Upstream the cable systems assign timeslots to each modem from a central box. So you can limit upstream bandwidth by limiting the timeslots. (Or just have the SMS drop the extra packets - which will cause TCP connections to throttle back.)
Of course that means the cable companies have to buy an SMS, rather than pestering the FBI to bust their subscribers.
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Re:Actually they were just being cheap. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:blank subject (Score:4, Insightful)
Before I left, I grabbed a box of cat5, 2 128 meg dimms, a tone and probe kit, and some cat5 crimpers and a celeron 400mhz system.
Admit to snooping in the company books. Clever. Kind of illegal in many jurisdictions.
Admit to theft. Also clever. Very illegal, just about everywhere.
Post with a link to a website with pictures of your home and pets. Unbelievably clever. (I think it's cute that you ask people to hire you on the web page, by the way.)
Yes indeed, it's a shame that the FBI has trouble finding criminal masterminds like you.
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