Mark Cuban Calls on ISPs to Block P2P 463
boaz112358 writes "Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner, HDNet CEO, and noted gadfly is publishing on his blog that Comcast and other ISPs should block all P2P traffic, because as he says, "As a consumer, I want my internet experience to be as fast as possible. The last thing I want slowing my internet service down are P2P freeloaders." He complains that commercial content distributors instead of paying for their own bandwidth, are leeching off consumers who are paying for the bandwidth. As an alternative distribution method (at least for audio and video), he suggests Google video."
hold on a sec... (Score:5, Insightful)
P2P is only int its infancy (Score:5, Insightful)
P2P is only in its infancy. More and more applications are being found for it. Joost is one example, where p2p is used in a way to allow a relatively small player to operate. New uses even bring bandwidth use down, keeping it local.
It would be stupid to kill these opportunities for the benefit of a few big players.
Re:hold on a sec... (Score:5, Insightful)
Paying Customer? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is getting silly..... ISPs should NOT be advertising services they can not actually provide and then blaming groups of their own customers for their lack of infrastructure.
How exactly ? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a battle that cannot be won, unless the whole Internet is shut down. Most people in the content business would like to regulate P2P like TV or shut it down like unregulated radio, but unlike these media, P2P doesn't require more equipment or knowledge than ordinary citizen already possess in order to be able to broadcast.
The cat is out of the bag, and the clever ones will take advantage of it. The others will fight to the bitter end and lose, as always.
obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)
Google video requires no bandwidth (Score:4, Insightful)
Or wait... why was it that this P2P concept was invented again? "Distribute load" or something... difficult concept.
Try again Mark.
Re:Paying Customer? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Ok... so now paying customers who buy a service as it is advertised are freeloaders?"
He means this in the sense that while you might pay Comcast a monthly fee for bandwidth, you're using that bandwidth to get free movies, games and music that are otherwise being offered for sale. Yes, I'm aware that some people use BitTorrent only for legitimate purposes, but he's addressing the other 99%.
"This is getting silly..... ISPs should NOT be advertising services they can not actually provide and then blaming groups of their own customers for their lack of infrastructure."
Agreed. Since Comcast is a virtual monopoly in many localities, they could simply drop the "unlimited" plan and start selling monthly bandwidth alotments in tiers. This wouldn't be a popular decision among BitTorrent fans, but it would be more equitable.
Re:Freeloaders? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Freeloaders? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Freeloaders? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Freeloaders? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or at least to whomever's ISPs promised them service. That's the real problem here, the overselling of backhaul capacity and quoting of mindless 'burst' speeds rather than average or continuous transfer. What everyone is doing with their connection is irrelevant. If I'm downloading porn or watching YouTube, the effect on my neighbors is going to be basically the same (witness most recent 'imminent death of the net' story, which IIRC blamed video).
We need a little more truth in advertising in internet access. Let's make them advertise two separate figures, one for speed and one for transfer, for starters. And if they're going to do QoS or prioritize traffic, that needs to be disclosed, too -- not just that they're going to do it, but on what basis they're going to do the QoS and a breakdown of what traffic is going to get what priority over what else.
Mr. Cheapskate asks for more. (Score:3, Insightful)
All ISPs offer a "shared bandwidth" plan where they tell you that you will be sharing the bandwidth at the last mile, with your neighbors. And if you want to have fast guaranteed unshared access, they offer a dedicated "bandwidth connection" for a premium fee, where only you get the full bandwidth and if it is any lower than promised average, you can actually complain to the ISP and get it fixed, or even possibly sue them for not providing service as promised.
Mr. cheapskate bigshot CEO opted for the shared bandwidth option, where he was aware that his neighbors would share the bandwidth and thus his connection quality was dependent on their usage. He chose not to go for the premium dedicated line in order to save a few dollars.
And now the Greedy Bastard is complaining about why he is not getting the features of the *premium* dedicated service on his cheap shared bandwidth connection. And then he calls *others* freeloaders!!!
Re:How exactly ? (Score:3, Insightful)
They could make life on ports 22 and 443 and using conventional protocols like HTTPS and SSH really obnoxious, but you can't just ban all encrypted content, at least not easily and at very high speeds.
Will the real Mark Cuban, please stand up? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hold on a sec... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:One way to solve this (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One way to solve this (Score:3, Insightful)
Some facts:
Real fans pay for music.
Poor fans won't pay for music whether it is easily available or not.
And if there wasn't any demand, then there wouldn't be any supply.
The market will work itself out despite DRM and the like.
So no TCP/IP then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting comment... (Score:5, Insightful)
What you are referring to is breaking of network neutrality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality).
******
The principle of net neutrality and regulations designed to support the neutrality of the Internet have been subject to fierce debate in various forums. Since the early 2000s, advocates of net neutrality rules have warned of the danger that broadband providers will use their power over the "last mile" to block applications they oppose, and also to discriminate between content providers (e.g. websites, services, protocols), particularly competitors.
******
So if universities do priorization, why not corporations, why not ISP's?
A slippery slope....
Re:One way to solve this (Score:5, Insightful)
What about legitimate P2P sites? (Score:3, Insightful)
And not just software - p2p is critical to the ability of independent musicians to distribute downloads of their music. For example, Jamendo [jamendo.com] offers Creative Commons music from thousands of artists via BitTorrent and eMule.
I'm such a musician - I offer BitTorrent downloads of my music [geometricvisions.com]. If (Heaven forbid!) I got slashdotted, the torrents would keep me from being bankrupted by bandwidth bills, as would be the case if I only offered HTTP downloads.
Re:Freeloaders? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps they should sell their bandwidth differently. Some people want a really high-speed connection for instant response time and occasional large transfers, others want to use all the bandwidth they can get 24/7. The two could be charged differently for their usage. Sell different plans with the same connection speed but different limits on maximum monthly usage. When someone goes over the limit, either throttle their connection to a much lower speed or bill the extra usage at a premium rate. The ISPs could actually offer higher speeds at much cheaper rates to the 'normal' users, and make extra bucks off the high volume users. Users would pay for what they use, and as people moved to high volume use, the ISP could add the bandwidth without having to gripe about it. They could even shape their traffic if they wanted to, offering lower rates during off hours for high volume use.
A side benefit would be that they wouldn't have to oversell bandwidth by anywhere near as much since they would know how much real bandwidth they need by the type of account.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One way to solve this (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for supporting artists, but I won't support the RIAA and bullshit business tactics to do it. I stick to music from people I know or discover and that I can buy directly from them or an outlet similar to CDBaby.
Re:hold on a sec... BINGO!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
And this would make the big guys very happy. I wonder if our Mr. Cuban is a big guy or a small guy these days...
all the best,
drew
Re:One way to solve this (Score:5, Insightful)
They should not use the access they're paying for, but instead should go pay another internet provider also? That sounds fair. And by fair, I mean utterly stupid. It's not like you get to choose not to pay your inet fee - most schools either require it or bury it in other fees anyway, so even if you DO pay for your own inet access, you're just double or triple-paying. How about when you pay for internet access, you get to... I know this is crazy... access the internet? If it's too slow for Mark Cuban, he's welcome to run his own, faster network and put whatever policies he wants in to place to govern it. He has enough money. But he, you, and everyone else can stay the fuck out of my internet usage, thank you.
Re:One way to solve this (Score:2, Insightful)
See, here is the thing. How much is music worth? Well, it is worth whatever the artist is paid. The idiot anonymous coward who posted elsewhere here in reply to me suggesting that I am somehow obligated to buy music I don't even line for whatever value corporations place on them is completely off base.
How much does a VERY successful band get from a single $20 CD? A buck. Maybe two bucks if they are lucky. Therefore, the music is worth one or two dollars for an entire album of content. The other $18 is the price of advertising, distribution, lawyers, music videos, corporate revenue building. It has nothing to do with the value of the actual music to me as a consumer. Those are all added expenses by other people to get the music to me. It isn't needed anymore. Especially since I don't find out about music on the radio or television, but through friends and the internet. If a band is paid $2 for the royalty on each album, then $2 is what the album itself is worth. Do away with the middle man and sell me the product for $2. Or charge $4 if you like, as the artist.
So until the artist is the one dictating the price of their product, people like that anonymous coward who want CORPORATIONS to dictate the price of an artist's product can suck it.
Re:Interesting comment... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because a university is a private network. Same with a business. Your house is also a private network.
So if I do priorization in my own home, why not corporations, why not ISP's?
Do you want the government telling you that you can't prioritize you WOW session over you daughters MySpace traffic?
When there is only one choice of ISP in a given area, that ISP becomes a public utility, not a private university, company or home. This is where net nutrality rules will apply. Once that traffic is delivered to the ISP's customers, it becomes private data and is not governed by Internet rules.
Money for nothing (and chicks for free) (Score:1, Insightful)
The guy became a billionaire and contributed absolutely zip to anything. Every time his name shows up on this site I throw up a little in my mouth.
Please remember - It's not all about pirating (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Want VPN? Upgrade to business class. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the term "business class" means something else when you're a student at a uni.
Anyway, this is a horrible idea. ISPs should just make sure they have enough bandwidth to satisfy everyone at peak time. Not doing so is called being cheap and nasty.
In Australia we have monthly download quotas, which some people hate but seems to actually be a good solution. If you want to P2P 200 gigs a month you can, but you're going to pay a lot more for your access than someone who wants to do 10 gigs a month over their company's VPN. Also, you have a well-defined limit to work to; I've seen quite a few posts here about some ISPs having a seemingly undefined "limit" after which they start asking you to curb your net usage. But if you ask them what they consider acceptable you'll never get an answer, because it's always changing. So, I might only get 40 gigs a month on my account, but I know I'll always be able to use it at full speed because my ISP ensures they have enough capacity to handle peak periods.
There is of course money to be made by catering to the heavy downloaders who don't care too much about performance, by selling them cheap accounts with heavily overcommitted bandwidth. But if you're doing that without being upfront about it, then you're cheap and nasty; and it shouldn't be the norm. If you pay for a X mbit/sec connection, that's what you should get, and the only time you shouldn't get the full throughput is if the host you're receiving data from can't handle it.
Re:One way to solve this (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's more that people don't care how ISPs make their money. It's not my problem if an ISP offers a product which they're unable to make a profit on, any more than it's my problem if a store mis-prices an item and sells it a loss.
ISPs have been telling everyone that bandwidth is cheap, by selling X mbit at Y$ per month. "Use it as much as you want and that's all you'll pay", they say. Now they're complaining that their customers actually think their $Y per month entitles them to X mbit of bandwidth. Gee, I wonder why that is?
If you sell an internet connection as an unlimited service, people are going to use it as an unlimited service. If you can't actually provide that, then don't sell it! IMHO, if an ISP that sells you an unlimited X mbit connection and then tells you you're using it too much, it should be an open-and-shut case of false advertising. They're entering into a contract with you without being able to fulfil their side of it.
In the internet backwaters of Australia, ISPs used to offer unlimited access plans on dialup. The low bandwidth of dialup meant that this was kind of feasible, because there's only so much you can download at 56k. When ADSL started coming out, they went to a quota system, because even a couple of hundred kilobits per second can add up to a crapload of data if left going 24/7, and data from overseas costs a lot.
So now I'm paying for 40 gigs of traffic on an ADSL2 link at ~ 19mbit down, 1mbit up. Sure, it's only 40 gigs, but they're my 40 gigs. I can do whatever I want with that and not worry about being throttled because my ISP doesn't approve of particular types of traffic.
There are ISPs here which offer cheaper prices for a much higher quota (and even some offering unlimited quotas at low speeds, i.e. 256kbit). I'm with a more expensive ISP because the cheaper ones heavily oversubscribe and that means you often get poor performance during peak periods. I don't have a problem with ISPs providing such a service; there's people who want to download a lot but don't really care if sometimes (or often) websites are slow to load. It's only a problem if they try to hide the fact that they do this.