Will BitTorrent's Paid 'Fast Lane' Violate 'Net Neutrality'? (torrentfreak.com) 121
BitTorrent and TRON have an ambitious plan to improve the BitTorrent protocol. Not only will users be financially rewarded for seeding, but they can also pay for faster access. While this may sound good to some, we wonder how this rhymes with BitTorrent's fight for Net Neutrality and its advocacy against paid prioritization. From a report: We ask this question because BitTorrent has been a fierce proponent of an open Internet. It has been a frontrunner in advocating for Net Neutrality, repeatedly criticizing paid traffic prioritization and so-called "fast lanes." BitTorrent went as far as creating the dedicated "internetbetter" website, avenging FCC's plans to meddle with the 'Open Internet,' advertising its campaign on a massive billboard. "The FCC's proposed changes to Net Neutrality would create a preferential fast lane for designated traffic," BitTorrent wrote at the time. "Those with the deep pockets to pay for this fast lane will have the ability to access and distribute content at higher speeds. Those who lack the purchasing power will be disadvantaged. This moves us towards an Internet of discrimination." These efforts didn't prevent the Net Neutrality rules from being repealed in the US, but it appears that BitTorrent's own plans may not be in line with an 'open' Internet either.
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Re:There’s nothing wrong with it. (Score:5, Interesting)
They are free to fork the protocol and introduce this as an alternative. Let's see how much adoption it will get - law enforcement will love that sharing a movie will now provide a financial incentive, as that will make it a crime instead of a violation.
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"One arbitrarily selected crowd is the exactly same crowd as the other arbitrarily selected crowd. Because [no reason ever given]".
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law enforcement will love that sharing a movie will now provide a financial incentive, as that will make it a crime instead of a violation.
This is incorrect. Damages depend on whether the copyright holder was deprived of profits, not whether the violator made any profit. Severity also depends on whether the violation was "willful": Did the violator know at the time that they were infringing?
Tiers (Score:2)
I think it's more like paying DropBox or Azure for faster downloads. I don't see a problem with it.
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"I think it's more like paying DropBox or Azure for faster downloads. I don't see a problem with it."
No net neutrality problem perhaps, but if you receive money for seeding copyrighted materiel, you might go to jail instead of paying a fine.
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that has nothing to do with it being like net neutrality or not though.
Re:There’s nothing wrong with it. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is no different from free download mirrors with a speed cap (remember when the cap was 40 KB/s on sites like Tucows?) and Premium mirrors you can only access with a subscription.
Re:There's nothing wrong with it. (Score:2)
Bittorrent isnâ(TM)t the provider, they're the end-point. It would be different if they were the ISP. (They havenâ(TM)t become an ISP, have they?) In the highway scenario, where Comcast and AT&T and all are providers of the highway, Bittorrent is the drive-in movie theater... actually thatâ(TM)s not even right.
No, both are problems, but yes they are problems at a very different scale.
Comparing NN to pipes and water leaking:
An ISP throttling you with paid fast lanes is akin to a water main pipe bursting in your basement.
A service online perhaps akin to a drippy sink faucet.
So yes by all means put 100% of your resources and time into fixing the water main, as that is by far a major problem with major coincidences.
No one will fault you for ignoring the leaky faucet during all of that.
But it is still wrong to claim t
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Now that I’ve written this, I’m suddenly not feeling as certain Bittorrent is in the right on this. Hmmm...
Nope, you're right on. Exactly as you said it, bittorent provides content, not service. They can do what they want as long as they don't interfere with anybody else that does the same thing. Our singular issue with the internet is service provision.
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I don't see how this is any different from some people paying more to get a faster internet connection. You personally pay so that you personally get faster access. I don't see anything wrong with that. It's different from someone else having to pay so that you will get faster access. That's what causes the potential for abuse.
Now, if Bittorrent started saying you have to pay more to get faster access, except for their "sponsored torrents" that give full speed even without paying, that would be a proble
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You personally pay so that you personally get faster access.
But when a corporation pays to give all it's customers faster access, it's wrong/a violation/a crime?
This is where most Americans eyes glaze over and ask "what's the difference?" The Armchair NN pundits boiled their argument down to "paying for faster service put others that couldn't pay for faster service at a disadvantage because by comparison their service is now slower - everyone should have equal access, so it's wrong."
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Application or virtual ISP (Score:5, Interesting)
That's an interesting question, is bittorrent an application or a virtual ISP? The genesis behind net neutrality is to ensure fair access to monopoly pipes. Can a virtual ISP have a monopoly pipe?
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Virtually, yes.
Re:Application or virtual ISP (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems respondents/reactors to the post want to hijack it for their own political agendas. I'll take the pure open source agenda for my standard, and using that, react by saying that using speed as a funding model is a harbinger of the ugly stuff that is closed-model.
Yes, I understand they need a funding source for innovation. It's my hope that if Tor is still FOSS, someone just hacks the speed differential and we move on.
In my book, it's a valid criticism against the project for creating fast lanes when net neutrality is important to both their project, and so many others.
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OTOH, it is similar to FOSS projects prioritizing support for sponsors. People have to eat and pay for infrastructure.
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No doubt people have bills. I'm not criticizing the funding method, but speed/functionality is not support. Tor believes themselves somehow a "holy" work, and although I believe in distributed anonymity (such as it is), this seems not so much hypocritical, but an element of what FOSS principles revile.
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If you've ever had bittorrent running on your network, you'd know the answer. Bittorrent is a prime example of a need for home network QoS to depioritize bulk data saturation transfer over just about anything. Monetizing further efforts to prioritize the traffic is in the same vein as cryptomining--a great way to scam* users (possibly behind their back**) into burning a lot of their own resources with vague promises of some reward. Unless/until it's proven otherwise
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That's an interesting question, is bittorrent an application or a virtual ISP? The genesis behind net neutrality is to ensure fair access to monopoly pipes. Can a virtual ISP have a monopoly pipe?
Good question. I think the key difference is not in the tiered speed levels and pricing but how data is treated at each tier. If all the data is treated the same way, no matter the type of ISP, with no degradation of level of service based on the data type or source then they are still providing fair access and there is no net neutrality issue. Many ISPs have tiered speed level pricing, giving consumers a choice of which level meets their needs and budget. As long as they don't discriminate within tiers th
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There are two classes of ISPs, last mile ISP and transit ISP. Transit ISPs do not have a history of interfering with Net Neutrality. Transit providers are in the business of delivering packets and that's what they do, the more packets the more they get paid.
The problem is with monopoly/oligopoly last mile providers. For these companies there is a large incentive for them to violate Net Neutrality. This is an extreme example of net neutrality violation, but it could happen. Your monopoly ISP could sell off t
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I pay my ISP for internet access at a certain bandwidth. That's what they advertise and what I agreed to pay for. If they block or slow things, they are cheating me. Some ISPs want to redefine internet access as pieces and speeds but not sell it that way. That dishonesty is why net neutrality matters.
Cable TV could come with internet service, but when I agree to pay for cable and not internet, they block internet service. That is not cheating because they aren't failing to provide what I pay for.
I don't thi
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I have this now with AT&T.
If I use Fast.com I can only get 20 - 25 Mbps, anyone else I get 90 - 100 Mbps.
When I called to have it checked, the AT&T guy that came to the house said it was probably Netflix being too overloaded to send data any faster.
This was 11AM on a Thursday morning. Hardly peak Netflix!
I told him this is probably a net neutrality issue as Netflix could send me enough bits to start my house on fire if AT&T would let them, but they currently throttle my connection so that I can
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The obvious solution for you seems to be to download your 25 Mbps 4 K video at 15-20 Mbps (maybe faster) using BitTorrent then, to watch it as many times as you wish without any additional bandwidth usage! AT&T really leaves you no choice here! hehe:)
A friend told me that Netflix automatically publish their videos on BitTorrent as soon as they come out!
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There's no such thing like a 'Virtual ISP'? Bittorrent is a P2P protocol, it's up to me as an end user to decide I want to seed some torrents, and if so, at what pace I choose to do so. I could of course (aided by a bit of software) decide to seed it a little faster if you give me some crypto tokens in return.
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That's an interesting question, is bittorrent an application or a virtual ISP?
Not really and no. They're not providing internet access. If you do't pay for fast bit torrent, you get slower bit torrent and that's it. Having bittorrent on your pc won't magically make access to google drive slower in order to "encourage" you to use more bittorrent instead. Bit torrent doesn't monopolise your connection leaving you at their mercy. They are not forcing small players to have a slowdown so that you use bittorrent
what? (Score:2)
A perilous time for Bittorrent (Score:2)
Will they be excommunicated from the Internet for their sins against the sacred Net Neutrality?
Not a NN violation (Score:2)
There's no problem with charging more for faster access. The problem is that carriers want to charge both their customers and the businesses whose data they provide to their customers to move the same set of bits.
It sounds like BT is doing the opposite. They will be paying the providers and charging the consumers.
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The problem is that carriers want to charge both their customers and the businesses whose data they provide to their customers to move the same set of bits.
ISP's have more than one customer, and some of them arent people. Some of them are other ISP's.
The problem with net neutrality is the dishonesty loaded into it right at the start, the dishonesty that netflix was being throttled when in fact netflix chose (repeatedly) an ISP that didnt want to pay for delivery.
I rough timeline is that first netflix was with Cogent, and other ISP's like Level 3 wanted settlement for the traffic because Cogent didnt qualify for settlement free peering due to the amount of
Resource neutrality is not technically desirable. (Score:2)
Americans don't want net neutrality ... (Score:1)
... that's kinda obvious. Given that it's dead, might as well play by the rules mandated by the American people.
I supported net neutrality, but my vote doesn't always go my way. When I lose, I play by the new rules.
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Bullshit.
Lobbyists don't buy voters. They buy politicians while in office.
Officials whose constituents feel strongly about an issue win over lobbyists every time there's a vote.
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You assume what I'm assuming.
you can't have a fast lane (Score:2)
without there also being a slow lane
Since available bandwidth is fixed, they have to slow someone down to speed someone else up. So yes, that's pretty much the definition of violating NN.
Just like my father used to say (Score:2)
No, and this is stupid propoganda (Score:2)
Having one use pay for speed has never been the issue with NN. It's when both endpoints have to pay the middleman. That is, no one thinks it's strange I can buy gigabit internet access or just 3 megabit. That's what they're talking about. What NN is about is, even though I paid for gigabit, if Google doesn't pay I only stream Youtube at 3 megabit (but still get Netflix, which did pay, at gigabit).
This gets confused by terminology, is a dumb article, and should never have been posted on Slashdot. It eit
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Yes, but nothing is implying that the throttling is on both sides. It seems like it's the downloaders who are being throttled.
Yeh, no. (Score:1)
If they pay people for seeding (Score:5, Insightful)
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Everyone's Against Paying Shit (Score:1)
Written by the MPAA/RIAA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only will users be financially rewarded for seeding
Oh great - I bet Hollywood lawyers are salivating at this. There are many countries in the world where downloads and uploads are no big deal and not criminal - so long as there's no commercial gain from it. "Financially rewarding" people for uploads will criminalize a whole group who currently are not breaking the law.
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Pure nonsense, just another 'Muh Bandwidth wuz STRANGLIFIED!' ignorance thing and an assumption of other perspectives to suit that drivel.
1. Total bandwidth is a fixed thing at each hop between you and the destination, even if its local, you are not guaranteed max speed to any site anywhere. All available bandwidth is zero sum so if something else is using up 99% of the max then you only get 1%.
2. Someone has to pay to handle the streaming volume now let alone the 4K-8K-3D streaming to come in the futur
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Ignorant (Score:1)
Hey dipshit. QOS is a fast lane.
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The alternative, as human history shows us clearly, is corporations with guns. Which means that you get nothing and lose everything, as corporation is not accountable to anyone but owners. Current democratically elected government is in fact accountable to voters in many ways.
Free market if allowed to function in unmanaged capacity leads to death of free market through consolidation of power and eventual full monopolization of each field. Again, look at history for examples. This is a tried system that simp
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You know that being an extremist makes you conclude the strangest things, such as that government is just another corporation, or that dying for allah is the primary purpose of life?
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I see that your faith is utterly impenetrable to logic. Unfortunate, but expected for an extremist.
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Which by definition is the opposite of extremist, as that's the mainstream view across overwhelming majority of humanity.
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