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Comcast has a very slow lane for all BitTorrent traffic (they effectively blocked it back in 2007/2008) until the FCC died them to not do that. You’re argument
by plandis 9y ago
Comcast has a very slow lane for all BitTorrent traffic (they effectively blocked it back in 2007/2008) until the FCC died them to not do that.
You’re argument is probably false. The fears are real we’ve seen ISPs provide tired bandwidth in the past. Everything except BitTorrent traffic was in the fast lane and BitTorrent traffic was in the slow lane.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoFWIW, Comcast's statement clearly indicated it would not throttle or block lawful content. If you're being honest, you should be able to agree that most BitTorrent traffic is not lawful. As of 07/08, I think maybe the most common use of legal BitTorrent was that some Linux distros offered their ISOs over it. Today this might be a bit more interesting of a case since a lot of software patchers from major protocols now use the BitTorrent protocol to patch software. I believe Star Citizen does, Blizzard games may as well. Windows Update at the very least now uses a similar system, though I don't know if it's specifically BitTorrent based or not.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> FWIW, Comcast's statement clearly indicated it would not throttle or block lawful content. If you're being honest, you should be able to agree that most BitTorrent traffic is not lawful. Most BitTorrent traffic may not be, but that's a matter of content not protocol. Most of the people physically located in the death row wing of a particular prison may be condemned convicts but if a government says it's not going to kill anyone not duly sentenced to execution and just drops a bomb on that wing, killing mostly condemned criminals, but also a few correctional officers and service workers, the action would be clearly out of line with the commitment.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoSure, but again, the example given is ten years old, when there was almost zero legitimate BitTorrent traffic, and it was unreasonably difficult for ISPs to combat illegal traffic in other ways. (Of course, I suspect net neutrality supporters would be far angrier if Comcast were to inspect the contents of the BitTorrent content to determine if it's legal or not.) If you're going to throttle a protocol to keep your network optimized for legitimate users, crippling a piracy protocol seems pretty practical, wouldn't you say?
- dragonwriter 9y agoNet neutrality supporters don't generally agree that ISPs have a proper duty to block even illegal content, only that it is not problematic (from an NN perspective, some may have problems in some cases for other reasons) if they do so provided that in doing so they do not block any legal content. If they can't discern illegal content they should just leave it alone; they are generally protected from liability for it specifically because it is not their job to police it.