TK Junk Mail
Go ahead, make my day
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Margate City, NJ
clubs:
 ·Comcast
|  Legal P2P will be fostered; illegal P2P will be punished
In short, Comcast customers who want to use P2P to trade copyrighted files are about to either become second class citizens, or find themselves booted from the Comcast network entirely. Copyright infringement should be booted from the network. And while many say ISPs should stay out of being copyright cops, it is the best place to put an end to that practice.
By fostering legal P2P products and services, Comcast will be able to optimize the network without suffering the bad effects of unbridled growth. And by charging more for those who fit the profile of the top .1% of bandwidth users, they can fund further expansion of network capacity.
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digitalfreak
Frodo failed. Bush has the ring
join:2005-12-09
49533
| said by TK Junk Mail  :And by charging more for those who fit the profile of the top .1% of bandwidth users, they can fund further expansion of network capacity. LOL. They don't want to expand network capacity. They want folks to pay more for less. |
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swhx7
Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to TK Junk Mail
Why would they ever invest in network capacity?
The only time that happens is when there's competition in the local broadband market. And if there is one other provider, they'll invest just enough to equal or slightly exceed its offering, and not a cent more.
If there's no competition or only an oligopoly in the local market (the "last mile"), it will be more profitable for the ISP to charge more and more, make more restrictive policies, and never improve anything for the customers. In fact, they can and do spend money on preventing competition instead of improving the network. |
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TK Junk Mail
Go ahead, make my day
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Margate City, NJ
clubs:
·Comcast
| said by swhx7 :Why would they ever invest in network capacity? The only time that happens is when there's competition in the local broadband market. And if there is one other provider, they'll invest just enough to equal or slightly exceed its offering, and not a cent more. If you look at their qtrly and annual reports you would see they invest on average $1 billion a year in infrastructure. So all these claims that Comcast never invests are pure nonsense.
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My BLOG .. .. Internet News .. .. My Web Page |
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en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA
·RoadRunner Cable
 ·DSL EXTREME
·DSL EXTREME
| reply to swhx7
Nobody invests in capacity, unless they can make a profit on that investment.
Its more likely that you'll find the investment to be in managing the efficiency of the existing capacity.
This would almost go back to the days of having ISP run cached proxy servers.
I almost wonder if this p4p is an attempt at creating ISP based seed proxy servers for customers. It would cut down on bandwidth consumption, and sold p2p issues.
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Canada = Hollywood North |
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swhx7
Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to TK Junk Mail
Those numbers include building out to new markets and maintaining existing infrastructure. How much of it is for increasing capacity? It doesn't make sense for any big ISP to improve the "last mile" (where all of the notorious congestion is) unless a competitor is drawing away customers. |
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moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
·Verizon Online DSL
| reply to TK Junk Mail
said by TK Junk Mail :Copyright infringement should be booted from the network. And while many say ISPs should stay out of being copyright cops, it is the best place to put an end to that practice. So should infected systems the spew SPAM and DNS attacks.  |
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swhx7
Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to en102
said by en102 :Nobody invests in capacity, unless they can make a profit on that investment. Its more likely that you'll find the investment to be in managing the efficiency of the existing capacity.
That's just putting a nicer spin on "it will be more profitable for the ISP to charge more and more, make more restrictive policies, and never improve anything for the customers".
said by en102 :I almost wonder if this p4p is an attempt at creating ISP based seed proxy servers for customers. It would cut down on bandwidth consumption, and sold p2p issues.
They can't seed or cache anything from p2p without getting in legal trouble, because a lot of what's out there (and a lot of what's popular and would benefit from caching) is copyright-infringing. Even indiscriminate caching would get them sued, and if they did it selectively it wouldn't help much with the traffic problem.
Besides, it would amount to the same thing as collaborating with Pando/p4p companies. But that doesn't reduce their peering costs unless they discourage p2p (see my "it's a scam" post). |
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deadzoned
Premium
join:2005-04-13
Baton Rouge, LA
·Cox HSI
| reply to TK Junk Mail
But I thought all P2P was illegal traffic simply by being P2P?! Guess I have to change my way of thinking again because big corporate deems it necessary.
ISP's are making deals with the devil left and right these days. It's gonna bite them in the ass down the road and it's certainly not going to be friendly to the hated consumer like you and me. |
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Navarre, FL | reply to swhx7
It seems to me that all of the well known ISPs are routinely announcing "last mile" improvements. Comcast is bringing DOCSIS 3, AT&T continues to extend fiber and deploy VDSL, Verizon continues the FiOS rollout, etc. What am I missing? |
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funchords
Robb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Hillsboro, OR
·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Skype
·Comcast
edit:
May 22nd, @06:08PM
| reply to TK Junk Mail
A copyright filter has to comply with the copyright law
said by TK Junk Mail :In short, Comcast customers who want to use P2P to trade copyrighted files are about to either become second class citizens, or find themselves booted from the Comcast network entirely. Copyright infringement should be booted from the network. And while many say ISPs should stay out of being copyright cops, it is the best place to put an end to that practice. There is no way to systematically prevent copyright infringement on the Internet because the question of infringement is decided on HOW the content is used. The courts have already ruled that making it available is not infringement. Using it for educational, non-profit, news, review, or commentary purposes is not infringement. The 17 USC 107 "Fair Use" test is a great text as to why no electronic system can say that copyright has been violated.
A copyright enforcement system has to be compatible with copyright law -- otherwise it's broken.
Technology that distinguishes between copyrighted works and non-copyrighted works is dangerous, as it is inconsistent with the copyright laws around the world, including those here in North America.
In the US, everything written or drawn is protected by copyright laws, without any requirement for upfront registration.
To design a copyright filter to act correctly according to US law, it would have to block all transfers unless some bitprint was registered somewhere as allowable to be transferred:
1. Because its copyright has expired (currently 70 to 90 years from the date of the works creation or the death of the creator).
2. Because the content was explicitly placed into the public domain by the owner, a recognized authority, or a treaty provision.
3. Because the content's owner explicitly allows such distribution while retaining other rights.
AND THIS IS A REALLY INTERESTING ONE -- this is the issue that makes filtering impossible:
4. Because the downloader claims the right under Fair Use. (The owner does not get to decide "fair use." If the owner consents, that's called a license and it would be handled by #3 above.
So, unless the filter works in the way that I've described above (it's impossible), it's broken by design. It is incompatible with the Copyright laws of the United States -- and our laws have aligned with the various treaties and laws of other major world powers.
And there is still much case law to consider, some of it still controversial, and it would have to be incorporated into that system:
a. Does the protectee (author, owner) place any limit on the duration or places of distribution? (Some say that such limits exceed the exclusive rights granted under copyright.)
b. Does the protectee place a limit on the number of transfers? (ditto)
It's madness.
To fix this system, we have to fix the part that's broken -- and the Internet is not broken. We need to fix the laws.
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
HTTP is the new Bandwidth Hog...
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funchords
Robb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Hillsboro, OR
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
·Comcast
| reply to TK Junk Mail
Re: Legal P2P will be fostered; illegal P2P will be punished
said by TK Junk Mail :If you look at their qtrly and annual reports you would see they invest on average $1 billion a year in infrastructure. So all these claims that Comcast never invests are pure nonsense. I think Comcast invested $6 Bn but that's not quite the $10 Bn Verizon put into theirs nor the $17 Bn borne by AT&T.
Still, I want to know the configuration of a "Burst" node. What are the sizes of the bandwidth pools being divided by how many homes? This will tell me whether they're doing meaningful upgrades or just pushing out modem configs at a whim.
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
HTTP is the new Bandwidth Hog...
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funchords
Robb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Hillsboro, OR
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
·Comcast
| reply to en102
said by en102 :I almost wonder if this p4p is an attempt at creating ISP based seed proxy servers for customers. It would cut down on bandwidth consumption, and sold p2p issues. They could do that right now.
Every ISP could just put out a machine named tracker that falls in their DNS resolve space -- for example:
tracker on comcast would be tracker.comcast.net
tracker on verizon would be tracker.verizon.net
tracker on rr would be tracker.rr.com
...and etc...
It could even be regionalized if the RDNS is set up that way
tracker for my IP would be tracker.or.comcast.net
And BitTorrent downloaders simply need to add the one word "tracker" to the list of trackers on any torrent, private or public. The only IPs on that tracker would be from that same ISP (because "tracker" wouldn't resolve elsewhere). It wouldn't violate copyright since trackers only carry a hash (no file or archive names) and IP addresses.
WALLAH! Done. No need for P4P. No closed-source apps required. No strange algorithms or AS lookups. No gatekeepers. Just one machine and one DNS entry can bias BitTorrent to keep a lot of its activity on-net.
Very simple. Try it -- you'll see that I'm right about that.
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
HTTP is the new Bandwidth Hog...
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funchords
Robb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Hillsboro, OR
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
·Comcast
| reply to swhx7
said by swhx7 :They can't seed or cache anything from p2p without getting in legal trouble, because a lot of what's out there (and a lot of what's popular and would benefit from caching) is copyright-infringing. Sure they can ... Via DMCA notices ... just like YouTube.
Comcast already handles DMCA notices, so allowing a PeerCache and applying notice handling to that would be no big whoop (hell, it might end up saving time!).
Now DMCA is broken itself, but that's a different story.
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
HTTP is the new Bandwidth Hog...
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swhx7
Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to funchords
Trackers only connect the peers with one another. This could help to keep connections within the ISP's network if (a) there were seeders within the ISP's network (b) the ISP kept enough torrent files on the tracker to answer a lot of the demand (c) subscribers were willing to use the ISP's tracker instead of a remote one.
But the gain would be only small, For more reduction of peering costs, the ISP would have to cache content, or in Bittorrent terms, provide seeds. This would make ISPs the infringers, not merely conduits, in the case of infringing files. It would still leave customers going off the network whenever they want something that's not on the ISP's tracker, or when they don't trust the ISP. |
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funchords
Robb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Hillsboro, OR
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
·Comcast
edit:
May 22nd, @07:39PM
| I think you misunderstand what a tracker is. A tracker isn't a website that hosts .torrent files or that has information about the contents a download.
A tracker is simply an HTTP machine that accepts queries containing an infohash and outputs IP addresses and port numbers related to it.
When your client contacts a tracker, that tracker doesn't know whether you're downloading a song or a picture, an album or a movie.
Many trackers are attached to web sites, those web sites do contain .torrent files and information about the download -- and they even exchange data with the tracker function.
So when I was talking about a tracker, I'm simply talking about the machine that identifies who is in the swarm.
said by swhx7 :Trackers only connect the peers with one another. This could help to keep connections within the ISP's network if (a) there were seeders within the ISP's network Everyone who is downloading has data available to upload. There doesn't have to be a single on-net seeder in order to relieve stress at the network boundaries.
Note, the proposal is to add "tracker" to the list of trackers, not replacing the existing trackers on the list.
(b) the ISP kept enough torrent files on the tracker to answer a lot of the demand (See above -- trackers don't store .torrent files, they only accept the infohash calculated from the contents of a .torrent file.)
(c) subscribers were willing to use the ISP's tracker instead of a remote one. (see above -- we're talking about adding to the list of trackers, not replacing it.)
I completely agree that the subscriber should have the free choice of using such a tracker. If a greater proportion of more local peers generally improves download speed -- which it should -- then I suspect downloaders will choose to do so unless ISPs also start to mess with the privacy of their users.
But the gain would be only small, This is essentially what Pando is doing to get 250% to 800% improvement. This is also what the Azureus plugin Ono strives to do and they claim huge speed improvements, too.
But you've already misunderstood the proposal, and your theory was based on that misunderstanding. Perhaps you'll see more clearly now.
For more reduction of peering costs, the ISP would have to cache content, or in Bittorrent terms, provide seeds. How much reduction is needed before it is enough? Answer: we don't know. The ISPs are all complaining that P2P makers must reduce the impact but they've never said by how much, or when, or even where in the network (the last mile, the boundary gateway, upload, download). They've given absolutely no data. Oh, but they do call us Bandwidth Hogs -- so do they want to make piglets or do they really want to make bacon?
Yeah and no. Once a file is unpopular, the once-in-a-while normal download of that file isn't all that impactful. But when something is newly released, and several hundreds of ACTIVE connections are crossing the network boundary to get it, then having a cached copy and internal peers as data sources really can cut the demand on the boundary gateways.
Caching may be of concern to those who are using private systems, because caching would reduce the demand for their upload bytes and their ratio will suffer. That said, if this model becomes widespread, then administrators should reset their expectations about ratios anyway.
This would make ISPs the infringers, not merely conduits, in the case of infringing files. No more than YouTube is an infringer. DMCA take-down notice. Done, it's off the local cache. If my downloading of the content is within my rights, I can contest the DMCA notice (probably a waste of time because most uses are not fair use) or get the file without the benefit of the cache.
This does not add to or take away from a downloader's rights or a copyrightholder's rights in any way, nor does it help nor hinder a copyrightholder in protecting his rights.
It would still leave customers going off the network whenever they want something that's not on the ISP's tracker, or when they don't trust the ISP.
You're right! You can't make P2P a zero-impact technology, but that isn't the goal. The goal is to reduce its impact in a meaningful way -- and my proposal would do that.
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
HTTP is the new Bandwidth Hog...
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| reply to digitalfreak
said by digitalfreak :said by TK Junk Mail :And by charging more for those who fit the profile of the top .1% of bandwidth users, they can fund further expansion of network capacity. LOL. They don't want to expand network capacity. They want folks to pay more for less. BINGO!
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When I gez aju zavateh na nalechoo more new yonooz tonigh molinigh - Ken Lee |
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rolande
Certifiable
Premium,Mod
join:2002-05-24
Powell, OH
clubs:
Host:
Linksys
AT&T Midwest
| reply to digitalfreak
said by digitalfreak :They don't want to expand network capacity. They want folks to pay more for less. The problem here is that consumers pay an extremely bargain rate for the bandwidth they receive regardless of Cable/DSL/Satellite/WISP etc. and the ISP's can't turn a profit if they have to pay for premium rate bandwidth on their end with no ability to oversubscribe on the consumer's side. As the consumers start to utilize more and more of the bandwidth they have access to, the law of economics comes to bear. Either they will force you to pay significantly more for the same access, cut your access down considerably to match the price, or find a happy medium where you pay a rate somewhat in the ballpark of what the average user is consuming.
There is a joke in here somewhere about the busload of fat people showing up to the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.
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Ignorance is temporary...stupidity lasts forever!
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»blog.thewaystation.com/ |
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patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
| reply to openbox9
said by openbox9 :It seems to me that all of the well known ISPs are routinely announcing "last mile" improvements. Comcast is bringing DOCSIS 3, AT&T continues to extend fiber and deploy VDSL, Verizon continues the FiOS rollout, etc. What am I missing? To a special 1% of their customers who are rich and live in ideallic suburbs. FiOS is only available to 28% of Verizon landline customers as of 2007 Q4.
Comcast won't deploy DOCSIS 3 unless there is Uverse/FiOS competition in the market. |
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patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
| reply to funchords
Speaking of node architecture. Its interesting most CMTSes are built around a shared design of the downstream link, 4 nodes use an identical downstream channel, but each node has a different upstream. The CMTS has 4 upstream ports, and 1 downstream. So the upload may pass 100 houses, while the downstream passes 400. I'm not sure if this is just 1990s thinking or downstreams are really never used and its always upload that is maxed out. |
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