[PLUG] Torrent download speeds - was: Metrofi wins Rogue of the Week

drew wymore drew.wymore at gmail.com
Sun Jan 13 23:30:19 UTC 2008


On Jan 13, 2008 2:38 PM, Jeme A Brelin <jeme at brelin.net> wrote:

>
> On Sun, 13 Jan 2008, Mike Connors wrote:
> > Denis Heidtmann wrote:
> >> drew wymore wrote:
> >>> it is their network and they are allowed to do whatever they please.
> >> Do they have an obligation to tell customers what they are doing?
> >>
> > Technically, only in as much as what is defined in the terms of service
> > agreement. Which I don't think too many people have read in full nor
> > declined using their service based on it except a few enlightened people
> > on this mailing list.
>
> I think that Denis is hinting at a moral and ethical obligation which goes
> far and away beyond any merely legal entanglements.
>
> After all, the law is there only to atttempt to reconcile design flaws.
> Doing what is legal is doing the bare minimum and I would argue that we
> have an obligation to do much more than that.  The source of that
> obligation is the enormous dependence we have on our society and culture;
> for the technology we were given free of charge by the billions of people
> who came before us -- from the computers we use to the language we speak
> -- and for the culture itself and all of the art and literature that gave
> us this rich, fertile soil upon which we build our lives and in which we
> grow our own ideas.
>
> The legal obligation is what you cite when someone is being egregiously
> antisocial, but it is not our sole obligation to society.
>
> > The problem I have with many ISPs is that they set invisible limits,
> > don't tell you when and why they're employing traffic control
> > mechanisms, and they don't provide any accounting of your bandwidth
> > usage.
>
> I agree that it is unethical to provide a network that is not transparent
> -- that changes the form or content of the data or the shape of the
> bandwidth that crosses it.


I completely agree that they should be transparent but they aren't. The only
way to get them to change either policy or force them to be more transparent
is to speak with your wallet as it were.

The only *real* way to determine if they are shaping is to set up sniffing
on both ends of any given connection and be able to rule out other network
elements. It could be that they have reversed their course and aren't
shaping but other ISP's may very well be doing so, with or without telling
their customers.

Drew-



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