Comcast Makes Nice with BitTorrent 161
An anonymous reader writes "In a dramatic turn-around of relations, cable provider Comcast and BitTorrent are now working together. The deal comes as BitTorrent tries to put its reputation for illegal filesharing behind it. The companies are in talks to collaborate on ways to run BitTorrent's technology more smoothly on Comcast's broadband network. Comcast is actually entertaining the idea of using BitTorrent to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future, said Tony Warner, Comcast's chief technology officer. '"We are thrilled with this," Ashwin Navin, cofounder and president of BitTorrent, said of the agreement. BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. It was important that Comcast agreed to expand Internet capacity, because broadband in the United States is falling behind other areas of the world, Navin said. Referring to the clashes with Comcast, he said: "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."'"
O RLY? (Score:2, Interesting)
all bittorrent traffic, or just BitTorrent, Inc? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
But seriously this just means Comcast is going to work with the bittorrent folks
to put tighter than ever controls in place. They'll shape traffic to prefer the comcast
servers and peers to those same peers or any others talking to non-comcast servers.
They way they can claim to be embracing p2p traffic while actually throttling anything
they don't like.
Money? (Score:3, Interesting)
BitTorrent the company, not the protocol (Score:5, Interesting)
BitTorrent Plugin Detects ISPs Raping Your Torrent (Score:5, Interesting)
http://gizmodo.com/372442/bittorrent-plugin-detects-isps-raping-your-torrents [gizmodo.com]
Of course, a peaceful solution such as this agreement is always preferred, as it enlightens more and more people about the true nature of BitTorrent, and opens up the doors for more and more ISPs to do The Right Thing (tm).
first off.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Could Make P2P more palatable for CDNs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I think I speak for all Comcraptastic Customers (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh dear. I guess they do have the big picture. I can see it now: all Comcast users must keep a background application running while using their network (or have bandwidth severely throttled on a per MAC address instead of per packet shape) and will seed data to other users using your hard disk space and electricity instead of Comcast's central servers. Diabolical.
*adjusts tin-foil hat*
the water is still wet. (Score:5, Interesting)
All that "more to it" is the problem and Comcast needs to be clear about network freedom. They can rig all sorts of schemes to make BitTorrent a traffic cop or to be some kind of traffic cop but none of that is appropriate. Comcast needs to do it's job, which is delivering bandwith. Everything else is bad for them and leads to real censorship.
All of this nonsense about "unauthorized reproduction" and single file copies being a criminal offense represent a tremendous and wrong expansion of copyright laws. Copyright disputes should be a civil matter of who deserves money earned from works. Copyright protection of restricted files violates the limited time provision of the Constitutional establishment clause and the whole point of copyright is to insure a rich public domain. Censoring the press (aka the internet) in order to enforce this new and unwholesome copyright idea violates yet another portion of the US Constitution.
Money that can't be earned in a free society is money that should not be earned. It would be better to live without mass produced entertainment than to live without a free press. Comcast and other ISPs should be at the forefront of the battle to preserve network freedom. As long as they insist on port blocks and traffic shaping, they are an enemy of freedom.
Re:Useless article (Score:3, Interesting)
The Hollywood studios howled that their business was being destroyed by government interference, but without it we would never have a system that gave the directors more power over their films and Jaws, the first blockbuster, wouldn't have been released - the rest is history. Regulation can open up markets and increase creativity and profits, if it's done correctly.
Re:all bittorrent traffic, or just BitTorrent, Inc (Score:5, Interesting)
I like-a to say (Score:5, Interesting)
This certainly is unexpected.
First off, Comcast is going to stop blocking or filtering or slowing down bittorrent traffic. That's bittorrent the protocol, not BitTorrent the company. From TFA, "We are working hard on a different approach that is protocol-agnostic during peak periods." Protocol. Not just torrents sanctioned by BitTorrent, Inc., but any torrents whatsoever.
Second, what seems to be even better, is that Comcast is going to be increasing throughput to its customers. "Internet Capacity" as stated in the summary doesn't really make sense, unless it's referring to an IPv4-IPv6 changeover (-1: Pedantic), but if that means what I think it was supposed to mean, then it's great. However, is it an increase in last-mile throughput, or overall throughput? Or both? Because overall throughput would simply mean that if your neighbors are torrenting, your connection isn't slowed down, whereas last-mile throughput would only increase your peak speed when no one else is downloading anything. It seems like last-mile throughput is generally already maxed out with today's (yesterday's?) technology, namely, cable, at around 6Mbps, and the bottleneck is in the shared line.
What I'm saying is that both should be improved. The shared line should be made so that everyone could attain peak throughput at all times, and the peak throughput should be about 10x-20x what it is now. That's right. The bottleneck should be in our own Cat5 cables or 802.11g networks, not imposed on us by our ISPs.
Of course, ISPs won't willingly provide this (it costs precious $$$s), but for what we're paying ($50 a month, or $100 with TV, which amounts to $1,200 a year) it kinda seems like we deserve it. Telecom companies are required to put most of their profits back into their networks, but I don't think ISPs like Comcast, which operate over cable, are. Maybe they should be. Seems like it might help.
Of course, most of that was just my incoherent rambling about one aspect of the state of technology in the US (don't get me started), so if you were expecting that to be meaningful, well, just forget what you read.
Re:Useless article (Score:3, Interesting)
This is laughable. A director signs a contract with a studio, which agrees to exchange their property (money) for the director's talent. If the director doesn't like the terms of the agreement, he can refuse to sign the contract unless and until it is modified to his pleasing. If after signing the contract, that studio reneges on any part of the contract, the director can sue the studio for losses. If there is any gray area, such as the studio knowingly hiding something important from the director, a lawsuit will also clear that up. Where in this is a need for regulation to "give directors more power over their films"?
Whether or not the great films of the 70s would have occurred is of no concern; the ends do not justify the means, because that would eliminate the basic principles by which one guides one's actions (these principles are explained in the documents of the founding fathers). Most likely those films still would have occurred, because in most cases their stories were floating around in their respective writers' heads well before the increased regulation was put in place; it would simply be a matter of finding a studio willing to agree to their terms. If none exists, then there is a demand without a supply, and the necessary supply is likely to spring up to fulfill that demand.
No matter how hard they try, the legislature cannot regulate property rights out of existence. Anytime the government gets involved in the economy in this way, rights violations occur.
Notice the Fine Print, please... (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is a Good Thing, IMO, and I'm happy to have been proven wrong (I thought the P2P vs ISP war was going to heat up further.)
However, a guess: it may be a consequence of improved traffic shaping: they are already starting to prioritize short connections ("Speed boost", which is being very heavily advertised in this area).
You don't NEED to do RST injections if you can take the 1% heavy-users and traffic shape them down to a reasonable level when there's congestion. RST injection is very crude traffic management compared to the alternatives.
It also allows the ISP to deal with the cost externalities indirectly, because now the 90% don't complain as much about bad performance when they want to surf the net.
Finally, there is NOTHING in this that says they have to treat BitTorrent UPLOADS as special, just "not different from youtube".
Comcast has repeatedly claimed that they are only killing "leeches/seeds", flows which upload vastly more than they download. If Comcast instead just shapes all large uploads, this will have effectively the same effect, without the visible political repercussions.
Likewise, if ALL ISPs agressively shape uploads, this kills the P2P business model nearly as sure as anything else.
Also, the lack of topological awareness does hurt BitTorrent, as well as the lack of cacheability. If the ISP is able to say that
a) BitTorrent-type protocols can stay in my local loop and
b) These flows are ones I CAN cache without being sued
BitTorrent type flows become far less objectionable.
Re:Using comcast peers (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps part of the reason is that last mile bandwidth is scarcer than backbone bandwidth, so an ISP doesn't save as much by encouraging its customers to share with each other (backbone bandwidth saved, last mile bandwidth remains the same) as it does by discouraging them from sharing at all (backbone and last mile bandwidth saved)?
Re:In many ways it is worse. (Score:2, Interesting)
Laws are neither good nor evil. It's a persons perspective that attaches good and evil. It is also worth bearing in mind how laws are created and how they are enforced. In short, the law is not there to protect you but to cage you.
'User Privacy?'
There is no such thing as privacy the sooner people understand this the sooner you can see what a childish concept it is.
'You are in prison and don't know it.'
The size of the cage is limited by the size of your mind. If you wish to be caged then you will be.