Brad Ideas - The impact of Peer to Peer on ISPs - Comments

Ad hominem

Davida — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:20:46 -0700

Uh, Brad: Just so you'll know, pointing out a conflict of interest isn't argumentum ad hominem.

I tire of this

brad — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:24:47 -0700

Have a nice day, Brett. You won’t take my advice to stick to real arguments and always see the self-destructive desire to bring in completely untrue ad-hominem. I have no interest in that level of discussion.

Brad, you're "saying that which is not so" again.

Brett Glass — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:59:18 -0700

The EFF has published two falsehood-ridden and inflammatory white papers, at http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair
and http://www.eff.org/wp/detecting-packet-injection,
both of which accuse ISPs who manage their bandwidth of "forgery" and other skullduggery.

EFF has also started a project to publish software which defames ISPs who engage in traffic management; see http://www.eff.org/testyourisp.

Conveniently, these articles all state that reining in BitTorrent's bandwidth hogging behavior is somehow evil. How convenient that these falsehoods just happen to serve BitTorrent's interests and therefore yours personally.

Oh, and I note that there is no mention in your biography on the EFF site that you are a Board member of BitTorrent, Inc. So much for disclosure.

Brad, your assertions that people should look the other way and pretend not to notice your conflicts of interest ring hollow. You've been caught promoting your pocketbook. Time to resign as chair of EFF.

On all ISPs

brad — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:25:33 -0700

Well my own position is to limit regulation to the monopoly franchise players. So while I didn’t push for the current position as it does not mesh entirely with my own, I don’t think transparency requirements are a bad idea so don’t mind them being more universal. Why are you against transparency?

You misunderstand criminal law if you think what you have quoted demonstrates criminal activity. I recommend you consult with a criminal lawyer for more information.

P2P programs don’t deliberately circumvent congestion. When fetching a file from a large number of peers, it is inherent that several sockets will be opened. How would you implement it?

Wrong on many counts.

Brett Glass — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:08:16 -0700

You write:

"You can set whatever terms you like. We’re talking about the bigger debate, on the bigger ISPs."

Not true. The rules for which EFF is lobbying, and the legislation it is supporting, would apply to all ISPs regardless of size. Not that size should matter; it is not ethically any better to steal service from a large company than from a small one.

"I’ve challenged you to come up with something — anything — to demonstrate your accusation of criminal activity."

And I've quoted a law which clearly defines the activity that way.

"P2P, as a concept, does not circumvent any congestion controls."

"As a concept," maybe. But every actual P2P program tries to do it. And BitTorrent is among the worst offenders.

Brad, it's bad enough that you're not being truthful. But what's worse is that you have exposed both yourself and EFF as corrupt. EFF claims to espouse online freedom, but you would cut our users off from being online altogether -- the ultimate denial of online freedom -- simply to pad your pockets as a director of BitTorrent, Inc. And EFF is going right along with you. You've blown your credibility AND the credibility of the organization.

Figure out who to attack

brad — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:06:15 -0700

Brett, this borders on comical. You saw me speak. You’ve read my posts. I’m against network neutality legislation. Bram Cohen has come out against it as well (entirely independently from me.) So if you think I, BitTorrent or the EFF have some bias you want to attack, I remain confused. Are you secretly pro network neutrality legislation? I still don’t get what we’ve done that’s go you so in a tizzy. The EFF criticised Comcast for not being transparent and being anti-transparent on their RSTs and used a few strong terms you disagree with to describe it. As for the program chair of CFP, Eddan Katz, he just joined EFF as a staffer in the last couple of months and I’ve certainly never spoken with him about network neutrality or BitTorrent that I recall. I’ve barely met him.

Again, instead of inventing complete fabrications about conflicts, please try to focus on what’s actually wrong about my position, or EFF’s, or BitTorrent’s (none of which 3 are exactly the same as far as I know.)

More evidence of Brad's, and EFF's, conflict of interest

Brett Glass — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:30:06 -0700

Just read an interesting session description for the "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy" conference -- whose programming chairperson is on the staff of EFF and whose programming committee has at least one other EFF member on it. The description said:

"In Washington, DC, debates over network neutrality are often not only contentious, but also unhelpful, if not dishonest. In DC, panels on network neutrality often include a "pro" and a "contra," which can degenerate into a war of slogans as people talk past one another, using very different sets of facts, many of which come from dubious sources. A particularly good example is several panels held in DC on Comcast's secret, scattered blocking of p2p protocols. Comcast defenders often work from wildly different facts from everyone else. Comcast denied its actions to the public, to the press, and to nonprofit organizations repeatedly until the Associated Press's tests confirmed Comcast's actions. Then Comcast and its surrogates continued dissembling, making technical assertions that were generally discredited by technical experts testifying at the FCC's Cambridge Hearing on Feb. 25 on network management practices, yet Comcast continues making its questionable/inaccurate assertions. DC panels including a Comcast defender and opponent have largely been marred by an inability to agree on any basic, objective facts."

In other words, the description of the supposedly "unbiased" panel discussion is about as biased as can be! Also, note the multiple white papers on EFF's Web site which -- conveniently -- support BitTorrent's financial interests (and, hence, Brad Templeton's) 100%.

This should be a total embarrassment to EFF. Not only does its Chairman have an undeniable conflict of interest, but because BitTorrent and other P2P-ware actually degrades networks and hence harms free speech, the group is going directly against the principles it claims to hold dear to favor Brad's personal pocketbook. This completely blows both Brad's credibility and the EFF's credibility. It also does a lot of damage to the credibility of the conference. This blatant cronyism and corruption is amazing. It's a total sellout to corporate interests.

Brett, as Brad said put up or shut up!

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:24:41 -0700

If it is illegal to share files using a P2P client, either take it to court of law and prove it or show case history. don't just waddle around. Your methods might fly in the boonies, it won't in the silicon valley. If doing business is unprofitable, quit, stop whining about it.

Yeah, I know but it's the

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:23:19 -0700

Yeah, I know but it's the best I could come up with. I lost the link that mentioned IP addresses being copyright and the particular case it referred to. It's very specific and doesn't apply generally. If you're really interested you could chase it up with the German data protection commisioner or a German lawyer.

Anyway, that forgery thing is pretty much nailed down. That trips the UK Data Protection Act and other relevant EU directives, whatever they are. The problem is getting authorities to understand and act. Sadly, they side too often with business. Mostly because of status and phantom job losses, I reckon.

That's something entirely different

brad — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:02:15 -0700

It’s about a privacy right in records tied to your IP address, ie. server logs about you.

Completely apart from copyright.

And all are apart from forgery. Your name is not private, nor copyrightable, but if somebody uses it to act as you without your authority that can be forgery.

Germany's data protection commissioner

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:18:22 -0700

I did some really hard digging and was about to give up but I found something that's close. It doesn't directly address the issue of copyright but might be a useful lead and help explain the reasoning behind it. As you know, an IP address can be transitory. The copyright perspective I read took a similar approach to the data protection line. Sorry, I couldn't do any better than that.

http://blogscript.blogspot.com/2008/01/ip-addresses-are-personal-data-of...

Tell me more

brad — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:21:04 -0700

I certainly have not heard of any use of copyright applied to IP addresses, or anything that short, or anything plainly factual, in Europe.

Can you cite the URL of something talking about that? It goes at odds with all general concepts in copyright, so I would be surprised. Let us know the URL.

Brad, IP addresses are

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:16:32 -0700

Brad, IP addresses are copyright in European Union law. It's been to court and a precedent has been set. I can't think of a reference to help you out but it's a done deal. If I recall, it was some communications directive and a case in Germany that nailed it. Essentially, the IP address for the time you used it is your copyright. It can be used for the transmission of data as that's implied in the transmission but any other use not explicitly granted by you is a breach of copyright law.

I did some earlier reading on issues related to Phorm and what you say about forgery came up. As well as Phorm breaching RIPA and the DPA the fraud puts them in breach of the Computer Misuse Act. This specifically prohibits any unauthorised use of a computer system. The Phorm bunch are saying they're in the clear because putting a web page up implies consent. Uh, since when? You have a respectable view but law enforcement isn't prosecuting these people because of their carefully crafted business status.

Copyright

brad — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:13:42 -0700

Well no, IP addresses are not copyrighted. But if a man-in-the-middle injects packets into my TCP/IP streams with another party, putting my IP address into them or my sequence numbers into them, and it’s against my wishes and knowingly against my wishes, I’m not sure why forgery isn’t a good term for that. They are pretending to be me to the other side. This is quite different from sending such packets when a link is going down for reasons beyond my control. In that case, I want the other side informed that the link is down, and as such one can reasonably argue I authorized or would have authorized the MITM to use my identifier in a packet. When you use somebody else’s identity when they don’t approve it, that’s forgery.

Prove it somehow

brad — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:09:05 -0700

No, I don’t think you want to charge a customer, and listen, we get that your ISP is different and sets different terms. You can set whatever terms you like. We’re talking about the bigger debate, on the bigger ISPs. I’ve challenged you to come up with something — anything — to demonstrate your accusation of criminal activity. If it weren’t for the fact that you can always find a lawyer who will take your side, I would be amazed if you could even find any lawyer with serious grounding in this area of the law to agree with your claim.

So again, put up or shut up. You tell us what sort of test — other than your highly unusual and unfounded in caselaw interpretations of some rules — could demonstrate that there’s even a shred of truth to your claim of criminal activity here.

Anything. Cite us a case.

P2P, as a concept, does not circumvent any congestion controls. What are you referring to here? What does P2P do worse than any other downloader, especially the common downloaders people use with their web browsers that simultaneously open several sockets to the source fetching different parts of the file? Or are they criminals too?

The impact of Peer to Peer on ISPs

brad — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:43:19 -0800

I’m a director of BitTorrent Inc. (though not speaking for it) and so the recent debate about P2P applications and ISPs has been interesting to me. Comcast has tried to block off BitTorrent traffic by detecting it and severing certain P2P connections by forging TCP reset packets. Some want net neutrality legislation to stop such nasty activity, others want to embrace it. Brett Glass, who runs a wireless ISP, has become a vocal public opponent of P2P.

Some base their opposition on the fact that since BitTorrent is the best software for publishing large files, it does get used by copyright infringers a fair bit. But some just don’t like the concept at all. Let’s examine the issues.

A broadband connection consists of an upstream and downstream section. In the beginning, this was always symmetric, you had the same capacity up as down. Even today, big customers like universities and companies buy things like T-1 lines that give 1.5 megabits in each direction. ISPs almost always buy equal sized pipes to and from their peers.

With aDSL, the single phone wire is multiplexed so that you get much less upstream than downstream. A common circuit will give 1.5mbps down and say 256kb up — a 6 to 1 ratio. Because cable systems weren’t designed for 2 way data, they have it worse. They can give a lot down, but they share the upstream over a large block of customers under the existing DOCSIS system. They also will offer upstream on near the 6 to 1 ratio but unlike the DSL companies, there isn’t a fixed line there.