Japanese heighten Internet restrictions

[chrono]

With little fanfare from local or foreign media, the Japanese government made major moves this month toward legislating extensive regulation over online communication and information exchange within its national borders. In a series of little-publicized meetings attracting minimal mainstream coverage, two distinct government ministries, that of Internal Affairs and Communications (Somusho) and that of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Monbukagakusho), pushed ahead with regulation in three major areas of online communication: web content, mobile phone access, and file sharing.

On December 6th, in a final report compiled by a study group under the Somusho following up on an interim report drafted earlier this year, the government set down plans to regulate online content through unification of existing laws such as the Broadcast Law and the Telecommunications Business Law [1,2]. The planned regulation targets all web content, including online variants of traditional media such as newspaper articles and television broadcasting, while additionally going as far as to cover user-generated content such as blogs and webpages under the vaguely-defined category of "open communication" [3,4,5,6].

Only days following the release of the Dec. 6 report, again through the Somusho, the government on Dec. 10th requested that mobile phone companies NTT Docomo, KDDI, Softbank and Willcom commence strictly filtering web content to mobile phones for users under the age of 18 [7,8,9,10]. The move to filter content in this area comes at a time when the Japanese market has become saturated with mobile phones, a growing proportion of which are held by high-school and even grade-school students. The proposed policy, in part responding to fears and anxieties expressed by parents about online dating sites, is broad in scope and reportedly covers all websites with forum, chat, and social networking functionality.

Regulation of a third area of online communication, that of online file sharing, was meanwhile advanced through the Private Music and Video Recording Subcommittee of Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs (under the Mobukagakusho) in a meeting held on December 18th. Authorities and organizations pushed in this case for a ban on the download of copyrighted content for personal use, a category of file transfer previously permitted under Article 30 of Japan's Copyright Law [11,12,13,14].

The final report on Internet regulation released on December 6th, and the meetings about mobile phone regulation and copyright policy held on December 10th and 18th, collectively touch on nearly every aspect of modern network communication in Japan and together indicate a significant shift in government policy vis-a-vis the Japanese cyberspace. While granted little attention in mainstream media, a series of Japanese-language articles, government reports, and blog entries on the topic together sketch basic details of the proposed regulations. The main points of these documents are summarized below, with references to resources offering more in-depth discussion included at the end of the article.

Read the rest here: http://gyaku.jp/en/index.php?cmd=contentview&pid=000320

This is 2 months old, but I didn't see it posted here. They is a lot more to the article than this and is going to be quite a problem when other nations follow their lead. HEH! Information regulation! Virtually ANYTHING and EVERYTHING can be blocked at the server level if it doesn't pass the national guidelines for what is "safe" and what is not.

I expect some of the more blatant large scale dl sites to get closed, but I also expect an increase in pass wording and encrypting on some files types to prevent site banning/closure.

Edited February 10, 2008 by chrono

[Hikuro]

Not worried about this in the least. The internet is a vast sea of information and gathering, if Youtube can't even regulate their own site from the content they have posted there, neither can a government.

[Necron_99]

uh oh. I hope that none of this happens until Macross Frontier concludes

[azrael]

Filtering is nothing new. Even the US is planning content filtering on ISPs.

And we've already seen the file-sharing business happen when a bunch of WinNY nodes went offline last month. This topic factors a little tiny bit with this discussion.

[Steve]

This is hilarious governments try to filter the internet, spend all kinds of taxpayers money figuring out systems and making programs and the day after the implement bam some kid in his moms basement figures out how to get around it and posts it all over the internet. What a waste of money...

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

It will just go more underground.

Remember back in the good old days when people taped songs off the radio or recorded episodes of a show when they weren't home to watch it? That is technically copying something for personal usage. The internet is similar: people will just find new ways of copying things and if need be: mail bootleg or illegal copies of stuff to their friends if they have to.

It's just that dl the content is more convenient and seems "more mainstream" and too "easy" for the average joe. So the government has got to at least look like they are doing something to ease parents fears. Even if that something won't stop people from wanting to share files with friends any more than people recording episodes of their fave tv show for later viewing or recording a bunch of songs on the radio to listen to them whenever they want.

In the future you will eventually just download all the shows to their game console in the same way people can buy old games from a virtual console. So perhaps the plan is to make money distributing the stuff in a legal legit way for profit like how people are making money selling ancient games through an online shop? (perhaps that's the REAL purpose of the effort by the government: maybe they are pressured by companies who may want to profit distributing the stuff online themselves as they see it as an alternative to selling through retailers? Protecting you is just one positive sounding way they can dress it up as beneficial to you and society, but the real thing is blocking content which could affect their future plans to profit from free distribution of the material they want to sell?)

As an example: Look at how Electronic Arts was able to bully Epic into not allowing free online content for xboxlive because it competed with their overpriced content that wasn't free. They were afraid the free stuff drove the market value down of their stuff when people could get better stuff from another company free. (just like with pc game online content that comes for free which pc gamers have been enjoying for years) I think the same thing will happen with all content: if something is free (even if the people creating it want it to be freely offered, it means the competition will be pushed out of the market and make their paid stuff look bad. (this is why you don't see encouragement for user generated content on xbox live despite it being encouraged on PC platforms through the free editors and tools that come with many games that allows a community to extend the life of the game well beyond what it was expected to be.) Time spent playing some fan made user generated mod or level, is time not spent buying one from online shop and playing that instead. The user generated content competes with the official stuff and drives the average price of that paid content down as people who don't mind paying money for it start to complain: "hey if I paid X amount of $ for this stupid armor upgrade for my horse in an RPG, and this other game offerrs whole maps and missions free, then why should I be accepting such poor value for money from this other company which is ripping me off?"

Sharing files, sharing content is seen as an obstacle competing for attention by those greedy companies that have established themselves and see a worthy reason to shut these people down. (both legit forms of free distribution like user generated content or people offerring their homebrew music/games/files free, and the usual illegal pirates)

That's one thing that always pissed me off about the psp: the homebrew stuff is always being blocked by psp updates and stuff. From the big evil corporation's perspective: If they can't profit from it, why *should* they let do what you want? Why *shouldn't* they stop you doing it, so that you have to go to them for ALL content? It just seems to make sense: ie to trap you from accessing content from other sources by blocking those sources altogether from a business point of view.

Another thing that pisses me off: is how you can't share your games with other people: for example if you bought a game from nintendo's VC, it is locked to the machine. What that means is a friend who you could normally lend the game to for free, would have to buy the game from nintendo to play the game. More profit for nintendo but less rights for you as an "owner" of the game for personal use. A physical retail copy of a game still has advantages for the consumer in terms of who he can allow to see and play it. It means less profit for the companies selling it (since they could say they lost a potential sale from you having lent the game to a friend) so that is why they go to all the trouble of shutting down emulator sites offerring the roms for free (even though the games are so old you can't buy them anymore) because in the future they intend to profit from it. (so the government then gets involved in supporting the watching of all the sharing of files to scare people)

That's the only reason I can logically see why they would "go to all the trouble" and "spending of tax payers money" to stop people from "freely accessing information". (first take away as many rights the consumer has in sharing what they bought, by not allowing him to lend it to others, then try to offer a service where each individual who wants to play/listen to/view the content must pay for it individually "per head" to boost sales. (as opposed to how traditionally you could buy a game and lend it to another person to see, or copy it so a tightass friend could leech off you if he had no intention of buying it at full price or whatever - it will allow "overpriced content" that isn't worth the money you pay for it at full price, to stay at 'normal' market value and force the content creators who offer better value or offer free content out of the way - so the big guys maintain control while the little guy can't compete.)

It's all about

(1) "control" so the competition can't push them out of the market by offering cheaper, better quality(in terms of user generated content or mods in games) and better-value content that threatens to push the established power out of business. If you don't like the overpriced paid content, too bad.

(2) "profit" so you can't share your games/music/book/movie to friends and instead must pay individually per head/household for the license to see something, in order to sell the same thing more times.

(3) "prices". You might see a really crappy movie and think that is not worth paying ANY money for, but so long as thousands of others do pay ridiculous sums of money, they (the seller) will always assume that you pirating a bad quality song, movie, book, show etc is a "lost sale" even though you had no intention of ever paying money for it and in extreme situations (when the cost is set so high) would never be able to afford to own it. Example: a rare porno that is selling for $30000 or some ridiculous price on ebay - just some junk that someone else would for no sane reason at all might actually pay that price for - having to mean that you now should owe $30000 in a lost sale for having seen it free, which to most people is just ridiculous since there is no sane way you would buy something like it and expect to pay such a ridiculous sum in the first place. Many people refuse to pay anything unless they are convinced the quality matches the price asked for so it you can't legitimately claim a "lost sale" or damage if the person had no intention of owning garbage in the first place just because the price asked for the item was huge and someone else may have wanted to pay the ridiculous sum. Morally that is wrong. I could charge $10000 for a picture of my poo, but that doesn't mean a friend who copies the file illegally should now pay me in damages for stealing it. There is a moral limit to what a person can say they've "lost money" from piracy of something they intend to sell for a huge price. (but who obviously not expect anyone to pay the ridiculous sum for)

Edited February 11, 2008 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[Duke Togo]

Filtering is nothing new. Even the RIAA is planning content filtering on ISPs.

Fixed.

AT&T bent over to them, Verizon told them to get bent.

[Macross007]

uh oh. I hope that none of this happens until Macross Frontier concludes

Don't forget Gundam 00.

[mikeszekely]

I'd be more concerned if this wasn't two months old and the anime wasn't still available.

[azrael]

Fixed.

AT&T bent over to them, Verizon told them to get bent.

Comcast is already filtering P2P traffic through their routers.

[Graham]

Don't forget Gundam 00.

I'm trying very hard to forget it.

Graham

[Duke Togo]

Comcast is already filtering P2P traffic through their routers.

No no, as a Comcast customer, I can assure you they are doing no such thing. I'm way over simplifying it, but basically they are cutting into p2p speeds when they can identify it. Simple encryption beats this, though.

[protostar8]

Read the rest here: http://gyaku.jp/en/index.php?cmd=contentview&pid=000320

This is 2 months old, but I didn't see it posted here. They is a lot more to the article than this and is going to be quite a problem when other nations follow their lead. HEH! Information regulation! Virtually ANYTHING and EVERYTHING can be blocked at the server level if it doesn't pass the national guidelines for what is "safe" and what is not.

I expect some of the more blatant large scale dl sites to get closed, but I also expect an increase in pass wording and encrypting on some files types to prevent site banning/closure.

I honestly don't expect this to really change anything. And don't worry about this happening to the US. There would be such an outcry from the general public that it would fall apart ASAP. I think the same thing will probably happen in Japan, or it will end up like the whole Napster thing...a few people get in trouble but the large majority go untouched.

[chrono]

protostar, which is why that it didn't get much news time. You slide them into place and the gross population wouldn't be widely effected.

Actually it's as easy as looking at the amount dl'ed in a given period vs paid for account type. Comcast and others do that right now. It wouldn't take much for a dedicated company to back-track the IP and ban it's user at the server level and see them in court or in jail.

Besides most "It isn't going to happen!" crowd is also ignoring the fact that information tech will be changing making reductions and controls easy to implement. They also forget that they are actually a rather small portion of the population as well and easily ignored due to their social status. And to be honest if the "Pay-per-page-view" charging scheme gets put into place it most definitely cut into illegal mass downloading because the downloader would be charged in set number of KB or MB blocks. Also I've heard talk of removing the "Anonymous" status of the user. It's coming it's just when?

But as 1/1 LowViz Lurker has well said it'll simply go underground, and underground for computers is directly p2p and not over a network either! Back of the van WIFI!!

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

Peer 2 peer is for the masses. People will just download privately direct from each other like they always have before the days of napster and the popularity of the p2p programs emerged.

Piracy itself will never be outright stopped. Everytime they try to control something with new protections it has been defeated. It's just the less-determined noobs that get discouraged and buckle under the pressure. So long as hackers who take great delight in finding exploits exist, there will always be ways around "teh latest info tech1!1".

People don't have to share files through the internet., just distribute through LAN or through another means that involves encrypting the information. The law is as unenforcable as trying to catch every single jaywalker would be, without the need to have cameras pointing everywhere, on every person, at all times. If I want to record a show using a dvd recorder, send it to a friend through the mail full of pirated software or foreign shows from japan, really what's to stop me? Nothing. Just like there would be no way of stopping some guy back in the 80s who tape records songs on the radio to make a compilation of fave songs to play back on his stereo at a party.

Honestly all the cracking down on individuals is just a scare tactic. They can't bust every single individual who has ever pirated a mp3 because like the jay walking example it would take enormous time and resources to do something like this. Monitoring how much you download through bittorrent? I don't think so. Remember that you can download LEGIT programs and other things from bittorrent and it's not used soley for pirating.

The RIAA might try to pretend they are distributing some software illegally as a distributor, and then say "aha! we saw your ip because you were part of the swarm!", but what's to stop that person just using his friend's computer who could be ignorant of the illegal software being downloaded to his pc? You can't prove who the person was at the computer at the time of the download. Before you can accuse someone of a crime you have to have prove it was the person you are accusing that actually performed the download and not just an IP which just tells you what computer it was downloaded to. (given there could be more than one person using that computer - a dad might not know what his son or daughter downloaded or if he let his or her friends in to use the computer to do the download despite the account being his)

They could go after you for "copyright infringement" but what about if you've never actually uploaded anything to anyone who didn't have the legal right to have it? So how can you say that person has damaged the company for millions of dollars when that person didn't sell or distribute the thing? In the old days people had backups of software for personal use. (you were encouraged to backup your software in case the original ever got damaged) What if you upload a copy of the program to some secret place (for your own use in case your original copy gets damaged in a fire) and some guy finds the file and copies it himself? Should you be sued for thousands of dollars because some guy found the file you uploaded which was intended for you only? Of course not. Morally that would be wrong to put that innocent person in jail. So this issue of privacy rights is there: once you pay for a retail copy of something it is licensed to you for personal use. It's not the physical cd but the software that is on it. So having backups of data is very important issue for many people and as long as they have the right to do as they please with what they own and paid for, in private, you can't accuse them of any wrong-doing.

It's because of the ease of downloading through p2p that has made it easy for anyone to download illegally that has gotten the attention in the media, but piracy has always existed and not once been stopped. It's just been underground like any other illegal thing people want to have but that the government says 'no' to in order to make it illegal to 'protect you', yet can't control completely. (ie kids accessing illegal substances like marijuana, underage drinking, asking an adult to buy smokes for them because the clerk won't sell to a minor etc) There is a limit to how much they can try to stop, but I honestly don't think piracy will go away, just be reduced at the mainstream level and out of view of the average joe.

So what you'll see in the media is the use of scare tactics to discourage the mainstream hoping the fear is enough to stop them (and it probably works for those who are not determined) but it just angers or makes the determined ones who know they would never pay for the stuff they like to get for free, want to try new things. (eg: some people who just plain refuse to pay the X amount of $ for the given thing that they can't afford, like say a uni student who is forced to buy a piece of software for his course, and has not enough money to buy the full thing, or a workmate who just needs a utility to open up a certain file in a wierd format but doesn't want to own it) By having stories published of people who got busted downloading a file they shouldn't be they are hoping to use that one or two people as a public demonstration like cutting a person's head off or having a public hanging: "This is what can happen to you if you don't stop!". But they know they can't stop the masses of people still doing it who still want to take the risk and who are determined to find work-arounds to copy protection, spyware, region blocking, etc. just because on principle alone they passionately disagree with the idea that someone can tell them what they are allowed to do with the data they have on their own computer or the song they ripped from they cd/dvd/hddvd/brd they don't want to use to listen/watch the content off of. (for technical reasons: too lazy to get a cd out, more convenient to put it on a pc etc)

For example: just because it might be illegal to, say, use a rom of a game on an emulator to play an old game that you once owned 20 years ago on a machine that no longer works or no longer has support for it, doesn't mean that *morally* you shouldn't have the right to be allowed to keep playing that same game on the emulator free. (if you already paid for it a long time ago and do not wish to pay the high price to play it again - that act of having the rom might be *technically* illegal but you owned the rights to play that game years ago when you first bought it for personal use.) Now a person who is passionate about rights is not going to just buckle under pressure just because some fat cat company wants to squeeze more money out of him by re-releasing the same thing again and profiting from the old game. At the end of the day: consumers still think of themselves and their rights as owners of the content, first ...and the big companies that profited off them for years, second. There are many that on principle are put off this idea that they can't be allowed to share a song with a friend or a book, just as a public library allows a person to lend out a book to a person, or friend might want you to have a copy of a game he bought for play in multiplayer mode. (knowing that you'd never want to fork out the cash to own the game) People are not going to feel sympathy when told they can't do what they've already been doing for years and despite the new law making it illegal; feel that they are still morally right, and on principle; don't support the companies getting any richer than they already are, ...so choose to continue sharing files as they always have.

Edited February 12, 2008 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[Fly4victory]

This is old news for people that try to watch the CBC web broadcasts of Canadian Hockey while in the US. The websites can tell that you are in the US and not .CA and the broadcast is blocked.

This is bad news because as an American I will be limited to what the distributors of anime want me to see. There are times that the US release is edited or simply not released at all.

While consumers will find work-a-rounds it will still take time on our part while companies like Microsoft will profit.

It just reminds me about the fair use of intellectual property and how the consumer's rights are always less profitable when compared to those of the media company. Just look at companies like Sony and Macrovision. You as the end user of a product have the right to copy that property for your sole use. You buy Spiderman on VHS. You have the right to copy it to DVD, convert it to Mpeg4 to play on your PSP, or save it to the hard drive on your computer as long as you do not violate US Code Title 17, distribution...exhibition... in other words no copies for friends and family or public viewing.

Now try to exercise those rights... you can not do it thanks to encoding, software, and hardware by design. The funny thing is people that are professional pirates will have the ability to defeat the technology and are the ones in violation of the law. The general population, who has no intention to profit for copying materials, is the group that has to suffer.

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My wife is a lawyer. I think it is time to go beat on her.

[chrono]

Peer 2 peer is for the masses. People will just download privately direct from each other like they always have before the days of napster and the popularity of the p2p programs emerged.

Piracy itself will never be outright stopped. Everytime they try to control something with new protections it has been defeated. It's just the less-determined noobs that get discouraged and buckle under the pressure. So long as hackers who take great delight in finding exploits exist, there will always be ways around "teh latest info tech1!1".

People don't have to share files through the internet., just distribute through LAN or through another means that involves encrypting the information.

P2P is for the masses, but a good amount of net users don't have the ability, money, or intelligence to set-up direct or LAN networks. So until that gets far easier, we're talking plug & play level, the p2p is merely the geeks doman.

Normal users can simply encrypt their materials, which works until some corp. lawyer or govt goes after the network as a co-conspirator and then the networks will change the service contract that you agreed to and start dropping regular users.

Broad media piracy can be stopped, but the company's involved are all too greedy (R&D costs money that could be put into ones pocket) to get ahead of the "regular" users knownledge and create something new that would prevent it! Apple took the first steps towards that goal while keeping the customer happy, but they, like others, depend on software and not hardware to keep the their material safe. Trade the software protection for hardware protection, something that MS has started to push with VISTA, and you can nearly wipeout regular user theft because the software hacker is rendered helpless!

But like it's been said in other threads until the company's adapt to the new 'Digital Age' the old methods of control are worthless.

[Wes]

This is old news for people that try to watch the CBC web broadcasts of Canadian Hockey while in the US. The websites can tell that you are in the US and not .CA and the broadcast is blocked.

This is bad news because as an American I will be limited to what the distributors of anime want me to see. There are times that the US release is edited or simply not released at all.

While consumers will find work-a-rounds it will still take time on our part while companies like Microsoft will profit.

It just reminds me about the fair use of intellectual property and how the consumer's rights are always less profitable when compared to those of the media company. Just look at companies like Sony and Macrovision. You as the end user of a product have the right to copy that property for your sole use. You buy Spiderman on VHS. You have the right to copy it to DVD, convert it to Mpeg4 to play on your PSP, or save it to the hard drive on your computer as long as you do not violate US Code Title 17, distribution...exhibition... in other words no copies for friends and family or public viewing.

Now try to exercise those rights... you can not do it thanks to encoding, software, and hardware by design. The funny thing is people that are professional pirates will have the ability to defeat the technology and are the ones in violation of the law. The general population, who has no intention to profit for copying materials, is the group that has to suffer.

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My wife is a lawyer. I think it is time to go beat on her.

In the first case, all you should need is a canadian proxy. On the second case there are plenty of people that make programs to let you copy (though I don't have a PSP so I haven't messed with it). The general population has no real problem getting this stuff to happen but you need to do some research to learn. If you're like my mom and still have issues getting CD's onto an MP3 player then it's not going to happen.

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

Comcast is already filtering P2P traffic through their routers.

an example of "zomg new internet technology!1" to the rescue?

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-devs-in...ryption-080215/

BitTorrent Developers Introduce Comcast Busting Encryption

Written by Ernesto on February 15, 2008

Several BitTorrent developers have joined forces to propose a new protocol extension with the ability to bypass the BitTorrent interfering techniques used by Comcast and other ISPs. This new form of encryption will be implemented in BitTorrent clients including uTorrent, so Comcast subscribers are free to share again.

BitTorrent throttling is not a new phenomenon, ISPs have been doing it for years. When the first ISPs started to throttle BitTorrent traffic most BitTorrent clients introduced a countermeasure, namely, protocol header encryption. This was the beginning of an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and BitTorrent client developers, which is about to enter new level.

Unfortunately, protocol header encryption doesn’t help against more aggressive forms of BitTorrent interference, like the Sandvine application used by Comcast. A new extension to the BitTorrent protocol is needed to stay ahead of the ISPs, and that is exactly what is happening right now.

Back in August we were the first to report that Comcast was actively disconnecting BitTorrent seeds. Comcast of course denied our allegations, and ever since there has been a lot of debate about the rights and wrongs of Comcast’s actions. On Wednesday, Comcast explained their BitTorrent interference to the FCC in a 57-page filing. Unfortunately they haven’t stopped lying yet, since they now argue that they only delay BitTorrent traffic, while in fact they disconnect people, making it impossible for them to share files with non-Comcast users.

In short, the Comcast interference works like this: A few seconds after you connect to someone in a BitTorrent swarm, a peer reset message (RST flag) is sent by Comcast and the upload immediately stops. Most vulnerable are users in a relatively small swarm where you only have a couple of peers you can upload the file to.

For the networking savvy people among us, here’s an example of real RST interference (video) on a regular BitTorrent connection. In this case, the reset happens immediately after the bitfields are exchanged. Evil? Yes - but there is hope.

The goal of this new type of encryption (or obfuscation) is to prevent ISPs from blocking or disrupting BitTorrent traffic connections that span between the receiver of a tracker response and any peer IP-port appearing in that tracker response, according to the proposal.

“This extension directly addresses a known attack on the BitTorrent protocol performed by some deployed network hardware. By obscuring the ip-port pairs network hardware can no longer easily identify ip-port pairs that are running BitTorrent by observing peer-to-tracker communications. This deployed hardware under some conditions disrupts BitTorrent connections by injecting forged TCP reset packets. Once a BitTorrent connection has been identified, other attacks could be performed such as severely rate limiting or blocking these connections.”

So, the new tracker peer obfuscation technique is especially designed to be a workaround for throttling devices, such as the Sandvine application that Comcast uses. More details on the proposal can be found at BitTorrent.org, which aims to become a coordination platform for BitTorrent developers.

TorrentFreak talked to Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent Inc. who has some of his employees working on the new extension. He told us: “There are some ISPs who would like people to believe that “slowing down” BitTorrent or “metering” bandwidth consumption serves the greater good. Consumers should be very weary of this claim.”

“In recent months, consumers enjoyed unprecedented participation in the political process thanks to the ability to upload opinions and feedback in the YouTube presidential debates. Musicians, filmmakers and artists are finding ways to connect with their audiences across the world thanks to MySpace and BitTorrent. Students are engaging with interactive learning tools in their schools. Which bandwidth intensive application will banned or shaped or metered next by these ISPs? The creative spirit of millions has been ignited, and our need to participate, to communicate will not be silenced.”

“The US government should encourage ISPs to innovate and invest in their networks,” Ashwin said. “Permitting them to interfere or interrupt in the communications of consumers, to protect ISP profit margins, would be a tremendous set back for our country and economy, when we are already slipping behind the first world (UK, EU, Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc) in its broadband capacity.”

We wholeheartedly agree with Ashwin on this one, as we’ve said before. The Internet is only a few years old, if the plan is to keep using it in the future, ISPs need to upgrade their networks. So, invest in more Internet gateway capacity, 10Gbps interconnect ports, and peering agreements. BitTorrent users are not the problem, they only signal that the ISPs need to upgrade their capacity, because customers will only get more demanding in the future. The Internet is not only about sending email, and browsing on text based websites anymore.

The new protocol extension is still under development, but the goal is of course, to get it out as soon as possible.

Hang on…

Arrrrrrrrrggg!

Edited February 16, 2008 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker