The UK Government, through the BERR, commissioned a public consultation last year into illicit file-sharing, and how to deal with it. The responses should have been published in December, but due to a holdup concerning a freedom of information request, it was delayed until today. Despite this, some will still be kept confidential.
In these harsh economic times, everyone is looking out for a bargain. A new VPN service launched recently offering a lifetime of anonymous BitTorrent, completely unlimited, for a one-off $50.00 payment. Sounds good? We take a closer look to see if the numbers stack up.
The proposed Australian Internet filter is causing controversy before it even gets off the ground. The trial, which is to include attempted BitTorrent blocking, was due to start two days ago but generating further embarrassment for the government and surprising no-one, it failed to launch.
Previously thought to be limited to HTTP and HTTPs web traffic, the touted Australian Internet filter will also target P2P traffic. In response to a comment posted by a user on his department’s blog, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has admitted that BitTorrent filtering will be attempted during upcoming trials.
In contrast to the US, net neutrality does not seem to be an issue in the UK as one after the other, British ISPs start to throttle BitTorrent users. Most recently, Virgin Media announced that it will target BitTorrent, which will render their newly released 50Mbit/s plan unusable for the people who really need it.
A group of British actors, directors and producers have written an open letter to The Times newspaper. Their concern – downloads of TV episodes and films. What is needed, they claim, is for the government to force the ISPs to do something about it.
Just over 12 months since one of Romania’s most popular BitTorrent trackers was raided by the police, Torrentbits.ro is suffering more problems. Customers of one of Romania’s largest ISPs, UPC, can no longer access the site.
Yesterday, the FCC ruled that Comcast’s network management practices that specifically targeted BitTorrent users, were unfair. The ruling is a small victory for Net Neutrality, but it wont stop ISPs from going after the heavy bandwidth users, not at all.
In part one of our look into the anti-piracy efforts at universities, we saw that Missouri S&T used a simple home grown system, ignoring the favorites of the entertainment industry. In part two, we look at Ohio University, Texas A&M University, Tulane University and others that do use one of the methods preferred by the RIAA and MPAA.
Under the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, colleges and universities that get federal funding have to come up with ways to deal with “Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention”. The bill doesn’t give specific methods, and universities can come up with their own methods, as Missouri S&T has done with their P2P quiz.
Comcast must feel it’s being attacked by all sides. It’s been hit by lawsuits, investigated by the FCC, and roundly criticised everywhere else. It has brought the issue of traffic shaping to the forefront of people’s minds, and into public discussion. Aiming to highlight ISP’s and their shaping, the EFF has released a new tool for users to test their connection’s integrity.
