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Bandwidth caps could lead to ISPs benefiting from piracy

By Eric Bangeman | Published: July 04, 2008 - 12:15PM CT

Bandwidth caps are almost universally loathed, except by the companies that implement them. Consumers hate them because they have to treat the Internet not as an inexhaustable resource, but as something that's doled out to them. Each page they view, video they watch, or song they stream moves the needle closer to zero with the resultant overage charges. Tech companies don't like them either. Video services such as Joost and Vuze rely on P2P to deliver their goods, and that, too is going to keep the bandwidth meter spinning, as will an HD rental from your Apple TV. Even sites like Hulu and YouTube may see less traffic from metered households.
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How did we get into this position? It's a result of cable ISPs essentially doing the equivalent of an airline overbooking a flight. But instead of getting bumped to the next available flight and being given a free roundtrip ticket anywhere in the lower 48, like airline passengers, cable customers get lower speeds and bandwidth caps. Although there's plenty of fine print about actual speed and performance from cable ISPs, they've historically marketed their services as fast and unlimited in scope. Comcast's admission of throttling BitTorrent traffic has led to, among other things, class-action lawsuits accusing them of false advertising.

To their credit, some cable ISPs are working on modernizing their networks and infrastructure to handle increased demand. But others are relying on traffic shaping, throttling, and bandwidth caps to keep traffic at manageable levels.

Some people find little to object to when it comes to bandwidth caps. Proponents of caps argue that they offer a fair option for those whose Internet use is truly minimal, and require those who plan to run their connections full throttle 24/7 to pay for the privilege.
Profiting from piracy?

What about those customers who want to treat their connections as an all-you-can-eat buffet? It's that group of customers that have the potential to rake in the most revenue for bandwidth-capping ISPs. Like it or not, a lot of the traffic from heavy users comes from P2P and other forms of file-sharing. Sure, some of that is legit, consisting of content from legitimate P2P companies and things like Linux distros. But much of it is illicit content: movies, TV shows, and music. P2P devotees who are forced to live under caps may still choose to exceed their allotments, or pay for a higher cap to satisfy their bandwidth jones. The illicit traffic will still be flowing through the ISP's tubes, but with one important distinction: the ISP will now be profiting from their subscribers' use of P2P. Want to download the crappy camcorder cap of Kung-Fu Panda? You can still do it, and you'll now be paying your ISP extra for the privilege should you be exceeding the cap.

With all of the attention that Big Content has been throwing ISPs' way this year (filtering, anyone?), it's a sure bet that the possibility of ISPs making still more money from their users' nefarious activities will draw their attention. "We understand why ISPs might want to experiment with tiered pricing models, given the rapid growth of legitimate high-bandwidth content online," RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth told Ars. "But it would be troubling if ISPs were to profit from piracy, by charging more for bandwidth used for illegal downloading."

If anything, the possibility of this happening is likely to turn up the pressure on ISPs to begin filtering out all infringing content from their networks, and neither the ISPs (with the exception of AT&T) nor their customers are anxious to see copyright filters deployed. In the meantime, bandwidth caps appear to be here to stay. It's a fact of life in Canada and many other parts of the world, the second-largest cable ISP in the US is experimenting with them, and the largest one is watching it with interest. We have many freedoms to reflect on in the US on this Independence Day. Hopefully, independence from filtering won't prove too fleeting.

Anybody who stopped to even think for a minute should have seen this coming and in fact as early as the 1990's people were saying that eventually internet use was going to be charged based on how much you download/uploaded.

In some area it is going to cost a lot. Here in Las Cruces, NM for example nearly all our utilities are underground and were put in the late 70's and early 80's. As a result updating anything is going require digging up huge hunks of the landscape and that costs.

Why is it that everyone on the planet can make money from music except the record labels?

Possibly, it's a self-serving ploy:
The record labels prefer to feign low income, because if they revealed the truth (that they've been wallowing in moola for the past decades), those whom they've short-changed might have more leverage to demand their fair share that they were bilked out of.

Also, I don't buy their moaning, groaning litany that "piracy" (P2P activity) has decimated their income from music.
Their income may be comparatively down ... but primarily because of strategical errors on their part, for which they should only have themselves to blame.

OK...I am dead set again bandwidth capping...PERIOD.

The truth is that bandwidth usage is a function of the size of the PIPE and your connection speed.

I started my internet experience in the bad old days of 2400 baud modems
For some nostalgia, read THIS
http://lonestar.texas.net/helpdesk/2400.html
"Using 2400 Baud Modems with the Internet
Only the most stable and efficient of 2400 baud modems have a chance of connecting and allowing you to browse the Internet. The method that information is sent and received over the Internet involves a lot of overhead, or data that is used simply to let other computers know what to do with the information. Data is sent over the Internet in packets, with each packet containing a header of information that explains where the information is to be sent and how it is to be sent.

With modem speeds lower than 9600, the ratio of data in the header to data in the packet body becomes so high that your computer is unable to effectively keep itself connected. It will be unable to send and receive authentication information (such as your login name and password) and will simply give up, often by disconnecting you.

The vast majority of Texas.Net customers connecting at 2400 will fail to maintain a connection but for a few seconds. Only a very few people will manage to keep their connection going, even though their performance (especially when browsing the web) will keep you in suspense for as long as a half an hour before you get to see some of a web page's content.

If you're using a slower modem, or a fast modem that, due to line quality, is unable to connect at speeds faster than 2400 bps, you may see poor connections and disconnections. If this sounds like you, Texas.Net recommends that you upgrade your modem to at least a 14.4 kbps speed. 33.6 kbps modems (and higher) are available for not much more, and will provide a significant increase in speed, performance and stability."

Now, I have cable internet.

But, even cable will seem slow to someone with FiberOptic, and that will be slow to future users.

The point is, connecting at say, even 14,400 it would take almost all day to download maybe a hundred megabytes IF you could stay connected.

So, back then "capping" was a silly notion because you were limited by your connection speed as to how much you can download.

Now, is it fair for a 70 year old lady who just reads Google News to pay the same for perhaps downloading 10 megabytes a month, as some script kiddie who keeps his modem humming along uploading and downloading all day and night?

Well, maybe ...it begs the comparison of the buffett. Should someone on a diet pay the same for a buffett as someone who caqn put away plate after plate after plate of steaks and fish and finishes it off with pie and cake?

You know, you could have a tiered system, with folks doing only minimal broadband usage paying like 15 bucks a month in addition to their regular cable bill, but if you get over 30 gigs, you pay 40 bucks a month, and it becomes all you can eat at 50 bucks a month.

That would be reasonable if the ISPs would just quick keeping those damn activity logs, and thus, they wouldn't have to worry about silly subpoenas for user info on whether they were sharing a tune by Tommy TuTone or some such nonsense, because they could answer, we don't keep individual user activity logs during the course and scope of our daily business.

I meant buffet...drank too much Gatorade and had to add some t

Well...I had to add an explanatory note...IF they went to the system I said may be reasonable if they must charge for usage...
they could only keep records for billing purposes about whether or not a user was uploading or downloading data...actually USING the connection, and keep records of total data transferred, but NOT keep data on things like which website they visited or other such nonsense.

". . . if the ISPs would just keep records of total data transferred, but NOT keep data on things like which website they visited or other such nonsense."

Strongly agree!

Related to all this is a problem outlined in many webpagesthatsuck examples: too many webpages use methods that "waste" bandwidth especially Flash. Needless use of flash eats up bandwidth faster than a kid in a candy shop.