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Re: WORTH REMEMBERING djf AT&T says there is no duopoly, net neutrality is bad
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:52:29 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Edward Almasy <ealmasy () axisdata com> Date: October 26, 2007 10:37:39 AM EDT To: "Matthew Tarpy" <tarpy () tarpify com> Cc: David Farber <dave () farber net>Subject: Re: [IP] Re: AT&T says there is no duopoly, net neutrality is bad
On Oct 25, 2007, at 8:20 AM, Matthew Tarpy wrote:
Should network providers not be able to react to the usage of their network to increase stability, limit activity that is theft at worst, and in a gray nebula of legality at best?
I know this has been said before, but given the questions at hand, I think it bears worth repeating: BitTorrent is used every day for legitimate purposes that are not at all gray or nebulous. Every single one of the torrents on the BitTorrent trackers listed below is 100% legal. bt.etree.org currently has more than 3,300 active legal music torrents, and it's not just Phish and the Grateful Dead; you don't hear about it much in the popular media (for obvious reasons), but Radiohead, Pearl Jam, My Morning Jacket, Ryan Adams, and hundreds of other very successful artists allow and encourage free sharing ofrecordings of their work online. linuxtracker.org has thousands of legal
torrents available, and it's not just software -- they're also using BitTorrent to distribute educational videos and podcasts. Even clearly suspect sites like The Pirate Bay offer many gigabytes of legal content (e.g. http://thepiratebay.org/user/meetthegimp/). Traffic shaping or blocking like that practiced by Comcast affects more than just the downloading of illegal MP3s -- it also hinders the rapidly-growing community of people using the technology for legitimate tasks. If this is representative of what we can expect without net neutrality, then I can't help but think that some legal protection for that neutrality is needed. Ed http://bt.etree.org http://linuxtracker.org http://kickmedown.com http://torrent.fedoraproject.org http://www.tapers.org ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- Re: WORTH REMEMBERING djf AT&T says there is no duopoly, net neutrality is bad David Farber (Oct 26)