Bbc: Isps should assume heavy vpn users are pirates

[smackababy]

Except the thread is about heavy vpn users.

Someone on a vpn consuming a megabyte every minute is not a pirate.

Someone on a vpn consuming a gigabyte every minute is a pirate.

Not entirely true. While on a VPN, I ran a backup program 3 times, each time downloading some 70,000 pdf documents. I consumed tons of data for a legitimate purpose, through a VPN. Nothing was pirated.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Except the thread is about heavy vpn users.

Someone on a vpn consuming a megabyte every minute is not a pirate.

Someone on a vpn consuming a gigabyte every minute is a pirate.

As smackababy said, I think they'd need to define "heavy" I'm on VPN practically 24/7 for work (at least connected). I've also had heavy usage, but VPN's aren't known for speed. Basically my point was that the assumption that 9 of 10 vpn users is a pirate is overblown, it is probably closer to 1 in 20 or 50.

 

[jlee]

I can see it where VPNs and other similar things will simply become illegal. Instead of worrying about what is being done inside the VPNs they will just make the VPNs themselves illegal. Treat it the same way as piracy. Sadly I see this happen if VPNs or mesh networking become common enough. Physical mesh links will also be highly illegal. Running any such service will require some kind of ISP license and one of the requirements will be that the government has open access to all the data going through the network.

I don't see that happening. We use VPN's for work and that would be a massive security breach.

 

[biostud]

Well, by pirates they mean people trying to avoid geoblocking, yes.

this, I use it it to buy digital content from US.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Say What? Really? Is this true Anandtech?

-------------------------------------------------------

BBC: ISPS SHOULD ASSUME HEAVY VPN USERS ARE PIRATES

Funny thing, they might be right. I streamed the World Cup finals by VPN'ing into UK (BBC blocks streaming from non UK IP addresses) :whiste:

 

[DrPizza]

Sad thing is many of these types have gigabytes of material they never even view/use...they just collect this stuff for whatever reasons they have.

They're hoarders. It's just fortunate that the stuff they hoard doesn't take up a lot of physical space. One of my friends at a particular college - a year ago, 30 terabytes of movies. Assuming he gets a decent job after college, and has a decent life, I cannot conceive how he could watch so many movies. Heck, movie reviewers might not even view that many full movies during their entire career.

 

[destrekor]

They're hoarders. It's just fortunate that the stuff they hoard doesn't take up a lot of physical space. One of my friends at a particular college - a year ago, 30 terabytes of movies. Assuming he gets a decent job after college, and has a decent life, I cannot conceive how he could watch so many movies. Heck, movie reviewers might not even view that many full movies during their entire career.

What's the compression rate on each video?

If it's uncompressed from Blu-ray sources, that easily could be less than 1000 full-length movies (I used a generic 30GB value for a movie). And what about any extra content?

When you factor in how many TV shows we tend to watch, as well as movies, I would imagine it is not hard at all to find time to watch 1000 movies.
Plus, simply having a library on tap is pretty awesome. Have someone or people over - bam, now there are options galore. No need to browse endlessly on Netflix. 😉

 

[Red Squirrel]

I will admit I'm a hoarder myself when it comes to files. I have large raid arrays I can just throw it on and forget about the fact that it's taking up space, but if I need it, it's there.

 

[alkemyst]

Except the thread is about heavy vpn users.

Someone on a vpn consuming a megabyte every minute is not a pirate.

Someone on a vpn consuming a gigabyte every minute is a pirate 9 times out of 10. Consume a gigabyte nearly every minute of every day, that person is a pirate 100% of the time.

QFT. Too many are trying to make 'special examples'.

The typical office VPN user is doing typical office things like email, web meetings, etc. Not really high volume things.

Sucking down gigs at a time is usually something one doesn't do over a VPN as there are better methods out there for file transfers.

 

[vi edit]

QFT. Too many are trying to make 'special examples'.

The typical office VPN user is doing typical office things like email, web meetings, etc. Not really high volume things.

Sucking down gigs at a time is usually something one doesn't do over a VPN as there are better methods out there for file transfers.

That's why I said up front they need to clarify what is interpreted as "heavy VPN users".

By *time* I'm a heavy VPN user.
By bandwith used I am not.

Ambiguous title is ambiguous.