• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Can we start a class action law suit on our ISPs?

SSSnail

SSSnail

Lifer
I don't know if this has been done, and I am not one that advocates frivolous law suits, but I think something needs to be done about ISPs and their limitation of service rendered.

Most of us know that ISP are monitoring traffics and will either throttle or disrupt certain traffics from applications such as peer to peer sharing. Now, I don't know if that's allowed in any instance because we pay the ISPs monthly for a service, that includes an estimated bandwidth allocation and unlimited usage (unless otherwise stated in contracts). I've not seen anywhere in any contracts when I sign up with any ISPs that I can't use the service I paid for up to a certain limit.

Legally, can they throttle traffics of any kind? What about over usage disruption of service?

Edit: http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13883

Net neutrality? What?s that?

Throwing up its metaphorical hands in horror, it claims it would never dream of doing such a thing ?- it?s just kinda, well, you know, delaying things a teensy bit.

Nothing to get upset about.

Members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition and top Net scholars don?t agree, however. And to make their position unmistakably clear, they?ve filed a class action demanding the US Federal Communications Commission fine Comcast $195,000 for every affected subscriber

?Nobody gave Comcast the right to be an Internet gatekeeper,? says Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press and co-author of the complaint. ?And there is nothing reasonable about telling users which Internet services they can and can?t use.?

But Comcast isn?t the only villain in the piece, and the US isn?t the only country where The Biggies have decided they can do whatever they want and get away with it, a la the movie and music cartels.
Click to expand...
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13873

Heh, a bit of old news, but it's a very lengthy read.
 
The only way you are going to get a truely unregulated/uncapped connection is to pony up $600-$4500 a month + a couple grand in hardware and lease your own dedicated connection (T1 or better).

Otherwise, you are pretty much guaranteed that somewhere in the ISP's TOA that they are free to do this to you.
 
Originally posted by: NeoPTLD
Are you using their service for unlawful purposes? If so, you have no leg to stand on.
Click to expand...

No. I didn't know peer to peer sharing is unlawful, notwithstanding what is being share.
 
Originally posted by: SSSnail
Originally posted by: NeoPTLD
Are you using their service for unlawful purposes? If so, you have no leg to stand on.
Click to expand...

No. I didn't know peer to peer sharing is unlawful, notwithstanding what is being share.
Click to expand...

What? Sharing your family pictures on Kazaa?
 
Legally? Yes. Read the TOS carefully. Also, it's not a criminal case; they don't need "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that you're downloading pirated material. When you're downloading GB after GB of material through P2P networks, they're going to start making some assumptions. One of those assumptions is that at least some of that activity is illegal activity.

Granted, there is a lot of legitimate material on P2P networks. But seriously, if you're talking 50GB on P2P, I have incredible doubts that it's all legit. And, if you're only downloading 1GB per month on P2P, then they're not going to care.
 
drpizza and vi_edit got it.

The price home users pay for a connection is nothing compared to what business users pay and there are reasons for that, one is specifically a limitation of the service. If you want more freedom, expect to pay a lot more.
 
In all honesty, after years (ya, yearssss) of not tinkering with P2P, I started it again two days ago because I was looking for a certain application. What I notice is that just having BT runs in the background would completely kill my traffic to ANY applications such as internet browsing, using any browsers. Emails suffered, everything that touches the network suffered as well. If I kill BT, then everything is fine and peachy.

I just read that article Ns1 linked, and it seems that we should start more of those. Why do we readily bend to them?
 
Originally posted by: SSSnail
In all honesty, after years (ya, yearssss) of not tinkering with P2P, I started it again two days ago because I was looking for a certain application. What I notice is that just having BT runs in the background would completely kill my traffic to ANY applications such as internet browsing, using any browsers. Emails suffered, everything that touches the network suffered as well. If I kill BT, then everything is fine and peachy.

I just read that article Ns1 linked, and it seems that we should start more of those. Why do we readily bend to them?
Click to expand...

Because you are paying a utility. At it's root meaning utility is "what's best for the most people". If a few people are completely slaughtering the bandwith for whatever reason(legal or not) the utility of it starts to degrade for the other users that aren't abusing it.

I've argued ad nauseum about what you are and are not entitled to for the $50 you pay for in other threads. Suffice it to say, the cable company would be happy to fire you as a customer because you are costing them more money than you paying them. You can scream and bitch and threaten to leave and they'll hold the door open for you.
 
Originally posted by: vi_edit
Originally posted by: SSSnail
In all honesty, after years (ya, yearssss) of not tinkering with P2P, I started it again two days ago because I was looking for a certain application. What I notice is that just having BT runs in the background would completely kill my traffic to ANY applications such as internet browsing, using any browsers. Emails suffered, everything that touches the network suffered as well. If I kill BT, then everything is fine and peachy.

I just read that article Ns1 linked, and it seems that we should start more of those. Why do we readily bend to them?
Click to expand...

Because you are paying a utility. At it's root meaning utility is "what's best for the most people". If a few people are completely slaughtering the bandwith for whatever reason(legal or not) the utility of it starts to degrade for the other users that aren't abusing it.

I've argued ad nauseum about what you are and are not entitled to for the $50 you pay for in other threads. Suffice it to say, the cable company would be happy to fire you as a customer because you are costing them more money than you paying them. You can scream and bitch and threaten to leave and they'll hold the door open for you.
Click to expand...

Alright then, have clear and concise service schemes that mesh well with their advertising. That way, as a consumer I don't have to be weary of what I do with the understood usage when I sign up.

So, for 1 dollar, I get to use this much and anything over will be charged. For 5 dollars, I get to use a bit more and just a bit faster, and if I go over I will be charged, so on and so forth. I would have been OK with that instead of the bait and switch (or throttle) policy that most seems to be accepting as the norm.

Much like web hosting, no? That's the way it should be so I know exactly what I'm paying for and getting.
 
Becasue it would take big pockets to bring it to the Supreme Court.
In 2005 the Court ruled that a cable ISP is NOT to be considered as a "common carrier"
A "common carrier" was used in the Telecom Act of 1996, for interconnection between providers as a means to ensure fair prices for inteconnection. One of the provisions for Common Carriage, is that you can't discriminate the "cargo" based upon affiliation of the cargo (within reasonable limits)

Instead Cables ISP's were deemed as "Information Services", and are not bound by common carriage. They are doing what they feel best protects their network, which is within their rights.
 
Originally posted by: DrPizza
Legally? Yes. Read the TOS carefully. Also, it's not a criminal case; they don't need "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that you're downloading pirated material. When you're downloading GB after GB of material through P2P networks, they're going to start making some assumptions. One of those assumptions is that at least some of that activity is illegal activity.

Granted, there is a lot of legitimate material on P2P networks. But seriously, if you're talking 50GB on P2P, I have incredible doubts that it's all legit. And, if you're only downloading 1GB per month on P2P, then they're not going to care.
Click to expand...

a lot of bands allow their concerts to be audio, and sometimes even video, recorded and traded freely online. the vast majority of the trading communities use BT nowadays and strongly believe in non-lossy codecs, so a single concert could easily be a 500MB download for just the audio recording, not even counting any possible fan-dvd releases.
 
I've not seen anywhere in any contracts when I sign up with any ISPs that I can't use the service I paid for up to a certain limit.
Click to expand...

Post your ISP's ASUP, we'll point it out for you since you can't read.
 
Originally posted by: SSSnail
In all honesty, after years (ya, yearssss) of not tinkering with P2P, I started it again two days ago because I was looking for a certain application. What I notice is that just having BT runs in the background would completely kill my traffic to ANY applications such as internet browsing, using any browsers. Emails suffered, everything that touches the network suffered as well. If I kill BT, then everything is fine and peachy.

I just read that article Ns1 linked, and it seems that we should start more of those. Why do we readily bend to them?
Click to expand...

Are you sure you are not just maxing out your up-speed? If your requests take 10 seconds to get to a website, then the download doesn't start for at least 10 seconds. Either that or your router may not be able to handle all of the connections, so it may have absolutely nothing to do with your ISP.
 
Originally posted by: DrPizza
Legally? Yes. Read the TOS carefully. Also, it's not a criminal case; they don't need "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that you're downloading pirated material. When you're downloading GB after GB of material through P2P networks, they're going to start making some assumptions. One of those assumptions is that at least some of that activity is illegal activity.

Granted, there is a lot of legitimate material on P2P networks. But seriously, if you're talking 50GB on P2P, I have incredible doubts that it's all legit. And, if you're only downloading 1GB per month on P2P, then they're not going to care.
Click to expand...

On this token I've always wondered one thing: what if you're playing online games a lot or running a server from your computer? Is that amount of bandwidth used even comparable to say 5 GB of stuff a month on p2p?
 
It is their service, they have the right to throttle whatever traffic they damn well please. If you don't like it, then too damn bad, go without internet if it pisses you off so much.
 
It's like this:

If you buy a plane ticket, you pay for your seat. Everyone else pays for their seat. You use your seat and your's alone. If you're fat and you require more space then you need two seats... you pay for two seats.
If you buy internet service you are paying for "average" hardware and bandwidth load. Without throttling, it's much harder to ensure that you aren't going over your share of this traffic. If you require the usage of more bandwidth, then maybe you should pay the price for double the service.

It's not rocket science. Bandwidth, processing power, and connections are not infinite. Don't complain about bandwidth throttling unless you've never had a gripe about CEO's making more money than other people, SUV's taking more gas... when you break it down, it's all the same concept.
 
Originally posted by: Steve
Nobody downloads gig after gig of Linux .iso's 😛
Click to expand...

That's certainly a valid reason to see a spike in someone's bandwidth usage. However, when you see a pattern of 50GB's/month, month after month, you can be certain it isn't just Linux .iso's that are being downloaded.
 
Originally posted by: Steve
Nobody downloads gig after gig of Linux .iso's 😛
Click to expand...

I have.

When I get disgruntled, I share 20+ distributions of Linux. Everyone else who shares my bandwidth suffers.

Completely legal way of fighting the system. 😀
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top