Corydon
Cultivant son jardin
Premium
join:2008-02-18
Denver, CO
clubs:
 ·Comcast
| No, the service itself is perfectly legal. However, there are several situations where some uses of it may not be:
1) I think everyone will agree that using it to mass-produce copyrighted material is illegal (we can argue over whether it is moral or not, but it's certainly against the law in the US and most other countries).
2) I don't know how ISPs in Australia work, but since broadband started becoming readily available here in the US, you have never been permitted to run a server on residential service.
Yes, you can upload files to another server. Yes, you can send files to specific people via email, ftp, dcc or whatever. But you have never been permitted to deliberately offer up files on your machine for anyone to come along and grab.
3) I'm also a bit dubious of companies like Vuze and Blizzard using BitTorrent to distribute (legal) files. They don't want to pay to host their files themselves.
To me, that sounds like the actions of a parasite: I think it's unfair for me to bear part of the cost of their distribution network so my neighbor can enjoy their content, while they contribute nothing at all back to me.
4) I'd also like to remind everyone that no-one has ever accused (let alone found any proof of) Comcast of interfering with downloads via BitTorrent. I also note that no-one has made any credible accusations of Comcast interfering with non-BitTorrent related content (from Apple, Netflix, or whoever).
This whole argument is over whether Comcast has the right to manage its upstream bandwidth, which everyone agrees is limited because of the very nature of the current DOCSIS architecture. |
