[WXC/VFX] The Torrent plan and what it's done...

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [WXC/VFX] The Torrent plan and what it's done...

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#167939 30-Sep-2008 10:35

attilathegorilla: Not quite off topic, because a NZ based news server could greatly improve international speeds for non-leechers.

And u, like other posters before you, don`t seem to be able to grasp an important point: We`re not talking about ISP`s hosting copyrighted materials. We`re talking about third party news servers for sharing news and non-copyrighted binaries.

No, I am quite sure I grasp it better than most here, and we wouldn't be having this discussion if it was for "sharing news and non-copyrighted binaries."

You know it, I know it, anyone with a clue knows it.

Non copyright infringing usage simply doesn't stress the network at the access layer, or the ISP International links. Anyone that claims otherwise is, I am afraid to say, a little ignorant.

The fact is that to reduce the impact on the international pipe, the copyrighted material would have to be hosted somewhere in New Zealand, and there's no way of doing that in an official and supported way.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

freitasm

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#167943 30-Sep-2008 10:44

But who guarantees the material being posted on these third party servers are ok to distribute? As I said any company hosting content is liable for it.

Also beign news servers it means some of posts come from overseas where the server owner would have no jurisdiction and no way to effectively prevent posting of illegal material.

And truth be told I had the impression the suggestion was for this kind of content. For legitimate use most companies use Akamai services or authorised mirrors already.

attilathegorilla

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#167966 30-Sep-2008 12:19

Of course I`m talking about illegitimate content, but I`m just speaking lawyer language hehe.

What I`m trying to say is that news servers cannot be outlawed, because they cannot be held accountable for what the users upload. If a news server has the same liabilities as an internet service provider like WxC, then how do they get away with it in America? There must be a legal loophole, and I can`t imagine that NZ would have stricter laws than the US.

If honest work and justice are not enough - we'll get a lawyer.

Talkiet

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#167982 30-Sep-2008 13:34

attilathegorilla: Of course I`m talking about illegitimate content, but I`m just speaking lawyer language hehe.

What I`m trying to say is that news servers cannot be outlawed, because they cannot be held accountable for what the users upload. If a news server has the same liabilities as an internet service provider like WxC, then how do they get away with it in America? There must be a legal loophole, and I can`t imagine that NZ would have stricter laws than the US.

You'd be surprised... I am not totally familiar with the current law, but do know that we're certainly NOT significantly better off than the US in this regard.

Do you know what it takes to run a news server and keep it reliable (or reliable enough to be an alternative to the very simple torrent alternative?)

Back in 2000 odd when I was helping support IHUGs news server hardware, they just couldn't keep it reliable (due to a variety of factors) and that was with a far lower load than would be required today.

I shudder to think of the hardware resources you'd have to throw at an even moderately full binaries feed today to keep a reasonable retention window.

Of course, the main issue here is that the ISPs would be spending MORE money to try and support indiscriminate users. There's ample proof that doing this is hardly ever a good idea and one day the ISPs will actually learn this. *1

Cheers - N

*1 - I know you're going to say that doing this would benefit the discriminating users as well - but the fact is that trying to accommodate indiscriminate users instead of changing their behaviour (even if the change is Get Them Off Our Network!) is an arms race against users that are 100% selfish and don't care about anyone else. *2

*2 - As evidence, how many indiscriminate torrent users would throttle their client to just a dozen or so connections to make sure they didn't affect other users too badly? And how many would ramp those numbers up to the max when they aren't using their PC for something else, just to get a little bit more speed?. (Answers, None (*3), and Everyone else)

*3 - Or as so close to zero as to be worth not considering.

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Talkiet

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#167983 30-Sep-2008 13:35

attilathegorilla: Of course I`m talking about illegitimate content, but I`m just speaking lawyer language hehe.

What I`m trying to say is that news servers cannot be outlawed, because they cannot be held accountable for what the users upload. If a news server has the same liabilities as an internet service provider like WxC, then how do they get away with it in America? There must be a legal loophole, and I can`t imagine that NZ would have stricter laws than the US.

Oh, and as a specific issue, most ISPs don't carry Child Porn newsgroups because they COULD be held accountable for it. So all we're arguing now is about how objectionable or illegal content it, not whether or not ISPs could get in trouble.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

attilathegorilla

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#167989 30-Sep-2008 14:09

Quote from Wikipedia:

`Commercial usenet service providers claim to operate as a telecommunications service, and assert that they are not responsible for the user-posted binary content transferred via their equipment. In the United States, usenet providers can qualify for protection under the DMCA Safe Harbor regulations, provided that they establish a mechanism to comply with and respond to takedown notices from copyright holders.`

In my opinion the biggest issue with a NZ newsgroup server (a non-ISP operated, commercial one) would be that in order to keep a decent retention of material, there would need to be a network of different newsgroup servers. Like this other quote says,

`Removal of copyrighted content from the entire usenet network is a nearly impossible task, due to the rapid propagation between servers and the retention done by each server. Petitioning a usenet provider for removal only removes it from that one server's retention cache, but not any others. It is possible for a special post cancellation message to be distributed to remove it from all servers, but many providers ignore cancel messages by standard policy, because they can be easily falsified and submitted by anyone.[5][6] For a takedown petition to be most effective across the whole network, it would have to be issued to the origin server to which the content has been posted, but has not yet been propagated to other servers. Removal of the content at this early stage would prevent further propagation, but with modern high speed links, content can be propagated as fast as it arrives, allowing no time for content review and takedown issuance by copyright holders.`

Quotes from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Binary_content

If honest work and justice are not enough - we'll get a lawyer.

freitasm

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#167992 30-Sep-2008 14:13

First the Wikipedia can't be used as a reliable source for legal matters.

attilathegorilla: Quote from Wikipedia:

`Commercial usenet service providers claim to operate as a telecommunications service, and assert that they are not responsible for the user-posted binary content transferred via their equipment. In the United States, usenet providers can qualify for protection under the DMCA Safe Harbor regulations, provided that they establish a mechanism to comply with and respond to takedown notices from copyright holders.`

This obviously apply to the USA only. One thing you may not be aware is that the laws are very different. For example in the USA a blog or forum owner is not liable for anything an anonymous poster writes and post in their service. In New Zealand I am responsible for whatever, whoever is posted on Geekzone.

It is that simple.

attilathegorilla: In my opinion the biggest issue with a NZ newsgroup server (a non-ISP operated, commercial one) would be that in order to keep a decent retention of material, there would need to be a network of different newsgroup servers. Like this other quote says,

The biggest issue in New Zealand, with the new copyright law is that whoever is the owner of such a service, hosted and based in New Zealand is liable for its contents. It is that simple.

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Talkiet

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#167995 30-Sep-2008 14:24

attilathegorilla: [snip]
In my opinion the biggest issue with a NZ newsgroup server (a non-ISP operated, commercial one) would be that in order to keep a decent retention of material, there would need to be a network of different newsgroup servers. [snip]

The ISPs aren't going to do this. No rational company is going to open themselves up to this level of risk either (and how do they make money / cover their costs?).

But, and here's the important point.

NO-ONE is stopping you from doing it - you just have to:
1) Buy a server (or servers) with vast amounts of capacity
2) Host these at several locations throughout NZ
3) Purchase sufficient International and National connectivity to feed the servers and distribute the traffic.
4) Deal with the large number of incoming DMCA like requests for removal of content.
5) Charge your users an appropriate amount to cover all these startupcossts and ongoing fees.

Now, there's no actual technical difficulties in steps 1-4, but they will cost you a LOT of money.

Step 5 however is going to screw you. You are advocating catering to the indiscriminate users that want to download a huge amount of content for basically $0. They are not going to pay you for this.

Now, if they won't pay YOU, having set this up for them, WHY WOULD ANYONE ELSE GO AND SET THIS UP?

This all points back to the entire problem being an economic problem.

Xnet is effectively giving away 75GB of scarce resource for free. This encourages indiscriminate use and that indiscriminate use severely impacts service for paying users.

Interestingly, there's also a DIRECT cost on Xnet. Because I cannot use the Internet through them from midnight to 8am, I currently switch my network to Go large at about 11:45 if I intend to use the internet after midnight, and switch it back when I get home from work the following day.

See what this does? That's right, any traffic my home network consumes after 11:45pm and before 6:30ish, goes via Telecom, and NOT VIA THE PAY PER GB PLAN AT XNET. Instead of giving Xnet money, I use my backup connection.

Even for people that don't have a backup link - they will be downloading less (because they can't download fast) but they too are paying Xnet less because they can't download as fast, due to the indiscriminate users hogging the bandwidth.

Xnet, change the time to 2am and deal with the whinging of your indiscriminate bandwidth hogs.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

PenultimateHop

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#167997 30-Sep-2008 14:33

attilathegorilla: Not quite off topic, because a NZ based news server could greatly improve international speeds for non-leechers.

And u, like other posters before you, don`t seem to be able to grasp an important point: We`re not talking about ISP`s hosting copyrighted materials. We`re talking about third party news servers for sharing news and non-copyrighted binaries.

A third party news server, hosted in New Zealand, would still be a Service, Provided on the Internet. It would be subject to the same rules.

Go read Internet New Zealand's repeated submissions on the new laws for why, as they stand, are incredibly poorly constructed.

attilathegorilla

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#168009 30-Sep-2008 15:24

PenultimateHop:
attilathegorilla: Not quite off topic, because a NZ based news server could greatly improve international speeds for non-leechers.

And u, like other posters before you, don`t seem to be able to grasp an important point: We`re not talking about ISP`s hosting copyrighted materials. We`re talking about third party news servers for sharing news and non-copyrighted binaries.

A third party news server, hosted in New Zealand, would still be a Service, Provided on the Internet. It would be subject to the same rules.

Go read Internet New Zealand's repeated submissions on the new laws for why, as they stand, are incredibly poorly constructed.

Where do I find these please?

By the way, Talkiet. Binary newsgroup servers DO charge money for their service. Have a look at this for example, I think this is the most popular one on the market.

Link

If honest work and justice are not enough - we'll get a lawyer.

PenultimateHop

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#168020 30-Sep-2008 15:46

attilathegorilla:
PenultimateHop:
attilathegorilla: Not quite off topic, because a NZ based news server could greatly improve international speeds for non-leechers.

Go read Internet New Zealand's repeated submissions on the new laws for why, as they stand, are incredibly poorly constructed.

Where do I find these please?

A presentation given at NZNOG 2007 by Internet New Zealand:

http://resources.nznog.org/2007/Friday-020207/InternetNZ-Copyright.ppt

Copyright bill 2007 submission:
http://www.internetnz.net.nz/issues/submissions/archive/2007/copyright

ACTA 2008 submission:
http://www.internetnz.net.nz/issues/submissions/2008/acta/view

attilathegorilla: By the way, Talkiet. Binary newsgroup servers DO charge money for their service. Have a look at this for example, I think this is the most popular one on the market.

Link

I was recently chatting with the CTO of Giganews at a conference. He mentioned they were looking to deploy a point-of-presence into the Asia Pacific region to increase performance and reduce costs for customers in the region.... however a major consideration of where to deploy to was Copyright and ISP liability laws. This ruled out Australia and New Zealand, even though they have a large number of customers in those two countries.

Talkiet

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#168024 30-Sep-2008 15:50

attilathegorilla: [snip]By the way, Talkiet. Binary newsgroup servers DO charge money for their service. Have a look at this for example, I think this is the most popular one on the market.

Link

I had a scything comment about economies of scale, and the relative hosting costs in the US vs NZ, but then I thought I'd have a quick look on the page you mentioned and by listing it, you back up my assertion that it's an economic problem.

Giganews CHARGE for traffic... their starting plan is $7.99 for 2GB, up to $25 for "unlimited"

I put unlimited in quotes because of this comment in their Acceptable Use Policy...

"Reasonable Use Policy : Giganews would like for all of its members to have reasonable use of its service. To that end, Giganews may curtail unreasonable usage of Unlimited accounts in order to ensure the best possible service for all members."

So there you go... They charge for data, and they reserve the right to 'curtail' unreasonable usage.

So again, I invite you to go set this up yourself. I assert that in NZ, given not even ISPs can justify keeping news servers well stocked with Binary groups, there's no way that a standalone company could!

I mean, ISPs already have international bandwidth spare at some times of day they can use to suck down the news, and they have pretty damn good national connectivity in most cases. If they can't make it work given those huge costs are already covered, why do you think someone else could?

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Talkiet

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#168027 30-Sep-2008 15:52

PenultimateHop: [snipped a lot of sensible, informative stuff...]

Excuse me - if you are going to continue posting well thought out responses and relevant evidence, I'm going to have to ask you to leave :-)

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

attilathegorilla

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#168039 30-Sep-2008 16:22

I agree about economies of scale Talkiet. You just seemed to believe that newsgroup servers do it for free, hence my link.

If honest work and justice are not enough - we'll get a lawyer.

attilathegorilla

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#168041 30-Sep-2008 16:25

I wonder why NZ and Aussie have tougher copyright laws than the home of Hollywood.

If honest work and justice are not enough - we'll get a lawyer.

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