Net neutrality to be tested by Virgin Media

I think the internet as we know it is living on borrowed time. There is a time coming where you are charged postage for email and the list of web sites will be limited to things like goverment site and banks and billing web site so you can pay bills on line. People will go for a month or more without even going on line. Computers will be used more for typing leters and printing lables and playing games than anything else. The end of the net is just over the next hill.

Mass boycott its the only way.

reply to post by gYvMessanger
I also think this will help since Virgin went out on a limb like this. I will be spreading the word. I think all Virgin media should be boycotted. Makes me wonder about Virgin mobile seems like they would not be above straight bugging every phone.

Ungh, large governments and corporations will always attempt to control the information you can access.

The difference with the internet is : If an ISP decides to control your connection, you use another ISP, there are tens of thousands to chose from.

If the entire backbone becomes controlled, You start a new network!

It's not difficult people. We already have the hardware... all we have to do is point it somewhere else. The companies interested in controlling your access will be bankrupt pretty quickly.

Networks are networks. You can start one VERY easily. Heck... maybe this time we can manage to keep the ISP's to a local level like they were supposed to be.

Here's an interesting story. Apparently quite a few ISP's in the UK have already begun censoring the internet. I think censorship is inevitable. Governments and corporations are obsessed with the control of information.

UK ISPs implement IWF censorship

If you thought that invisible web censorship was something that only happened overseas, think again: it would appear that several UK ISPs have teamed up with the Internet Watch Foundation to bring us our own Great Firewall.

According to an article published over the weekend on ZDNet, a plethora of UK ISPs – Virgin Media, Be, O2, Telefonica, EasyNet, UK Online, PlusNet, Demon, Eclipse Internet, Kingston Communications, Sky Broadband, and Opal to name but a few – have activated a transparent proxy system at the behest of UK censorship body the Internet Watch Foundation in order to police “child sexual abuse content” and other “criminally obscene [or] incitement to racial hatred” materials online.

The filtering system – which has not been communicated to ISPs' customers in any way – was discovered by Wikipedia users who noticed that every single UK request to the website seemed to be coming from a small number of IP addresses. As Wikipedia relies on the ability to block addresses being used by 'vandals', this resulted in automated blocking systems preventing thousands of users editing pages. Users affected by the filtering will be greeted by a message saying “Wikipedia has been added to a Internet Watch Foundation UK website blacklist, and your Internet service provider has decided to block part of your access. Unfortunately, this also makes it impossible for us to differentiate between different users, and block those abusing the site without blocking other innocent people as well.”

While the transparent proxy system can be circumvented quite easily – it relies on traffic travelling via port 80, so secure connections on port 443 are ignored – issues are still likely to crop up on websites that rely on semi-unique IP addresses to differentiate users. Ironically, a system designed to offer tracing of illegal content may very well end up offering cyber-criminals an easy way of increasing their anonymity online – if they're appearing from an IP address at the same time as a few thousand legitimate users, they're hidden by the noise.

Although no official word has yet come from either the IWF or the ISPs involved, it is thought that the system comes as part of a wider crackdown on images of child abuse on the Internet. While the IWF has offered its Cleanfeed domain blacklist system to ISPs for a while, this move represents the first attempt to detect and filter the traffic of all major UK ISPs without the knowledge or consent of the end user. While the IWF's goal is laudable, their methods are sure the leave a bad taste in the mouths of anyone interested in freedom of speech and free dissemination of information online - especially when one notes that the IWF is known for its trigger-happy blocking policies, often adding material to its blacklists which is not illegal under UK law.

Is this latest move another sign of politics intruding into the free running of the Internet, or is this kind of technology a necessary evil with the completely reasonable aim of eradication of objectionable content?

www.bit-tech.net...

IWF: What are you looking at?

The Internet Watch Foundation was set up mainly to prohibit child pornography, but a policy change may lead to harmless material being banned. Justified protection or censorship gone mad?

So the IWF – which now has a list of newsgroups it wants to ban – was initially set up specifically to avoid banning a list of newsgroups. The IWF's focus until now has been on illegal material, and its central activity is operating the hotline to which members of the public can report online material they believe to be illegal. Its funding, of roughly £380,000 for the first nine months of 2002 comes primarily from the ISPs, who send representatives to a funding council, four of whom serve on the IWF board. Some EU funding goes to support the hotline, and the UK government has funded specific projects.

I might of known that the EU would have something to do with it.

lpuk.blogspot.com...
www.independent.co.uk...
www.thinkbroadband.com...


[edit on 18-12-2008 by kindred]

Originally posted by guliver
Boycott, simple as that.

Already started on that one, i'm so angry with virgin media. Not only are they abusing net neutrality but they're also looking into using the phorm system.

Furthermore not all things downloaded on bittorrent are illegal and copyrighted! Why do these companies equate torrents and illegal usage? Last night i downloaded a very long video, it was made by someone on youtube and advertised on his channel as free to download and share.

To find it i had to look at a torrent site, so if they block torrent websites they will be blocking access to legal material. So this virgin media customer is going elsewhere, just have to read up on what other companies are offering now and their views on net neutrality.

I reckon Virgin Media are pushing for this first because of their relationship to Virgin Records. They no doubt feel that torrent sites et al are responsible for a perceived loss in sales at Virgin Records.

I bet that other record/film companies that have their greasy fingers in the ISP pie are just waiting to see whether this move pays off for Virgin before doing the same themselves.

Sounds stupidly lame.... And I suspect that they would lose plenty of customers.... Its a bit like DRM on games... Why bother?

Tbh though, blocking P2P is one thing. Blocking sites that host data is another. As that can be legit in some cases... In other circles it can be known as Warez.

Blocking that would end the internet

I am not affliated or agree with Warez.

Here is a way we can ALL protest, and not simply those who leave Virgin:-

Web hosts should start a campaign and literally BLOCK all users who visit their site using Virgin Media - net censorship can work both ways.

It would take long before independent facebook , linked in, myspace, and youtube were established which no one on Virgin, or other censorship sponsored ISP's, would be able to access.

Anyone who is on Virgin would not only be unable to access any web content which Virgin has blocked, but any other content at all ! Further they would be paying for internet access via Virgin, to content which is Pay per use with no access to the rest of the web - Virgin would change policy in a heart beat.

BRILLIANT -

The thing about this is that Web Masters are much more willing to cooperate with each other, and any that doesn't would simply be black listed and their site would be delinked from the rest of the web......stooged.

This needs to be acted upon.

Boycott!
all who are preventing free sharing of knowledge.

And all those who are selling sweet poison.

They will suffocate in their own schemes.

They better effing not!

I'm tied into a contract with them till february, can't afford an increase in price! I'm paying £36 a month as it is for Broadband, and T.V.

If it went to £51, and if they blocked the use of p2p and torrent sites, then I would lose my primary use of t'internet, so would definately switch ISP's.

Most likely to Sky, and get their T.V and broadband deal.

I for one will definately boycott VM if this comes to fruition. And I will urge my friends and family to do the same if they're with VM aswell.

tO

Virgin Media run a f-ing awful service.

They took over my local cable provider/isp, and their service has been crap ever since - they've sunk all their money into adverts with Hollywood movie stars rather than provide a solid service to their customer base. No surprise there of course, these large companies are all ABOUT image and sucking in more fresh meat.

If this comes into effect they can go fish, I will hop to another ISP quicker than I can pull out my ethernet cable.

reply to post by Maiku2052


They already have throttled back p2p in Aus thats why I took my custom elsewhere. Simple

reply to post by guliver


They have a valid point since file sharing sites only exist to illegally trade (or sell) licensed programs and other materials without paying for them, to the tune of millions of dollars every year. Excusing that is like exusing the neighborhood drug dealer for providing great service. Let's not forget also that those programs are in fact also heavily used in the child porn trade as evidenced by international arrests of which several have occured here in the past few years. As long as people continue break the law they are bringing these kinds of actions on themselves.
One more point, net regulation also would prevent people from intentionally posting false information to sites like ATS to stir up trouble, which isn't a bad idea considering some of the more far-fetched strings that have appeared here lately.

One thought I have on this is, if the big internet providers do this the smaller ones may get sucked into it, regardless if they want to or not. Most smaller ISP's get their bandwidth from the big boys, the bandwidth has to come from somewhere.

I work for a small ISP and the bandwidth comes from ATT. If ATT decided to do what Virgin is doing im not sure if we by default would be under the same rules, as it comes from them.

Something to think about anyway.

-Uninspired

i've just left bt & gone to o2,I considered going to virgin media but decided o2 was a cheaper better service.
People will leave in droves if virgin do what they say thy will do,i know alot friends who are on virgin,this news won't make there day i don't think.

Something came to me as I read through the posts.

It has been suggested numerous times that if you don't like a service provider, just switch to another one. Makes sense to me until I realized that there is still just a single cable running into my house. Control what flows through that cable and you control everything.

It is just a series of tubes as we all know.

The same thing goes with my cable TV.

Sure there are hundreds of channels to choose from, but I'm still limited to what someone has decided those channels contain.

reply to post by Runningtobabylon

poor Leno where you'll be I'll know where you'll be I'll go where you'll be I'll find you

Lol i'm currently with VM

They can try and stop me accessing what i wan't but that ain't gonna happen...

Silly people!