Aussie ISP's managing director John Linton says iiNet has made "childishly absurd suggestions" for how to deal with file-sharing customers in its “Encouraging Legitimate Use of Online Content" report.

Last week Aussie ISP iiNet published a report entitled “Encouraging Legitimate Use of Online Content" in which detailed a system of “traffic infringements” to deal with online infringement among suggestions.

The report is a product of its multiple wins against the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) for reportedly not doing enough to prevent illegal file-sharing by customers on its network.

Though siding with the ISP, the judges on appeal found that if iiNet was given "unequivocal and cogent evidence of the alleged primary acts of infringement by use of the iiNet service in question" and it still didn't act, then it could reasonably be found to have authorized the infringement.

This means iiNet and other ISPs have to come up with a graduated response system for dealing with repeat infringers, and the paper it published tried to come up with a solution.

Part of the solution also entailed the creation of an independent body to oversee the process of notification and warnings whereby "many, if not all, of the concerns of content owners, ISPs, the government and the community can be addressed."

However, Exetel's managing director John Linton, called iiNet's whole proposal "absurd."

"Why would anyone think a 'mediator' has any ability to interpret law? Worse, why would anyone think that a 'mediator' would put themselves in the position of having to read tens of thousands of copyright notices each day and then put themselves in a position that exposes them to legal redress? Can you think of anyone who would be so ludicrously stupid?" he said in an exchange with ZDNet Australia.

Linton said the whole problem is caused by iiNet's reluctance to simply disconnect file-sharers in the first place when notified by copyright holders of suspected infringement. He says that file-sharers make up a "huge percentage" of its subscribers, and that disconnecting them all "would send them broke."

"Making childishly absurd suggestions such as iiNet has done [is] just a pathetic attempt to 'buy' more time before they really have to stop allowing their customers to steal other people's property as their standard process of making money," he said.

Linton makes a good point. The appeal judgment already determined that ISPs have to act when notified of infringement, and trying to determine how best to act in the absence of meaningful dialogue between all stakeholders - particularly copyright holders - really is "absurd."

Yet, at least iiNet has had the gumption to make suggestions and create a discussion about what should be done.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

The news comes from IT News Australia where they cite an Exetel company posting which explains the plan.

“We will simply ban P2P traffic in the 12 midnight to 2 am period if the user elects to make that an ‘off peak’ period.” John Linton explains, “The penalty for selecting that period as ‘free’ and then using it for P2P downloads will be the removal of the free period completely for that customer or termination of the service.”

“Unlike every one of our competitors (or at least I assume this is the case) we have never been concerned about making as much money as possible from providing our services – we have always been driven by the objective of providing the best possible value. One way of doing this is to make use of the ‘dead’ bandwidth that exists on virtually very commercial network (though I have known of at least two exceptions) in the early hours of the morning.” Linton also said, explaining why the company is mulling this. He continued, “Typically on an efficiently utilised network such as Exetel’s this costs us (at our current size) well over $A150,000 a month and the bandwidth is completely wasted. Simple solution offer it to your user base at no cost to them – how, over a five year period could you fail to make that work?…..giving away $A150,000 a month worth of services…..not a problem in the world. We couldn’t do it – rather than using the virtually unused 3 am to 7 am period to set a schedule of downloads our user base insisted on starting them at one second past midnight EVERY night and, for over 90% of those users their downloads were completed by 12.30 am EVERY morning. Could they be persuaded to start their downloads after 2 am?……nothing we could do for five plus years could make that happen.”

Perhaps the sad part of all of this is the fact that there was frustration over customers actually using what they paid for. If a company offers a popular service, then suddenly stops it altogether, no doubt there’ll be anger within the customer base.

Many Australian file-sharers make use of schedulers that either download during certain times of the day or certain times of the month to try and maximize their allotted bandwidth caps. In fact, sometimes users resort to an alternative form of file-sharing, blanks and postage, to help bypass the caps while still getting what they want. One wonders, if bandwidth problems haven’t been solved by now, exactly how much investment is being made in the underlying infrastructure in the first place in Australia? In addition, what happened to caching traffic to help save bandwidth for the ISPs anyway?

Linton seems to think that there is only a tiny fraction of p2p users actually using that bandwidth in the first place. He concluded, “One of the unprovable ‘business school myths’ (similar to the “every unhappy customer etc” nonsense) is that EVERY service provider would be better off without 1% – 2% (depending how unlucky they are) of their customers.”

So it seems that they think there’s no problem cutting people off if they try using p2p. Given more businesses use p2p solutions, this could only serve to hurt the overall Australian economy. If a small business such as a vidcaster uses BitTorrent to distribute their shows, sorry, but some ISPs don’t allow it. It doesn’t matter if you are selling the content, making money off of ad revenue, or even if you are legitimate at all. The ISP will have non of it.

It’s unclear if banning p2p traffic on peak hours will actually be implemented, but Exetel has already expressed interest in carrying through with it.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Due to begin in mid-November, Exetel makes the laughable surmise that they are really doing no harm to anyone and merely “protecting” the “…current low prices and high download allowances for all users.” Heaven forbid if you actually use all of the bandwidth you are paying for in the first place.

Exetel goes on to further poke customers in the eye by noting that “You will still be able to get your copy of “Debbie Does Taronga Zoo’s Major Wildlife IV”; it will just take twice as long to download.” So let me get this straight, I pay X amount of dollars for an internet connection only to discover that my bandwidth is automatically cut in half when I need it most? Also, what P2P protocols will be throttled? They don’t say in the forum message to their customers but, surely they can’t throttle them all.

So why now, why this sudden move by Exetel? They write:

Over the past two years Exetel has analysed the traffic that it carries to and from its users – as any network provider would do.

Over that, relatively short, period we have noticed that the percentage of P2P traffic carried on our network has significantly increased as a percentage of total traffic – something that every other network provider around the world has also noticed.

This is where they go on to make the assertion that “normal” people who download stuff won’t care how long it takes only that it eventually downloads at all. This is the really funny part:

We have decided to begin a program of “de-prioritizing” P2P traffic on the basis that it should be immaterial to an end user whether their downloaded files arrive in 5 minutes or ten minutes – when all is said and done they are files that will be used at some later period and whether, or not, they are available a few minutes later is of absolutely NO consequence.

“Immaterial to an end user?” What are they crazy? My guess is that they’ve never tried to download a 700MB XVID movie file before, because it’s more time than just a matter of 5 or 10 minutes involved.

My only hope is that ISPs here in the United States won’t follow suit. My guess is that they won’t because we have too many options when it comes to selecting an ISP that they would only risking losing customers to a competitor. Either way, time will tell I guess. In the meantime Exetel customers are none too happy, with one guy noting ” For cutting p2p speed, they should be bloody reducing their costs, let alone “retaining” them.”

THE COMPLETE FORUM POST FROM EXETEL

We’ve raised this issue before.

Over the past two years Exetel has analysed the traffic that it carries to and from its users – as any network provider would do.

Over that, relatively short, period we have noticed that the percentage of P2P traffic carried on our network has significantly increased as a percentage of total traffic – something that every other network provider around the world has also noticed.

We have decided to begin a program of “de-prioritizing” P2P traffic on the basis that it should be immaterial to an end user whether their downloaded files arrive in 5 minutes or ten minutes – when all is said and done they are files that will be used at some later period and whether, or not, they are available a few minutes later is of absolutely NO consequence.

As any Exetel user would have noticed, Exetel has progressively lengthened the ‘uncounted period’ and has also increased the ‘soft’ download limit that applies to that period; currently 30 gb.

From mid November, approximately, Exetel will restrict the amount of bandwidth it provides to P2P traffic to approximately 50% of what all aggregated users of P2P protocols could, theoretically, use during the period 12 noon to 12 midnight each day.

This will have the, theoretical, effect, of reducing P2P download speeds by 50% – it obviously won’t affect the total of downloads.

These restrictions shouldn’t affect any user at all – other than to slow the download speed of files using P2P protocols – which shouldn’t matter in any way.

You will still be able to get your copy of “Debbie Does Taronga Zoo’s Major Wildlife IV”; it will just take twice as long to download.

Why are we doing this?

We are doing this because it will allow Exetel to retain the current low prices and high download allowances for all users.

Who will be inconvenienced?

No-one.

What will it cost Exetel to do this?

A cash outlay of over $100,000 which will reduce operating costs by around $60,000 a month.

Everyone benefits. No-one loses.