December 16, 2008

UPDATED: VM Broadband: an end to neutrality?

I'm not going to turn this blog into a Virgin Broadband one, but this post over on The Register caught my eye. It appears that Berkett has said that VM's new broadband services will implement some restrictions on BitTorrent traffic, rather than the rather draconian restrictions placed on all download traffic at the moment for high volume users.
Personally, I don't think this is a bad move, as long as it's not extended to legal media distribution such as iPlayer or similar. I've never been a fan of downloading films, music or TV illegally - it's just plain wrong.
Berkett has spoken out on this before, and I think it's a brave step for him to stick his neck out on this. I'm sure others disagree but he gets my support on this move.
UPDATE: A Virgin Media spokesman denies The Register's story, reported here on a Wired blog

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure about this one. What about the legitimate uses such as the World of Warcraft updater which also uses torrents? I don't think it's fair for VM to impose those restrictions when the uses can be perfectly legit & legal.

Anonymous said...

BitTorrent is just a protocol, and there are a variety of programs that use it. These are not illegal programs, nor is the protocol illegal.
Some people use the protocol/programs for illegal purposes, but others do not.
They need to be very careful of performing such a blanket protocol discrimination, especially given the back-lash in the US against such measures.

Nialli said...

It's like any attempts to filter traffic. For example, Kontiki is blocked by my company's network as it is used by peer-to-peer sites distributing content illegally. But it's also the engine behind 4OD, SkyPlayer and the original BBC iPlayer.
VM has now denied the original story, btw.

Unknown said...

Looks like I'll be leaving Virgin then. This is a huge mistake.