Discussion Forums > Technology
Comcast should be sued...again.
datora:
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--- Quote from: JarieSuicune on May 24, 2012, 08:08:14 PM ---Anyway, how would using a VPN help? You still have to send packets to that, which first go through the ISP, and then packets come back through the ISP.
--- End quote ---
Those packets are encrypted, and going to I.P addresses that are not suspect. To shut down anything (including & especially large transfers) traveling over a VPN will piss off several tens of thousands of businesses that provide billions upon billions of $$$s in income for ISPs.
Just because packets are encrypted is not reasonable cause to suspect, and suspecting something is not grounds to take action. There has to be some sort of evidence to found an investigation, conclusion and then actions upon.
--- Quote from: JarieSuicune on May 24, 2012, 08:08:14 PM ---I've never looked into it, so I don't actually know anything about it
--- End quote ---
Not to put too fine a point on it ... but *ahem* take an hour to search teh webz about VPNs and get a basic education. You'll understand why VPN is one good, basic solution that can be adopted immediately. Certainly it is not a forever solution, and there are other things that can be done in addition to a VPN.
--- Quote from: JarieSuicune on May 24, 2012, 08:08:14 PM ---It'd be like having a bus driver go to a place they know they shouldn't and expecting them to not notice?
--- End quote ---
Hmm. Let's try a similar analogy.
Suppose it's a network of commuter trains in a large city, like New York. A lot of stops have very heavy traffic. Some stops are in districts known to be high "crime" areas, others are in business & trade districts. And, some trains are made of glass while others are lead-shielded steel.
Open torrenting is like using a glass train to visit a known high "crime" district, and then using certain stops to offload & load huge amounts of goods in glass boxes that the "authorities" can video tape at will and examine at their leisure.
A VPN is like visiting a legitimate trade district and using well-known loading docks to pick up your goods, which are in steel shipping containers, which you place on steel, lead-lined trains with all the other legal shipping traffic for delivery to your computer. Nobody knows what you've picked up or has any opportunity to see the contents of the packets in transit. All the torrenting activity takes place at the loading dock with the rest of the world, not between the loading dock and your house.
To stretch it a little further, imagine that the "trade district" is outside of the jurisdiction of New York ... perhaps located in the Netherlands or Russia. The "authorities" in those jurisdictions couldn't care less about and make no attempt to observe the packets at those loading docks ... so there is no actionable evidence by the ISP to attempt to pry into those packets. And they lack the authority to try.
Additionally, if the ISP decides to penalize everyone using the foreign trade districts, they will piss off a huge number more paying customers ... big business customers with gigantic, billable service contracts that keep stock holders in the ISPs very happy ... than the few people attempting to "smuggle" a few DVDs home for personal use.
All the uploading is taking place on another ISPs bandwidth in a foreign jurisdiction, so the U.S. ISPs have less than zero interest in knowing anything about it. In fact, they would have to breech numerous international laws to try & do so.
Pentium100:
--- Quote from: JarieSuicune on May 24, 2012, 08:08:14 PM ---You may 'mask' where those packets ultimately went, but the VPN itself can be tracked to, and could be recognized as a piracy tool, couldn't it?
--- End quote ---
VPNs are also used by people who work from home to connect to their work network. However, you could find out that the VPN is used to connect to "AwesomePirateVPN" VPN provider and not some random company. The ISP cannot find out what information is carried in those packets, also, depending on where the VPN provider is, it can be really difficult to track the user from the other end of the tunnel (depends on how easy it is to force the VPN provider to tell the law enforcement who the user is).
NaRu:
Comcast new cap is going to be 300GB per month and charge $10 for every 50GB over that.
JarieSuicune:
Hm... so, they can't even get what the target IP's past the VPN are?
Heh... that's pretty nice range, I think (if they's gotta have a cap).
Pentium100:
--- Quote from: JarieSuicune on May 29, 2012, 12:57:12 AM ---Hm... so, they can't even get what the target IP's past the VPN are?
--- End quote ---
No, they can't. The whole IP packet is encrypted and put into another IP packet. This IP packet goes to the VPN server, which decrypts the original packet and sends it to the destination. Basically it goes like this:
Simplified original packet (sent by uTorrent etc):
To: 1.2.3.4 (another peer)
From: 9.8.7.6 (IP provided by the VPN server)
Data: "movie"
This gets intercepted by the VPN service in your PC and gets encrypted and put into another packet (this is what the ISP sees):
To: 5.6.7.8 (VPN server)
From: 1.1.1.1 (your actual IP)
Data: "Encrypted"
The VPN server gets it, decrypts the "data" portion and sends what it gets:
To: 1.2.3.4
From: 9.8.7.6
Data: "movie"
The VPN server sends out your original packet, but the ISP does not see it, it is like you made a tunnel trough your ISP - the ISP knows where the end points are, but does not see what goes inside it. This method (putting an ancrypted IP packet inside another packet) is called "tunneling" for that reason.
Anybody who intercepts the decrypted packet (with the movie) does know the contents, but the packet can only be traced back to the VPN server and if the server does not keep logs for long (or at all), there is not way to know which costomer actually sent that packet.
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