ISPs are not your friends

Posted on April 14, 2008
Filed Under Fun on the Web, Rants, Techie stuff |

Internet Service Providers are great, or so you might think. Piping all the wonders of the web into your home for you to peruse at your leisure, allowing you to interact with friends and family all around the world. I’ve just found out (from my wife who has spent the morning researching these things for a customer) that Tiscali are blocking peer to peer software and Virgin are blocking Skype.

Now blocking filesharing is nothing new, most ISPs throttle the ports which software like BitTorrent uses simply because the infrastructure can’t handle the volume of traffic which filesharing generates, but Virgin blocking Skype is alot more sinister and smacks of anti-competitive behaviour. Added to this the fact that an unwanted side effect of these practices is that online games also get blocked (currently EVE, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Call of Duty 4, and World of Warcraft on Tiscali and Virgin) and you’ve got a situation which will see alot of unhappy internet users.

Skype is a VoIP service which allows users to make phone calls through their computer at a fraction of the cost of using the phone. Virgin obviously feels that this is cutting into their profits as they offer a phone service as well as cable TV and broadband. Basically Virgin would rather you paid to use their phone line to talk to your mates than spoke to them for free (If they’ve got Skype) or paid Skype (If you’re calling a normal phone line). Virgin have decided that they can’t beat Skype in a fair fight and so have done the equivalent of kneecapping the other competitor.

Now I’m the last person to be saying that the government should get involved in what is basically a business arrangement between the ISPs and their customers but we keep being told that the government wants everyone online (their motives for this aside), if this is the case then they need to give the ISPs a slap and make sure that internet access is available for all to use as they want. I’m of the opinion that unless its kiddie porn or some other unsavoury nastiness, then its none of the ISPs business what I use my internet connection for.

I’ll be updating this post with links to relevant info as I get it (I’ve got my trusty researcher on the case as we speak, collating information and such.) Though if you guys have any useful links feel free to post them in the comments.

Keep the Net Free (not as in beer, that would be unreasonable)

Out

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Comments

3 Responses to “ISPs are not your friends”

  1. Tom Donald on April 16th, 2008 6:40 am

    I use virgin and skype works fine for me…
    Wouldn’t it be quite difficult to block particular services anyhow?

  2. mandrill on April 16th, 2008 10:09 am

    As far as I know, ISPs don’t actually block specific services what they do is block ports that those services are known to use.

    It may be the case that Skype is only blocked on Virgin’s cable service and not their standard ADSL.

  3. Daniel on April 24th, 2008 2:22 pm

    I couldn’t understand some parts of this article e not your friends | UC2, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.

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