Online games stealing your bandwidth

Sat Sep 25 22:41:16 UTC 2010

> From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi.com at nanog.org  Sat Sep 25 17:00:42 2010
> Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:01:38 +0200
> From: Jeroen Massar <jeroen at unfix.org>
> To: Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu
> Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth
> Cc: NANOG <nanog at merit.edu>
>
> On 2010-09-25 23:53, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> > On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:43:25 BST, Matthew Walster said:
> > 
> >> Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
> >> P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
> >> questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
> >> for the content cached there?
> > 
> > The ISP is off the hook on that one.  17 USC 512(2) specifically carves out an ISP
> > safe-harbor for data that's only cached on an ISP's servers due to an end
> > user's request.  IANAL, so have somebody you pay for legal advice read 17 USC 512(2)
> > and tell you what they think.
>
> So it that is true, if you define "news server" as a "cache", even
> though you have to buy several terabytes, make that several petabytes,
> to "be able to "cache" this data one along with all the network
> environment to support getting data out of this "cache", the ISP is
> completely in the clear even though that "cache" is the sole single
> point where one can retrieve that "cached" data from even years after
> the data was originally put on the network, the original is gone and
> that "cache" works without anything being attached to it ? :)

There is existant _recent case law, specifically with regard to operating
a newsserver, that holds otherwise.  Of course the server operator was
blatently _advertizing_ the copyright-infringing (and more) nature of 
their content.

Several of the major ISPs who recently discontinued providing USENET did
so as a direct result of the above-mentioned case -- attorney-generals
were 'making noises' -- and the ISP chose not to risk a confrontation.