SurfboardHacker Forums: Surfboard Portal

US International Trade Commission Learns That 'Piracy' Claims From Industry Are Bunk

from the good-for-them dept
Could it be that folks in the federal government are finally starting to get the message that all of those "piracy" stats out there are complete bunk? Following up on the recent excellent GAO report noting that industry claims about "losses" from piracy were absolute fiction (the latest, by the way, in a very long line of smart GAO reports on topics of interest to those around here), apparently the US International Trade Commission held hearings where it heard from a bunch of folks explaining how inaccurate industry reports on "losses from piracy" are -- and furthermore, based on little actual evidence and don't take into account the additional benefits.

It's so rare to see the government ever actually paying attention to those who don't toe the "piracy is absolutely purely evil and destroying everything" line, that this alone is pretty impressive. Whether or not it actually gets through or leads to policy changes is another story altogether. But it's good that more voices are being heard.




http://www.techdirt....228329860.shtml

UK Cable provider Virgin Media says they're experimenting with a new deep packet inspection solution that will snoop into customer packets to determine if they're trading copyrighted files. The trial will cover 40% of the company's customers, though no action will be taken against users (nor will they be informed of the snooping). The CView technology being used is the same gear used by behavioral advertising firm Phorm. With much P2P traffic being encrypted and such gear still not able to detect all P2P details, this could be a wild goose chase -- but it appears the ISP wants to get out ahead of the UK government's effort to turn ISPs into Internet content babysitters.


http://www.dslreport...-Packets-105670

Average UK broadband just over half advertised speed
By Chris Williams Posted in Telecoms, 28th July 2009 08:27 GMT


The average downstream speed received by UK households is just 57 per cent of the average advertised rate, according to Ofcom research.

Data from the regulator's hardware-based performance monitoring network shows that while the average broadband package is sold as "up to" 7.1Mbit/s, it actually delivers 4.1Mbit/s.

The UK average is up from 3.6Mbit/s in January however, when Ofcom released its first set of figures.

In rural regions, the gap between marketing and reality is wider, with an average downstream speed of 3.3Mbit/s. In urban areas the mean is 4.6Mbit/s.

As many as one in five customers on "up to" 8Mbit/s packages delivered via the BT network - the most common class of broadband - receive less than 2Mbit/s in reality. Tiscali offers the slowest speeds on average.

Just nine per cent of "up to" 8Mbit/s lines creep above 6Mbit/s.

ISPA, the internet providers' trade association, noted Ofcom's numbers say Lord Carter was working with dodgy data when he made the government's "universal broadband" pledge last month. "The research also shows that the figure in the Digital Britain Report that 11 per cent of UK households are unable to reach speeds of 2Mbit/s is in fact 19 per cent, nearly twice the size and a greater challenge," it said.

The government is pledged to back universal broadband with subsidies. ISPA's "greater challenge" presumably will require greater subsidies.

According to Ofcom, the picture is better for Virgin Media subscribers than for those on ADSL. Those on the "up to" 10Mbit/s package, the cable network's nearest equivalent to "up to" 8Mbit/s ADSL, get about twice the average real world speed (see bootnote).

Market research run alongside performance testing showed that speed problems are the biggest cause of dissatisfaction among broadband subscribers. More than one fifth are unhappy.

The data were collected from 1,600 homes between November 2008 and April 2009. The full report is on Ofcom's site here.

It's part of an ongoing effort to offer consumers more accurate information about broadband, alongside a code of practice calling on providers to be more up front about the limitations of their services. ®


Bootnote
Here's Ofcom's data for the major ISPs it tested. Caution is advised for Plusnet and O2 figures because of small sample sizes. ISPs with less than 2 per cent market share were excluded.