The network is faster than ever despite some obstacles. Any mutlinet proggy as RAZA, Morphie and all slow down the network. This is a fact. The only thing they could say in their defense is that they introduce new files to the network and I find that highly arguable. In fact they are mostly self centric users that are trying to justify their preferred app in a non objective way.
Now let's talk about the biggest problem, the companies.
First, there are the ISP. They are interested into making profits (which is understandable and they have the right to) and not being sued in court.
We all know that P2P is responsible for at least 60% of the bandwidth consumed and hence at least 60% of their bandwidth cost (they pay for bandwidth), so clearly some are tempted by limiting either download or upload speed or even both. They often have very sophisticated hardware that can determine if you are using P2P and which protocol of P2P it is (Gnutella, BT et al) and they can limit every user connexion P2P activities based on that "sniffing". Now, people who are knowledge-full can counter attack that trend in ISP by switching to other ISPs that don't limit P2P activities so in fact the previous ISP understands that users should do what they want for THEIR service and that limiting P2P would in fact decrease user base and so profits.
The fear of being sued by supporting all activities for ISP is also something that might push them to spy on users and limit P2P too. ISPs should understand that what the user do is NONE of their business. They provide a service, the user is the ONLY responsible for what he does with it. As an analogy just look at P2P apps. They are legal because they provide the service, they are in no way liable of what the user does...
There is also the privacy issue, if the ISP are spying on their users to know what they do, they should be threaten. This is none of their business. If they spy you over your online activies without even doubting you could do something illegal at the basis, they are over their rights. That's why an ISP should never disclosed users activities to simple companies like the RIAA or MPAA. If they do, switch ISP, only the police should be able to do so upon illegal proofs.
Then there is the companies who own the copyrights of things share over the networks. Normally the only thing they would be allowed to do is inform the police over suspicious activities by certain IP addresses. What they do right now (RIAA MPAA et al) is to talk directly to ISPs, threatening non collaborative ISPs and users. This is NONE of their business to do so by theirselves. It is unacceptable they pass over the police to make the law be respected. Not only that, they pay firms good money to place spoof files on networks, viruses and spam... This is ILLEGAL. They are trying in a wrong way to discourage users to dl thing on P2P networks. Often, they will also share corrupted files and also by many techniques slow down the download speed of certain files.
In my mind, before trying to sue people, governments should sue these cartels over fraudulous internet activities. This is not the way they'll regain people confidence... They lost mine long ago and there is no way I'm gonna pay for a TOP40 artist... I'm only paying for underground artists and indie labels. Everybody should do the same to dismantle those cartels and encourage innovative new artists.
Besides, anybody not shocked about CDs being priced the same now while bands can record themselves for near nothing at home with computer and that producing a CD and a pochette cost lest than 1,50$???
Ciao
