

ISP modifying .torrent file contents to add local seed - swombat
http://compsci.ca/blog/isp-modifying-torrent-file-contents/

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swombat
Worth noting that the original article from TorrentFreak is here:
[http://torrentfreak.com/isp-speeds-up-customers-
bittorrent-d...](http://torrentfreak.com/isp-speeds-up-customers-bittorrent-
downloads-090418/)

This was submitted already to HN yesterday, but did not gather enough votes to
make it to the front page, which seems like a shame as this is a very
interesting and noteworthy development.

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jbert
Why do they need to modify the .torrent?

If they simply read passing .torrent files and acted as a peer-then-seed,
wouldn't they get the same benefit?

Perhaps the problem with that is they want to firewall off non-customer IPs.
Would this make them look like a bad torrent peer and so get poor download
rates from other peers? If so, couldn't they snag their customer's incoming
data blocks to populate their seed?

~~~
chancho
Maybe they are relying on the (now invalid?) assumption that tracking is
always legal while seeding is not.

~~~
jbert
But just tracking gains them nothing, surely?

They need to hold a seed themselves to get the bandwidth benefits? Or have I
misunderstood what they're doing?

~~~
chancho
Oh Ok I see. It appears (from the dearth of quoted text on the linked article)
that they are running both a tracker _and_ a seed. The seeder is for their
customers only, because then they don't have to pay for upstream access. The
p2p connections stay within their network. They don't want to seed normally
because they don't want to connect with non-customers, and being choosy like
that would make them appear to be a bad peer. So they use this second tracker
to inform their customers of this special seeder and of each other. Sounds
like a win-win to me.

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mseebach
If this is a good-faith effort, it'd make sense to make it configurable, like
the HTTP proxies that ISPs were running back in the day.

~~~
axod
Some ISPs still run HTTP caching proxies, and some do not allow you to bypass
them.

------
jskopek
I'm sure they've double and triple checked this with their legal departments,
but this strikes me as being ripe for a lawsuit. If the MPAA (or Israeli
equivalent) can prove that the ISP is caching copies of illegal torrents it
doesn't seem like there's much to defend in court.

~~~
josefresco
You forget that big business ISP's are in bed with big business MPAA/RIAA-like
groups. The only reason ISP's ever side with the consumer is that is who pays
their bills and makes them a tidy profit. The day they can figure out how to
make both sides happy (and line their pockets with the cash from each) they'll
do it in an instant.

~~~
jdminhbg
If they figure out a way to make both sides happy, surely any cash that lines
their pockets will be well-deserved.

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barredo
It still breaks netneutrality, right?

~~~
randallsquared
Anything that helps bandwidth customers without actually adding more capacity
is going to break net neutrality. Since adding more capacity for all means
that a larger and larger amount is going to be dark most of the time, it seems
like it could be worthwhile to break net neutrality in cases where it's a win
for at least some and a loss for no one.

