COMCAST, COX and Time Warner Cable Funding An Anti Piracy Tool, BITSTALKER

Comcast Anti Piracy Tool BITSTALKER snapvoip.blogspot.com
With many torrent users worldwide and MPAA/RIAA being very active, at the first glance I thought the paper was funded by them.
The paper being "BITSTALKER: ACCURATELY AND EFFICIENTLY MONITORING BITTORRENT TRAFFIC" from University of Colorado. Boulder CO.
The researchers claim that their tool is more accurate and will eliminate false positives. But people involved with torrent sites and operators seem to be less impressed by the technology according to Torrent Freak.
Like torrent freak we too wonder why ISP's, major US ISP's at that, investing in this arena, which has been the field of RIAA/MPAA. ISPs usually remained neutral to the witch hunting coducted by them.
Following is an excerpt from the paper and for more descriptive account of BitStalker and positives and negatives of it at Torrent Freak, and slashdot (link after the jump)

This paper presents BitStalker, a low-cost approach to monitoring large BitTorrent file sharing swarms. BitStalker collects concrete evidence of peers’ participation in file sharing in a way that is robust to tracker pollution, highly accurate, and efficient. In contrast, the past and present investigative monitoring strategy consists of tracker server queries and ICMP ping probes. While this method is simple, it is also prone to a variety of significant errors, especially false positive identification, since this monitoring technique does not verify participation in the file sharing. We present an alternative monitoring strategy based on actively probing the list of suspected peers to obtain more conclusive evidence of participation in the file sharing. There are several aspects of our approach that warrant additional attention. In particular, a specific definition of what constitutes “evidence” in the context of file sharing across various legal systems should be explored. Also, the general legal issues that this type of monitoring exposes should also be investigated further.
Acknowledgments. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. We also thank Claire Dunne and the University of Colorado’s institutional review board for ensuring that this research was conducted with the highest of ethical standards. This research was funded in part through gifts from PolyCipher.

Plycypher is a  a broadband ISP consortium (COMCAST, COX and Time Warner Cable)

Torrent Freak,
Slashdot

Time Warner Cable "No DOCSIS 3.0" We Put It On Hold Because You Said No Bandwidth Caps!

TWC No Bandwidth Cap, No Wideband!
I am twice happy that I do not live in an area where Time Warner Rules. But Even if I did, I think I will not be having their internet service that they call broadband. In any case 5GB monthly cap they suggested while back was the crux of road runner crap!
But now they seem to be laying more crap so their customers can stp on. According to Alex Dudley, VP of public relations for Time Warner, the wideband service, DOCSIS 3.0, is on hold because they could not launch tiered pricing. Time Warner planned to roll out both the services at the same time, therefore they are both on hold now.
Dudley on his twitter feed;
"@netpro2k It doesn't...just that the rollout was scheduled with the trial and now all of it is on hold"
@AlexTWC
He has also mentioned that the biggest cost associated with wideband roll-out is bandwidth allocation. Are sure it is not per house passed? I read some where that it costs us some where around $750 per house passed USA while Japanese do it for $20. I think what they refer to as bandwidth allocation is the infrastructure upgrade. They want you to pay for their network setup? I think the wolf is catching up!

All the while, Comcast started rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 last year, announcing this Tuesday that it had expanded into the San Francisco Peninsula. Yes Show them how it is done!

Good to be living in the San Francisco Bay Area!

Read more at PCMAG. "TWC: No Bandwidth Caps? Fine, No Wideband"

Tags: DOCSIS 3.0, Time warner Cable, comcast, wideband service

Time Warner Cable Testing To Charge Based On Internet Usage or Nearest Byte Billing

Broadband News is reporting that Time warner Cable is testing overage charges for its RoadRunner cable broadband service. The system is aimed at gaining additional revenue from "5% of subscribers who utilize over half of the total network bandwidth." The trial will determine whether it's practical to deploy such a system nationally.
While I think it is bull or better what come out of rear end of the bull, we all remember to begining of the internet services, in those dial up days and ISDN days. They (phone companies or ISPs) charged based on usage. It suddenly died soon as "All you can eat" model came to be.
Time warners 5% of users will be 95% once the multimedia service become more main stream. People will be renting movies and music on line. So higher usage will be for more that 5%.
On the other hand, Time warner may be trying to recoup what it might lose in PPV movies!
Broadband News also mentioned that; "It is rumored that Comcast has also conducted such tests, but never implemented the system because they were afraid of consumer backlash. We recently spoke to several ISPs and an industry analyst, all of whom shared those same concerns. ISPs are under pressure from investors to gain more revenue from higher-consumption users, but have had great success marketing the "all you can eat" business model to consumers."
So Roadrunners you might soon be coyotes or something on coyote's plate.
You can read more at Broadband News.

tag: Roadrunner, Time warner Cable, perbyte billing, capped services