Modern Warfare 2 and net neutrality? (and Opera Link)

[Husar]

Link

Interesting posts are arising at the official IW forums regarding cable companies contacting MW2 players regarding ‘running servers on their home connection’ and ‘excessive file sharing through peer to peer connections’. This is in direct line with the article I wrote earlier regarding ‘IWnet forces most MW2 players to violate their ISP´s TOS & AUP’.

So most people seem to blame Activision for this, but I have to say that this package sniffing of ISPs is what I find far more ridiculous. I just ordered MW2 on Tuesday and should my provider (now Vodafone) have any problems with me playing that I'm going to tell them to bugger off or cancel my contract because I wanted to do that anyway and what I'm doing would hardly be illegal.
Of course it's bad for people who can't easily switch.

Isn't this kind of sniffing exactly what net neutrality is supposed to prevent or did I misunderstand something there?

And as a related question, if a lot of people are not even allowed to host a server on their connection, what about Opera Link where everyone can turn their browser into a fileserver?

So what do the wise people here think? Is it all the fault of inconsiderable companies like Activision who should have known that people violate other contracts by using their product or are those other contracts just wrong?

[Monk]

That's... awfully strange. XBOX Live has been doing this for years and I haven't heard of anything like this before. Heck, I played Gears of war 2 for hours on end, nightly, for over a year and I can guarantee you I hosted my share of games and never had a problem with Time Warner.

I'm not sure why Activision/Infinity Ward should be the special snowflake. I wonder if any of these people would be in a similiar violation if they owned a PS3 or a Xbox 360. (for using PSN and Live respectively)

I just ordered MW2 on Tuesday and should my provider (now Vodafone) have any problems with me playing that I'm going to tell them to bugger off or cancel my contract because I wanted to do that anyway and what I'm doing would hardly be illegal.

I'm planning to do the same. I am not anti-social with my ISP, if there's a problem I'll explain it to them. And i'll use small words.

[pevergreen]

Well it depends on the game.

Warcraft 3 uses about 1kb/s for a player, 8 for the host.

Yes something else could easily take more.

[Veho Nex]

Link



So most people seem to blame Activision for this, but I have to say that this package sniffing of ISPs is what I find far more ridiculous. I just ordered MW2 on Tuesday and should my provider (now Vodafone) have any problems with me playing that I'm going to tell them to bugger off or cancel my contract because I wanted to do that anyway and what I'm doing would hardly be illegal.
Of course it's bad for people who can't easily switch.

Isn't this kind of sniffing exactly what net neutrality is supposed to prevent or did I misunderstand something there?

And as a related question, if a lot of people are not even allowed to host a server on their connection, what about Opera Link where everyone can turn their browser into a fileserver?

So what do the wise people here think? Is it all the fault of inconsiderable companies like Activision who should have known that people violate other contracts by using their product or are those other contracts just wrong?

I believe this is exactly what we need. We need more games to do this so we can quickly show our ISP's that WE are the ones keeping them in business and WE should be allowed to use our internet when and how we want to.

I got sick and tired of Verizon when I played a lot of games online. They would reset my "amount" then 15 days later I would be capped and so my internet would be unstable or just plain "Can't Connect"...

That was despite Verizon insisting they don't limit your internet usage.