Is Rogers Blocking Podcast Downloads?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the more-info-please dept

We’ve talked in the past about how various ISPs want the right to control their pipes to block out things they don’t like. Sometimes it’s competitive applications, but many of these companies like to defend their actions by saying they need to block certain applications to protect their network. This is often the argument given for blocking things like BitTorrent, from providers who say it eats up too much bandwidth. Of course, many of these providers are selling “unlimited” bandwidth — so it really looks like they’re just unable to live up to what they’re selling. Still, even in cases where they claim they’re just protecting their network, things are going to get very confusing very fast, as plenty of perfectly legitimate applications make use of the full power of that network. Boing Boing is pointing to a discussion forum claiming that some Canadian ISPs are blocking the download of Podcasts via iTunes, because it downloads the file from multiple sources. There’s almost no evidence to support this, so it might not even be true (if anyone does have evidence one way or the other, please post it here), but either way it does show how such restrictions become problematic. An ISP might put in place such restrictions early on assuming that any traffic like that must be for illegal purposes — but then they’re caught off guard when others use the same technology for perfectly legitimate reasons. Update: Plenty of people are suggesting the story isn’t true — which is a good thing. However, it doesn’t take away from the questions about how this issue will be handled in the future. Traffic shaping or trying to block one kind of traffic just opens up a lot of troublesome questions.