I just wanted to throw this in to the community for discussion. I operate a WISP in Spain who’s client base consist of a large proportion of expats who use illegal UK IPTV services. We find ourselves having to pay for very expensive bandwidth, that is not normally required, to keep these services running. In a Nutshell we are funding the Pirates. The Pirates make good money on the back of our services and pay us nothing for the pleasure. Is this fair? is there anything that can be done about it? Should we report the Pirates? or should we just except it. Many questions. What are you opinions on this.
I think there are net neutrality laws in the EU, so you are not allowed to block/prioritize certain traffic.
You could report them, but then your customers might want to find another provider…
Is it fair, maybe not for you, but it secures the rights of the consumer.
imho.
Exactly. Are they paying you for the bandwidth? If no, cut them off. If yes, give them what they are paying for to you.
You set up the price list, don’t you? Therefore you cannot say that your prices are not fair to you.
Found a description of the EU rule https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/eu-actions-net-neutrality
I’m with jarda there.
Their contract should include bandwidth / traffic / volume / speed etc … if they go over what’s specified, bill them for it. If it’s not specified then that’s your fault for not including it.
If you base your whole business on oversubscribing your links massively and planning that your customers won’t use all they’re allowed to, that’s just poor planning on your part.
If you were my provider and you called me a ‘pirate’ just because I use the bandwidth WHICH I PAY FOR I would go to another provider in an instant! Maybe throw in a campaign to let the rest of your clients now your opinion about them.
You are an ISP. Not police. wtf?!
Second, why do you care what services they use? It’s none of your business. If they downloaded linux ISOs all day what you would do? ‘Report’ them to the ‘internet police’? Pff..
You say that you pay for the ‘pirates’ and they pay nothing. Unless you provide your services for free, that’s just silly. Obviously they do pay you to provide them with an internet connection. If the fees you charge are not enough then increase them. If your business model is to charge low in the hopes that the majority of your clients will use a small percentage of their traffic, then that’s your problem, not your clients’ now isn’t it?
yeah yeah yeah I get all that. I am not saying that I cannot supply the service, we can, and we do. Guess your all using illegal STB’s then lol.
Not at all.
It doesn’t matter what your clients use.
It’s NONE of your business.
Should ISP’s be taking some responsibility. Some of the bigger players out there already do by banning certain known piracy sites, child porn sites etc. If its illegal and harming someone should it be allowed? should IPS’s just turn a blind eye and let it happen?
double standards I think chaos. You would stop certain activity it was harming you.
Sensible answer LaRP. interesting point I take this one on board
It’s law-court who decides what should or should not be blocked in such cases, not ISPs. ISP may be ordered to block something, but it should never be ISP’s own decision.
Are you refering to your double standards?
You provide internet access but only to the services you deem moral or legal?
Do you consider your self an Internet Service Provider or an Internet Service Police?
Is it illegal in Spain for internet users to watch UK TV? Probably not.
Should you care about what your users are doing? NO. Despite the mega-corporations trying to shift that responsibility to the ISPs, you should resist. That’s your moral obligation to your clients. They pay you to provide them a service. Not to police their habits.
If anyone should care about any illegal use of UK’s TV services, it’s the UK channels. They are being ripped off, not you.
Let me put it another way. Would you want the telephone company to monitor your calls and block them/report them if you are calling sex/hot lines just because they believe them to be immoral or illegal?
Or would you want the Postal Office to check your parcels for immoral/illegal items you may have purchased?
Privacy on these services has been established for decades. I know it’s tempting to use Tools > Torch to ‘spy’ on your users, but as you may find immoral/illegal their activities, so are yours (at least by my country’s laws and by common sense).
I abolutely agree.
You have your views Chaos, and I respect that, but you are being a bit naive to think that your every move is not already being spied on. As it happens the STB’s are the next big target for the piracy police so I dont think it is something we will have worry about much longer. I just wanted to know if others felt the same as I do that we appear to be funding the pirates activities. By pirates I mean the guys peddling the service not the clients of ISP’s.
Staying with chaos. Privacy and neutrality are the values that none should trade off. Once we accept the sniffing the traffic and reading the content, we like human beings are lost.
And how do you know if they are stealing? Maybe client paid for that IPTV services, and just streaming it over your network.
Indeed, my views on the subject are strong. I don’t mean to offend you or anything. It’s just that not everyday an ISP (even WISP) asks for our opinion on such an important matter. And my posts are just that. My humble opinion.
I understand that there is mass surveillance on an unprecedented level. That does not mean that we shouldn’t fight back.
If we, that we understand how the internet works don’t do anything about it who will? The sold out politicians who don’t even now what an IP address is?
ISPs are in a unique position to resist this situation (and they do for the most part). End users cannot do much unfortunately, apart from using some VPN or something.
From your words I take it that you prefer an Internet owned by corporations and copyright trolls rather than an open and equal network for everyone to use.
There is no such thing as ‘piracy police’. There are private companies acting on behalf of copyright owners which more than often entrap and blackmail internet users to pay whatever fines they deem appropriate on each occasion.
You are right, with ISPs that think like you, sooner or later the internet as we know it will be a thing of the past. In the future the older generations (us) will talk about it as the epitome of Democracy and freedom of speech when it was at its infancy and then the epitome of ‘dictatorship’ (or more likely corporation-ship) and surveillance as we weren’t vigilant enough to protect it from copyright trolls and transnational corporations.
George Orwell would be terrified of what we have done! 1984 was not an instruction manual!
At least you don’t refer to your clients as ‘pirates’ any more 
If UK TV stations dont want their services streamed into Spain, they would block them. Implementing distribution based on location is actually trivial. Since they don’t, they are OK with it.
Second, if your customers privately steam some tv programme from the UK, it’s either FTA or subscribed on the UK side. So again, it could be absolutely legal.
Actually, in my view, the only in the gray zone here is the ISP sniffing traffic without a warrant from a judge.