Net Neutrality Bullshit

[converge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jHOn0EW8U

I understand why people are rallying behind this, but I think it sets a bad precedent. Internet Freedom cuts both ways; as a service provider you should be able to allow of disallow any type of traffic on YOUR network. That's right.. its your equipment, leasing agreements, or however you look at the various models for the industry.

It's already done. Cable company #1 supports residential service and doesn't want people running their own mail servers, for obvious abuse headache reasons. Cable company blocks inbound port 25 traffic, but doesn't stop offering email services through them. Are they now obligated to let you operate your own mail server? Of course not. Are you obligated to stay with their service? Absolutely not.

Video and music are a couple of the largest bandwidth hogs short of VoIP. Have companies started blocking video and audio streams? Of course not, it would piss off their customers and they would lose considerable business. As a cable Internet customer, should I be required to lose the bandwidth that I am paying for because the yokel next door can't suffer to make voice calls over a POTS or cell phone? What about IPTV?

So how far does the regulation go from their? Can you no longer QoS your own circuits because it isn't deemed fair to some? or will some things be deemed worthy of QoS, but others not... is it legal if I don't explicitly block the service but limit its bandwidth allocation to the point that its unusable? ... ok, so who it going to determine what priorities I can legally assign to different type of traffic?

[Deviant Ollam]

Internet Freedom cuts both ways; as a service provider you should be able to allow of disallow any type of traffic on YOUR network. That's right.. its your equipment, leasing agreements, or however you look at the various models for the industry.

i must respectfully disagree with that concept. if i were the owner of a store, a restaraunt, or some other retail/service-industry business, i'd have the right to deny my customers' the freedom to (for example) wear whatever they want or behave in a raucous manner within my establishment. network providers, however, aren't mere vendors of a service... they are (or at least they should be treated as) common carriers of communication. like phone companies (who cannot prohibit calls to certain destinations) or electrical utilities (who cannot deny customers the right to make toast or use an air conditioner), internet service providers have absolutely no right to determine WHAT i do with the connection they're providing me.

the only thing that should be allowed, in my mind, is overall management of bandwidth resources.

Cable company #1 supports residential service and doesn't want people running their own mail servers, for obvious abuse headache reasons.

i fail to see the headache reason. if a mail server suddenly starts spewing spam all over the goddamn place (an easy enough thing to monitor and notice) then one is free to curtail the traffic... or, better still, just cap the person's bandwidth and let them do whatever the hell they want.

Cable company blocks inbound port 25 traffic, but doesn't stop offering email services through them.

thus obligating users to use their (the ISP's) own mail server with whatever minimal features it has. want crypto? want to SSH into your mail? tough luck.

Are they now obligated to let you operate your own mail server? Of course not. Are you obligated to stay with their service? Absolutely not.

this argument only has total merit if customers have a wide array of service providers from which to choose. in my area (a highly populated portion of the northeast) there are exactly two broadband providers: comcast cable and verizon DSL. if customers had infinite choice and could voice their opinions in the marketplace, then market pressures would force ISPs to offer packages that meet demand. without real choice, however, markets don't work and such an option (the "move to someone else's service") doesn't really apply.

As a cable Internet customer, should I be required to lose the bandwidth that I am paying for because the yokel next door can't suffer to make voice calls over a POTS or cell phone? What about IPTV?

you should not be made to suffer any more than a person whose neighbor takes a lot of showers... if the water utility can't figure out a way to keep proper water pressure to both of your homes all the time then they shouldn't be in the water business. if an ISP can't figure out a way to limit bandwidth hogs and therefore ensure that all customers have the bandwidth for which they pay, then they shouldn't be in business.

if a company offers a 1 Mbit down / 256 Kbit up connection and i become their customer, then i should be able to saturate my pipe with traffic and rarely if ever drop below those transmission rates... and my actions should never result in degraded service for those around me.

Can you no longer QoS your own circuits because it isn't deemed fair to some? or will some things be deemed worthy of QoS, but others not.

i would say that the law should recognize an ISPs right to QoS bandwidth in order to ensure egalatarian and equal treatment of all customers. but it should be at the bandwidth level, not targeting individual services.

is it legal if I don't explicitly block the service but limit its bandwidth allocation to the point that its unusable? ... ok, so who it going to determine what priorities I can legally assign to different type of traffic?

my point again, just to reiterate... the municiapal utilities can (in order to prevent massive droughts, etc) set a maximum water usage amount per month but they are not (in my mind, if not in the letter of the law) empowered to tell people what to do with the water that is theirs. in much the same way, ISPs should be allowed to cap bandwidth (in accordance with whatever package rates a person is paying for) but has no right dictacting what sort of data goes across the customer's connection.

on a more personal note, i mentioned above that i live in an area where only Comcast and Verizon are offering broadband. I have comcast cable. they are actively and maliciously fucking with Vonage connections. this is because, as the activists publicizing this issue have pointed out, Comacast (and many others) wish to offer their own VoIP service in the future.

my electric company doesn't have the right to send voltage spikes down the power lines that are engineered to knock my Air Conditioner out of comission just because they have a business plan to offer "PSE&G Air Cooling Service" sometime in the next quarter.

my gas company doesn't have the right to steal the BBQ grill off my back porch at night (or install gas lines in people's homes that only connecto to a particular brand of stove) in order to force me to use their resources and equipment for all my cooking.

and (correct me if i'm wrong) but phone companies who operate pay phones (often in shit-ass places of the country) don't have the right to block numbers like 1-800-CALL-ATT or 1-800-COLLECT in order to force people to use their own (the shit-ass, fly by night phone provider's) exhorbitant collect calling rates. (this was a problem that i can recall encountering ages ago... wasn't it addressed by the Telephone Operator Consumer Services Improvement Act?)

[converge]

ok.. gloves off! (not angrily of course.. let's just get a good discussion going about this)

like phone companies (who cannot prohibit calls to certain destinations) or electrical utilities (who cannot deny customers the right to make toast or use an air conditioner), internet service providers have absolutely no right to determine WHAT i do with the connection they're providing me.

Sure they do. You're using THEIR network, and paying them to do so. You may have the luck of a nice ISP, but ISPs do have (and do excercise) the right to handle your traffic as they see fit. Did I mention you're using THEIR network? Invasion of privacy or other law violations are subject to litigation, but simply managing mass network traffic is not an infraction, even if it eliminates or cripples a specific use that you want the connectivity for. Maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong angle, but coming from the BBS's to the Internet this just seems logical. If I dial into someone elses BBS, they don't owe me a fucking cookie crumb because it is *a* medium for communication. The same if I dial into someone's network.. and so on.

Whether you can access porn or not is not vital to national infrastructure, sorry. Comparison to electric or water utilities is a bit of a stretch, since either is regulated because they effect an individual's physical well being and, on a larger scale, the ability for an established municipal to function. Voice service has been deemed equally vital for those that want it, hence the E911 issues for VoIP. But VoIP is a luxury, not a standard of communication. Just because you can doesn't make it a requirement.. and all similar services like cell phones and pocket wifi dildos are nifty thing, but not required as dependable means of communication.

i fail to see the headache reason. if a mail server suddenly starts spewing spam all over the goddamn place (an easy enough thing to monitor and notice) then one is free to curtail the traffic... or, better still, just cap the

So IT IS okay to block or quota some traffic but not others? Because on the premise above, capping a spam relay negatively effects the legitimate mail coming from that server too.. meaning that the ISP is now blocking or hindering a mission critical communication (by your argument path) infrustructure because of the inconvenience of spam. By your argument path it should be left solely to the server owner, since the ISP 'has no right' to differentiate between the traffic.

The headache comes in several forms, and really not just from the ISPs perspective. Okay, so from their view every new spam relay is another fire they have to put out.. a crapload of manual and automated spam complaints they have to respond to and deal with. But lets not look at it that way. Let's take this from the user perspective. DorkB decides he wants to run his own exchange server from home because he can. SpammerX uses his server to relay spam because DorkB doesn't know how to configure a mailserver, he just knows how to install a Windows program. DorkB is now flooding connection with spam, effecting bandwidth until shut down by the ISP, annoying millions of people with crap messages, and getting blocked for doing so by more entities than the ISP. Now DorkB has gotten his host and possibly others onto spamcop or spamhaus listings, effecting anyone else trying to send mail from that IP space. ..but a lot of these lists don't pull the trigger on the entire range that quickly. DorkC was brilliant though. DorkC is craftier than his brother and decided through inginuity that he as a customer of the ISP was going to relay mail through their servers. Now the entire class has been blocked by spam entities and effectively email communication from ALL users on that network are DoSd.

..or you could block inbound port 25 to residential users, suspecting that anyone able to run a mailserver on that connection is probably intelligent enough to configure their server properly.

thus obligating users to use their (the ISP's) own mail server with whatever minimal features it has. want crypto? want to SSH into your mail? tough luck.

Yup, which is why AOL, Earthlink, etc hoard donkey balls.. just more to suck. That's also why I don't use AOL or Earthlink service. I don't feel compelled to force AOL to change their practices.. I just laugh at them and the people that rely on their service. .. it's their network.

this argument only has total merit if customers have a wide array of service providers from which to choose. in my area (a highly populated portion of the northeast) there are exactly two broadband providers: comcast cable and verizon DSL. if customers had infinite choice and could voice their opinions in the marketplace, then market pressures would force ISPs to offer packages that meet demand. without real choice, however, markets don't work and such an option (the "move to someone else's service") doesn't really apply.

Of course it does, it's a service. You can move to some place that doesn't have a monopoly on the market. There is nothing preventing a CLEC from starting up there.. in fact current government regulation encourages companies to start up and compete for these services. The fact that you can get broadband is a feature in itself, where many sections of the country still rely on dialup.. yes, even today. It is not implicit that service providers start service in the back woods 50 miles from society just so I can have a cell phone. Likewise, creating rulesets for what companies can and cannot permit on their data networks simply because there aren't better options in that area.. seems absurd to me.

you should not be made to suffer any more than a person whose neighbor takes a lot of showers... if the water utility can't figure out a way to keep proper water pressure to both of your homes all the time then they shouldn't be in the water business.

.. and the reason ISPs can stay in business is that oversubscription allows the world to go 'round. They don't have to charge customers the price of a T1 because they aren't offering customers their own 24 channel circuit.. they are offering them an affordable alternative. The bandwidth guarantees you suggest are definately possible.. its called owning a T1. It would change the scope of broadband to cost require such for every user.. it would either disappear from the homes, or otherwise be considerably more expensive than most could afford for a long while yet. If companies can't make money through sane oversubscription, then CLECs will become more sparse and you'll have even less choice over which conglomerate assraper to get service from.

In the case of water, the town/city not only provides water to you at a (taxed) fee, but they also charge based on usage. On top, they charge to get rid of the water once you're done with it too, whether or not you've altered the water's composition. So.. if you're proposing that ISPs charge for the broadband, then charge users based on the upstream and downstream usage from their circuit... that absolutely sounds fair. No need to restrict the 'water pressure', folks would be paying exactly for the service they require. That brings up the problem of internetwork traffic.. one ISP might charge more than another to use their network. So ISPs could implement and enforce an accounting system for roaming fees. A user sending traffic exclusively on the ISP network would pay the flat rate per KB of water they use, while users that send their traffic across the world would be subject to routing fees from other network owners... this would certainly change the scope of the Internet as we know it. High bill for the month? Hey.. it's not the ISPs fault that you had a leaky facet for half the month, or forgot the running water in the tub that busy day a week ago. Personally, I prefer being able to pay the same lower price as George R Browser.. even though I use my upstream considerably more than the average subscriber, through the ISP of my choice.

i would say that the law should recognize an ISPs right to QoS bandwidth in order to ensure egalatarian and equal treatment of all customers. but it should be at the bandwidth level, not targeting individual services.

Fair enough. Definately something I can agree with. The only catch is that you have to be able to discern services in order to give correct priority, otherwise you are subject to my rant above. The nasty thing about VoIP/IPTV/etc is that it requires high bandwidth AND high priority since it is time sensitive.

I have comcast cable. they are actively and maliciously fucking with Vonage connections. this is because, as the activists publicizing this issue have pointed out, they (and many others) wish to offer their own VoIP

heh good. fuck vonage. Since when did we start getting pissed off at evil monsters for fucking around with other evil monsters? And since when did Vonage become entitled to our sympathy? They are a company that runs a central login service. They provide a pseudo phone service by digitally encapsulating the signal and sending it over lines that they do not own or lease. OTOH, the ISPs blocking Vonage pay for every inch of copper and fiber, whether they own and ran it outright, or lease it through one of the ILECs. seriously guys. fuck vonage.

my electric company doesn't have the right to send voltage spikes down the power lines that are engineered to knock my Air Conditioner out

Nope, but just like water .. why would they? You pay a base rate for having electric service. You then pay for every second of every air conditioner that you run. For all they care, you could run the air conditioner all winter and switch to electric heating. The person running a box fan to stay as cool as they need to be will pay less. .. which reverts back to the pay as you play Internet.

my gas company doesn't have the right to steal the BBQ grill off my back porch at night in order to force me to use their gas for all my cooking.

.. no.. but that didn't stop me from cooking that juicy chicken roast last night.. thanks man. :p practicing for the TBBQ.. I swear.

and (correct me if i'm wrong) but phone companies who operate pay phones (often in shit-ass places of the country) don't have the right to block numbers like 1-800-CALL-ATT or 1-800-COLLECT in order to force people to use their own (the shit-ass, fly by night phone provider's) exhorbitant collect calling rates.

*shrug* .. what gives hotels the right to jack you around with insanely inflated call charges? ... it's their IW .. it's their network. .. same technology.

[TheCotMan]

Is per-port blocking for services run by a customer reasonable?

Email:
There is overhead to supporting customers with ability to run a mail service.
* Generally speaking, the customer's IP address should be static
* Generally speaking, the customer should have a DNS service with valid MX records and a backup MX entry (ISP mail server?) and that backup should also be configured to accept mail for the domain(s) the customer has selected.
* Generally, the ISP should support pass-through rDNS to customer DNS or local DNS for rDNS and DNS lookup of the IP address and domain.
* The ISP risks being blacklisted on spamlists when a customer stats sending content that looks like spam, and this will interfere with the level of service for other customers, as other customer's email to other ISP may get blocked.

All of the above are costs associated with allowing customer to run their own port 25 service. Solution? Make port 25 service part of a more expensive package that includes the DNS, backup MX, static IP address, and the overhead the ISP must include with blacklist watching.

For email, port blocking is reasonable. If a customer really wants to run a mail server, they can look into buying a virtual instance at a colocation provider for $15/month or less. (That is cheaper than broadband in some areas, or the difference in cost between phone company DSL and "nice" ISP DSL.)

For web service, there is no competition to the Web, unless you count gopher, or ftp. Blocking single sites from web access smells of censorship. However, there are times when we as people of the net benefit from censorhip.

When new malware is found that downloads a binary file from several peers, it has been common practice for ISP or NOC-admins to block the malware-selected service access to those hosts/IP-addresses until a reliable long-term solution is found and put into place.

When an ISP/Colocation site notes that one of their customers has been slash-dotted, they may choose to impose QoS limits to the hosts being hit so other customers are not significantly harmed by the excessive traffic.

ISP under DDoS may seek support from their upstream providers to block incoming trarffic from specific hosts.

Web and Email are special, since there is really no competition for these.

When we look at vonage and other VoIP solution, we start to see risks for unfair trade practices if and when one VoIP provider is restricted more than others, or one VoIP is given advantage over others.
Agreements between VoIP providers and ISP to offer preferrential treatment of one service, over another with kickbacks included, smells of unfair trade practices.

You remember the legal issues with Microsoft offering incentives to PC manufacturers with selection and install of OS on built machines? Yeah. Incentives to favor one VoIP provider over another like that would almost certainly be illegal too.

Now for a big problem:
If ISP start to selectively enforce and restrict traffic to specific web sites, it will be more difficult to claim any kind of common carrier status. What does this mean? They are at greater risk for being sued for allowing certain kinds of content to pass through their network. They may be at greater risk for criminal charges too.

I am not a lawyer, but there are several examples in law where taking action to start to fix a problem, but not fixing the entire problem is an admission to knowing there really is a problem. Admission that there is a problem, and evidence that problem was not fixed even after it was a known problem, can weaken the case for the defense.

[Deviant Ollam]

i'm chest-deep in my second thesis* at the moment so i can't forumulate long, detailed responses but suffice it to say that i'm thrilled at this topic being raised and i look forward to a lot of engaging debates on the matter.

i lift my glass to converge for a great thread starter.



* some folks here have seen my first thesis paper kicking around a while back... but like the dumbass that i am, i chose to dual-major which means utter hell for me at the moment as i am writing page after page on a topic for which i have far less passion when compared with the first paper.

[converge]

I am not a lawyer, but there are several examples in law where taking action to start to fix a problem, but not fixing the entire problem is an admission to knowing there really is a problem. Admission that there is a problem, and evidence that problem was not fixed even after it was a known problem, can weaken the case for the defense.

Quite true. Something as simple as proactively scanning a mail server to see if it is an open relay is legally construed as taking ownership of the entire problem, regardless of who owns the server and opening up a football field of liability for trying to do something helpful... scanning multiple customers or entire subnets exponentially increases the change that this will bite you in the ass

[converge]

i lift my glass to converge for a great thread starter.

damn dood.. good luck with that.. very few things annoy me more than having to write about something that doesn't interest me at all. We'll have to take extra effort to lift glasses at DC14, celebrating an end to such thesii :)

[xwred1]

I don't like the idea of the isp inspecting my bits and discriminating against services they want to compete against.

Maybe free market will create a competitive space for network providers who don't degrade your service, I hope thats what happens. There's not too many big network providers out there, so it seems pretty easy for them to collude and leave me no choice but to use their degraded service.

Already in my area, if I wanted to use Vonage, I'm between a rock and a hard place. Comcast degrades Vonage service and Clearwire blocks it altogether. Only thing left is for me to get SBC dsl, but if I go with them they already price it in a way to push their normal pstn service to me.

I can see your argument of the telco's network being their space, and the implications of that argument when you scale it down to smaller people running their own networks. But on the other hand, the idea of intentional network degradation rubs me the wrong way. Maybe you can draw the line at whether or not you are big enough to be subject to regulatory bodies? I don't know... the line is fuzzy. At any rate, it seems to me that you can say they are trying to care about content now, where they used to only be interested in blindly moving bits.

[Samurai Drifter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jHOn0EW8U

I understand why people are rallying behind this, but I think it sets a bad precedent. Internet Freedom cuts both ways; as a service provider you should be able to allow of disallow any type of traffic on YOUR network. That's right.. its your equipment, leasing agreements, or however you look at the various models for the industry.

I suppose they technically have the right to, but as someone else mentioned they aren't mere providers of a service. If anyone could get on the internet without an ISP that would be one thing, but everyone has to go through the ISPs. They control essentially all access to the internet. For them to restrict access to various sites based on business decisions would be like a phone company refusing you connection to someplace you wanted to call.

Not to mention, if ISPs started restricting access to various services based on their business decisions, they would probably start losing business to companies that decided to remain neutral.

[converge]

but as someone else mentioned they aren't mere providers of a service.

Sure they are, just like television; TV has become an accepted medium for communication, but each provider can pick and choose which channels to offer, when or if they will air programming, and how many channels you get for the horrid price they charge.. you can choose whether or not you want the service, you can choose the level of service, but generally can't choose who you have service through or how they manage their broadcast content. How is the Internet, such as my entertainment typing on these forums, any different? I've lived 50% of my young life without it and surely bet that if it were shut down tonight (the world might be a more intelligent place if it were) that people would still be communicating tomorrow. Sure, Al Gore told me that I won't be able to live without it some day.. and of course, people have become quite reliant on its positive and negative values.. but.. I can do without, you can, and it really doesn't equate to the communication infrastructure like PSTNs or radio.

If anyone could get on the internet without an ISP that would be one thing

... and.. ISPs interconnect through magic fairy dust?

, but everyone has to go through the ISPs.

.. because the service of connecting has been brought to the public through these ISPs willing to pony up the bucks to make it happen. You too can become an ISP, choose a business model, get some funding and start one up. .. or you can spend your million dollars to buy your own amusement park so that there are no lines. It's your theme park, you can do what you want and run crappy vonage service until your balls explode.

For them to restrict access to various sites based on business decisions would be like a phone company refusing you connection to someplace you wanted to call.

Actually... let's put the kabosh on this one 'cause it keeps getting repeated and is not put into perspective. Phone companies can and do put restrictions on where you call every day. Period. Try calling outside of your local switch without the appropriate calling plan to do so. Try calling outside of your exchange without a long distance carrier. The switch can easily route all your calls all day long, but it won't unless you accept the usage charges beforehand and pay those charges off within billing cycles. Try not paying your bill.. guess how long your government regulated and life enabling POTS will continue functioning. While we're playing with our channel, lets try mass dialing or autodialing numbers in the area... I'm sure they won't mind seeing that in their alarms. All of these examples fall back to the pay as you play Internet concept.. something that doesn't exist or seem desired.

they would probably start losing business to companies that decided to remain neutral.

Exactly, which is why you can run your bittorrent client without fear unless you become a known hub for illegal activity or are reported for abuse of AUP. It is why Qwest and Comcast DON'T have my business.. I give it to a CLEC that is in line with the service that I want. Ironically, it is the reason why I continued to use BBSs long after people had been trying to tug my onto this Intarnet thing.. I could get the same thing for free by dialing into the various locals and using the guest time allowance for each one.

My wife respectfully disagrees with me and says I should stop typing now.

[converge]

Here's another article off of news.com today that spurs my pissed-offedness at the false entitlement that make people think they can spur around another person or company because their convenience is all that really matters.

In any case, with no shortage of massively multiplayer online games, such as "EverQuest," "City of Heroes," "Ultima Online" and others, on the market, some might wonder why angry WoW players don't just walk away.

But some say WoW has reached its 6 million subscriber threshold--no other American massively multiplayer online game has even broken a million--because its game play is easier to grasp for mainstream players. And because there are few other practical options for many such players, they feel Blizzard should take the performance problems more seriously.

"The thing is, there is no other real alternative" to WoW, Ito said. "So they sort of have a natural monopoly, and that's why people are so mad, I think. They can't vote with their feet. They just have to wait. And 'Blizz' has to realize that they have millions of hours of people's time hostage and should feel that responsibility."

So let me get this straight. WoW is a service that you pay $15 a month for. You don't like the service because your gameplay is difficult to begin and often cuts out. There are handfuls of MMORPG games out there (ok.. way more, but we're still talking dumb public terms here). You would rather bitch about the $15 service you're on instead of a) simply hopping on a different server that isn't taxed or b) playing a different game that you actually enjoy.. thus making Blizzard game not so much a huge success. Is it your problem for becoming addicted to a crappy service that only Blizzard offers?? NO! It is Blizzard's fault for not having perfect services for the unsightly $15 you pay, you should be able to join any server you want without any problems happening along the way evar!

... and the millions of hours of people's time in hostage? Give me a fucking break. If you're waiting two hours to hop in a game, to play a specific round on a specific server.. your life is not worth the chair you're sitting in staring at the load screen at that point in time. Now, no taking that out of context .. I'm not saying don't play games, I play games myself ranging from a past of Diablo II addiction to intermittant legacy console joy and an occasional bout of XBox. I'm saying that if you're going to take your excess time that seriously and whine about your 'hours being held hostage' and that a game company needs to take responsibility for this, you should probably invest that time in real munitions training, apply to self and save the world from the contribution you bring, which will range from not-so-much to just annoying insignificant.

\ .. okay.. so this strays from the net neutrality discussion some, but definately touches on the 'entitlement' vibe I've been catching lately, not exclusive to this discussion.

[xwred1]

So let me get this straight. WoW is a service that you pay $15 a month for. You don't like the service because your gameplay is difficult to begin and often cuts out. There are handfuls of MMORPG games out there (ok.. way more, but we're still talking dumb public terms here). You would rather bitch about the $15 service you're on instead of a) simply hopping on a different server that isn't taxed or b) playing a different game that you actually enjoy.. thus making Blizzard game not so much a huge success. Is it your problem for becoming addicted to a crappy service that only Blizzard offers?? NO! It is Blizzard's fault for not having perfect services for the unsightly $15 you pay, you should be able to join any server you want without any problems happening along the way evar!

It seems the same as complaining about poor product quality from anyone else. They make almost $100 million a month but have servers that can't handle the load.

Last night I was playing an instance with people, and toward the end Blizzard said server was going down for a restart. By the time we got up to the boss, it was lagging and bugging out badly so we had no hope of rushing him before the restart. And then the server restarted and we lost our progress. Yay, good engineering.

[converge]

yup.. sounds to me like a game that I wouldn't keep paying $15 a month for. I'm sure I can place that entertainment money into something else that would yield as much, if not more, fun with less hassle. My leaving would decrease the load on the servers that negatively effects the gameplay of others and everyone would be happy, except Blizzard because they would have less revenue. Until such time, they will continue to make money off of whiners.

[mfreeck]

Last night I was playing an instance with people, and toward the end Blizzard said server was going down for a restart. By the time we got up to the boss, it was lagging and bugging out badly so we had no hope of rushing him before the restart. And then the server restarted and we lost our progress. Yay, good engineering.

It sounds like their service is not worth your money. Sounds like it's time to find another online game that can keep their servers up or does not charge you $15 a month.

Good thing my board games do not have servers to go down. Of course, you can't really play them for FIFTY HOURS AT A TIME, but that works for me since I've got enough of a life to productively fill my non-game hours, even if I game only an hour a day (or more like 1 hour a week at this point, if I'm lucky).

Who wants to play old fashioned board/card games at the user meet at Defcon?

[robosycho]

If Blizzard is making almost $100 mil a month and their servers are overloaded and lagging then why would anyone want to play their game? It was nice and novel when it came out but now the insane loads on everything they have running have made most of it crap to use depending on the time. My only question is why people get so upset about it and still pay? I stopped paying after the original system changed and the game went down the tubes(in my opinion...). It was nice when you could randomly pop on and mess around, do something interesting then leave and not have to worry about a million idiots all jumping you with questions on how to play and where to go for different things. I don't understand how someone can take your time hostage through a computer...? It still works the same way with or without your sitting there waiting for it to do something. Go ride a bike. Climb a tree. Work on something. But complaining because your favorite game isn't working? And then staring at it until it does? Get a life...