Net neutrality is being fought in all countries

In the United States most ISPs were throttling certain types of data traffic.  Most notable were the BitTorrent sites that complained of not only federal busts and seizures for illegal copyright material sharing, but also of throttling.

Since initial complaints and the passage of net neutrality regulations by the FCC, most complaints have subsided.  So have complaints of the throttling of competing movie streaming services that competed with pay-per-view services.

Sweden has the domain .SE and a recent report has really dinged them for all sorts of blocking and throttling.  Many ISPs in Sweden routinely throttle all P2P (Peer to Peer) services.  This includes BitTorrent, Voddler, Skype and Spotify.

Some .SE ISPs totally block all access to BitTorrent sites.  Under the guise of preventing piracy, they throttle or block the BitTorrent sites.

The unfortunate problem is that a lot of shareware software (along with a lot of pirated software) is distributed over BitTorrent servers.  The ISPs in Sweden have a pretty free rein on what traffic they can block of throttle.

The report says: “If peer-to-peer protocols are blocked so the trend will go toward developing protocols according to the traditional server-client model, or data will be hidden in other traffic where it is difficult to discern.  It will probably not be as effective and lead to an increase in traffic – rather than the decrease as ISPs seek when they block peer-to-peer protocols.”

In other words, if certain traffic is blocked people will figure other ways to sneak it through anyway.