ArsTechnica asks an amazingly stupid question. I’m not sure if they are just pretending to be dense or if they really don’t get it.

The article talks about Mark Cuban who wrote a letter saying that ISPs should block P2P users because they are making everyone else’s connection slower:

“If I was a Comcast customer, I would tell them, as I am now telling all the services I am a customer of: BLOCK P2P TRAFFIC, PLEASE. As a consumer, I want my Internet experience to be as fast as possible. The last thing I want slowing my Internet service down are P2P freeloaders,” says Cuban. “Thats right, P2P content distributors are nothing more than freeloaders. The only person/organization that benefits from P2P usage are those that are trying to distribute content and want to distribute it on someone else’s bandwidth dime… When consumers provide their bandwidth to assist commercial applications, they are subsidizing those commercial applications which if it isn’t already, should be against an ISPs terms of service.”

Let’s set aside the “who” here for just a moment. Let’s assume it wasn’t Mark Cuban saying this. Let’s say that it was, for example, your techie relative over the Thanksgiving meal. He’s explaining to your parents why their Cable/DSL connection isn’t as fast as it used to be. They’ve had all the hardware checked and everything is wired OK, but it still seems slow.

“Well what you have to remember is that there are a small group of people who use a lot of bandwidth all the time, even when they aren’t using their computers. They are sharing files — most of it music but now also a lot of the time it’s also movies or TV shows — and that is making your connection slower, because you are sharing the available bandwidth with them.”

Your parents are going to think that sucks.

They want to surf the web, look at some pictures, maybe occasionally download s 3 minute video of the grandkids doing something cute.

Here’s what Ars thinks:

[W]hat, exactly, is wrong with users saturating their connections? They are, after all, paying for that connectivity, and most ISPs are keen to market their higher-cost, higher-speed services. Dictating how bandwidth can be used will not make bandwidth any faster or cheaper, nor will attempting to play favorites with what kind of Internet traffic is legit or not.

What’s wrong with them saturating their connections is precisely the fact that it will slow things down for everyone else.

Yes, they are paying for the connectivity. So is everyone else. There is not an infinite amount of bandwidth available, and if everyone saturated their connections 24/7, the system would break down. Yeah yeah yeah, the ISPs ought to be upgrading it so that everyone has fiber to their front door. But here in the real world, that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Instead, there are a few people using up what is meant to be shared by everyone. Imagine going into the local fast food restaurant and finding out that they are out of napkins. Annoying, right? Then you see them bring out another boxful, and someone jumps up and takes 90% of them for himself. When questioned about it, he says “What?! I paid for my meal just like you did, and the napkins come with that, so I’m completely in my rights.”

The worst part is the claim that “Dictating how bandwidth can be used will not make bandwidth any faster or cheaper.” I’ll grant you cheaper. But would a drop in P2P traffic make bandwidth faster? I bet it would, especially those using shared cable connections. Turning off P2P would be like running a batch of Draino through old pipes. You’re going to be able to get a lot more through there without the extra cruft.

…nor will attempting to play favorites with what kind of Internet traffic is legit or not.

Earlier in the article the author refers to downloading Linux ISOs, which is the old standby for talking about the legit side of P2P. And it’s true. I wonder, however, how statistically relevant it is. That is, of all the P2P traffic in the world, how much of it really is being used by people with legit downloads such as Linux ISOs versus people downloading music and movies. And I don’t mean for the purposes of criticism or parody, or to make it easier to use on their iPhones than converting movies they own.

I mean people who don’t own any of it and are just downloading a movie because they want to watch it and don’t want to pay $5 to rent it. I mean people will download a song off P2P who won’t pay $1 to download a song off iTunes because “Information wants to be free, man.” These are people who want you to believe they can tell the difference between the bitrate that iTunes uses and what they are downloading, when really they just don’t want to pay for anything and they’ve found a way to avoid it for now.

Is everyone using P2P like that? No, certainly not. Are the vast majority? I’d bet yes.

And the idea that P2P users aren’t slowing down the Internet for everyone else is just plain dumb.