Are ISPs Playing By The Rules?

[rave]

my ISP packet shapes bittorrent traffic, and i mean all BT traffic, like linux distros and what not. on uTorrent and Azureus, encryption is turned on but they are able to read into the packets probably by cracking the encryption. If i am encrypting something for the purpose of other people of not seeing it, and they break it on the sole purpose to find out what im doing, isnt that invasion of privacy? can they be sued? do they probably have some clause saying they can do whatever they want on the connection they provide?

[tigstah]

have you read your isp's terms of service.

[mairving]

I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you are doing something that you shouldn't.

I would doubt that any ISP is going to go to that much trouble to determine what you are doing. It is highly doubtful that you can sue them. As has been suggested, check your AUP.

[Force Flow]

They're not going to be wasting their time breaking RC4 encryption. Is it breakable? sure. It's just too time consuming to do so unless there's a specific reason.

Some ISPs will try to limit and control bittorrent traffic because they simply lose money on it. The average person doesn't really use that much bandwidth. So, giving them 5Mb/1Mb isn't a bit deal since the ISP knows they won't really be using that on a constant basis. Bittorrent...well...it sucks up everything you throw at it for the most part (you can cap yourself, however).

Unless the ISP is actively manipulating data streams, I don't think you can do much to prevent anything else they do.

[Force Flow]

If it's of interest, CNet had an article related to this today...

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9769645-46.html