http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/short ... nline-news

No wonder they are keeping a lid on this. If it was known who was involved in this it could cost them dearly.

I like the comments on that article

It would also explain what I was starting to think was a coordinated push from the likes of the MPAA to the world's governments - the numerous instances of heavy court judgments are still stacking up...

Yes but without bit torrent why would many actually pay for the service that they have. If you only use the higher speeds for browsing then it is overpriced. You would never need that capacity and so could seriously cut back. I suppose iPlayer will be one very good reason, but other than that why pay for expensive broadband for the majority of people. I could probably switch to a free ADSL package.

Gaming would be one reason I suppose, also maybe a bunch of family users all at once?

Nah, Amnesia's right. There's nothing legal that requires as much bandwidth or speed at this point. Paid for download services are virtually non-existant for big files and HD content. Gaming, iPlayer, music. None of which is gonna require unlimited downloads or even probably more than a 20Gig cap. If file sharing soon does actually get shutdown, I'll save a fortune in moving to a cheaper connection. In fact, I could probably make do with the 500mb I get from Orange for email, here and Facebook.

Looking to the future, though again I know little about it as I've no real interest, I'm assuming mass IPTV usage if it ever takes off will be a factor, and the likes of $ony and M$ wanting you to download games and films (in HD). It'd be nice not to see buffering and a decent download speed in those instances...

Gaming requires low pings. If the connection is not good enough the gameplay will be affected. Even then would you pay extra on top for that otherwise?

What was Eric Scmidt's quote again:

"If you have something to hide, then you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" or words to that effect

Not me personally, but some gamers get well into it

Yes but then why not ban encryption on mobiles so that all our phone calls can be intercepted by the government. Now then would you bother making any business decisions over the phone if you knew it could be intercepted and even handed over to a competitor? Nothing illegal there but why privacy is important.

I disagree. Everybody has something to hide. It's in our nature to want to keep some things private/hidden.

Ernie, the day we have enough bandwidth for IPTV is years and years away. You can't even make good quality VOIP calls from home yet. Not to mention the will to take up those services from Jo Schmo doesn't exist by a long way.

I meant the quote in the context of this secret treaty. If they are trying to hide the fact it exists then they shouldn't be doing it.

Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

This is a slippery slope.

I thought that you meant the rest of us had no right to privacy.

As you are talking about this treaty then we are agreed. I would accept a treaty that dealt with national security being secret, but then this is hardly national security is it?

Righty ho James
Quite.