BitTorrent and P2P Banned in Antarctica

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
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You know that story about the guy and his downloading cat? Maybe they need to send the kitty to Antarctica to join the penguins and seals that can’t download Happy Feet or March of the Penguins anymore since the US Antarctic Program banned P2P apps, including BitTorrent, down there. That’s cold!

“This is why we shouldn’t use P2P in Antarctica,” an USAP employee wrote us, adding “The gist I got from it was ‘because you are all too dumb to use a computer correctly.’ At least the plans for my secret uranium mine won’t leak out while I’m down here freezing my ass off.”
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Because P2P sharing in the remote regions of the the Antarctic is a really huge problem :rolleyes:
 
Yep, makes sense. P2P is a cause of global warming...................or climate change.
 
I suspect this has more to do with the outrageous bandwidth costs that must be associated with getting the internets to the most uninhabitable location on the planet rather than piracy.
 
^^ +1

I haven't confirmed but I assume they use sat internet there. I had to use Wild Boo for 2.5 years and god did that FAP and latency SUCK BAD. The only thing I will ever say positive about that service is that it did at least exist.
 
This probably has more to do with the high bandwidth costs for internet in such remote areas than piracy.
 
I like how they say they prohibit online games too.

First off, who the hell would be such a tard to even attempt to do that?
Gaming with 800+ ms ping times... no thanks.
 
Friggin' pirates. Why don't they just go to WalMart and buy the DVD or CD?!?!?!?
 
MechBFP said:
I like how they say they prohibit online games too.

First off, who the hell would be such a tard to even attempt to do that?
Gaming with 800+ ms ping times... no thanks.
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I can think of plenty of games that work fine with an 800ms ping. Not everything is a FPS. What if I were playing Civ Wars or Castle Fight for WC3? P.S. A vast majority of these "'tards" are research scientists with one or more PhDs in their particular field. How many PhDs do you have? What do you suggest they do during the winter when it's pitch black and -120F for 2 months straight?
 
Gosh, banning P2P warez downloading must be unique to *that* government division. How evil. :rolleyes:
 
I had to use Satellite Internet for 5 years: DirecPC -> DirecWay -> HughesNet. It sucked but it was better than nothing. I lived in the 1% of CA that couldn't even get ISDN (the nearest CO to me was still on copper with no fiber interconnects). Downloads were decent but that Fair Access Policy was killer. Forget watching streamed stuff... even if your buffer could handle the 800-1200ms latency, you'd peg out your usage cap and then be stuck with sub-dial up speed for about 12 hours. I had a program called FAPMon (yeah, yeah - I know) and it was great to help me keep tabs on the house's usage.

Now I have FIOS 15 Mbps service. Talk about night and day.
 
Wow, the one place on earth that needs P2P or MMO to stay sane and they get a cock block, w2g US gov't. I read the article while chatting with a friend on the phone and he said, "Why doesn't the US gov't just pay a couple million to get an unlimited iTunes account for the people down there?" Besides the obvious bandwidth restrictions I reminded him, this is the US gov't we are talking about. His next joke was along the lines guess we wanna study what happens to a bunch pf guys trapped in the middle of nowhere slowly going insane, I reminded him, if the US gov't wanted to study what happens to a bunch of guys in the middle of nowhere going insane, we would spend millions to build a volt somewhere here in the states to do it to control the experiment.
 
Considering their only internet access down there is a single sat shot that doesn't work 24/7 i'd ban P2P as well.
 
xrealm20 said:
They'd have to be using satellite internet -- and wow, that would suck.
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I'm not sure they can use satellite internet there because there are no geosynced satellites that are close. That's something I'd like to find out for sure though. Sorta useless to know but fun to know. Does any1 know?
 
The memo in the link mentions it is satellite based and that P2P, streaming media and using the bandwidth for games was already against the rules. The notification seemed to be more of a reminder than anything new.

memo "Information Security Awareness Monthly Topic: P2P said:
From the USAP Enterprise Rules of Behavior, “Use of USAP information resources to participate in Internet-based gaming, peer to peer networking, or streaming media usage activities is prohibited”.
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Imagine this scenario. A USAP participant on the Ice wants to get a copy of a popular new game. The user decides to download a copy from Morpheus....

There are many different Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications: BitTorrent, LimeWire, Gnutella, and KaZaa to name a few more popular ones.
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Please, stop the funnies!
 
Antarctica does not really have any formal type of government. When it was formally established 12 countries signed the treaty agreeing to certain rules and such. I would bet the banning of P2P is akin to banning P2P on a company network. It is not like P2P was banned in an established country.
 
How can they make laws and such when no country owns Antarctica?
 
DTN107 said:
How can they make laws and such when no country owns Antarctica?
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No one did. US government employees were reminded of the rules regarding "se of USAP information resources."

Nothing is stopping someone from using their own bandwidth to do whatever they want, as long as it's not USAP's. It just might be a little hard finding an ISP. :p

Apparantly I'm the only one who bothered to read the article. The employee is just whining.
 
Nemesis999 said:
What do you suggest they do during the winter when it's pitch black and -120F for 2 months straight?
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Here's a short list for you in order of how fun it is.
1. Penguin Bowling
2. Pretend Snow=Blow, then go have sex with any female scientist there.
3. Walrus Rodeo

The list goes on and on.:D
 
nathancipher said:
I suspect this has more to do with the outrageous bandwidth costs that must be associated with getting the internets to the most uninhabitable location on the planet rather than piracy.
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+1

The memo mentions this first, but then lists other security reasons that are also valid which the "complainer" latched on to. I can understand the P2P restriction since the internet link is most probably paid for in full by the US government, the complainer's employer, so can be considered a "work" network.

IMHO, The non P2P rule is quite reasonable since it's a work connection, even *if* the connection wasn't a super expensive satellite connection.
 
Shotglass01 said:
Yep, makes sense. P2P is a cause of global warming...................or climate change.
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