ISP did not throttle YouTube traffic at peak hours, telecom regulator finds

Allegations that an ISP throttled traffic from YouTube and other Google properties at peak hours were unfounded, according to the French telecommunications regulator.

Any problems with access to YouTube and other sites at peak hours were simply due to the overall volume of data flowing between the ISP, Free, and the rest of the Internet, said the regulator, Arcep.

Following a complaint from the French consumer association UFC-Que Choisir last September that Free appeared to be throttling traffic from YouTube, Arcep began an investigation, questioning the companies involved and their transit providers, and studying traffic flows.

Arcep spent six months studying traffic flows at Free, finding that Free and Google exchange traffic directly, via peering, and indirectly through a number of international transit providers, and that both routes are congested during peak hours, as they are at other ISPs.

Furthermore, there were no signs that Free was employing traffic management techniques on its network to discriminate against traffic based on the content, origin, destination or protocol used. In other words, Arcep said, “No practices contrary to principles of net neutrality were observed.”

At the time of the complaint, Free was known to be in dispute with Google over who should pay for additional interconnect bandwidth between the two. In January it briefly added a function to the DSL routers of millions of its customers to block ads served by Google and other major ad networks. The ad blocker, enabled by default although Free’s customers could choose to disable it, cut into the revenue the ad networks received from French surfers. Within days, the French government announced that such action was against the principles of net neutrality, and with the next router software update, the feature disappeared. There was no change in the number of complaints from Free customers on user forums and elsewhere about difficulties viewing YouTube videos at peak hours, though.

Neither Google nor Free immediately responded to requests for comments on the investigation’s findings.

Having recognized the importance to customers of the way in which ISPs and Internet companies balance their use interconnection and peering, the regulator now plans to conduct six-monthly reviews of operators’ practises and the effect this has on customers.

ISP did not throttle YouTube traffic at peak hours, telecom regulator finds

Allegations that an ISP throttled traffic from YouTube and other Google properties at peak hours were unfounded, according to the French telecommunications regulator.

Any problems with access to YouTube and other sites at peak hours were simply due to the overall volume of data flowing between the ISP, Free, and the rest of the Internet, said the regulator, Arcep.

Following a complaint from the French consumer association UFC-Que Choisir last September that Free appeared to be throttling traffic from YouTube, Arcep began an investigation, questioning the companies involved and their transit providers, and studying traffic flows.

Arcep spent six months studying traffic flows at Free, finding that Free and Google exchange traffic directly, via peering, and indirectly through a number of international transit providers, and that both routes are congested during peak hours, as they are at other ISPs.

Furthermore, there were no signs that Free was employing traffic management techniques on its network to discriminate against traffic based on the content, origin, destination or protocol used. In other words, Arcep said, "No practices contrary to principles of net neutrality were observed."

At the time of the complaint, Free was known to be in dispute with Google over who should pay for additional interconnect bandwidth between the two. In January it briefly added a function to the DSL routers of millions of its customers to block ads served by Google and other major ad networks. The ad blocker, enabled by default although Free's customers could choose to disable it, cut into the revenue the ad networks received from French surfers. Within days, the French government announced that such action was against the principles of net neutrality, and with the next router software update, the feature disappeared. There was no change in the number of complaints from Free customers on user forums and elsewhere about difficulties viewing YouTube videos at peak hours, though.

Neither Google nor Free immediately responded to requests for comments on the investigation's findings.

Having recognized the importance to customers of the way in which ISPs and Internet companies balance their use interconnection and peering, the regulator now plans to conduct six-monthly reviews of operators' practises and the effect this has on customers.

US regulator sues ex-MF Global boss

Mr Corzine is a former governor of New Jersey US regulators have charged the former chief executive of brokerage firm MF Global with failing to properly manage the company, which allegedly misused customer funds before its collapse.


The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said Jon Corzine "did not act in good faith" and did not diligently supervise.

About $1.6bn (£1bn) of client money went missing before the firm filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2011.

Mr Corzine has denied the allegations.

The CFTC also settled charges with MF Global itself, with the firm agreeing to pay a $100m penalty and all the funds it still owed to commodity customers.

The regulator also charged MF Global's former assistant treasurer, Edith O'Brien.
Transformation plan Continue reading the main story

Turning a profit is not the only job of the person at the top of a CFTC-regulated firm”

End Quote David Meister CFTC enforcement director MF Global collapsed after making a $6.3bn bet on European sovereign debt, and customers were left reeling when it emerged that more than $1bn of their money could not be found.


Most of that money has since been returned but Mr Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, has said he did not know where the money went.

The CFTC said that Mr Corzine joined the company in March 2010 with a plan to transform the firm from a futures broker into a major investment bank.

But it said his strategy called for increasingly risky and larger investments of the firm's money, and "he knew that the firm was relying more and more on proprietary funds that it held alongside customer funds".

It said he did not ensure the company did not use customers' money to support its own proprietary operations.

"Turning a profit is not the only job of the person at the top of a CFTC-regulated firm," said David Meister, the CFTC's enforcement director.

"Particularly in times of crisis, the person in control, like the CEO here, must do what's necessary to prevent unlawful uses of customer money, so that customers' money is still there if and when the music stops."

US regulator shuts down 1,677 Internet pharmacies

More than 1,600 websites selling pharmaceutical products, including some spoofing CVS and Walgreens pharmacies, were shut down this week in a sting involving 99 countries, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Thursday.

 

Close to 8,000 more were warned against selling unapproved drugs or those without a prescription. The FDA said many of the websites were part of an organized criminal network that runs sites under the "Canadian Pharmacy" banner.

 

Called "Operation Pangea VI," the enforcement action ran for a one-week period through Tuesday, and investigators seized US$41 million worth of illegal medicine, the FDA said.

 

At least of the two of the websites purported to belong to the CVS pharmacy chain and Walgreens, using slight spelling and punctuation variations of those brands in domain names.

 

The targeted websites displayed bogus licenses and certifications in order to convince U.S. shoppers that their products were approved by the FDA.

 

In one instance, the FDA said a pharmacy marketed drugs for erectile dysfunction called "Levitra Super Force" and "Viagra Super Force," which both are modified names of FDA-approved drugs. But the medicines were claimed to contain dapoxetine, which is not approved by the FDA.

 

In 2009, the FDA shut down 90 Web sites hosted in the U.S. that sold unlicensed or misbranded drugs while also warning other ISPs, website operators and domain-name registrars.

 

Since 2007, the website LegitScript has vetted more than 300,000 health-related websites and those selling drugs. Of more than 34,000 online pharmacies, only 270 are considered legitimate with another 1,492 "potentially legitimate."

 

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U.K. regulator gives Google 35 days to scrap its remaining Street View data

A U.K. regulatory group is giving Google 35 days to delete what remains of the data collected by its Street View cars in the U.K., and is using the threat of legal action to compel the company to comply.

The request, which was served to Google in the form of an enforcement notice from the Information Commissioner’s Office, the U.K. government’s data and privacy regulator, follows a reopening of an investigation into Google’s Street View project.

In 2010, that investigation revealed “a significant breach of the Data Protection Act,” when Google Street View cars collected payload data through the company’s Wi-Fi mapping efforts in the U.K., by scraping personal data including emails, URLs and passwords.

Google agreed to delete the payload data following that investigation, but when reaching this week’s decision, “the ICO also considered the discovery of additional disks containing payload data, which were located by Google while the reopened ICO investigation was in progress,” the group said Thursday in a statement.

“Today’s enforcement notice strengthens the action already taken by our office, placing a legal requirement on Google to delete the remaining payload data identified last year within the next 35 days and immediately inform the ICO if any further disks are found,” the ICO said.

“Failure to abide by the notice will be considered as contempt of court, which is a criminal offense,” the ICO said.

Google claims to be cooperating. “We work hard to get privacy right at Google,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “But in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue.”

“We cooperated fully with the ICO throughout its investigation, and having received its order this morning we are proceeding with our plan to delete the data,” the company said.

“The project leaders never wanted this data, and didn’t use it or even look at it,” the spokeswoman added.

Based on the ICO’s investigation, the breach failed to meet the level required to levy a financial penalty, the ICO said.

That assessment differs somewhat from that of German regulators, who levied a fine of €145,000 (US$190,000) against Google in April for the company’s gathering and storing of emails, photos, passwords and chat protocols from unprotected Wi-Fi networks using Street View cars.

In the U.S., Google has already entered into a settlement to pay $7 million related to complaints from dozens of states about unauthorized collection of personal data transmitted over Wi-Fi networks.

Google must be very careful about how it collects data going forward, according to the ICO.

“The early days of Google Street View should be seen as an example of what can go wrong if technology companies fail to understand how their products are using personal information,” said Stephen Eckersley, head of enforcement at ICO, in a statement.

“The punishment for this breach would have been far worse, if this payload data had not been contained,” he said.