[Sannas]

I know this thread is old, but why is this argument even here?

The issue isn't with who is downloading and what is being downloaded its simple case of infrastructure and virgin top the bill as far as their backbone is concerned. Virgin, BT and others aren't investing any where near what the should be in their infrastructure to allow for the increase in download speeds. It is a simple fact, if people are willing to pay a substantial price for an Internet connection with a set speed then they should be entitled to use that speed for what ever they want providing its legal. Virgin and other companies are in competition for the speed that they can offer.

Virgin are currently testing 200 meg connections and have rolled out 100 meg to the majority of its users however their backbone realistically cannot support this upgrade, financially virgin probably cant afford the speed they are offering, as this would mean what they pay for their tier 1 connectivity would be too great, so they throttle, block or restrict connections to networks that can provide a source of illegal content, thus preventing them for being charged excessive amounts for their own traffic.

So rather blaming each other why not look at the companies that are providing internet services, BT is often mistaken for being a tier 1 provider and last time I checked they use sprint, global crossing and level 3 as their tier 1 providers, so even BT havent got the connectivity and have to pay for internet access, hence their throtteling techniques.