Article mentioned above:

The Word is out: Microsoft will face online fight on core software Ashling O’Connor in Bombay The co-founder of Hotmail, the web-based e-mail service bought by Microsoft for $400 million a decade ago, is challenging the American software giant’s core $20 billion (£9.7 billion) office desktop business … “We are just a few years away from the end of the shrink-wrapped software business. By 2010, people will not be buying software,” Mr Bhatia said. “This is a significant challenge to a proportion of Microsoft’s revenues.”

Their are plenty of other examples of how decentralized media distribution channels are enabling groups that were once fairly marginalized: look at http://www.sourcewatch.org, http://www.exxonsecrets.org, or indymedia, and you can see that all sorts of things that used to happen under old media, but cannot happen any more: http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/non-violent-protest-part-i/ Another example:

Farmers to fall under scrutiny of ‘green spies’ on internet Valerie Elliott, Countryside Editor People will be able to keep a check on farmers, including the Queen and her private Sandringham estate, in order to establish their “green” ratings. The amount of money paid to each farmer for looking after the landscape and wildlife is also to be made public for the first time. The information is to be released today on the website of Natural England, the Government’s landscape adviser. Users will be able to type in the name of a village, parish or postcode and find out which farmers in the area have signed up to environmental stewardship schemes and the cash that they receive. The website is to be developed to give details of environmental works agreed by the farmer with the agency that polices the green payment schemes. There may also be a feedback section where people can report on what farmers are doing. The move was disclosed by Sir Martin Doughty, chairman of Natural England, in an interview with The Times”

The Word is out: Microsoft will face online fight on core software
Ashling O’Connor in Bombay

The co-founder of Hotmail, the web-based e-mail service bought by Microsoft for $400 million a decade ago, is challenging the American software giant’s core $20 billion (£9.7 billion) office desktop business
…

“We are just a few years away from the end of the shrink-wrapped software business. By 2010, people will not be buying software,” Mr Bhatia said. “This is a significant challenge to a proportion of Microsoft’s revenues.”

Their are plenty of other examples of how decentralized media distribution channels are enabling groups that were once fairly marginalized: look at http://www.sourcewatch.org, http://www.exxonsecrets.org, or indymedia, and you can see that all sorts of things that used to happen under old media, but cannot happen any more:

http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/n…

Another example:

Farmers to fall under scrutiny of ‘green spies’ on internet

Valerie Elliott, Countryside Editor

People will be able to keep a check on farmers, including the Queen and her private Sandringham estate, in order to establish their “green” ratings.

The amount of money paid to each farmer for looking after the landscape and wildlife is also to be made public for the first time. The information is to be released today on the website of Natural England, the Government’s landscape adviser.

Users will be able to type in the name of a village, parish or postcode and find out which farmers in the area have signed up to environmental stewardship schemes and the cash that they receive.

The website is to be developed to give details of environmental works agreed by the farmer with the agency that polices the green payment schemes. There may also be a feedback section where people can report on what farmers are doing.

The move was disclosed by Sir Martin Doughty, chairman of Natural England, in an interview with The Times”

Further, this article caught my attention, about the market for shrink wrapped software declining, and this is a result of peer production processes, processes whose results are distributed by bit torrent.

Further when you say: The “cost gets shifted” is exactly right – but the problem is the network wasn’t built for such cost-shifting. THIS CANNOT BE GEEK-RANTED AWAY! It must be addressed in the real world, with practical economic limits.

I agree with you that that network was not designed for this cost shifting, but that’s part of the reason why it is worth doing–It’s a good thing!

The same argument you make about decentralized network has also been make about the Internet itself, and we see how THAT worked out (and saying someday in the future the revolutionary potential will be reached is not a convincing argument).

That does not change the fact, which you haven’t explained, that the MPAA and the RIAA have tried many times to make p2p, like bit torrent illegal.

Any ‘deals’ they may make with developers will not change the basic architecture of bit torrent–a decentralized network for distributing digital content not under anyone’s control.

Microsoft is an example of one of those highly centralized corporate power structures whose value web 2.0 will collapse, unless they evolve away from fixed product, and move to services and skills (like IBM is doing)

The big four labels are another example. How have cd sales been the last 4 years??

The “cost gets shifted” is exactly right – but the problem is the network wasn’t built for such cost-shifting. THIS CANNOT BE GEEK-RANTED AWAY! It must be addressed in the real world, with practical economic limits.

No it is not ludicrous just because you say it is. I will grant you that its potential is very far from being fully realized.

I would look who have been trying to make p2p illegal, and I would posit that as my evidence that many feel threatened by bit torrent. The RIAA and the MPAA have both tried to stamp out p2p services such as bit torrent.

So, Seth why, exactly, have they done so?

Secondly, many linux distros use bit torrent as an effective cost-shifting method to distribute their iso’s. The cost gets shifted from the distros bandwidth charges to the unmetered service that downloaders/uploaders using bit torrent have already paid for.

Sorry. This is utterly ludicrous. The BitTorrent developers are very eager to sell themselves in service of those corporate power structures, and have been making deals with them as much as possible.

BitTorrent is a network problem because in the real world, it’s the cause of an overwhelming amount of bandwidith use. That’s just an empirical fact. And I keep repeating that ground-level problem solving is not the same as geek-rant perfection. This shouldn’t be so tedious, and it’s a lesson that it is.

I understand that seeding, after you’ve downloaded a torrent, stops. I don’t think it matters whether or not Comcast has ‘deliberately stopped all bit torrent traffic’ but it is much more important that this interruption is in fact unique to bit-torrent–i.e., it does not occur if I upload using ftp, or download using http or ftp.

So this throttling uniquely attacks bit torrent, while NOT altering ftp or http traffic, and it will stop a torrent of a small (2 meg) file while leaving a 5 gig ftp download unscathed.

The net effect of limits on seeding was not to prevent exchanges wholesale, but to throttle them. Let’s get it straight – IT’S A KLUDGE! It’s not a perfect way of doing bandwidth-limiting. But it would be utterly unrealistic to have a no-kludge government regulation.

Yes, legislating against stupidity is a dead end. But you are portraying this as ONLY a bandwidth measure when in fact it deliberately targeted bit torrent, regardless of the size or bandwidth consumed.

Second, the requirement for transparency would require some careful deliberation, but I think the requirement for transparency would, for this particular wrong, be more appropriate than legislating net neutrality.

Bit torrent is an important tool in the dismantling of highly centralized and oppressive corporate power structures. Therefore, any effort to stop or delay adoption and market penetration of bit torrent has a political dimension. That does NOT equate to some conspiracy theory that Comcast sat down and decided to “stomp out bit torrent” which I doubt happened.

But the effect of their decision was to weaken an important tool a tool which will ultimately play a part in depriving certain economic structures of their present power to do things like:

1. wage a campaign against the First Amendment;

2. wage a sustained and well-funded campaign to suppress the truth about global warming, (see exxonsecrets.org) This campaign may very well have already doomed tens or even hundreds of millions of people to premature deaths.

Their FAQ was not dishonest because they are clear they do network management, and to expect otherwise is absurd.

If there was government regulation which required Comcast to publish something like “We are using Sandvine appliances set at threshold ABC this week”, what would change in practice? There would still be X file-sharers trying to use Y bandwidth. “Transparency” isn’t a magic word. In fact, I suspect all the heavy used would then tune to just under ABC, and if Comcast then moved the threshold lower, a mighty scream would go up “LIARS! Lack of TRANSPARENCY! You said it was ABC you’re lying, lying, lying …”. I can very well see Comcast making a decision that they’re damned no matter what, so say as little as possible (yes, I know the pundits have been saying otherwise, but the actions do not match the rhetoric there – it looks far more like find something to flame them).

First, the issue with me always was the deceitfulness of Comcast, and I don’t believe that you can say that they were being anything but deceitful about their interruption of the BT traffic. If you tried to seed a 2 megabyte torrent your traffic was still interrupted. So Comcast was in fact censoring BT more than other traffic that used the same bandwidth. So their FAQ was dishonest.

Second, if there existed a robust, competitive market with three or four choices for most folks, they could decide, to paraphrase Trotsky, “vote with their feet”

However that competitive market does not exist, therefore the questions become:

1. Was harm done to consumers by the non-competitive market place?

2. If harm was done, what is the least drastic means to intervene to mitigate against that harm?

I believe the answer to the first question is: yes, harm was done, inasmuch consumers were unable to participate in BT uploading. (See Thomas Friedman-one of his “Flatteners’ is ‘uploading’*)

The question then becomes ‘What is the least drastic means to prevent that harm?’ and in that regard, it seems prudent to legislate ‘transparency’ rather than net neutrality, to fix this particular problem.

See this post:

http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/comcast-lying/

The technical details may have caused Comcast to unwittingly do something that many consider to be wrong.

However, notice that they continue doing it, and also that many who would switch internet providers because of Comcast’s monopoly in their area can’t do so. And many only have one other choice: AT&T aka NSA.

So, given the monopoly (or duopoly) and the manifest harm being done, the stage has been set for: government protection of individual liberties, which, when the oppressor is a large corporation, comes in the in the form of regulation.

Actually, my biggest criticism of comcast has been their dishonesty. Seth apparently believes that they are still being honest because because they are just “delaying” BT traffic. My point in posting the technical information from Ed Felten’s website is to demonstrate their dishonesty, dishonesty which even Mr Richard Bennett appears to agree is wrong (see his comment over at freedom to Tinker)

Dishonesty here is key, because their dishonesty, when transmitted by wire, I believe starts to have some legal implications for Comcast, but IANAL, and I leave the legal eagles who will stick Comcast with a class action lawsuit to figure it all out, and I hope they do.

Personally, I’d like to see then lose a few million dollars for their attempts to stomp out BT traffic and then lie about it.

Recall that the testing that was done demonstrated that even BT files of just a couple of megabytes were blocked, too.

If Comcast is only limiting seeders, does that constitute “blocking” Bittorrent? Most Comcast users including myself have no problems downloading torrents. Sandvine is noticeable only when the client shifts to seeding mode. Further analysis of Sandvine is needed, and legal question of whether Sandvine constitutes blocking Bittorrent must be answered. If Comcast’s FAQ and public statements are found to be deceptive, Comcast be forced to pay retribution. But I suspect Comcast will get off on a technicality.

1. Cord is correct that Comcast’s terms of service do prohibit servers. Tim makes a good point that banning servers is absurd in an age where myriad widely used protocols rely on peer-to-peer connections. But Comcast rarely enforces its server ban, so the ToS clause is better interpreted as stating “Comcast reserves the right to limit usage of server-based protocols that place a burden on the network” Selective enforcement of a contract, however tyrannical, doesn’t negate its validity.

Richard’s definition of a server makes sense to an ISP network engineer; the reason servers are banned is because their traffic patterns place a burden on networks designed for residential use. But from a legal standpoint, the technical definition of a server has nothing to do with the amount of bandwidth generated. A better definition of a server is a connection that accepts and transmits data to unsolicited inbound connections.

Bittorrent’s appetite for bandwidth is virtually insatiable—unlike HTTP traffic, which saturates your internet connection only until the download or web page has finished loading. But Bittorrent, in seeding mode, will keep on uploading and accepting inbound connections as long as peers are out there.

Comcast has made a calculated business decision that the benefits of restricting seeding to relieve network congestion outweigh the costs of angering users who seed regularly. Presumably Comcast did not foresee the magnitude of the hellish blogosphere response or the widespread negative media coverage. But, at least for now, Sandvine is here to stay.

1. Most technophiles would prefer if Comcast dealt with node saturation in a protocol-neutral manner, instead implementing a system for controlling or pricing bandwidth usage. Comcast execs are understandably hesitant to deploy a metered pricing system (which Comcast is rumored to have fully prepared) because no major American residential broadband ISP has ever priced bandwidth. Some cable providers like Cox have explicitly stated bandwidth caps but these caps don’t discriminate against peak usage or upstream traffic which is more likely to impact user experiences.

Comcast already terminates users who generate excessive bandwidth, which Comcast reportedly considers to be anywhere from 90GB to 500GB per month (probably closer to 200GB). But while one user may generate 50GB of HTTP traffic during off-peak hours each month, another may generate 50GB monthly of seeding traffic during peak hours. The latter user places a far greater strain on local nodes and is much more likely to impact experiences of other users.

Consumers are still entrenched in the all-you-can-eat unlimited mindset from the days of unlimited AOL dial-up in the mid 1990s. And considering its unlikely any DSL provider would resort to metered pricing, for Comcast to be the first U.S. ISP to charge residential customers for overages would be a risky business maneuver. It’s not hard to envision an AT&T ad campaign touting its DSL services as having no preset bandwidth limits.

1. enigma_foundry criticized Comcast for using Sandvine instead of conventional traffic shaping which ISPs normally use for network management. But Richard Bennett has argued that, because of technical limitations in DOCSIS 1.1, conventional traffic shaping is not a workable solution to the specific problems the Comcast network faces. Bennett suggests that congestion at local nodes may be caused by excessive amounts of “Request to Send” packets, for which shaping is not feasible. Forging reset packets actually stops the Request to Send packets from originating in the first place.

Of course, if Comcast simply explained why they’re using Sandvine (assuming they have a good reason) criticism would likely be far more muted. When Comcast rolls out DOCSIS 3.0 in the next year or two, I believe that Sandvine will no longer be necessary not only because of greater node bandwidth but also because DOCSIS 3.0 is better suited for the realities of modern network management (namely, the ubiquity of P2P traffic). Sandvine is probably just an interim measure to keep costs down so Comcast can allocate more resources to overhauling its network.