One question that has been repeatedly raised in regards the the Comcast-BitTorrent affair is why wasn’t Comcast more open about what it was doing? Comcast’s response — supported by Richard Bennett in our recent podcast — is that more transparency would make it too easy to bypass the system. They say this is a cat-and-mouse game with bandwidth hogs (to mix zoological metaphors), and announcing what techniques are being used would simply give away the game.
That got me thinking. Since the Associated Press broke the story last week, the proverbial feline is pretty clearly out of the bag. Is word spreading on a bypass? A quick search on Google, with the phrase “how to bypass Comcast” indicates the answer is a resounding “yes,” with no less than 34,700 results. I’m not a technical expert, so I can’t say the bypasses work (and I freely admit I didn’t read all 34,700), but that’s still a lot of mice.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean Comcast was right to keep its practices so hush-hush. Even if Comcast wasn’t under legal duties to reveal more, more transparency would certainly have precluded much of this week’s consumer outrage. Still, if the Google results are any gauge, the cat-and-mouse game does seem very real.
I’m a little slow on the draw, but I did a Cato Daily Podcast [MP3] on the wiretapping debate on Monday. Incidentally, as you can see here, Cato’s Daily Podcast is an excellent source for in-depth commentary on a wide range of public policy issues. I listen to it on my way to work and find it invaluable for keeping up with public policy debates outside of tech policy.
I want to comment on Adam Thierer’s recent paper, “Unplugging Plug-and-Play Regulation,” which makes several excellent points. Adam briefly summarized his thesis (i.e., there is no need for government “assist” in private standard-setting) here a couple days ago and generated a couple comments.
The cable industry and consumer electronics manufacturers are touting competing standards initiatives. The pros and cons of each approach, from a technology perspective, are somewhat bewildering to a non-engineer like myself. But there appears to be one clear difference that matters a lot. Adam points out that under the initiative sponsored by the consumer electronics industry,
the FCC would be empowered to play a more active role in establishing interoperability standards for cable platforms in the future. [It’s] a detailed regulatory blueprint that specifies the technical requirements, testing procedures, and licensing policies for next-generation digital cable devices and applications.
Why would ongoing assistance be required from the FCC, which mainly consists of lawyers?
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My colleague Scott Wallsten, PFF’s Director of Communications Policy Studies, has just released an excellent short essay on one of my favorite pet issues: Metered pricing as a solution to broadband congestion / traffic management issues. This is very relevant right now, of course, because of the Comcast kerfuffle regarding how the company have gone about managing BitTorrent traffic.
In his essay, entitled “Managing the Network? Rethink Prices, not Net Neutrality,” Scott points out that:
Comcast should have been more forthcoming in its response and should be more transparent about its actions. Even so, Comcast isn’t the culprit and net neutrality regulations aren’t the answer. Instead, network congestion problems caused by some people’s excessive use are a direct and predictable result of the all-you-can-eat pricing that nearly every ISP charges for broadband service.
We know that this kind of pricing gives people little incentive to pay attention to how much of the service they use. People whose electricity is included in their rent rather than metered, for example, may as well leave the lights on all day and keep their homes frigid in the summer and toasty in the winter. To be sure, some people conserve simply because they care about the environment, but most won’t since they don’t see any savings from using energy more efficiently.
It is often complicated to determine prices in network industries that have high fixed costs and low marginal costs–like broadband. As long as the cost of sending an extra bit down the pipe is close to nothing, a flat rate for unlimited use is probably efficient. In that case, the operator must cover the fixed cost of the infrastructure, but it might not be worthwhile to monitor usage. If usage costs begin to increase, however, flat rate pricing may become inefficient.
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If you we’re offered a pill that would cure a disease that afflicted you or a family member or friend, but the pill wasn’t researched or manufactured in the
U.S., would you still take it? Of course you would. Similarly, when it comes to foreign direct investment, we shouldn’t care whether the money comes from a company based in Canada, Japan, or…China.
A Dubai Ports-like
brouhaha could well be brewing in the IT industry, involving 3Com and
an IT company from China. In September, Boston-based Bain Capital
announced that it had entered into an agreement to purchase 3Com Corporation,
a U.S. seller of network and security products. The purchase would
include a limited financial stake for 3Com’s largest customer, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., a private China-based technology company.
Money and capital act a lot like people…they go to where they’re most welcome, and stay where they’re rewarded. This was one of the messages I tried to convey when speaking yesterday at the Heartland Institute‘s Emerging Issues Forum in Chicago.
To make money more welcome in the U.S., but to still be able to review foreign investments for legitimate national security concerns, we have a review process called CFIUS. You don’t have to say "gesundheit" after saying CIFIUS, and don’t be confused by the STD with a similar sounding name. CIFIUS stands for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. President Reagan established this review process to provide a predictable, nonpartisan and depoliticized process. Unfortunately, as Dubai Ports shows, these things can and do get political.
But our country needs foreign money.
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Remember Bill 602b? That legislation, which you probably heard about in a message forwarded to you by a well-meaning relative or friend, would have placed a five-cent tax on e-mails.
It was a hoax, of course. No such bill ever existed. But now comes word that the Internet tax bill passed by the House last week actually would allow such taxes to be imposed.
According to a Congressional Research Service memo sent Wednesday to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the bill’s definition of “Internet access” would allow taxation of “many more products and services” than the existing moratorium. Including, CRS said, taxes on e-mails.
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Tomorrow I’m slated to present my draft paper, Copyright as Intellectual Property Privilege, at Creators vs. Consumers: The Rhetoric, Reality, and Reformation of Intellectual Property Law and Policy, a symposium hosted by the Syracuse Law Review and The Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University. The folks running the show say that they’ll make a webcast available here. I’m up at 1:45 p.m. Eastern, if that sort of thing interests you. Prefer something a little less multimedia? Here, you can check out the PowerPoint I’ll present.
[Crossposted to Agoraphilia and Intellectual Privilege.]
I’m not much of a Democratic activist, but I’ll take a swing at Kevin Drum’s question regarding the Democrats’ spinelessness with regard to civil liberties:
When we blogosphere types complain about this weak-kneed attitude, are we complaining because (a) we think the centrists are wrong; they could keep their seats in marginal districts even if they toed the progressive line on national security issues. Or (b) because we don’t care; they should do the right thing even if it means losing next November?
I’m not sure about “the progressive line on national security” in general, but with regard to FISA, I find it awfully hard to believe that telecom immunity is a losing issue for the Democrats. I find it awfully hard to imagine somebody’s Republican challenger running attack ads on the telco immunity issue. I mean, between this, FEMA, Haliburton, and the Blackwater fiasco, the Democrats will have a potent narrative about how the President has put cronyism above the interests of the country. If a Democratic politician can’t at least spin the telco immunity issue to a draw, it’s a miracle he got elected to Congress in the first place.
Now, of course the Republican candidate can still run generic “Rep. Smith hates the troops and loves the terrorists” ads. But as Max Cleland discovered in 2002, Republicans call Democrats soft on terrorism pretty much regardless of how they vote. So I think it’s better to have a clear, easily-explained position on the issue (and “telecom companies should obey the law” seems like a pretty clear position to me) than to curl up into a fetal position and vote with the president on everything related to terrorism in the hope that it will save them.
Spending your life in a defensive crouch simply ensures that the other team gets to define the terms of the debate. The way you win an argument like this is by going on offense. The DCCC should start running ads in swing districts touting the courage of Democratic incumbents in standing up to Pres. Bush and his cronies in the telecom industry. Tie this issue to Haliburton, Blackwater, and “Heck-of-a-job” Brownie’s handling of Katrina. Like those folks, AT&T have sold out your rights in exchange for lucrative government contracts. I guess you’d have to run an ad like that by a focus group before you’d know how effective it was, but surely something like that would work better than the current “cave in and hope they’re nice to us” strategy.
Is Comcast a monopolist? You’d think so, given the tone of much of the coverage of the firm’s BitTorrent affair. And supporters of neutrality regulation often scoff at the idea that competition, not regulation, is the best way to prevent market abuses. But competition may be livelier than most people assume. This was evidenced by the “other” Comcast story in the news today — the release of its third quarter financials. The results, which were — according to most reports — disappointing. Of particular note was the drop in new subscribers for high-speed Internet access, coming in at 450,000, down from 538,000 a year ago.
The reason: competition.
“So what’s going on here?” ZDNet asks, and then answers: “Two words, Verizon and AT&T.”
In an article posted today, ” ZDNet’s Larry Dignon indicates that Comcast has been losing ground as its rivals have been gaining subscribers.
Yes, as argued by the Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro, more competition is always needed. But the competition that exists now is more than a kerfluffle.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.