The AP reports today the results of an investigation it conducted on Comcast’s “traffic shaping” practices as they relate to BitTorrent. The bottom line, if the AP is correct, is that Comcast interferes with packets coming from both ends of a BitTorrent communication. Comcast allegedly inserts messages pretending to be one or the other end requesting that the transmission be reset. Susan Crawford has a technical explanation on her blog.
If this is a consistent policy, this is much worse than the meaningless one-off snafus such as Madison River, Pearl Jam, or NARAL. While this is technically legal, and should always be, it’s a bit indefensible. No doubt Comcast and every other access provider should have the ability to manage their networks to ensure that a minority of users doesn’t slow down or increase costs for the majority. However, they should be transparent about what they do.
As the AP reports it (and I’m really looking forward to clarification), “Comcast’s technology kicks in, though not consistently, when one BitTorrent user attempts to share a complete file with another user.” If that means any BitTorrent user, even if they’re not a heavy user, then the policy seems over-broad to me. In its acceptable use policy,1 Comcast reserves the right to take any measures it deems necessary to deal with subscribers who use too much bandwidth (although how much is too much is not clearly defined). But if the AP is right, this is targeting a specific application, not specific users.
What this all points out to me, however, is that we don’t need regulation prohibiting these kinds of network management practices. The problem is not the practice, but the lack of disclosure, and as Google’s Andrew McLaughlin has said, it’s more of an FTC issue than an FCC one. The other issue this brings up is Adam’s favorite: Why not just have a Ramsey two-part tariff style metering after instead of interfering with legitimate applications?
Entertaining stories, but here’s what really caught my eye:
A few weeks ago I [sat] next to a US Senator on a commercial coast-to-coast flight. While I read up on the FISA debate, he played a pong-like game on his phone almost the entire time. Hello?
No need to read the whole thing.
It appears that Senator Lamar Alexander has a different tactic in his
opposition to a federal prohibition of the states ability to tax Internet
access (he’s been an ardent with his states’ rights rhetoric in the past).
In support of a temporary ban, not a permanent one, he’s
saying that it’s in the public interest that Congress periodically review the
ban so that it can keep up with new technologies. He even says that "since
the moratorium was enacted in 1998, we’ve extended it twice while changing the
law substantially to meet changing technology." Um, not really.
The Senator has it backwards about why we had to revise the
moratorium twice. It’s not to update the law for new technologies.
Instead, it’s to close loopholes that states have used to tax what the
Moratorium said they could not tax.
Note this excerpt from the House Judiciary Committee report:
While it is true that Congress has made changes to the law
virtually every time it has extended the moratorium, those changes have largely
been directed at preventing states from circumventing the law….For
example, the definition of ‘‘Internet access’’ was modified in 2004 to prevent
states from taxing Internet access providers that purchase capacity over wire,
cable, fiber to connect end-users to the Internet backbone. That definition is
modified again in this bill, also to ensure that States do not tax the Internet
backbone. Why does Congress have to make this change again? Because eight
States (AL, FL, IL, MN, MO, NH, PA, WA)
continue to tax the Internet backbone, despite Congress’ clear admonitions
to the contrary.
Now’s also a good time to remind the Senator that rural
areas of Tennessee aren’t going to get the next generation of broadband
buildout if new taxes suppress consumer demand. Here’s why:
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In an editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post, Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America, joins Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in calling for congressional investigation of purported censorship by wireless operators. Combs, who has vociferously argued for net-neutrality regulation for communications and Internet companies, is now stepping up those calls, claiming that private companies want to squelch speech over wired or wireless networks. “We’re asking Congress to convene hearings on whether existing law is sufficient to guarantee the free flow of information and to protect against corporate censorship,” Combs and Keenan write.
Prompting this latest call for regulation was an incident two weeks ago in which Verizon Wireless blocked text messages from NARAL. Verizon admitted that it had made a mistake and immediately changed its policy. But net-neutrality fans like NARAL and Christian Coalition say that the incident shows why a Fairness Doctrine for the communications and online sector is essential. In reality, as I point out in my latest City Journal column, the incident proved the opposite: the message got out, and this episode is hardly an excuse for imposing Net neutrality mandates on the Internet. Read on…
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I’d like to invite TLF readers to a lunch panel discussion next Tuesday at noon on copyright law and space shifting – and for the geek in you, live demonstrations of the Slingbox, Apple TV, and a Windows Media Center tied to the XBox 360.
Space shifting
includes such activities as copying music from a CD to an MP3 file for use on a
portable player or watching your local television broadcast on a computer
located outside your home. Essentially it’s using digital content on a device other than
the one for which it was originally intended. We’ll discuss space
shifting, its legal implications (including how/if litigation between wary parties can be avoided) and suggestions for continued success in
bringing consumers cool stuff.
The
lunch discussion will feature Morgan Reed and Debbie Rose of ACT (Debbie was on last week’s TLF podcast about file sharing), Gigi
Sohn of Public Knowledge, and Patrick Ross of the Copyright Alliance.
Details: 12:00 noon, Tuesday, October 23,
2007, B340 House Rayburn. email or RSVP to
mmoskal at actonline dot org
This isn’t about tech policy, but since it’s something I’ve spent a ton of time on in recent months, I thought some TLF readers might be interested in my new study on eminent domain abuse in Missouri. Also be sure to check out my spin-off article in the American that focuses on the ways that urban redevelopment projects harm small businesses and poor people.
I’ve documented a couple of times my frustration with organizations that try to collect a Social Security Number for payments that don’t require it. The IRS does not require reporting of expense reimbursements, which are not income, and income of under $600 (total in a year) is also not subject to reporting. Small payments and reimbursements do not require an SSN.
I’m happy to report that a multinational media conglomerate that initially refused to reimburse my travel expenses for a conference at which I spoke has relented. They reimbursed my travel expenses without collecting my SSN.
It took a lot of patience. I had to speak to three or four different people in the organization, each of whom believed that their corporate policy should naturally trump my personal policy. But I suspect that my persistence and courtesy caused someone to pick up the phone to someone else and say, “Oh, just pay him, will ya’?”
This kind of thing is a good exercise because the next person will have an easier time of it. Do yourself and your neighbor a favor and refuse sharing your SSN when it’s not needed, mkay?
In a previous essay, I critiqued Andrew Keen’s thesis that our culture was better off in the age of scarcity than it is in today’s world of media and cultural abundance. In this essay, I want to make a few comments about his latest anti-Web 2.0 rant regarding how, in addition to destroying art and culture, the age of abundance and “amateur” content creation is going to result in the death of advertising.
In an AdWeek guest editorial this week, Keen argues that:
Web 2.0 is, in truth, the very worst piece of news for the advertising industry since the birth of mass media. In the short term, the Web 2.0 hysteria marks the end of the golden age of advertising; in the long term, it might even mark the end of advertising itself.
[…]
[F]or the advertiser, media content is indeed losing its value, a value historically derived from its scarcity. This devaluation of media isn’t hard to quantify: It can be measured everywhere, in falling CPM and the failure of social networks to develop viable business models. No new technology—neither the false dawn of mobile, nor the holy grail of personalized, targeted advertising—is going to save the advertising business now. No, the truth is that advertising can only be saved if we can re-create media scarcity. That means less user-generated content and more professionally created information and entertainment, less technology and more creativity. The advertising community desperately needs more gatekeepers, more professional creative authorities, more so-called media “elites” who will curate, filter and organize content. That’s the way to re-establish the value of the message. It’s the one commercial antidote to Web 2.0’s radically destructive cultural democracy.
Oh my, where to begin…
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To continue my long-running series of essays about media DE-consolidation…
One of the America’s oldest media operations, the E.W. Scripps Company, announced a major plan to split up its operations yesterday. With a loan from his brothers in 1878, E.W. Scripps went on to establish a successful penny press newspaper business that later blossomed into a nationwide media empire with newspapers, syndicated features, cable networks and Internet / interactive properties.
But now the Scripps media empire will be dividing into two different companies. One, which will still be called “E.W. Scripps,” will cover “old media” print properties and stick to covering local markets. The other company, which will be called “Scripps Network Interactive,” will focus on “new media” efforts of an interactive nature and with national scope. This is somewhat along the lines of the Viacom-CBS split a few years ago, which I wrote about here.
It’s all just more proof that the modern media marketplace is far more dynamic than the pro-regulation media critics ever want to admit. These stories about media breakups get relegated to the backpages of newspapers and buried on websites, if they get reported at all. By contrast, whenever there is a merger, it’s always front-page news full of Chicken Little quotes about the coming media apocalypse. It’s all quite silly.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.