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?
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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Its been clear for some time that unbundling regulation discourages investment by potential competitors in their own facilities. Now comes a new study providing some hard numbers on just how much is discouraged. The study, released last month by London’s LECG consulting group, and commissioned by European telcos, looks at the connection between “access regulation” and investment in competing broadband platforms. Based on data from 12 European countries, the authors conclude that a 10 percent reduction in the prices for mandated access causes an 18 percent fall in market share for alternative platforms. For Europe as a whole, this could mean E10 billion in lost long-term investment, and E30 billion in GDP loss.
Worthwhile reading for policymakers here in America, as well as their European counterparts.
It’s long been conventional wisdom that a Hillary Clinton presidential administration would quickly move to adopt net neutrality regulation. Now that conventional wisdom has been cast into doubt. Although Sen. Clinton has supported net neutrality legislation in Congress, the idea was noticeably absent from the “innovation agenda” she announced in late August. The absence has caused some — perhaps belated — consternation on the net neutrality Left — with a post last week by Matt Stoller on Open Left asking “Where’s Your Net Neutrality Proposal Senator Clinton?” Stoller warns: “If anyone has illusions about how horrific Clinton will be as a President, disabuse yourself now.”
Strong words. Maybe its just election-season hyperbole. And maybe a Clinton neutrality proposal is still in the cards (Clinton did after all label the innovation agenda “version 1.0”.)
Still, one can’t help but sense a bit of panic on the left as the neutrality army continues to fray.
One more thing to which you should stay tuned.
(Thanks to Scott Cleland for the heads up.)
Last week was a whirlwind of activity for the telecommunications, media and technology project with which I had been engaged since August 2006.
The folks at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard were kind enough to invite me to speak in their luncheon series on Tuesday, October 9. I discussed “Media Tracker, FCC Watch, and the Politics of Telecom, Media and Technology.” I’m happy to report that the event is now archived on Media Berkman as a webcast.
I spoke about the work of the “Well Connected” Project at the Center for Public Integrity for which I was responsible. I devoted most of my time in the lecture to the Media Tracker, the interactive database at the heart of the project. The Media Tracker combines data from publicly available sources in a new and unique way, mapping out media and telecom ownership at the ZIP code level. Ownership is linked to lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions by company. The level of contribution by a telecom, media or technology company to any federal candidate can be viewed – documenting who has received what from whom.
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Lately, it’s been like the 1990s all over again at the FCC. Forget the endless battle over net neutrality — since mid-summer the Commission has been in the midst of an all-out telecom war over telephone rates and broadband regulation — with the Bell companies squaring off against Sprint, competititive access providers such as Covad, and others. Their are two overlapping issues: should the FCC reverse it’s deregulation of of “special access” lines used by CLECs, cell carriers and large businesses, and (going in the other direction) should the FCC further deregulate high-capacity broadband services to large enterprises. Last year, AT&T filed a petition for such deregulation. Under federal law, if the Commission doesn’t act on that petition by midnight tonight, it automatically becomes law. For an excellent run-down of the issue, see fellow TLFer Hance Haney’s post here, as well as his op-ed from today’s Washington Times here.)
For months now, the two sides in this debate have been slinging statistics back and forth on the state of competition in these markets. Regulation proponents point to the high number of buildings that only are served by one carrier. But these numbers can be deceptive. As AT&T and Verizon point out, a high proportion of customers seem to be clustered in buildings with competing lines. More important, the market can’t be seen in static terms — the mere existence of a competitor nearby can constrain prices, as can the growing availability of wireless and other alternative technologies.
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Larry Lessig links to news that FCC insiders leaked details of forthcoming decisions to industry insiders in violation of the rules. He is justifiably outraged at the way the FCC has apparently abused the public trust for the benefit of the deep-pocketed interests that wield the most clout in telecom regulation. Administrators who break the law should be fired, and perhaps prosecuted in particularly egregious cases. I think it’s great that Lessig is highlighting these sorts of problems, and I’m looking forward to seeing his proposals for reducing this kind of corruption.
But I also think it’s worth keeping in mind that the odds are very long. This is not a new problem. Government regulators have been doing the bidding of industry incumbents for almost as long as they’ve been in existence. Reformers have been trying to clean up corrupt regulatory agencies for decades, and so far the only reliable way they’ve discovered to clean up a regulatory agency is to abolish it completely.
Which isn’t to say that we should stop trying. On the margins, it is possible to make government more transparent and accountable, and I expect Lessig will use his considerable intellect to come up with some innovative ways of doing that. But in the meantime, we should keep in mind that government agencies don’t work the way they’re described in high school civics classes. They are, in fact, dominated by industry incumbents who are experts at twisting the rules to their advantage, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers. And as long as that’s true, we should be wary of giving it more power over anything,
especially over a disruptive technology like the Internet.
The New York Times editorializes today about “The Verizon Warning,” which refers to the incident last week involving Verizon blocking text messages from NARAL, an abortion rights organization. Verizon quickly admitted they had made a mistake and changed its policy. As my TLF blogging colleague Tim Lee pointed out, “the market worked: Verizon’s decision sparked a consumer outcry, which in turn caused Verizon to re-consider its decision within barely 24 hours of its coming to public attention. This is hardly a good example of the need for greater regulation.”
Indeed. But that didn’t stop some regulatory activists from using the incident as their latest rallying cry for Net neutrality mandates. But the
New York Times actually goes much further in today’s editorial suggesting that Verizon’s mistake constitutes “textbook censorship.” The Times goes on to say that, “Any government that tried it would be rightly labeled authoritarian. The First Amendment prohibits the United States government from anything approaching that sort of restriction.”
Whoa. The Times apparently needs a First Amendment 101 lesson. While it is certainly true that any government action restricting speech in this fashion would constitute a violation of the First Amendment rights of the citizenry, what Verizon did in this case is not on par with that. When government censors, it censors in a
sweeping and coercive fashion; it prohibits (at least in theory) the public from seeing or hearing everything it disapproves of, and it punishes those who evade such restrictions with fines, penalties, or even jail time. Not so for Verizon or any other private carrier.
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Congratulations are in order to David Robinson, who has left his previous gig at the American Enterprise Institute to take a position in Ed Felten’s new IT Policy Center. David’s a smart guy, and he joins a group that has done some of the most innovative work in tech policy, so expect big things from them in the future. Today he’s got a post up at Freedom to Tinker comparing today’s network neutrality debate to the Western Union telegraph monopoly. Here’s a quote from Paul Starr’s The Creation of the Media:
[W]ithin the United States, Western Union continued to dominate the telegraph industry after its triumph in 1866 but faced two constraints that limited its ability to exploit its market power. First, the postal telegraph movement created a political environment that was, to some extent, a functional substitute for government regulation. Britain’s nationalization of the telegraph was widely discussed in America. Worried that the US government might follow suit, Western Union’s leaders at various times extended service or held rates in check to keep public opposition within manageable levels. (Concern about the postal telegraph movement also led the company to provide members of Congress with free telegraph service — in effect, making the private telegraph a post office for officeholders.) Public opinion was critical in confining Western Union to its core business. In 1866 and again in 1881, the company was on the verge of trying to muscle the Associated Press aside and take over the wire service business itself when it drew back, apparently out of concern that it could lose the battle over nationalization by alienating the most influential newspapers in the country. Western Union did, however, move into the distribution of commercial news and in 1871 acquired majority control of Gold and Stock, a pioneering financial information company that developed the stock ticker.
This is, of course, the position Felten has staked out in the network neutrality debate: that actually passing regulations is likely to have negative consequences, but that Congress and the FCC can use the threat of regulation to prevent the telcos from mis-behaving too egregiously. I’m personally not entirely comfortable with this approach because I think we should be wary of letting government officials to govern by threat rather than explicit regulation. But so far, that’s the strategy we’ve been following by default, and it appears to be working pretty well.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.