Will Anti-Net Neutrality Flack Mike McCurry Testify For Consumers Against Comcast?
March 30th, 2008 by jrintelsWill Mike McCurry be called as a witness for consumers in their class action lawsuit against Comcast for blocking and degrading its broadband customers’ access to legal Internet content downloaded via BitTorrent?
Here’s why I ask: in response to my earlier Huffington and SaveTheInternet blog post, Does Big Media’s One-Two Punch Knock Out the Internet?, “Hands Off the Internet,” the mega-bucks anti-Net Neutrality lobbying group co-chaired by McCurry and funded by Verizon, AT&T, etc., writes:
Jonathan Rintels writes this week at SaveTheInternet that Net Neutrality is “a requirement that broadband Internet consumers be permitted to access the lawful content of their choice.” We agree. But if that’s the definition, then this Net Neutrality fight is over since consumers already have that right.
But Comcast was caught red-handed blocking and degrading ALL content using the BitTorrent service, including a file containing the very legal, public domain, un-pirated King James Bible, as well as legit un-pirated legal video from Big Media stalwarts Viacom, Fox, Warners, and others.
It’s not very comforting that McCurry’s “Hands Off the Internet” now claims that consumers already have the right to access the lawful content of their choice over the broadband Internet, so that additional government consumer protection is not needed, when Comcast’s actions so obviously demonstrate the very opposite.
What Comcast did to BitTorrent proves that without further government action to mandate Net Neutrality, consumers are at the mercy of the broadband ISPs and do not have the right to access the lawful content of their choice over the broadband Internet.
So, if McCurry is called to testify on behalf of consumers’ rights in their class action against Comcast, would he be what lawyers call a “hostile witness?”
March 30th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
MIKE McCURRY IS A CON ARTIST WHO IS ATTEMPTING TO UNDERMINE BROADBAND COMPETITION AMONG CONTENT PROVIDERS AND CONSUMERS
Mike McCurry has been part of the public relations noise machine for several years developed to eliminate net neutrality.
The objective is simple. Eliminate competition by eliminating net neutrality.
The means are simple. Confuse the competitive content that flows over a broadband network with the duopoly market power of the underlying physical infrastructure - the landline broadband network itself that provides 93% of broadband service in the U.S. and is a monopoly in many locations.
The next step is to insult the audience by asserting that the content is the problem, not the market power of the landline duopoly, which is obviously subject to effective competition by snail mail through FedEx, UPS and the US Post Office for anyone who has ever watched Sesame Street.
McCurry conjures up the notion of “bandwidth hogs” as an “exaflood” that must be “managed” to prevent networks from going under from congestion in Katrina-like fashion while asserting in effect that net neutrality will result in another Katrina, otherwise known as “Gegabytes of mass destruction”.
Conveniently ignored by McCurry is the source of congestion, not from customers, but from physical network providers who oversold bandwidth capacity to create an artificial shortage.
From there, McCurry uses analogies like flooding the interstate highway system with “highway hogs” - large trucks, vans and buses - to the point where they slow all traffic down with traffic jams.
For example, 1 bus with 20 passengers would be claimed to take up more road space as a “hog” compared to 4 small cars with 5 passengers each as “non-hogs”, despite that both use the same amount of road space and cause the same amount of congestion.
McCurry then applies the analogy to broadband, using digital movies as the “bus” compared to say, emails as the “cars”.
But the con artist McCurry is in over his head with the high school math. It doesn’t add up. Why don’t small users and large users both cause congestion during peak periods?
They do. If one truck takes up the same road space as four cars, why is “one” truck a hog compared to the same congestion caused by “four” cars?
They’re not. If “one” digital movie takes up the same bandwidth as “ten thousand” emails, why is the movie a “hog” and the emails not a “hog”? They both cause the same amount of bandwidth costs.
Taken literally, McCurry’s claims would imply absurd results, for example, that a dozen eggs are a “hog” compared to twelve single eggs, that SUVs “hog” gasoline with large gas tanks compared to that of small cars, or that two burgers with fries is a “hog” order compared to one burger and so on.
McCurry confuses content-per-user in Gegabytes with bandwidth-per-user in Megabits per second, and then confuses both with the total number of users.
Labeling something like an SUV (digital movie) as a “hog” has different meanings, but McCurry wants one to believe it means the driver should not pay the same (i.e., neutral) price per gallon of gas as that paid by a driver of a compact car (email).
But these ridiculous claims start to make sense in light of McCurry’s objective to undermine competition.
After net neutrality is eliminated, there won’t be anymore “neutrally uniform packets” for sale as bandwidth tiers in Megabits per second, comparable to “uniform gallons of gasoline or units of eggs or hamburgers.”
McCurry and his clients plan to slice up current broadband bandwidth sold current as neutral commodity units of Megabits per second, and put it back together again to look like cable tv with forced bundling and packaging of grossly overpriced content by combining bandwidth in Megabit seconds with volume in Gegabytes, both combined at higher levels with selective content, none of which could occur under net neutrality.
In other words, fast-lane and “everything packages at the top end -what’s sold now, but at double or triple the price - stairstepped down to basic service with say, email on Mondays and Wednesdays and access to Wikipedia for every other letter, i.e, strong incentives to force users into the high-price packages. Sound familiar?
This explains why McCurry et al are raising desparate, irrelevant and redundant claims about problems with copyright protection, spam, porn and access to legal content, the solutions for which none has ever been interfered with by decades of enforced net neutrality.
It’s a diversionary tactic, designed to mask the primary objective, to undermine competition among content providers and consumers made possible by net neutrality.
The spontaneus nature of the self-organizing structure of a net neutral broadband network is a both a threat to those who currently exercise substantial control over speech, as well as a market opportunity to convert its vibrant competition into an orgy of leveraged market power and excess profit.
McCurry’s participation in any way as representing consumers collectively or individually while opposing net neutrality is a farce. A typical strategy of the large players in this situation is to appease and silence those harmed around the edges, like individual victims with loud voices, while going in for the big kill, in this case the eliminaton of net neutrality long enough to overhaul broadband into a closed system.
If McCurry et al is successful, less speech will replace more speech and less content will replace more content as competition from the bottom up is replaced by market power from the top down.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I’m going to take advantage of this forum — which is claimed to have been created for the sake of free speech — to express an opinion which I hope will not be censored (the antithesis of free speech).
I’m a small, independent, rural ISP. In fact, I was the first wireless broadband Internet provider. I’ve been around a long time and fended off many anticompetitive moves by the cable and telephone companies. But moves to prevent me from managing my network could easily be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for me and many of my colleagues.
In a nutshell: Comcast was right to throttle the bandwidth hogs, and “Save the Internet” is on the wrong side of this issue; it’s BitTorrent users, who are mostly trafficking in porn and pirated audio and video, who are harming free speech by degrading everyone else’s service.
The truth is that BitTorrent and other P2P applications are not necessary to free speech, because ANY content or service that can be delivered via P2P can also be delivered via means that do not abuse the network or harm other users’ service. And because P2P is used by content vendors such as Vuze to shift their costs to ISPs rather than paying their own freight, they raise ISPs’ costs and prevent THEM from upgrading their networks.
In fact, the regulations and legislation for which Free Press and others are lobbying are likely to put small ISPs — who MUST manage their bandwidth — out of business by preventing them from avoiding this shifting of costs.
Want to see rural America off the Net? Legislate and regulate small and rural ISPs out of business. Want to see a REAL duopoly, without the approximately 10,000 independent ISPs available to compete with the telephone and cable companies? Just make it impossible for those small companies to stay alive by imposing unfair and stifling regulation.
Want to save the Internet? Let ISPs manage traffic to make sure that free speech gets through.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Hi Brett,
We want to hear from all sides in this debate including yourself and would never pay people to censor your right to free speech by hiring seat warmers. It is great that you are providing Internet to Wyoming residents who would otherwise not have access.
If you read through our extensive filings with the FCC, you will see no one including ourselves has ever advocated for an unmanaged network. Nor have we said that Comcast shouldn’t be able to deal with those who use a disproportionately high amount of bandwidth, though it does seem strange they want to punish the people who enjoy their service the most.
Comcast has outlined to the FCC and the press their previous method for dealing with bandwidth hogs. I will quote directly here:
“Even for the one-hundredth of one percent of customers whose bandwidth consumption over a period of time indicates impermissible use (and possibly violations of one or more laws), Comcast’s enforcement approach is cooperative and reasonable. After all, some such consumers are the victims of viruses or other third-party abuse (and they welcome Comcast’s assistance in correcting the problem), and virtually all such customers rapidly address the issue once it is brought to their attention. For those customers who have legitimate high-bandwidth needs, Comcast offers them the option to purchase a commercial level high-speed Internet service from the company.”
This was stated again by Comcast in October of 2007:
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3706376
Approaching these customers on an individual basis and working with them to decrease their usage or purchase a commercial level account is a completely acceptable management technique. Deceptively blocking a certain type of legal Internet usage of all customers in area regardless of whether this is the first time or 1 millionth time they have used p2p applications is not.
Free Press does not believe you or any other ISP should be choosing winner and losers on the Internet, we believe that should be what users, not providers of the Internet do. What’s more, rather than being a death knell to providers, P2P services have without a doubt been a driver of broadband uptake.
Free Press has outlined a detailed position on this issue which you have grossly misrepresented. Rather than partake in this, we encourage you to support our efforts to preserve what competition is left as can be seen in our opposition to the forbearance petitions presented by the incumbents who like nothing more to than to see another service area of theirs deregulated so they can continue to try and drive you out of business (we would be happy to alert you the next time the FCC asks for comment on special access lines).
We encourage you and all 4,417 (down from 8,450 in 2001) colleagues of yours to manage your networks for the benefit of all subscribers but to do it in a way that leaves them in control.
April 12th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Adam:
Let me say at the outset that — as someone who has devoted the past 15 years to helping people connect to and use the Internet — I am 100% an advocate of free speech and of ensuring that Internet users have access to any lawful content or service.
I’m glad to hear that you approve of our efforts to provide rural broadband access. Unfortunately, while it seems as if your heart is in the right place, your zealous pursuit of the particular things which you are pursuing could well drive us and many other “third pipe” providers out of business. Based on my own research, there are far more than 4,417 of us — though more than ever small ISPs are trying to “fly under the radar” to avoid both government regulation and anticompetitive behavior by the big carriers. While the numbers have sagged slightly, I get an average of one e-mail per week from newcomers to the business, all over the country, asking for help and advice. This is a very hopeful sign, because it means that the telcos and cable companies really do have some competition. However, if we are forced to allow P2P (and by this I mean not any single program but anything which exhibits the same cost-shifting, resource robbing, network hogging behavior), it simply won’t be economically feasible for any of us to continue in business.
The reasons why are indisputable and are a matter of simple arithmetic. If you understand where our costs arise — and how much they are — you can work it out with a pencil on the back of an envelope. ISPs all over the world are subject to the same calculation; witness the losses now being wrought upon independent ISPs in the UK due to the BBC’s iPlayer. (iPlayer is based upon the “Kontiki” P2P software, originally published by a company by the same name but now owned by Verislime… oops, I mean Verisign.) They’re not being greedy, nor are they being deceptive. The problem is very real.
And while no ISP is immune to this, small and independent ISPs do not have the “bundling” and cross-susbsidizing capabilities of the telcos and cable companies and are not able to obtain backbone bandwidth via settlement-free peering. So, if you are successful in pushing for the specific policies you are now advocating, and do not rethink them in light of the simple economic facts of the business, you’ll be fostering a cable/telco duopoly. And that would be tragic for your constituency (and in fact for everyone), because then there will be not only far more of a risk of actual issues with free speech but also severe harm to consumers. It is important that your group adjust its recommendations to ensure that this severe adverse consequence (far worse than a few people having a little trouble downloading pirated videos).
As I have already mentioned, we believe that every Internet user should have the ability to access any lawful content or service. However, if a provider of those products tries to deliver that content or those services in a way that exploits our ISP, disrupts our network, or attempts to take OUR services without compensation, it’s only fair that we should be able to stop that behavior. If that interferes with the delivery of the service or content, the onus is upon the content or service provider to deliver its product in a way that is not exploitative or harmful. Don’t you agree?
April 13th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Brett- you are asking American’s to make a false choice: Supporting your business model; or an open Internet.
Did it ever occur to you that because of economies of scale, that you may be inefficiently small? This is a harsh reality, but it is likely true. In order for the maximum social benefits to be realized, small operators may have to take a hit.
It may be that broadband is a natural monopoly, and should be treated as such. Somehow, crippling the Internet so you can offer 11Mbps service doesn’t seem as good of an outcome as a national 1Gbps FTTH network.
April 28th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
“Bukowski,” did it ever occur to you that by pushing the concept of broadband as a “natural monopoly” (which it isn’t, by the way, or WISPs like me would not be needed to serve rural areas), you are promoting media concentration, which is inimical to the goals of your group?