Big Media and ISPs Close Rank to Snub Competitors
April 25th, 2008 by jrintelsLooks like our prediction in our recent SavetheInternet blog post was spot-on. Citing piracy concerns, Big Media has made its deal with broadband ISPs like Comcast to make sure its Internet video gets priority A-1 Express Lane carriage over the Internet.
In exchange, they are supporting the ISPs’ fierce opposition to net neutrality rules that would bar them from pushing everyone else’s video into the Bus Lane, if they even deign to deliver it at all. Variety reports:
at an Institute for Policy Innovation panel addressing online piracy, leaders of Hollywood, the recording industry and the wireless industry touted the beginnings of a long-term relationship built on a foundation of making the Internet a thriving market for legal content and a dead end for bootleggers. “We’re all in this together,” said MPAA chairman-chief exec Dan Glickman.
“We’re moving toward a world where all our interests align,” said RIAA chairman-CEO Mitch Bainwol. “The long-term relationship is much more complex and partner-based,” Bainwol said, suggesting that congestion, while a serious issue for content generators and ISPs alike, is only one common interest.
Could it possibly be that degrading and discriminating against video that competes with Big Media, Big Cable, and Big Telco could be another “common interest?”
As much as we also support fighting piracy, for Big Media to shout “piracy” as a reason to oppose reasonable Net Neutrality rules is a diversionary smoke screen for what’s really going on.
The existing FCC policy principles that call for net neutrality, as well as every proposal to turn those principles into enforceable rules, speak to ensuring that broadband providers allow consumers “to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.”
By definition, pirated content is not “lawful content.” Big Media’s claim that Net Neutrality rules will prevent it from combating piracy goes way too far, as evidenced by Comcast’s recent blocking and slowing of its customers’ access to content distributed by BitTorrent.
In kneecapping BitTorrent, Comcast didn’t just block pirated content, but all BitTorrent content, including legitimate un-pirated content such as a file containing the text of the King James Bible, and video that BitTorrent was distributing on behalf of its clients Fox, Time Warner, and Viacom - all card-carrying members of the MPAA!
At a recent Senate hearing on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act introed by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), FCC Chair Kevin Martin spoke disapprovingly of Comcast’s blocking and tackling of BitTorrent and strongly hinted that the FCC would take action, despite Comcast’s claim that the FCC didn’t have legal authority to enforce its net neutrality principles.
Allowing Comcast, ATT, and other broadband gatekeepers to discriminate against video content delivered by the BitTorrents of the Internet world vastly strengthens the competitive position of Big Media’s new Hulu.com as the leading and “safe” web distribution method for video.
Can there be any doubt that as a condition of Big Media’s allying with the broadband providers to fight net neutrality that there is a clear understanding between them that Hulu will never be discriminated against in the way BitTorrent was?
Look for all the Big Media companies currently using BitTorrent and other distribution over the Internet to sign up soon with Hulu. Following that, to ensure they are not discriminated against by broadband gatekeepers and placed at a competitive disadvantage, look for many more video content creators to place their content on Hulu.
In a world without Net Neutrality, linking up with Big Media’s Hulu — and its insulation from Comcast-style discrimination and degrading — will be a matter of self-preservation.
The Independent Film and Television Alliance has called out the MPAA and ISPs and their anti-competitive collusion. Writes the IFTA:
That openness [of the Internet] is threatened by the power of a small number of broadband providers to discriminate unilaterally against some categories of users or types of traffic or to accord preferential treatment to certain content providers over others, all under the ambiguous claim of “network management.” While these providers may have some legitimate issues related to the technical management of their networks, there have already been cases of different treatment of users and it is clear that there must be transparency, equal treatment and an avenue of redress when the providers’ private decisions trespass fair rights of others and the public interest. Thus, the issue is not whether government should regulate the Internet, but whether there will be effective oversight to prevent a handful of corporate giants from imposing their own version of private regulation to the public’s detriment.
The opening of Hulu and the MPAA’s vehement denunciation of net neutrality are intimately related, a double-barreled shot aimed at the heart of the open Internet. The goal of Big Media and the ISPs is nothing less than to turn today’s wide open Internet into a closed system more akin to cable television.
The likely result: as we’ve documented in cable, independent and diverse voices and their content will be inexorably marginalized or silenced.
To prevent this Big Media alliance with Big Cable/Telco from cornering and controlling the Internet, it is time for the government to implement reasonable network neutrality oversight that protects consumers and content creators, and preserves the open Internet we enjoy today. We need the Internet Freedom Preservation Act.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
[…] Save The Internet: “Piracy” = smoke screen. […]
April 25th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
FLAWED “COST SHIFTING” ARGUMENTS ALSO CONTINUE AS PART OF THE PIRACY SMOKESCREEN TO UNDERMINE NET NEUTRALITY
Consider this comment filed by George Ou on April 21, 2008 before the FCC on Broadband Practices, Docket 07-52, which attempts to characterize the impact of P2P use on broadband service.
Ou blames the passengers rather than the airline. In the analogy, the airline overbooked the flight, then allowed all the passengers on board under two conditions - one “acceptable” due to excess seating capacity with no congestion, the other “outrageous” due to a shortage - 100 seats “taken” by an excess of 165 total individual demands placed on only 100 available seats, which “bumps” 65 passengers into a “stand only” space.
Ou claims that like an airline passenger exceeding “ticket rights” to one seat by claiming multiple seats on a full flight, a bandwidth user exceeds “access rights” by occupying too many “bandwidth seats” too frequently which displaces other “rightful” users.
However, when the “P2P passengers” are placed in the correct context - on the outside of the plane in the waiting area at the gate terminal with all the other customers waiting to board the plane, or further back when the seats are reserved for the flight - Ou’s analogy fails.
From that perspective, the individual demands placed on available capacity for X seats at Y price arise from the same, neutral base and are the same across all passengers, i.e., seats are available on a neutral basis, and if the flight is overbooked, the excess demand is auctioned off on a neutral basis as well.
In this context, it’s not possible for the “P2P passengers” to “shift cost” onto other passengers. Individual seats are certainly not sold with the right to “steal adjacent seats at will” or “have stolen the seat sold.”
So why does Ou blame the equivalent of “bandwidth passengers” for “stealing bandwidth seats”?
What he means in part, is that because P2P use is based on simulatenous parallel streams of TCP allocated bandwidth, a single P2P user ends up occupying more “bandwidth seats” than were made advailable - but that’s no different than an overbooked flight in the short run or not enough airplanes over the long run.
As P2P users start using their “bandwidth seats” more often, broadband providers who failed to predict and accomodate the increased use - or chose to interrupt it instead - in effect, are like an airline carrier blaming certain customers for taking 20 flights a month instead of 5 and “shifting cost” to the other customers.
Nonsense. The airline is glad to have the additional business on a neutral, first-come, first-served basis under competitive conditions, which includes “neutral” access to first class seats and a wide variety of other neutral terms and condtions.
This is one more version of the mistaken “all you can eat bandwidth hog” label, which correctly phrased in this case, reverses to “we ran out of seating capacity because too many passengers showed up at the loading gate.” So? Whose problem is that?
If a “competitive” airline actually did what some broadband providers are doing - crammed too many passengers on the plane and then blamed them for stealing seats from each other after takeoff - there’d be some hard and fast net neutral solutions imposed in short order.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
That some messed up stuff.
Not only are they messing up bit torrent business base, but they were blocking service that people paid for.
Isnt that the same thing as paying for cable and time warner purposely messing up FX just because they air shows that promote violence. I paid for all of basic cable not just the part you want to show me.
Just like I pay an isp provider for the internet, not just the little bits that might not have piracy.
Attacking bit torrent will do nothing but cause the pirates to shift to another distribution source. If they wish to stop it they will have to go to the countries that allow people to put up servers with the pirated material.
April 26th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I heard that Shaw, one of 2 internet providers where I’m located (in Canada) tried to limit BitTorrent. Tons of people switched to the alternate provider, they got huge bad press about it & have stopped doing it.
Sadly, that probably doesn’t help the matter in the US.
April 26th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Although its relatively unknown, Comcast does monitor bandwidth and usage. My friend and I have been trying to carefully come around comcast and test our limits via bandwidth… We figure you get red flagged at 200gbs a month of download and maybe 150gb upload…
I just pushed a good 100gbs last week… regardless…
…I pay for my internet, I should be damned if I am told what I can and cannot do.
My internet doesn’t harbor terrorists, so whats the problem?
April 27th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
[…] This is a big fight that is going to affect how all of us are going to be able to communicate, thrive and survive in the coming decades. But we’re not hearing about it in the mainstream media because they’re part of the problem. Which only serves to emphasize how desperately important this issue is. […]
April 28th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Actually, it is forced carriage of bandwidth-hogging, cost shifting P2P traffic that would be anticompetitive. It would force competitive, independent ISPs like mine out of business, leaving only the duopoly which so many people dread.
Oh, and by the way: Mr. Payne’s comment above doesn’t actually address cost-shifting, which is an absolutely INDISPUTABLE propety of P2P. (Vuze, Inc. and BitTorrent, Inc. both stated this in their testimony.)
April 29th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Small ISPs in Canada make net neutrality part of their TOS and P2P part of their service, which was recently violated by Bell Canada via filters and throttling of the shared lines it resells to them. Net neutrality keeps small ISPs in business the same way it keeps small content producers in business on a level playing field.
See the full article at:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080424-p2p-throttling-leading-to-net-neutrality-showdown-in-canada.html
April 29th, 2008 at 11:22 am
P2P isn’t neutral. It hogs bandwidth from legitimate applications and shifts massive costs to ISPs. Therefore, throttling it or blocking it PRESERVES a neutral service rather than making the service non-neutral. It also creates a level playing field, because P2P harms small ISPs more than it harms large ones.