Well a commentator over at Public Knowledge says –

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Monday hearing in Cambridge, Mass., will be a reality check about how control of the Internet can be accomplished, by whom, and what the consequences will be.

Commissioners will have the chance to question, in public, representatives of businesses that could be affected by Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent and to make Comcast defend itself in the face of live criticism from those who know the Internet best. Comcast and the FCC will have to tell David Reed, who originated the “end to end” architecture idea for the Internet why it’s better to have Comcast and other network operators take control, rather than users and content suppliers. BitTorrent will note how the technology is going mainstream, used by such respectable customers as NASA.

We can certainly hope that it is the case. A little blood letting is always good for the tyrant(s). But I suspect that this will be more of a talking head kind of affair. Why? Well consider two facts –

1) The two antagonists Comcast vs Bittorret are on two seperate panels between 2 time intervals. You would really want the have those two representative on the panel at the same time.

2) Bittorrent is not a carrier but a tool. So how does that fit in a discussion from the FCC view as it relates to network management. Bittorrent is not a practice but the cause for having one. Bittorrent will not manage the network. Also keep in mind that Bittorrent is already making moves to defeat the current network mgt tools deployed by Comcast.

Mr. Brodsky, wish this was going to be an a ‘effective’ meeting but I am afraid it is going to be a droll CYA type discussion. The speaker alignment swages against it.

Linky.

It seems that Comcast may finally be reacting to all of the scrutiny that they have been coming under for bandwidth “management”. They recently revised their TOS:

According to Section III of the revised ToS, Comcast “uses reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards.” The company points out that it is not alone in the practice, saying that “all major” ISPs engage in some form of traffic shaping. Comcast does it to keep its subscribers from suffering the heartaches of “spam, viruses, security attacks, network congestion, and other risks and degradations of service” and to “deliver the best possible Internet experience to all of its customers.”

The revised language exactly mirrors that of the FCC’s 2005 Internet Policy Statement, which allows ISPs to engage in “reasonable network management.” At the same time, subscribers are entitled to run lawful applications and services, access their choice of lawful content, and hook up any hardware as long as it doesn’t harm the network. (from Ars Technica)

While not exactly transparent or forthcoming, the new TOS does appear to give some legitimacy to their throttling activites. The demand for bandwidth for legitimate purposes will soon eclipse illicit bit torrent and trying to manage that will be like trying to manage the path of a tornado. Less mentally challenged management would see that buildng adequate bandwidth instead of trying to micro manage inadequate bandwidth would be a wiser investment. Conventional wisdom is that arrogance has taken the place of wisdom on the Comcast management team.

We’ve already given a good bit of coverage to the overly optimistic picture painted by the NTIA in their report Networked Nation: Broadband in America 2007 that was released on January 31, 2008. Those civic minded hams who have been a hyperactive opponent of BPL or powerline broadband deployment have also brought a huge discrepancy said deployments to our attention:

Five years of experience in dealing with BPL systems as a radio interference source have given the ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio, considerable insight into the BPL industry. Based on that experience, the ARRL has concluded that the FCC’s figure of fewer than 5000 BPL customers is entirely credible. Therefore, the ARRL set out to determine the source of the “estimate” of 200,000 current BPL subscribers.

We contacted TIA and were advised that the figure came from a market study prepared by Wilkofsky Gruen Associates Inc and based on research conducted by In-Stat, a unit of Reed Business Information.

So we contacted In-Stat and asked how the figure was derived. They responded: “The 200,000 number for BPL subs did not come from In-Stat. In our US broadband forecast, we estimate about 231,000 broadband subscribers in the ‘other’ category besides DSL, cable, satellite. Other includes BPL, but is not solely BPL.”

We then contacted Wilkofsky Gruen Associates. They responded: “Our source for the BPL figures was In-Stat.” When In-Stat’s denial was shared with them, they responded, “It was our understanding that BPL was the principal component as it was the first item listed by In-Stat.”

TIA was invited to comment but declined to do so. (from ARRL)

The ARRL also requested that NTIA revise the report, with no response so far.

If the agency can be so deliberately far off the mark with BPL numbers, it really calls the entire body of the report into question. It’s astonishing to me that the tech and “mainstream” media has so willingly missed this! More independent, non-governmental bodies need to review and question this report. More noise need to be made. Any volunteers?

I think AT&T may have really bungled this one by getting out in front of the issue and saying they would monitor for copyright violations. It may be justification for messaging traffic on an AT&T network that is rapidly becoming too puny to be up the the task in the very near future. A very big problem with this statement is that if the RIAA or MPAA discovers copyright violations on a “monitored network” they could try make AT&T liable in a law suit.

For Verizon’s part, they are making a policy statement that they will be much more cautious and hands off:

It’s not that Verizon doesn’t believe that it’s vitally important to protect intellectual property, said Tauke, who heads the company’s public affairs, policy, and communications department. Rather, the company is concerned that inspecting individual packets, as rival AT&T is currently testing, poses potential dangers to consumer privacy and opens up a host of other potential watchdog duties that Verizon isn’t keen on undertaking.

“From a business perspective, we really don’t want to assume the role of being police on the Internet,” Tauke, a former Iowa Republican congressman, said in response to a question from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who moderated discussion with the executive. “We are leery of using these technologies on our networks.”(from Cnet)

Your humble admin thinks Verizon is more leery of the legal exposure. While neither of the Telco giants is famous for making smart decisions, but in this case Verizon clearly proved to be smarter than AT&T once again.

Remember the BitTorret fiasco that Comcast generated a couple of months ago? Well now the FCC is looking into the matter. Which probably means that a small coalition of CongressCritters had drafted a memo. –

A coalition of consumer groups and legal scholars asked the agency in November to stop Comcast from discriminating against certain types of data. Two groups also asked the FCC to fine the nation’s No. 2 Internet provider $195,000 for every affected subscriber.

“Sure, we’re going to investigate and make sure that no consumer is going to be blocked,” Martin told an audience at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

In an investigation last year, The Associated Press found that Comcast in some cases hindered file sharing by subscribers who used BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing program. The findings, first reported Oct. 19, confirmed claims by users who also noticed interference with other file-sharing applications.

Comcast denies that it blocks file sharing, but acknowledged after the AP story that it was “delaying” some of the traffic between computers that share files. The company said the intervention was necessary to improve the surfing experience for the majority of its subscribers.

Now it is never good to be under the microscope of the FCC. A study will be done, results gathered and a pronouncement made to Congress with recommendations for Congressional action. The fact that this happened may trigger the Net Neutrality that many advocate.

Linky.

The woes for the big music labels continue as they operate in denial that the world has changed. If you are selling a product, conventional wisdom states that you will give your customer what he wants or he will go elsewhere. The big label’s customers wanted downloadable, portable music. The industry refused to provide what the customer wanted and criminalized the him for doing it himself. The best solutions to piracy is a fair price, and $16 for a CD with 1 good song, that is not. Copying of music to circumvent purchase has been going on since the advent of magnetic tape for a few, but the illicit copying exploded only when the industry tried to clamp down hard on the practice. If your customers rebel, you make herculean efforts win them back. You do not lawyer them into a state of siege that will result in an all out war.

Things are likely to get worse for the next four or five years, said music attorney Kenneth Kraus, a Nashville-based partner in Loeb & Loeb, whose clients include Kid Rock and Carrie Underwood.

He said the music industry wasted too much time and goodwill battling digital distribution of music, and “we’ve lost a whole generation of kids” who grew up downloading free music from the Web and cannot fathom paying for it. (from Reuters)

Then, about how you treat those who create your product. The big labels are masters at retaining rights to music and paying little or nothing for it. The internet has given artists a new outlet,and they no longer need to old music industry to reach listeners. It’s now more possible than ever for real musicians to make a living making music. Only the big industry’s manufactured artists are feeling the pinch.
The old, big music industry is really a canary in the coal mine for many businesses who still believe that they can dictate what the consumer will receive for how much and how the consumer may use it. The movie industry is near to facing the same woes, as are the publishing, broadcast media and news industries.

Soon the big software industry, and the net access industry will follow if they don’t change their ways. There are many parallels to the big bad music industry in the behavior of Microsoft, Apple, AT&T and Comcast. The customer will always find another way if he does not like the way you are treating him. In this case he will do it with open source software, cloud computing and a Third Pipe.

Om Malik of GigaOm just posted report on his meeting with Mr Neil during his recent trip to Paris. Neil’s company and the state of broadband in France clearly demonstrates why the duopoly in the US has labored so hard to keep line sharing or local loop unbundling out of the marketplace.

On free.fr from GigaOm:

it has taken the French telecom market by the scruff and given it a vigorous shake.

How? By offering a flat-rate, high-speed Internet connection for 30 euros ($43) a month. That gives Free.fr’s three million subscribers a connection speed of roughly 28 megabits per second over DSL, free IPTV (and a free set-top box), a free Wi-Fi hub, and unlimited voice calls to some 70 countries.

Perplexed by the panoply of features offered by his service, I asked Niel how Free.fr does it. “We are a broadband service provider,” was his matter-of-fact reply. “Everything else — from voice to IPTV to storage – is just a feature that rides on this data service.” For the rest of the telecom industry, long addicted to metered minutes and billable items, this is rebellious thinking.

The rest of the report is highly recommended reading, especially for those who are not yet convinced that real competition will cure most of the ills currently associated with access providers.

Quoting Frank Zappa:

America is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.

While the concept of Net Neutrality is noble, it is flawed. It assumes the only path to connectivity is a duopoly that is to be micro managed by a nanny care government. The problem with regulation is it choses winners, losers, and stifles real competition. A regulated soft drink industry would offer only Pepsi and Coke to the mass market, much like the state of access providers in America today. Never the less, some politicians refuse to let go of any opportunity to leverage public concern to extend their reach deeper into the fabric of our daily lives.

Rep. Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads a key House of Representatives Internet and telecommunications law panel, had previously said he planned to revive his anti-discrimination bill from last year this December.

But a spokeswoman told CNET News.com on Wednesday that life for her boss has been hectic in recent weeks with pressing other issues, such as the Federal Communications Commission’s recent move to relax media ownership rules.

The plan now is to introduce a new bill in January. The language is likely to be similar, although not identical, to an effort that was twice defeated by a Republican-dominated Congress in the last session. (from Cnet)

Our law makers, including Mr. Markey have consistently demonstrated their clueless-ness in all things tech. Their legislation is directly derived from the corporate lobby that is often engaged in a bidding war for their attention. It has then been filled out in to a behemoth of countless pages filled with goodies for special the special interests favored by individual members.
There is a pox on the house of both Republicans and Democrats in their misinformed and bungled handling of the open access issue. The internet has grown exponentially almost entirely due to a complete lack of regulation. It is been very effective in self regulating with one very large exception: Competition in access. The reason it has been stagnant in the area of access is that current government regulations guarantee a dominant duopoly.

If Mr. Markey is really sincere in his wish to provide open access to all, he will burn the net neutrality legislation and replace it with a re-instated local loop unbundling law, and strictly enforce it. With real competition, the bad behavior that the duopoly is prone to will fade into the sunset along with the granting of power to misguided politicians to decide how will use our internet.

Our so very tech illiterate, good for nothing that is good congress is at it again. Isn’t it time for their month long holiday recess yet? With so much news about dirty tricks to manage net traffic by Comcast and others, many of our “representatives” are determined to grab attention by passing new laws. Very bad idea. Most new laws regulating commerce declare someone a winner, and it is never the consumer. How about open competition? Sure, in totally open markets bad stuff happens, but in the end the consumer has more choices, and service providers are more compelled to satisfy them. If a company is behaving very badly, the consumer votes with their feet and puts them out of business. The problem with open markets for politicians is there is no special interest to serve, and no one collect protection money from. And there is no way to win elections by promising to protect consumers who are much better at doing it for themselves. By they way Congress, the way we stretch the application of existing law, I think the 1st amendment has net neutrality covered. (article on Cnet)

I predict if we get a “net neutrality” law from our Congress, it will result in a network managed with a heavy hand. Here’s a glimpse of what “net neutrality” as defined by congress could bring us:

Jonathan Zittrain, who has written a book due out in April called The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It, gave a public talk on the issue Wednesday night at CNET’s offices here. News.com hosted the talk–a first for our newsroom. The event, which drew 120 people, was sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

You can call Zittrain’s theme the AOL-ization of technology. Instead of personal computers being able to run any program from any source without approval from a third party–which many of us were used to in the 1980s and 1990s–Zittrain fears we’re entering a world where centralized approval becomes necessary. (also from Cnet)

If you think central management is a great idea, go spend a few days in Cuba. I think you’ll change your mind.

Public Knowledge a fellow traveler in things telecom published this piece. However though the outcome should be as suggested, the implied remedy — more regulation — is not. Customers do expect that their broadband connection should be as reliable and unfettered as their water, sewer, etc. ThirdPipe agrees with that as well.

But our divergence is in how. Mandates and restrictions typically end up as a short term gain for a long term loss to the end customer. The FCC has the mandate for assuring equal access. They should continue that course. The purveyors of broadband, specifically the telcos, need to keep their eyes on the ball. Net neutrality is actually in their best interest for the managed content services game is just about up.

Incentives on the other hand typically do work. Much better that the FCC bring the big 4 to the table with the likes of Akami, Bittorrent and P2P developers and develop a scheme that everyone can live with and benefits the customer without tiered networks. Come up with a micropayment system, as a standard, that benefits everyone. Its sorely needed. The incentive? FCC recommends a comparable R&D tax write off against the bottom line to Congress.