PeerFlow

Control to Pay for Capacity?

Save the Internet found a recent quote by new AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson

We’re going to control the video on our network. The content guys will have to make a deal with us.”

— AT&T’s New Boss Wants Your World Delivered to Him, Save the Internet, 27 April 2007

Some say this is necessary to pay for infrastructure.

Ramping Capacity

Hands Off the Internet notes that all major TV networks suddenly (since last year) stream programs over the net, and concludes:

But it’s also a timely reminder of how these deals are placing unprecedented strain on the web’s capacity. Internet traffic growth surged past capacity growth last year. Average traffic was up 75 percent while capacity grew only 47 percent, according to the folks at TeleGeography.

— Katie Couric, Expensive Date, Hands Off the Internet, April 20, 2007 at 12:55 pm

Poor telcos and cablecos; straining to keep up.

U.S. Number 25 Worldwide

While the U.S. is number 15 out of 30 OECD countries in broadband users per capita, U.S. is number 25 among all countries worldwide as of the end of 2006. That last according to a survey by Point Topic, as interpreted by websiteoptimization.com, whose writeup also contains more legible versions of graphics from the OECD report than the OECD report itself has (wso uses HTML while OECD used proprietary formats).

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U.S. Number 15

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), basically the rich countries' club, has released a report on broadband uptake.

The United States has the largest total number of broadband subscribers in the OECD at 58.1 million. US broadband subscribers now represent 29% of all broadband connections in the OECD.

— OECD Broadband Statistics to December 2006 (all emphases are in the original)

That may sound like good news. But remember the U.S. is the third largest country in the world by population. So figuring broadband users per 100 persons, as the OECD does, the U.S. comes in number fifteen out of the thirty OECD countries.

RIAA, Radio Star

As we've seen, RIAA has been pushing for Internet Radio DRM, limitations to the Fair Use Act, and apparently elimination of Internet radio. This may seem counter-productive. Doesn't the Recording Industry Association of America want to promote its recording artists? And isn't radio a traditional way of doing that? And doesn't Internet radio provide even wider reach of marketing for RIAA's artists' products?

Well, not really:

The answer is sales. The RIAA isn't pushing for every artist, it's pushing a few select products. One star selling a million records is worth a lot more than one hundred stars selling ten thousand records each, even if the end numbers seem to tally up the same.

— Can you hear me now? by Brett Thomas, bit-tech.net, Published: 21st April 2007

In other words, apparently RIAA is pushing the fat head and doesn't care about the long tail; much less about participation.

Copa, Pew, and Parents

The 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA) has bounced back and forth between lower courts and the Supreme Court ever since it was passed, until a permanent injunction was ruled by Judge Lowell Reed of the U.S. District Court for Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on 22 March. This case had already been through the Supreme Court, in 2004:

The big split in the most recent Supreme Court COPA decision is between Kennedy and Breyer, with Kennedy saying that there are plenty of choices of relatively-effective (and certainly less-restrictive) filtering tools out there for parents to use, and Breyer essentially saying that parents are helpless so mandated shields of various kinds should be put in place to protect kids. It turns out that, in fact, parents are knowledgeable and are giving advice to their children about what to do online.

— Pew on teenage online social networking practices, by Susan Crawford, Susan Crawford blog, Thu 19 Apr 2007 06:43 PM EDT

It turns out because the Pew Internet and American Life Project did a study on Teens, Privacy, & Online Social Networks, in which they asked things like whether teens hold back information from their online profiles and how much their parents know about what they're doing. That, plus what Judge Reed had already determined, which is that there are pretty effective software screening products available that parents can use if they want to.

Yes, even children benefit from open participation through the Internet. Perhaps parents could learn from their children, too.

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Framing Net Neutrality

As we saw in AT&T's Internet Predictions from 1993, the telco view of the Internet is as a telco-provided service. This is radically different from the Internet we have grown accustomed to, but it is what we are likely to get without net neutrality. Doc Searls gets to the gist:

The short of it is this: As long as we understand the Net as what Jay Sulzberger calls "some bundle of services delivered by the Telephone Company and/or the Cable Company", we'll not only never have Net Neutrality, but not even a conclusive conversation about it.

We also can't have a productive conversation about it if we start with a regulatory conclusion and work our way back to businees from there.

Here's a frame that may help: The Net is the best platform for free enterprise ever created. How do we help get that built out for everybody? I suggest that we've barely started, and that what Cringely gets from Comcast (and what most of us get from whatever company provides it) is still just an early prototype.

— What Net do we want? Doc Searls, 17 April 2007

If the big-telco-provided Internet were actually a free market for Internet service provision, we could maybe leave it to the market to protect Internet participants by providing open access among them. But it's not; it's at best a duopoly (telco and cableco) in most places in the U.S. So we need laws to provide for open access. And it would be nice if we also had more service providers, so there would be some semblance of competition.

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AT&T's Internet Predictions from 1993

In 1993, several years after the commercial Internet was started by non-telco ISPs, AT&T produced the video "AT&T's vision for the Internet":

Picture phones on the ground and on airplanes. That's in part 1 of Paleo-Future's six part (OK, 9 part) series showing clips from the AT&T video. Watch the rest for a voice-actuated video-still-CAD phone tablet, plenty of virtual reality, and online shopping. In other words, a sort of visual AOL. Plus artificially intelligent agents and real-time voice translation with subtitles.

Telcos vs. Founding ISPs

Hands Off the Internet conflates more things that just aren't the same. First, they quote a recent story by a college physics sophomore:

Proponents of net neutrality would like you to think that large service providers had nothing to do with inventing our modern Internet, but this notion isn’t true. Even though explorations into the Internet began at major academic universities for the purpose of research, it is highly unlikely that private companies would never have entered into the market of Internet services. Companies eventually moved into the Internet communications market, albeit backed by government protectionism through such policies as the Communications Act of 1934.

— Net neutrality not for 'the little guy', The only ones who would feel the burden of varying price increases would be large content providers, such as Google, Yahoo and Amazon. By Christopher S. Gordon, Daily Texan, 13 April 2007

Nope, what we want you to know is that the big telcos that are the primary Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the U.S. these days had nothing to do with inventing our modern Internet. They also had very little to do with commercializing it. The first two geographically distributed commercial ISPs were UUNET and PSINet, back in 1990. AT&T, MCI, Sprint, and all the other telcos horned in on the party years later.

Net Neutral Musicians are Pirates?

I wondered how long it would take for somebody to try this:

"To what extent are supporters of net neutrality also tacitly supporting piracy?"

— Get Real - The Net Is Not Neutral, By Sonia Arrison, TechNewsWorld, 04/13/07 4:00 AM PT

Speak up for open connectivity and free speech, as Rock the Net is doing, and you're a supporter of piracy?

Rocketboom Explains Net Neutrality

RocketBoom on net neutrality:

Net neutrality is not a luxury: it's life, or death.

Found on Rock the Net.

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Musicians Rock the Net

Some artists get their facts straight:

Musicians, including well-known bands and smaller independent artists, have joined together in supporting Net Neutrality . On the actual website, Rock the Net, you can quickly get a list of the supporting artists and a list of upcoming concerts.

— SimpleTEXT creates a visual symphony, Ben Woods, WHAS11.com, 03:54 PM EDT on Monday, April 16, 2007

Or several different lists, but still, it's quite a few bands (362 bands so far, and 105 labels), some of them quite well known; others obscure (as yet).

Competition Would be Better

Some quotes from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) from 7 Nov 2006:

"Sometimes I think Net Neutrality, who knows about it?," Waxman said at that meeting. "What's going on now in the communications area is we are moving to a duoplet. We'll have the telephone companies. And we'll have the cable companies. They both have wires that go into the home. You'll have a choice of one or the other for your telephone services, cable services, and Internet services. Those are going to be provided by one or the other."

— Silenced: Progressive Sites Censored, by Kriss Perras Running Waters, Malibu Arts Reviews, 8 April 2007

So there's at least one elected representative who sees a duopoly.

Grad Student Explains Net Neutrality to Elected Official

Rep. Lamar Smith (D-Austin) recently (9 Apr) said he didn't understand net neutrality "I think it would be foolhardy to cement some fixed notion of "neutrality" - whatever that means - into the law." So an Austinite explains it to him:

Net neutrality is the underlying principle of a free and open Internet that all users can access the content or run the applications and devices of their choice. These Internet Service Provider companies, from whom you took at least $10,000 each from Verizon and AT&T just last year, will take away our ability to access information by charging higher prices and essentially squeezing out the "little guy" content providers who can't afford to pay. These companies had nothing to do with inventing the Internet, the World Wide Web or Web browsers. While their infrastructure costs money, they were heavily subsidized for this with our tax dollars, and they already charge for both bandwidth and access. Don't be fooled into thinking that these companies would not continue to provide these services and innovate if they did not have this additional revenue stream, which will only serve to enrich their shockingly high level of profits.

&mdash A lesson for Rep. Smith on net, Angie Yowell, Public affairs graduate student, 9 April 2007, The Firing Line, The Daily Texan, 11 April 2007

The rest of her post is also well worth reading.

Hostile Corporate Takeover of the Internet

Creative Voices sums up recent FTC and FCC actions (or lack thereof) on net neutrality:

With momentum in Congress building to pass Net Neutrality legislation, the FCC and even the Federal Trade Commission quickly swung into action. The FTC, which has been hostile to Net Neutrality since it emerged as a serious concern, held what it described as a "public workshop on 'Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy.'" In giving heavily "favored carriage" to panelists hostile to NN, the FTC unintentionally but compellingly demonstrated why NN is so necessary; to preserve the ability of citizens to access all viewpoints over the Internet, including those of independent and diverse voices, and then make their own choices, rather than have the government or the cable and telco companies choose for them.

The FCC also mobilized, launching an official "inquiry" into Net Neutrality. An FCC "inquiry" is often a no-deadline, never-ending process that results in no action. As Brooks Boliek noted in The Hollywood Reporter, critics contend that the FCC "majority on the five-member panel is stalling because they don't want to do anything to prevent such big network companies as Comcast or Verizon from turning the Internet into their own personal amusement park" That's spot on; this is little more than an attempt to give NN opponents an argument to fend off calls for meaningful Congressional action to preserve the freedom of consumers to choose what websites they can visit on the Internet.

— Net Neutrality Update, Creative Voices' 1Q 2007 Newsletter, April 10, 2007

And as we've already seen, net neutrality opponents are already using the FCC inquiry for that purpose, even though the inquiry isn't complete.

Neutral Net Face

An online chili vendor gets political:

Now, Maricle is worried that the big boys might gain an edge on the virtual highway where he set up shop. That explains why he and five other Internet devotees from Albuquerque sat down with Republican Rep. Heather Wilson in late February to urge her to act on "Net neutrality," legislation that aims to block telephone companies from providing a premium service to Internet customers who pay higher fees.

— The Human Face of Net Neutrality, By: Jeanne Cummings, The Politico, April 9, 2007 05:34 PM EST

Politicians respond to local constituents.

Imminent Death of the Internet Predicted (by net neutrality opponents)

Net neutrality opponents have apparently gotten up to predicting that net neutrality will cause the Internet to melt down due to traffic overload; for example, here's an article in Forbes.

Someone has taken the time to research these claims, and finds them hollow:

Why the surge of sky-is-falling rhetoric in the early months of 2007? Three possible explanations include misapplication of anecdotal evidence, the conflation of long-term and short-term views, and political gamesmanship.

— The Future of the Internet: Scare Stories, CIO Insight, By Edward Cone, April 4, 2007

Anyone who's been on the Internet for a while has seen Imminent Death stories over and over, since about 1974, that is, back in the ARPANET days before the Internet proper even existed. Various opponents of Internet technology or deployment seize on the glitch of the moment and build that molehill into a mountain.

Packet Shaping and Net Neutrality

Rogers, a prominent ISP in Canada, has done something interesting:

For the past 18 months, it has been open secret that Rogers engages in packet shaping, conduct that limits the amount of available bandwidth for certain services such as peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Rogers denied the practice at first, but effectively acknowledged it in late 2005. Net neutrality advocates regularly point to traffic shaping as a concern since they fear that Rogers could limit bandwidth to competing content or services. In response to the packet shaping approach, many file sharing applications now employ encryption to make it difficult to detect the contents of data packets. This has led to a technical "cat and mouse" game, with Rogers now one of the only ISPs in the world to simply degrade encrypted traffic.

— The Unintended Consequences of Rogers' Packet Shaping, Michael Geist, Law Bytes, 5 April 2007

Why degrade encrypted traffic? Because traffic these days is encrypted to prevent flow shaping on it. Slowing down all encrypted traffic catches that, including unauthorized movie sharing and the like. However, it also catches legal and authorized encrypted traffic. For example, I always log in on my remote computers using ssh, which is encrypted. This is for privacy. So is Rogers now making privacy slow?

Packet shaping doesn't have to be a problem with net neutrality, but in this case it looks like it is.

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FCC Sees Wireless Broadband Internet as Information Service

The FCC has reclassified wireless broadband Internet access services as information services, just like DSL, BPL, and cable modems:

Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) declared that wireless broadband Internet access service is an information service under the Communications Act (Act). This action places wireless broadband Internet access service on the same regulatory footing as other broadband services, such as cable modem service, wireline broadband (DSL) Internet access service, and Broadband over Power Line (BPL)-enabled Internet access service. It thus ensures that wireless broadband Internet access services are similarly free from unnecessary regulatory burdens. Competition among all of these broadband services will provide consumers with more and better services at lower prices.

&mdash: FCC CLASSIFIES WIRELESS BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS SERVICE AS AN INFORMATION SERVICE, Chelsea Fallon, FCC, 22 March 2007

Well, there is more competition in wireless Internet access than in cable or telco Internet access, but given the track record of this classification thus far in actually promoting more and better services, I have to remain sceptical. Also notice the word "consumers", not participants.

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Is It Broke?

I've seldom seen so many conclusions reached by pole vault in one paragraph:

Everybody agrees that there are no actual problems with net neutrality, and as our own Chris Wolf explained last week, it doesn’t make sense to fashion legislative remedies to situations that don’t actually need remedying. If anything, it just shows that the supporters of net neutrality laws are looking for any avenue possible to impose restrictions on ISPs that would benefit the big online content companies. Whether through the Senate, through the FCC, through the state legislatures, it doesn’t really matter. Any opportunity to regulate the Internet is one they want to pursue.

— Ask Questions First, Change Policy Later, Hands Off the Internet, April 3, 2007 at 10:24 am

Everybody? Such confidence to be able to speak for everybody with no exceptions! Situations that don't need remedying? I think the situation before August 2005 needed less remedying; now that the telcos have already gotten the FCC to abrogate net neutrality, the situation does need remedying. Restrictions on ISPs that would benefit the big online content companies? Only in the sense of no new charges for something they're already paying for, and restraints on the ISPs restriction content or speeds. "Any opportunity to regulate the Internet"; oh my. How dastardly those net neutrality proponents must be!

FCC Local Ownership Study

Well, this is old but interesting:

Former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lawyer Adam Candeub claims that the government agency destroyed a 2004 study on the implications of local media ownership. The study, which revealed that locally owned television stations provide more local news coverage, blatantly contradicts the FCC's assertion that "commonly owned television stations are more likely to carry local news," an argument used by the agency to justify a position in favor of a hands-off approach to media ownership restrictions.

— Senator calls for investigation of buried FCC study, By Ryan Paul, ars technica, September 17, 2006 - 09:58AM CT

It seems somebody gave Senator Barbara Boxer a copy, so its existence is known, even though FCC commissioners deny any knowledge of it.