The People’s Republic of Conformity

The first thing to annoy me about the Beijing Olympics is China’s evident cheating in girls’ gymnasitcs, where they’ve flouted the minimum age standard by making false passports for a couple of children. If Chinese gymnasts He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan are 15 1/2 years old, I’ll buy them each a Cadillac. Seeing them in … Continue reading “The People’s Republic of Conformity”

The first thing to annoy me about the Beijing Olympics is China’s evident cheating in girls’ gymnasitcs, where they’ve flouted the minimum age standard by making false passports for a couple of children. If Chinese gymnasts He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan are 15 1/2 years old, I’ll buy them each a Cadillac. Seeing them in Hi-Def makes me doubt these little tykes are a day over 14, actually. But nobody can make any sort of official protest until the games are over and they’re safely out of the country, for fear of judging reprisals or worse.

One thing that’s not in doubt is China’s history of cheating by lying about the ages of their female gymnasts:

Yang Yun of China won individual and team bronze medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and later said in an interview on state-run television that she had been 14 at the time of those Games. A Hunan Province sports administration report also said later that she had been 14 when she competed in Sydney.

Bela Karolyi, who coached Retton of the United States and Nadia Comaneci of Romania to their Olympic gold-medal triumphs, said the problem of under-age gymnasts had been around for years. Age is an easy thing to alter in an authoritarian country, he said, because the government has such strict control of official paperwork.

It’s sad that the government of China abuses these poor children. And desperate, because they’re not fooling anybody.

These Olympics were supposed to be China’s bid to show itself to the world in a favorable light, but so far we have an all-robot opening ceremony, a murdered tourist, a bizarre recruitment program that pumps professional athletes into junk sports like air rifle, girls’ weight-lifting and synchronized diving, and blatant cheating in the marquee events. China comes of as a deranged lunatic, obsessed with winning and lacking in both grace and the capacity for self-analysis; a Bridezilla.

In short, China is looking at a public relations nightmare. But that might be good in the long run, if it prompts some serious self-analysis.

BitTorrent Soap Opera continues

Valleywag’s outstanding reporting on the BitTorrent collapse continues with a detailed account of the tussle: BitTorrent has denied our report that the company laid off 12 out of 55 employees. That may be true: While our source told us 12 employees were on the layoff list, we’ve learned that, at the last minute, the jobs … Continue reading “BitTorrent Soap Opera continues”

Valleywag’s outstanding reporting on the BitTorrent collapse continues with a detailed account of the tussle:

BitTorrent has denied our report that the company laid off 12 out of 55 employees. That may be true: While our source told us 12 employees were on the layoff list, we’ve learned that, at the last minute, the jobs of two sales engineers, an HR manager, and an office manager were spared. Another tipster — “you can guess as to whether I’m an insider or not” — says that the BitTorrent layoffs aren’t the fault of new CEO Doug Walker, who came to the those-crazy-kids file-sharing startup to add some enterprise-software gravitas. Instead, the elimination of BitTorrent’s sales and marketing departments amounts to a coup by cofounders Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin, pictured here to Walker’s right and left, who are giving up on the notion of marketing BitTorrent’s file-sharing technology to businesses and hardware makers, and instead pinning their hopes on becoming an “Internet peace corps.”

One part that I can confirm is the lack of enthusiasm for DNA on the part of the tech people. I’ve asked them why anybody should care about DNA and I got was silence.

How long until we hear about the equally vexing woes at Vuze? They won their battle with Comcast before the FCC, at the expense of their corporate viability. Peer-to-peer needs to be domesticated, but the FCC has forbidden that. The only other choice is extermination, and metered pricing will take care of that quite efficiently.

Sad.

Previous entry here.

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Testing Internet capacity

NBC is streaming the Olympics over the Internet, in multiple resolutions, in what amounts to a massive test of the ability of the Internet fabric to handle load. Nothing on this scale has been done before, although BCC did stream the last Olympics inside the UK using Multicast. So we’re going to learn just how … Continue reading “Testing Internet capacity”

NBC is streaming the Olympics over the Internet, in multiple resolutions, in what amounts to a massive test of the ability of the Internet fabric to handle load. Nothing on this scale has been done before, although BCC did stream the last Olympics inside the UK using Multicast. So we’re going to learn just how realistic net neutrality really is:

This will be the biggest test today of Internet viewers’ appetite for streaming video of live sporting events – and of the Internet’s ability to handle that.

If the Internet service providers networks start getting maxed out, you can probably expect some “rate shaping” or other bandwidth management techniques to come into play, Eksten notes. After all, you still have to get the e-mail through for non-sports fans.

Which means not just technologists like Eksten but network neutrality proponents should spend a lot of time looking at logs and statistical reports from the service providers, after this is all over to see how the streaming affected the Internet’s fabric of networks.

Stay tuned, if you can.

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How Net Neutrality killed BitTorrent

Valleywag explains why BitTorrent, Inc., had to lay off all its sales and marketing staff in this fine piece, Unintended Consequences: How the FCC killed BitTorrent’s promising business When Comcast was caught blocking file sharing on its network, the Federal Communications Commission seemed to strike a blow in favor of peer-to-peer startups everywhere by fining … Continue reading “How Net Neutrality killed BitTorrent”

Valleywag explains why BitTorrent, Inc., had to lay off all its sales and marketing staff in this fine piece, Unintended Consequences: How the FCC killed BitTorrent’s promising business

When Comcast was caught blocking file sharing on its network, the Federal Communications Commission seemed to strike a blow in favor of peer-to-peer startups everywhere by fining the cable company. Observers assumed that the FCC decision would open the field for file sharing to turn into a legitimate business. But for BitTorrent Inc., a San Francisco startup seeking to commercialize the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, the move against Comcast led to layoffs instead. The ruling may ultimately prove fatal to the company.

The problem for Comcast and other Internet service providers is that they can no longer block file-sharing traffic from their networks. And yet file-sharing usage is consuming more and more bandwidth, which they must pay for. Broadband providers are businesses, not charities. So they are increasingly considering charging their users by the bit for bandwidth over a certain level. Most users won’t be affected, but file-sharing downloaders will be.

The prospect of pay-by-the-bit bandwidth had immediate consequences for BitTorrent’s two main businesses: an online-media store delivered via file sharing, and a content-delivery network which competed with the likes of Akamai and Limelight Networks.

For users who would have to pay bandwidth fees to their ISPs on top of paying the usual charges, BitTorrent’s Torrent Entertainment Network store would soon look uncompetitive with the likes of Apple’s iTunes Store and Microsoft’s Xbox Marketplace which prompted Best Buy to back out of talks to acquire TEN for $15 million.

As for BitTorrent’s content-delivery network, it was premised on the notion that BitTorrent would negotiate with ISPs to get privileged delivery for their file-sharing packets, while Comcast blocked others. With the FCC forcing Comcast to treat all file-sharing traffic equally, the promise of that business evaporated.

Be careful what you wish for, boys and girls of the pro-regulatory, net neutrality movement, because it’s going to cost more than what you’ve got.

UPDATE: BitTorrent, Inc. PR flack Lilly Lin didn’t want this story to get out, and demands Owen’s sources. Not a smooth move, Lilly, and please don’t sue me for saying so (we’ve talked before, so I can adopt this personal tone.)

UPDATE HERE.

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FCC bandwidth subsidy doesn’t help BitTorrent, Inc.

The recent FCC order requiring ISPs to donate bandwidth to peer-to-peer services was supposed to protect the Innovative-New-Application from competitive duress, but BitTorrent, Inc. didn’t get the memo: BitTorrent Inc., the file-sharing startup whose underlying technology is responsible for much of the piracy that plagues Hollywood, is laying off its sales and marketing department. The … Continue reading “FCC bandwidth subsidy doesn’t help BitTorrent, Inc.”

The recent FCC order requiring ISPs to donate bandwidth to peer-to-peer services was supposed to protect the Innovative-New-Application from competitive duress, but BitTorrent, Inc. didn’t get the memo:

BitTorrent Inc., the file-sharing startup whose underlying technology is responsible for much of the piracy that plagues Hollywood, is laying off its sales and marketing department. The immediate cause of the layoffs: A failure to sell the Torrent Entertainment Network, BitTorrent’s attempt at an online media store, to Best Buy for a rumored $15 million. That deal fell apart, a BitTorrent insider believes, because of a recent FCC ruling on file sharing. CEO Doug Walker, who replaced troubled founder Bram Cohen last fall, had hinted at a rethink of the store in March. Walker’s also said to be rethinking BitTorrent’s “DNA” service, which sought to offer businesses a cut-rate online content-deliver service, using file-sharing technology to undercut Limelight and Akamai’s prices. BitTorrent is now thinking about making the service free, which would certainly count as “cut-rate” — but also suggests that it hadn’t had much success selling it.

While this has been going on, the good folks at Vuze have been trying to save their own bacon by facilitating piracy by searching The Pirate Bay and Mininova.

Maybe P2P has problems so deep that even Kevin Martin’s bandwidth subsidy can’t cure them. This has the feel of a developing story.

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Vint Cerf at it again

It’s rare that I read anything by Vint Cerf these days that doesn’t make me laugh. He’s taken to making outlandish statements that foment PR crises for Google such that they’re softened and re-framed in a few days. Writing on Google Public Policy Blog he simply buries us in the obvious and contradicts himself: At … Continue reading “Vint Cerf at it again”

It’s rare that I read anything by Vint Cerf these days that doesn’t make me laugh. He’s taken to making outlandish statements that foment PR crises for Google such that they’re softened and re-framed in a few days. Writing on Google Public Policy Blog he simply buries us in the obvious and contradicts himself:

At least one proposal has surfaced that would charge users by the byte after a certain amount of data has been transmitted during a given period. This is a kind of volume cap, which I do not find to be a very useful practice. Given an arbitrary amount of time, one can transfer arbitrarily large amounts of information. Rather than a volume cap, I suggest the introduction of transmission rate caps, which would allow users to purchase access to the Internet at a given minimum data rate and be free to transfer data at at least up to that rate in any way they wish.

And here I thought pricing tiers were all standard practice all over the world. But he’s obviously not talking about that so much as providing a Committed Information Rate for low-cost residential Internet access like the much pricier business accounts have. You can tell who pays the bills in the Cerf household.

He also does the Kevin Martin two-step, applauding ISPs for raising the priority of VoIP:

In my view, Internet traffic should be managed with an eye towards applications and protocols. For example, a broadband provider should be able to prioritize packets that call for low latency (the period of time it takes for a packet to travel from Point A to Point B), but such prioritization should be applied across the board to all low latency traffic, not just particular application providers.

…and then slamming the means by which this is done:

Over the past few months, I have been talking with engineers at Comcast about some of these network management issues. I’ve been pleased so far with the tone and substance of these conversations, which have helped me to better understand the underlying motivation and rationale for the network management decisions facing Comcast, and the unique characteristics of cable broadband architecture. And as we said a few weeks ago, their commitment to a protocol-agnostic approach to network management is a step in the right direction.

So prioritizing is good, but not prioritizing is better? These people need to take some logic courses.

But I’m being too mean. Adam Thierer finds something to like about Cerf’s statesmanship:

But we know that countless more technical disputes will arise in the future at every layer of the Internet — not just with Comcast and BitTorrent. Thus, if we are really going to achieve “a broader dialogue and cooperation across industries” then what we really need is the equivalent of a multilateral trade negotiating process or forum to achieve sensible resolutions to complex technical difficulties surround Internet network management.

I am not prepared to say whether a new, formal organization is needed to accomplish this or if existing institutions and individuals (academic, trade associations, etc) might be able to work together to make this happen. For example, and I am just thinking out loud here so don’t quote me on this, what if we had the Internet Society working in conjunction with several major industry trade associations and some respected academic institutions to form some sort of collaborative, dialogue-oriented dispute resolution process? Sort of GATT or WTO for technical Internet dispute resolution.

Certainly that would be preferable to a politicized FCC taking over the show and making all these technical decisions, no? I’d be interested in hearing some input from others.

A relevant organization is not a bad idea.

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Cooper is no fan of the FCC

CNET blogger Charlie Cooper is among the large and growing number not impressed by the FCC’s pretzel-logic ruling against Comcast Critics correctly note that Congress still has not given the FCC explicit authority to decide Internet policy. Even as the FCC issued its decision, Chairman Kevin Martin went on record writing that while Comcast had … Continue reading “Cooper is no fan of the FCC”

CNET blogger Charlie Cooper is among the large and growing number not impressed by the FCC’s pretzel-logic ruling against Comcast

Critics correctly note that Congress still has not given the FCC explicit authority to decide Internet policy. Even as the FCC issued its decision, Chairman Kevin Martin went on record writing that while Comcast had no right to prioritize Internet traffic, it’s fine to prioritize voice over IP:

We do not tell providers how to manage their networks. They might choose, for instance, to prioritize voice-over-IP calls. In analyzing whether Comcast violated federal policy when it blocked access to certain applications, we conduct a fact-specific inquiry into whether the management practice they used was reasonable. Based on many reasons, including the arbitrary nature of the blocking, the lack of relation to times of congestion or size of files, and the manner in which they hid their conduct from their subscribers, we conclude it was not.

We do not limit providers’ efforts to stop congestion. We do say providers should disclose what they are doing to consumers

So it’s OK to put individual data packets under a magnifying glass? But in its group statement–which Martin presumably signed off on–the FCC approvingly cited MIT professor David Reed, a respected Internet notable [sic], who believes “that “(n)either Deep Packet Inspection nor RST Injection”–Comcast uses both to manage its network–“are acceptable behavior.”

This takes Emerson’s apercu that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds to an extreme. Maybe the private sector can figure things out without confusing itself over regulation from bureaucrats. But they first need clear rules of the road to follow. Otherwise, expect more of the same.

The FCC is delaying publication of the actual order because it’s impossible to reconcile the conflicting statements made by the majority in support of it. Specifically, they need to answer how an ISP is going to boost the priority of VoIP without violating this new rule that all applications have to be treated as equals.

They also need to explain where this new equality requirement comes from, because even the murky Policy Statement doesn’t say that all packets from all applications have the same value.

If it looks like Kevin Martin is making up the rules as he goes along, it’s because that’s exactly what he’s doing.

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The secret framework

Declan McCullagh is wondering about that secret framework the FCC has discovered: Details of the FCC’s ruling, which may not be available for a few weeks, remain unclear. While Comcast will face no fine, Martin said the FCC has adopted a new legal “framework” that will let federal bureaucrats deem whether future network management practices … Continue reading “The secret framework”

Declan McCullagh is wondering about that secret framework the FCC has discovered:

Details of the FCC’s ruling, which may not be available for a few weeks, remain unclear. While Comcast will face no fine, Martin said the FCC has adopted a new legal “framework” that will let federal bureaucrats deem whether future network management practices are permissible. The dissenting Republicans said they did not receive the final text of the order until late last night–it apparently includes a variant of a “strict scrutiny” test usually reserved to judge whether government policies are legal or not–and it is not yet public.

I think this secret framework is the most interesting part of today’s news, and the delay in the publication of the FCC’s order reflects the difficulty they’re having in making it up.

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The FCC’s alleged findings are full of holes

According to Drew Clark, these are the FCC’s findings in the Comcast dispute: 1. Comcast’s network management practices discriminate among applications and protocols. It uses deep packet inspection. There is no law against deep packet inspection for the purpose of reasonable network management, and Kevin Martin’s press release says it’s OK to discriminate for and … Continue reading “The FCC’s alleged findings are full of holes”

According to Drew Clark, these are the FCC’s findings in the Comcast dispute:

1. Comcast’s network management practices discriminate among applications and protocols. It uses deep packet inspection.

There is no law against deep packet inspection for the purpose of reasonable network management, and Kevin Martin’s press release says it’s OK to discriminate for and against applications: “We do not tell providers how to manage their networks. They might choose, for instance, to prioritize voice-over-IP calls.” So no problem here, but nice attempt at scaring people with “deep packet inspection.”

2. Comcast’s practices are not minimally intrusive, but are invasive, and have significant effect.

Comcast’s actions only affect BitTorrent in unattended seeding mode, which actually helps BitTorrent in peering mode and download mode, so it is minimally intrusive.

3. Comcast has blocked content and significantly interfered with person’s ability to access applications and content of their choice.

Comcast’s actions have no effect on the ability of its customers to access content. In fact, they help. Seeding cannot be construed as “accessing content” under any reasonable definition. In fact, it’s “offering content” and the Four Freedoms don’t enumerate that as a right.

4. Comcast’s practices do not constitute reasonable network management practices.

In the opinion of actual working engineers, these practices are reasonable, if less than ideal. In engineering as in politics the perfect is the enemy of the good.

5. The economic harms have been compounded by Comcast’s failure to disclose its practices.

There has been no demonstrated economic harm. In fact, the system discourages piracy, and therefore prevents economic harm.

6. Comcast’s practice contravenes federal internet policy, and limits consumers’ ability to access the lawful internet content of their choice.

Once again, this practice doesn’t affect consumer ability to download content.

So the Commission is wrong on the facts, wrong on the law, and generally pounding on the table.

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Commissioner McDowell’s dissent

At least one FCC commissioner has his head on straight today, Robert McDowell. His dissent on Martin’s arbitrary smackdown is great: For the first time, today our government is choosing regulation over collaboration when it comes to Internet governance. The majority has thrust politicians and bureaucrats into engineering decisions. It will be interesting to see … Continue reading “Commissioner McDowell’s dissent”

At least one FCC commissioner has his head on straight today, Robert McDowell. His dissent on Martin’s arbitrary smackdown is great:

For the first time, today our government is choosing regulation over collaboration when it comes to Internet governance. The majority has thrust politicians and bureaucrats into engineering decisions. It will be interesting to see how the FCC will handle its newly created power because, as an institution, we are incapable of deciding any issue in the nanoseconds of Internet time. Furthermore, asking our government to make these decisions will mean that every two to four years the ground rules could change depending on election results. Internet engineers will find it difficult, if not impossible, to operate in a climate like that. Today’s action is raising many questions across the globe. Is the next step for the FCC to mandate that network owners must ask the government for permission before serving their customers by managing surges of information flow? As a result of today’s actions, Internet lawyers around the country are likely advising their clients to do just that. Will the FCC be able to handle that case load? Will other countries like China follow suit and be able to regulate American companies’ network management practices, with effects that could be felt here? How do we know where to draw the line given that the Internet is an interconnected global network of networks?

Given the Internet’s interconnectivity, are we now starting a global race to the lowest common denominator of maximum government regulation all in the name, ironically, of Internet freedom? Keep in mind that societies that regulate the Internet less tend to be more democratic, while regimes that regulate it more tend to be less democratic.

I am being asked these and many other questions, and I don’t have answers to them. No one does. But two things are for sure, this debate will continue, and the FCC has generated more questions than it has answered.

Read the whole thing, it’s great.