Comcast loves file sharing, honest!
Was it really just a few months ago that Comcast was surreptitiously interfering with BitTorrent uploads? How quickly things change. Late last month Comcast, the country's leading cable operator, announced that it was collaborating with BitTorrent Inc. on "protocol agnostic" ways to manage the network. In other words, no more techniques that eased congestion by cracking down on file-sharers. Today, it declared that it was developing a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" with Pando Networks, a tech company whose optimized file-sharing techniques reduce the amount of bandwidth used. Not surprisingly, the latest announcement was greeted with reserved enthusiasm from Net neutrality advocates, who aren't persuaded that Comcast's thinking has changed along with its tune.
Don't get me wrong -- I like the idea of a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" embraced by ISPs and p2p software companies. Anything that promotes transparency and efficiency by both of those entities would be very much in the public's interest. The notion evidently originated with the DCIA, a trade group trying to advance legitimate, commercial uses of file-sharing. In fact, that group said after Comcast's announcement that it would be working with members and other interested parties on an early draft of a P2P bill of rights at a conference it's holding in Hollywood May 5. Like Comcast, the DCIA favors a voluntary industry approach to managing the bandwidth demands of P2P, rather than government regulation. But I wonder whether Comcast's vision of "responsible" P2P might be closer to Hollywood's than the DCIA's.
Consider this comment by Comcast CTO Tony Werner from today's press release: "By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content." How might the bill of rights and responsibilities address the delivery of infringing content? Would one of the responsibilities of p2p networks be to identify and deter bootlegs? Would ISPs be free to interfere with p2p networks that didn't live up to their responsibilities?
Martin Lafferty, CEO of the DCIA, said it's important to get content companies more involved in the discussions over making P2P networks play nice with ISPs. "They would like to see all these efficiency enhancements applied to licensed content distribution. It’s always going to be the devil in the details," Lafferty said. If content owners argued that ISPs and P2P networks have a responsibility to guard against online piracy, "the pushback would be, the responsibility of the content owner would be to license their content on non-discriminatory terms and conditions" to P2P systems, Lafferty said. In other words, rather than just trying to shut down P2P distribution channels, the DCIA wants Hollywood to support authorized, licensed ways to distribute works through such systems.
A number of P2P companies are getting licenses from content owners to distribute works, although they've had limited success in Hollywood. These companies are particularly vulnerable to interference from ISPs. One of them, Vuze, has asked the FCC to craft clearer rules to protect against the kind of traffic meddling that Comcast secretly engaged in. The FCC is scheduled to hold its second hearing on the topic Thursday (necessitated in part by Comcast paying people to fill seats at the first hearing). In response to Comcast's announcement today, Gilles BianRosa, Vuze's CEO, put out this statement:
When we filed our petition for rulemaking with the FCC in November, 2007, we stated that both regulation and meaningful industry cooperation are necessary to protect consumer rights and foster innovation. We still believe that. Whether you believe that Comcast’s relationship with Pando arises out of genuine enlightenment or is just for publicity, it changes nothing in terms of our original petition. The FCC should adopt enforceable rules that protect all consumers against improper throttling tactics. Ultimately, only the rule of law will compel network operators to stay on the straight and narrow.
Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge was a bit more, umm, harsh, calling the Comcast-Pando agreement an attempt by the cable giant to "evade punishment" for its actions last year. She went on:
The fact that Comcast is trying to come up with a Bill of Rights for customers is ludicrous. This is the company that not only lied for a year about the workings of its Internet service, but also created such ill will among its cable subscribers that one elderly woman busted up a customer service office with a hammer because she and her husband were kept waiting for hours in the heat. Comcast should fix its internal problems with customers being kicked off the Internet service for no good reason, or are disappointed about having programming switched to expensive digital services before it starts pretending to solve the problems of the Internet that it helped to cause.
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Today, Comcast Corporation and Pando Networks announced that they will lead the industry to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users and ISPs. With an FCC hearing on Comcast's anti-peer-to-peer practices scheduled for later this week, this is hardly a surprise. Once again, Comcast makes another sweetheart-sounding deal, but at the wrong time, and with the wrong sweetheart.
It takes a special kind of arrogance for a company that sells Internet Access to team up with another company that sells Content Delivery and together decide what rights and responsibilities that the world's Internet users should have.
As in its earlier "deal" with BitTorrent, Inc., Comcast's announcement today doesn't change any of the facts it faces: in 2006, it assured Congress that network neutrality laws were not necessary, saying it would not "deny, delay, or degrade" its customers in order to deal with traffic congestion. Within a year it was caught secretly doing exactly that! Even after a long string of deceptive and deflective statements and tactics, Comcast continues to degrade their traffic today.
As was the case in the BitTorrent "deal," neither Comcast Corporation nor Pando Networks represents the millions of customers and other members of the Internet community who were impacted when Comcast secretly launched its anti-P2P attack.
Today's announcement comes less than 48 hours from the US Federal Communication Committee's public hearing at Stanford University. There, the FCC is scheduled to hear from two panels of experts followed by two hours of public testimony on the Comcast incident specifically as well as similar industry practices in general.
No doubt we will soon see Comcast and Pando Networking executives start to explain why today's "deal" signals that Network Neutrality regulation is not needed in the Broadband Marketplace.
Robert M. "Robb" Topolski
Posted by: funchords | April 15, 2008 at 08:28 PM
The notion of a "P2P bill of rights" is silly. People don't have a "right" to do P2P -- especially since just about all P2P consists of pirated movies and music. They can do P2P if their agreements with their ISPs say they can. And if they don't have an agreement that allows them to do P2P (probably because P2P costs ISPs a tremendous amount of money), it's not a big deal. Any content or service that can be delivered using P2P can also be delivered without it.
Posted by: Brett Glass | April 15, 2008 at 10:02 PM
Brett, you're making a great argument for applying common carriage requirements on ISPs. Businesses that want to distribute content via P2P shouldn't be cut off at the pass by ISPs, particularly when the dominant ISPs are their competitors, too (think Vuze and Comcast). If there were multiple broadband providers in a market, this wouldn't be such a big deal. But there aren't. I know you're coming at this from the perspective of an ISP trying to keep its service commitments to its customers, but that's all the more reason for ISPs and P2P companies to get together on a mutual-non-agression pact clarifying all parties' rights and responsibilities.
Posted by: Jon Healey | April 16, 2008 at 06:09 AM
Jon, only in the world of fantasy is Vuze a competitor to Comcast. Comcast may very well worry about Verizon, AT&T, DirecTV, Netflix, and Apple iTunes, but I'm pretty sure they're not losing sleep over the prospect of Vuze (or any other cost-shifter) suddenly emerging from the shadows and taking over the TV business.
I personally download movies over my Comcast connection from iTunes, DirecTV and Netflix with no problems at all, and also use Azureus for peer-to-peer downloads of Linux and that sort of thing without incident.
The Vuze FCC petition was a publicity stunt.
This Comcast BOR&R irritates me because they've stolen my idea, but other than that it's fine. We do need more respect for inventors and other creative people.
Posted by: Richard Bennett | April 16, 2008 at 10:57 AM
Richard, there are plenty of people in this country who believe newspaper reporters are in the fantasy business. :-)
Your point is well taken, though. Vuze is theoretically competing with Comcast's VOD service. I, too, doubt it's taking any revenue away from Comcast at this point. But I think we have to look at policies from the standpoint of the competition that could develop, not the status quo.
Posted by: Jon Healey | April 16, 2008 at 11:03 AM