It’s a well known fact that some Internet users share files illegally. But does that justify ISPs around the world bringing in anti-piracy measures intended to slow or even block traffic?
One of the ways file-sharers swap music and movies online is by using torrent sites utilising the BitTorrent protocol. Last year Comcast decided to purposely mess with the flow of BitTorrent traffic.
This isn’t an isolated case, with other companies in the US trying the same, and the government in the UK even considering forcing ISPs to ban file sharers completely.
Here, Alex Curtis of Public Knowledge discusses the legality of the move, and tells how NBC Universal have backed the interference as justified.
NBC-Universal’s 800lbs Gorilla
NBC-Universal, in a
recent filing
with the FCC, has argued that Comcast’s interference with
BitTorrent is
justified. But contrary to its argument, the “800 pound
gorilla” in the
room is not “the
tidal wave of unlawful conduct by BitTorrent users[.]”
The 800 pound gorilla is whether or not Comcast’s actual
behavior was
“reasonable.”
The outcry by Comcast customers and the public interest
community should provide a strong hint that it was not.
Comcast’s
bait-and-switch tactic of secretly changing the service it provides its
customers is more important here than the theory of network management.
The focus of this debate should be what Comcast actually did and said.
When it’s time to debate the issue of network
management on a more
abstract level, we should be asking whether it is even reasonable to
engage in blocking behaviors that are bound to be ineffective.
A Small Minority Of Customers
The
small minority of customers who engage in the majority of illegal
file-sharing see network management and protocol blocking as a speed
bump, not an insurmountable obstacle.
Those who will be stymied by the
kind of network interference that Comcast promotes are groups like
Norwegian Broadcasting, who will find their
attempts to reduce the costs of digital distribution
frustrated by ISPs who have decided that BitTorrent technology is
illegitimate.
The problem of unlawful filesharing is not a technological
one, but
an economic one. The kinds of profits that some content companies
enjoyed in an age of scarcity are simply no longer going to be
available in an abundance economy where the marginal cost of creating a
copy of a digital file is zero.
Those things that remain scare (like
convenience, services, ease, and quality) are going to have to become
the means by which content creators recoup their investments.
A Need For Network Management?
The
perceived vital need for “network management” is
another instance of
economic perversity. ISPs are in the odd position of wanting their
customers to consume less of their product: imagine if Quaker
Oats’
biggest concern was getting people to eat less oatmeal.
Looking for a
“magic bullet” technology to solve the woes that
skewed economics have
caused both the ISPs and the content companies is at best a distraction
and at worse harmful.
The Comcast debate can’t lose sight of what Comcast
actually did.
But even the more general debate about the different methods of and
justifications for network interference and protocol blocking should be
informed by the fact that it’s basic economics and old
business models
that are causing the content companies and ISPs woe, not innovative,
democratizing, cost-reducing technologies like BitTorrent.
NBC-Universal should stick to making Gorilla
movies, and hope that when it begins to distribute its flicks
using
the same technology it’s fighting against at the
FCC, that we won this debate.
Alex Curtis is an author at Public Knowledge discussing public rights in the emerging digital culture. Post has Some Rights Reserved.
