Comcast Proposes Self Regulation and P2P Bill of Rights

Torodung writes "In a recent move, Comcast has proposed a 'P2P Bill of Rights,' joining the ranks of every great monopoly when threatened by government regulation for alleged misbehavior. They have instead proposed comprehensive industry self-regulation and cooperation with major P2P software vendors as a lesser evil: 'Comcast is looking to further position itself as proactively — and responsibly — addressing the issue of managing peer-to-peer traffic that traverses its network, announcing Tuesday it will lead an industry-wide effort to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users and Internet service providers.'"

Meanwhile...

Wolves propose sheep "Bill of Rights".

Exactly.

Anyone care to explain to me why a completely informal, unenforced "Bill of Rights", between Comcast and whatever commercial entities exist in P2P, is any better for consumers than government intervention?

Or answer this: If Comcast really is willing to cooperate, why are they so terrified of government regulation? Why is a legally mandated "Bill of Rights" worse for them than what they are proposing?

The obvious answer is, if it was a law, they couldn't simply violate it.

Next question: Why is Comcast working with BitTorrent, the company? Why do they need to "work with" any P2P corporations, rather than simply dropping their packet shapers and letting P2P protocols work well? Smells to me like Microsoft cutting a deal with Novell -- Microsoft obviously can't cut a deal with Linux itself, as it's a completely distributed, fault-tolerant community, so there's no one CEO to buy -- so they make a deal with Novell, while leaving everyone else out in the cold. Smells to me like Comcast is trying to do the same with P2P -- they can't make a deal with every single filesharer, everywhere, and they won't accept simply falling back to net neutrality, which is what we really want -- so they make a deal with some company which does filesharing, leaving everyone else out in the cold.

Gotta love the smell of bullshit in the morning.

Re:Exactly.

The only way I can see "working with" P2P software developers would be:

CC: "Is there anything we could provide you that would allow you to reduce your impact on our network?"
P2P Author: "Multicast please."
CC: "We don't do multicast because no applications support it."
P2P Author: "If you build it, they will come."

Re:Exactly.

Or answer this: If Comcast really is willing to cooperate, why are they so terrified of government regulation? Why is a legally mandated "Bill of Rights" worse for them than what they are proposing?

The obvious answer is, if it was a law, they couldn't simply violate it.

In this particular instance I agree with you. But in the general case, laws tend to be immutable in the short-term (and sometimes the long-term - just look at the Blue Laws [wikipedia.org] still in many States' books), whereas self-regulation can quickly be overhauled if it becomes clear that something isn't working. On a more ideological level, laws are rules made by a committee (who often knows little about the industry), self-regulation is rules made by market forces. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

The baffling thing to me about this whole thing is that Comcast could solve it really easily - just stop advertising "unlimited" bandwidth and publish the monthly transfer quotas. If they want they can even charge more for higher quotas. Then customers can make an informed decision how much they're willing to pay and self-police their own downloading. Instead for some bizarre reason Comcast (and most ISPs) seem to think the word "unlimited" is some holy marketing term which Shall Not Be Touched, and will go to enormous technically challenging and legally dubious methods to protect it.

What worries me more

What worries me even more there, is that it seems to be rather called a "Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" of users. Seems to me more like they want to formalize the "thou shalt not actually use all the bandwidth we sold you, and thou art an evil spawn of Satan and, yeah, verily, a ruthless predator upon thy neighbours, if you actually use more than 1/100 of all that unlimited, unmettered usage we advertised" bullshit that disgusts me of ISPs already.

Now, I'm not a Comcast subscriber, and I'm not even a heavy user. Other than Slashdot and the like, and the mandatory gazillion banners on the average web page elsewhere, my biggest downloads are the occasional MMO patches. They're not that big, so actually I'd rather stop subsidizing the heavy downloaders.

But if I'm to look at it impartially, and through the glasses of whatever ethics my education stuck into my head, it smells like pure BS.

It's _not_ some shiny-hippy... err... happy communal sharing scheme. If it were, I could maybe see the point of trying to tar and feather anyone who's used more than his fair share. But that's not it. It's one company selling a service to a person. It's their job to see that they can actually provide the service they charge for.

To illustrate the fundamental difference:

- if me and the neighbours were to have a potluck dinner, then it's ok to be annoyed if someone eats ten times more than they brought to the table.

But if we go to an "all you can eat" restaurant, then it's the restaurant owner's problem to make sure he can provide what he advertised. If a particularly high-metabolism co-worker finishes half the buffet by himself, tough luck, you may even have my compassion, but it's _not_ ok to paint him as some ruthless predator upon the other patrons and kick him out. If other patrons end up hungry, it's not because of that guy, it's simply because the restaurant didn't provide enough food for the bargain they offered.

- if me and the co-workers pool out petty change and buy a Wii and a TV at the office, then it's a communal sharing thing. It's not nice to be the guy who hogs it full time. The others should get a chance at it too.

But if we go to some (hypothetical) arcade that advertises that you can play all day for the flat fee of a ticket, then that's it. It's their job to see that they have enough machines and space for that kind of offer. If I find an old Penetrator machine and hog it for the next 16 hours for nostalgia sake, well, that's what was advertised there. I'm just using what I paid for.

Etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they _should_ provide free unlimited anything whatsoever. It's up to them to decide whether they can afford to do that or not. But if they decided to advertise it that way, then it's their problem to have enough of it.

Even briefer, I don't feel any _responsibility_ (since we're talking a "bill of responsibilities") to _not_ use a resource that was sold to me as an unlimited and unmetered resource. The users there paid for a service. They're not pooling their funds to create some communal internet scheme (and indeed ISPs have fought tooth and nail against municipal ISP ideas), they have paid fair and square for a service, and have _no_ duty or responsibility to leave enough bandwidth for the others. The contract isn't with any other users, it's with the ISP.

I honestly don't see why the ISPs are any different from any other service provider. If I buy a monthly ticket for the bus, then everywhere in the world I'd feel free to use it as much and as often as I need to. If I have to make 20 trips in a day, heck, that's exactly what such tickets are for. If the transport company doesn't have enough busses to serve everyone they sold tickets to, then it would be seen as their shortcoming. Not as, basically, "some evil, unscrupulous users use more than their fair share of bus trips, and we must tar and feather them." They don't get to draw up bills of customers' responsibilities, to weasel out of providing the

BobB-nw

Now why would anyone be concerned about ISPs meddling with their traffic? University of Washington researchers are set to release a paper today that says one percent of the Web pages being delivered on the Internet are being changed along the way... http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/041608-isps-meddled-with-their-customers.html [networkworld.com]

Re:BobB-nw

Really? I've never had a problem with pages being changed along the way, even though I think Comcast IS GREAT. IT'S COMCASTIC(TM)!

P2P bill of rights?

Yeah, right. The ISPs have gotten so far into bed with the RIAA that the only thing listed in the "P2P Bill of Rights" will be the right to remain silent.

Keep up the pressure!

Comcast is beginning to feel the pressure, they are stalling for time now with faux "rights bills". Now is the time to push EVEN HARDER for full Net Neutrality legislation. We have them on the ropes, don't let up now!

Catch

And here's the catch:

cooperation with major P2P software vendors

Which still means that if the P2P "software vendors" (who are these?) pays them, they'll allow it. Great neutrality.

Why am I not surprised...

They suggest SELF-regulation...

I wonder how long this regulation will actually last before it goes back to the status quo.

Re:Why am I not surprised...

Exactly. The FCC and Congress are looking into the matter specifically because the industry has shown that it's not capable of "self regulation," which is what they supposedly have been doing all along.

They could do that, sure...

or, how about instead they just provide the service people are, um, you know paying for?

Just move my packets around without f'ing with them, please and thank you.

responsibility

BitTorrent was originally designed to be VERY tolerant of ISP's needs. Prior to the obfuscated protocol expansion, the first thing sent by each connection, on both sides, was "BitTorrent protocol", easy for a protocol analyzer to discover and assign a lower bandwidth tier.

So what did ISPs do? They throttled it to zero, rather than to an intermediate level we all could live with.

The end result: Encrypted BitTorrent, and ISPs using drastic methods like spoofing reset packets.

NATCH!!! I don't like where this is going....

Where is the SMTP bill of rights and responsibilities?

Or how about a bill of rights and responsibilities for ISO downloading? HTML surfing?

When only one protocol/application is named, we are in for a long line of regulations (self imposed by ISPs or not) regarding every type of use for our Internet connections.

Car analogy? The speed limit is 75 if there is only one passenger, but 55 if there are three or more. 35mph if you have a child under the age of 12 in the vehicle. That is unless they are blood relatives, then the speed limit is 65 regardless of passenger count.

Rights and responsibilities have already been defined by the contract you sign with the ISP in the first place. They have gone to great effort to tell you what you can't do in that contract, and vaguely explained for what reasons your account might be canceled.

This new effort is an attempt to go back on that agreement, to modify it without pissing end user's off, and to get away with throttling in such a way as there is NO government oversight nor any other kind of oversight.

Sorry, sounds like I'm being bitchy, but if you don't push back on each little thing, it will be 'give an inch, they take a mile' and we'll end up with an Internet connection that is little more use than a dial up connection, and the price will continue to rise while service degrades.

No, I'm not wearing a tin-foil hat, I just see the writing on the wall here.

Why Subscribe?

I'll ask the obvious question here... Why subscribe to these providers that limit or restrict your traffic?

You may respond that, they are your only choice. Well unless you choose to go without or you choose to help lobby for better legislation then you're stuck.

Also are you willing to pay more for your internet? I choose to go with a DSL provider who is 1/3 the speed of Comcast and I pay a little more every month to be with them. Why? They don't limit my traffic and they let me have a static IP. To me it's worth it.

Just my two cents. I see a lot of people complaining but most don't want to do more then just that. Vote with your dollar! Donate to lobbies that are fighting for your cause. Otherwise stop complaining.

Bill of what?

I expect that the definition of "Rights" in "P2P Bill of Rights" will be the same as the one in "Digital Rights Management". There will be a whole lot you can't do, and very little that you can do, which you already had before the bill.

P2P Bill of Restrictions?

Bill of Rights

How about this?

1) Comcast's customers shall fulfill their obligations (i.e. pay their bill).
2) Comcast shall fulfill their obligations (i.e. deliver any network traffic without prejudice).

Re:Finally!

Anything they propose will not be binding and will not have the force of law. Any policy statements or forms of "self-regulation" are at the whim of those who want to make [more] money and so changes of policy will happen at any time for any reason without notice. Users will remain as the last people to know when something bad is going on.

It is clear that companies like Virgin and Comcast and the rest need the force of law and the occasional lawsuit in order to keep them in line. Otherwise they will stray outside their areas hunting for more money. The force of law isn't enough by itself... they have to be spanked to keep them in line. It's rather like raising children. Constantly exploring and pushing their limits and no matter how often you cite the rules to them, they will break the rules and require punishment. When a child exclaims, "I don't need punishment I'll be good!" I doubt anyone actually believes that child. So why should we believe Comcast?

Re:Finally!

We shouldn't. Service providers should be seperated from line ownership, and lines should be owned by the state or local municipalities. What really needs to be done is for Comcast to rot in hell though.

Re:Government Monopoly == Bad solution

I'd rather trust a goverments incompentence than a company's greed. Thank god I live in a country where they don't charge tolls.

Re:Finally!

I would be pretty disturbed if my kid told me that he'd be working on a "Bill of Rights" for me.

Re:Finally!

While I agree that they're a bunch of lying fucks who shouldn't be trusted further than they can collectively be thrown, I'm not sure that

Anything they propose will not be binding and will not have the force of law.

is necessarily the case. If they included their "Bill of Rights" as part of the contract of service, then it would be enforceable through contract law, just like any other part of their agreement is.

(I'm a bit rusty on the details, but I've been advised at various times by lawyers that there are situations where a company can be held via contract law to statements made outside the contract itself, if they basically define the relationship between the company and the customer. I doubt Comcast's lawyers are stupid enough to walk into this trap unknowingly, but you never know.)

Although I very much doubt that Comcast is acting in anything approaching good faith here, it's not impossible for them to make the Bill of Rights binding, if they were sufficiently motivated.

What needs to happen is that we, as users, need to make sure that Congress and various state legislatures aren't distracted by any sort of non-binding agreement on Comcast's part. If they want to avoid burdensome regulation, they can come up with a 'Bill of Rights' and then hold themselves to it contractually. But if they don't do that, or if they put it in their contract but then leave in a way of unilaterally amending the contract, it's not worth two squirts of piss.

Re:Finally!

Anything they propose will not be binding and will not have the force of law.

Well,never forget that under the law, two plus two can equal five, for sufficiently large values of two or sufficiently small values of five.

Suppose you are an ISP that advertises its adherence to the P2P Bill of Rights. You entice customers to sign up under a TOS that includes the standard statement saying you can change TOS at any time. Then you decide to take away some of the rights listed in the P2P Bill of Rights, pointing to your TOS statement as proof you are entitled.

I'm not sure that works. A "right" after all is just the flip side of a duty. A right held by an individual consists of a set of duties borne by certain others with respect to him. You can't just unilaterally declare one of your duties towards somebody void. You can't change the TOS in a way that absolves you of the duty of providing service, but does not absolve the customer of the duty of paying you. That's unconscionable.

So, you'd have to say in your TOS that you have the right to declare the specific rights in the Bill of Rights to be void. Or you'd have to say in the Bill of Right that "rights" doesn't mean something the service providers are obligated to abide by. Otherwise, you've just enticed customers to sign on with you by deception.

I am not a lawyer, but surely this is at least one of those things lawyers are always telling you not to do, because even if you are certain to win if it ever comes to court you could not possibly hope to gain enough benefit to pay for the costs of fighting and winning.

Finally?

Finally?

I think you misunderstand.

Rights are for the ISPs.
Responsibilities are for the users.