Jeff Chester has very disturbing piece in the Nation about the future of the internet:
The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.
Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets–corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers–would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.
***Why are the Bells and cable companies aggressively advancing such plans? With the arrival of the long-awaited “convergence” of communications, our media system is undergoing a major transformation. Telephone and cable giants envision a potential lucrative “triple play,” as they impose near-monopoly control over the residential broadband services that send video, voice and data communications flowing into our televisions, home computers, cell phones and iPods. All of these many billions of bits will be delivered over the telephone and cable lines.
***These “deep packet inspection” technologies are partly designed to make sure that the Internet pipeline doesn’t become so congested it chokes off the delivery of timely communications. Such products have already been sold to universities and large businesses that want to more economically manage their Internet services. They are also being used to limit some peer-to-peer downloading, especially for music.
But these tools are also being promoted as ways that companies, such as Comcast and Bell South, can simply grab greater control over the Internet. For example, in a series of recent white papers, Internet technology giant Cisco urges these companies to “meter individual subscriber usage by application,” as individuals’ online travels are “tracked” and “integrated with billing systems.” Such tracking and billing is made possible because they will know “the identity and profile of the individual subscriber,” “what the subscriber is doing” and “where the subscriber resides.”
Read the whole disturbing piece, and then go visit some of the websites listed in the article for more information.
Marcus Wellby
This is ALL about shutting the “little” people out of public discourse and hobbling small businesses who have the “nerve” to compete on even a marginal level.
People of ALL stripes and political leanings should rise up as one against this.
DougJ
I hope this is the kind of issue that unites the blogosphere.
John Cole
Just so you know, DougJ- I remember watching Manimal as a kid on NBC. I remember him morphing into the animal and thinking it was super cool.
semm
I really don’t think this is very feasible. The way the Internet Protocal works would make it nearly impossible to do this kind of filtering. You can’t just grab a packet of data and say ‘oh this is a bit of an mp3 being transfered via a P2P network.’
Unless these companies are able to both rewrite the way the internet works and have control of your personal computer, I am having a hard time imagining how this would work from a technical point of view.
CaseyL
semm, I know nothing of the technology involved here, but despotic regimes manage to control and censor the ‘Net quite handily. I have to wonder if our corporate overlords are working on getting a look at the code China et al. use to do that, with an eye towards adapting it for their own purposes.
Lines
semm: I would imagine that its all done via the links themselves, not the actual data. Knowing destination and source request would be enough to track most applications, I would think.
Marcus Wellby
Would be interesting to see what would happen on the right side of the blogosphere* if the Bush admin came out in favor of this plan. hehe – would be hard to sleep for a few days with the sound of exploding heads as self-interest clashed with pro-Bush talking points.
Not including our host, who would stand by his principles (though would still vote GOP because of a tshirt Cindy Sheehan once wore to a vegan supper) :)
Nutcase
IP traffic doesn’t have to be IP end-to-end. A lot of long-haul IP traffic runs on ATM networks, which do permit a lot of control. And later IP versions may be developed to permit a greater degree of network control.
The larger thing is, we have this concept called “free enterprise”. Maybe you’ve heard of it. The telecom companies built out these networks at great expense, and consider them to be corporate assets – that is, profit centers. I’m sure The Nation would probably like for the government to nationalize the networks and impose I-net socialism, but that just ain’t gonna happen.
I don’t personally care for the direction this seems to be headed myself, but once again – that doesn’t really matter. You get your bits-n-bytes off the the other guys network, you pay the shipping charge. Otherwise – no bits-n-bytes.
CaseyL
Nope.
The telecom companies didn’t build this network: the government did. DARPA, remember?
The telecom companies didn’t write the protocols; the NSF wrote the first one, and international standard setting organizations wrote the rest.
The telecom companies didn’t write the programming language HTML and HTTP: Tim Berners-Lee did.
The telecom copmanies didn’t write the first search engine program; National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) did.
The telecom companies piggybacked onto all that. They didn’t finance, invent, pay for, or in any way enable the creation of the Internet, or its infrastructure.
The Internet was created mostly by government agencies, public interest organizations, and idealistic geeks. And it was created for the specific purpose of being an uncensored, free, wide-open forum for communication and information swapping.
The telecom companied didn’t enable the Internet any more than they invented the airwaves that carry signals.
Nutcase
False.
But thanks for playing.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Oh you both are wrong.
Everyone knows it was Al Gore who invented the internet!
The Disenfranchised Voter
And before someone says something.
Yes, I know that Gore didn’t really say that. He said he started the initiative to fund the creation of the internet. And he did.
Rob
Nutcase – what are you saying? Are you refering to Whitacre:
If google (or I) have a T1 they have paid for a 1.5 Mbit connection to the backbone, when a user connects and downloads they have already paid for that connection.
Who’s getting what for free?
Rob
I don’t know what they are talking about with “deep packet inspection” as far as I know IP packets are just data with a header (from, to, size, identifier(to put them back together), and a checksum)
So to do what they say, they must look at the data, and decide that it looks like an mp3 file, or an email message, because email messages have certain characteristics.
But if that really happened, I think someone would come up with an easy to use plug-in that encrypted everything that you send.
The Other Steve
Uhh, the point was you can’t tell what the content is on the wire. Well, unless your monitoring every packet not just for routing, but for content. (generally a packet has some sort of header identifying what it is internal to the app) That fundamentally breaks the OCI model of operation that we’ve all come to rely upon.
And then as consumers, we’ll just start encrypting our packets. What are you going to do then?
This is technically unfeasible, as well as stupid from a consumer perspective.
WOW! Just WOW!
Suddenly if consumers demand that providers do what we want to do and pay for, we’re socialists. Folks, this is the new Statist economic system the Republicans are giving us. As people we must be subservient to the whims of the corporations. If not, Nutcase is going to get government rules to enforce this.
Someone needs to read Adam Smith again. The consumer is part of the Invisible Hand of the market.
Nutcase
“Are you refering to Whitacre…”
I hadn’t seen that, but that’s certainly the position.
The largest long-haul network operator in the US is the former MCI – that’s why WorldCom wanted it in the firt place, and why it still has value. The Bells offer you a high-bit-rate connection to their network, for which you pay. MCI charges other networks (like the Bells) for moving traffic. So your T1 that you paid for isn’t end-to-end.
AS far as preferential treatment of some content over others – they can do that.
Nutcase
“Suddenly if consumers demand that providers do what we want to do and pay for, we’re socialists.”
Wow. Just wow.
Providers don’t have to do what you want [them] to do. That’s a popular misconception.
You pay for a certain level of network access, but rates (and access levels) are subject to change (especially if you get service from a cable operator rather than a telco.)
If you don’t like the rate schedule, you can:
1) Change providers;
2) Use the free PCs at the library;
3) Not use the net.
Dougie
I find it interesting that the dude mentioned Vonage in his little rant. I bet they are particularly pissed off about that new service. These massive company’s natural reaction is to shut down or restrict Vonage or anyone else who competes with them.
Nutcase
“These massive company’s natural reaction is to shut down or restrict Vonage or anyone else who competes with them.”
No shit?
Pretend for a moment you’re a theiving capitalist telco exec.
“Let’s see… I’m in the telecom business to make money. Here’s this guy who’s taking my customers, and using my network to do it. So I’m going to, like, enable him?
Riiiiiight. Know what? Maybe Vonage should build their own freakin’ network.”
kl
Just imagine if you were charged by the word to post comments here. pp wouldn’t have anything to leave his grandkids.
emily
Perhaps the network should be a public utility, like a highway. If the interstate system were privately owned it would be analagous for the owning company to reserve certain lanes or faster routes for a fee. You could still choose between UPS and FedEx, but you’d know that one or the other could have bought prefered status (and shorter delivery times).
The cable and such was all laid out with private investment (I think), so if these companies can squeeze a new stream of revenue out, that’s their right.
Perry Como
Perhaps the telco companies can strike a deal with the government. The telcos get to run the networks anyway they see fit, and the government gets unfettered access to the information that flows over the networks. Kind of a you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
Perry Como
And besides, it not like private companies would use government regulations to help prop up their business. Free market, bitches.
ImJohnGalt
This is already happening here in Canada. Rogers cable (one of the larger cable providers) employs something called “Traffic shaping” to detect bittorrent activity, and then actively throttles down the bandwidth on these connections.
Here’s a brief interview with an RCN executive on what they’re doing. My understanding is that there are certain things that are also identifiable (such as you clicking on a link that ends in .torrent) that would allow them to prohibit/throttle your bandwidth as well.
Personally, I wouldn’t care too much if they charged extra for allowing bittorrent on my line, as long as they ensured me lots of sweet, sweet bandwidth. As long as they don’t start saying “this torrent is ok, this torrent is not”.
Steve
What it is, is a common carrier. They can be private and operate for profit, but they have to provide their services fairly. They can’t privilege one use over another just to screw their competitors.
The way these folks get an exemption from the antitrust laws is by promising to treat all traffic equally. That same promise is the reason they were given eminent domain power to build their networks in the first place. Common carriers receive many other benefits under the law as well.
We don’t need to pretend like the only two choices are nationalizing the industry or letting them do whatever the heck they please. The common carrier classification is an in-between concept that has existed for centuries and clearly applies to telecom companies. Not that it can’t be changed in a heartbeat if Congress decides to pass these laws.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Awwwwww, but extremism can be so much fun!
ImJohnGalt
It’ll be interesting to see how EV-DO or 811.n technology will allow upstart companies to leapfrog wireline companies. If we can see 100mb over wireless, the point at which consumer video can be transmitted successfully, I think the “last-mile” companies will lose a lot of their incumbent status.
It’ll be interesting times, to say the least.
Steve
FYI, this post seems to have been mistakenly tagged as “site maintenance.”
Rob
Here is a good article, but it is long.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8785?wlg=yes
he says the routers diferenciate with port number (and others), but if they did, I’m sure BitTorrent would stop using port 6881, do something like FTP and negotiate the port number using udp. At that point it would be a random port number. I think people would come up with ways around it.
The Other Steve
They do if they want my money. That’s what a fucking Free Market is. You don’t like it then move.
You’re suffering from pre-1776 thinking.
The Disenfranchised Voter
That was a really good diary by Feingold.
I’m agnostic but I’m almost about to pray that Feingold wins the Dem. nomination.
Nutcase
You see that now, and it doesn’t have to be under private ownership – think about toll roads with different prices for high-vs-low demand periods, and HOV lanes.
Richard Bennett
The Nation’s article is hysterical and misleading. People want to do stuff over the Internet that requires packets to be classified and treated according to application requirements. Web browsing has lower service requirements than video streaming, and that has lower requirements than voice. IP wasn’t engineered for mixed traffic streams of this sort, hence deep packet inspection is necessary.
If you want an Internet that handles voice and video as well as it handles browsing today, it’s going to cost more money to build. We call this capitalism, and outside of such morbid dens of socialism as The Nation it’s not considered a bad thing.
Here’s a clue: any time you find an article on the future of the Internet that cites Larry Lessig, disregard it.
Perry Como
Shorter Bennett: If it wasn’t for the free market, we wouldn’t have the Internets.
Nutcase
The telcos are certainly common carriers. I’m not so sure about cable companies like, say, Comcast. They’ve decided what they were – or weren’t – going to carry from the outset when all they carried was TV, downstream. Broadband and phone service are recent add-ons for them.
TM Lutas
Tier 1 providers (like the Bells) peer for free because they give and take a roughly equivalent amount of traffic back and forth between them. If a provider were to try to actually shape traffic to a radical extent, the entire net would notice the latency/lag and start changing their routing tables so that they avoid that carrier. The carrier’s traffic balance would go away and they would have to start paying peerage fees which can be considerable. If they act even more obnoxiously, peering agreements are voluntary. There’s nothing stopping AT&T from not peering with Comcast. They can sever links but their customers would howl. If Comcast were behaving badly enough, the customers would be howling for a severing of links. This is called an Internet Death Penalty.
Assessing an IDP is not lightly done but it has been done and would be done in the case of most of the extreme scenarios outlined above. You can’t be a complete jerk or you get cut off the Internet. That’s the beauty of the system and it causes most people not to be complete jerks.
Now the providers are going to try to make as much money as they can. The subscribers are going to try to pay as little as possible. That’s just capitalism and sometimes it is not a pretty picture when contracts are being negotiated.
The real solution is to demand, and pay for, service level agreements. If you want $15 high speed bandwidth, be prepared for traffic shaping in your future. If you’re willing to pay for more, you’ll get it. I expect that QoS will allow for a whole slew of new SLA arrangements including no traffic shaping at all down to we’ll block everything but these 5 ports and if you go off our network, you’ll drop in speed/latency in this way.
There’s our real future, QoS, varied pricing, varied service. It’s not that bad a deal, actually, but the devil’s in the details.
The Other Steve
Agreed. Not sure on nomination, but I definately liked that pre-1776 argument.
The Other Steve
If you have an international calling card, you’re using the internet for voice.
For video, you’re going to need a lot more bandwidth. It’s not a question of prioritizing, it’s just pure pipe. Is that going to cost more money? Yes, definately. Are consumers going to pay for that? That depends on if they want video or not.
I didn’t read the article and don’t much like Lessig. But I didn’t care for Nutcase’s statist argument that consumers should operate at the will of companies. If he’d had his way we’d all be suffering from DviX ,instead of the wide open DVD marketplace we have today.
Nutcase
Yep.
The Other Steve
Amen!
Nutcase
Statist? ME??? Surely you jest!
“Statist” would have been an argument for government operation of a national network of some sort – not what I was talking about at all.
My argument was corporatist – “Here’s what we have on the menu. See something you want? Fine – here’s what it costs. You don’t? OK – try that other guy’s menu.”
DougJ
You think this wouldn’t be happening under Clinton? Come on, you Bush-bashing Kossack nimrods. This whole thing sounds a lot like Whitewater to me.
kl
Ha ha! Whitewater!
The Disenfranchised Voter
Hey corporatist, that would be like corporatism, right?
You know, the economic philosophy practiced by fascists like Mussonlini…
The Disenfranchised Voter
*Mussolini
DougJ
Will we have to pay surcharge for all the money the NSA will have to spend monitoring everything that goes out over broadband? That could potentially be very expensive.
Nutcase
How ORIGINAL!!
(Hitler’s going to get dragged out next. You can bet on it.)
The Disenfranchised Voter
Are you disputing my assertion Mussulini practiced corporatism?
If so I’d gladly show you that he did.
You’re the one who called yourself a corporatist, not I. Maybe you just chose the wrong term?
The Other Steve
Definately statist. You whined about customers griping about a product and service… the next argument you’ll make is the Government ought to do something about it.
You clearly don’t like Free Markets, and suffer from pre-1776 thinking, where the colonists were subservient to the corporate entities of the British empire.
Look it up, and understand better what led to the revolutionary war. It had a lot to do with what Adam Smith wrote.
J-Smith
Reading comprehension: nil.
Customers can gripe all they want. My position was that the telecoms can run THEIR networks any way THEY want, and the government should definitely NOT do something about it.
“Can you hear me yet?”
Where did this meme come from? I’ve been seeing it all over the left side of the ‘net lately.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Feingold started the catch phrase, J-Smith.
And it is quite a good reply to the “Pre 9/11 mindset” talking point used by the Republicans.
J-Smith
Russ Feingold? Really? Hang on a sec… OK – found it. (Kos, right?)
Pre-9/11 mindset… pre-1776 mentality… nothing like a good catchphrase that sums up your opponent in three words or less!
I’ll offer one myself: “post-1974 mentality”. In which Congress proposes AND disposes, and the president is there just because somebody has to sign bills into law.
We had that from 1974 until about halfway through Mr. Bush’s first term.
(And before you say I’m a Bush supporter… I’m not, any more. I voted for Bush in 2000, and Kerry in 2004. First time I voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter.)
The Disenfranchised Voter
Enh, what can I say J-Smith? I’m a firm believer in fighting fire with fire. I think using the Republicans own tricks right back at them is the way to go…
Well except for that stealing elections trick they pulled in 2000.
:)
J-Smith
Know what, Dis’? I’m going to agree with you there, absolutely. I’d think a lot more of the Democrats if they took the fight TO the Republicans and put THEM on the defensive for a change. That would be nothing but good for our politics generally.