Cable Control of Broadband Bad for the Net

imsmith writes "The ACLU announced the conclusions of a study done to determine the impact of the cable industry (as a broadband service provider) on the Internet. The announcement is here, and so is the study. No surprise, they conclude cable monopolies are bad for online freedom, consumer choice, and the Internet in general."

Comments

Sometimes the line has to be drawn

[ObviousGuy]

Between Liberty and Pragmatism.

Re:Sometimes the line has to be drawn

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think "Give me pragmatism or give me death!" has quite the same catchiness to it.

Re:Sometimes the line has to be drawn

[ObviousGuy]

The pragmatic quote would have been, "Give me pragmatism or let's talk about my situation here."

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[Anonymous Coward]

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Full Text Below

[Anonymous Coward]

ACLU Warns of Threat to Online Free Speech
From Cable Monopolies
Technical Report Shows How Cable Operators Can Interfere With Internet Access
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, July 10, 2002

WASHINGTON- The American Civil Liberties Union today called on the government to protect the Internet from the power of monopolistic cable providers and issued twin reports examining the technical and policy sides of the issue.

"Many people don't realize that if current policies continue, a handful of big monopolies will gain power over information flowing through the Internet," said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program. "Freedom of speech doesn't mean much if the forums where that speech takes place are not free."

The first report issued today is a 78-page technical study commissioned by the ACLU and prepared by a Maryland-based telecommunications engineering consulting firm, the Columbia Telecommunications Corporation (CTC). The second report is a brief ACLU policy analysis.

At issue is the ongoing conversion by consumers from a dial-up Internet (based on slow modem connections over phone lines) to far faster "broadband" connections (mostly using cable modems). With dial-up, Internet access is provided over a medium that provides open, equal access to all: the telephone system. But with the shift to cable, Internet access must be adapted to a medium that has been far more subject to centralized control. The danger, the ACLU said, is that the Internet will come under private control.

"The path out of this predicament is clear," said Jeff Chester, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy, which collaborated in preparation of the reports. "First, the FCC must act to preserve the Internet's open, common-carrier status in the cable context. Second, citizens and community groups must play an aggressive role in shaping the future of the high-speed Internet, especially ensuring that local networks offer a diversity of broadband content and services."

The report by CTC includes an in-depth examination of two cable systems (in Portland, OR and Tacoma, WA) and interviews with officials at two Internet Service Providers that have been excluded from many cable broadband systems.

Among the report's findings and recommendations:

- There are no insurmountable technical barriers to open access on most U.S. cable systems;

- Broadband cable companies should adopt a "public interest architecture" based on principles such as maximizing consumer choice and competition among ISPs;

- The dominant emerging technique for allowing multiple ISPs on cable Internet networks, which CTC calls "rebranding and resale of wholesale services," actually leaves the cable operator in control of the product. As a result, it creates only the illusion of real competition and consumer choice, and is not true open access.

"Our finding is that there are no technical reasons why the policies backed by the ACLU and other advocates cannot be adopted," said Dr. Andrew Afflerbach, Vice President of CTC and an author of the report.

The ACLU's policy analysis explains how the government is failing to extend to the broadband Internet crucial regulatory protections that help keep today's Internet free and open to all. Unless the government changes course, the ACLU warns, a handful of large corporations will have both the incentive and the ability to interfere with the free flow of information across the network.

"Protecting free expression on the Internet is a high priority for the ACLU," said Steinhardt. "In the same way that we have battled Internet censorship by the government, we will also fight to make sure that private corporations aren't allowed to get into a position where they can dictate what we read and say online."

The ACLU policy analysis and the CTC report are online at http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/broadband.html The Center for Digital Democracy is online at http://www.democraticmedia.org

yeah monopolies in the cable industry are bad!

[Arminius]

I still have nightmares about Time Warner calling to schedule my mandatory AOL install.

The ACLU: The Good Guys

[Anonymous Coward]

What would we do without the ACLU? If wasn't for their tenaciousness in confronting power interests, we would be the poorer for it. It's too bad the U.S. has pretty much already gone to hell. Here's hoping the FCC busts the crooks in corporate America and returns the Internet to the public domain.

economies of scale?

[roll_w.it]

Ok, maybe off topic - I don't know. I didn't read the article, because it's too long and I need to go to bed, but...

Is there not economic problems with opening the market to large numbers of broadband providers. Opening up the market may bring new providers in the short run, but will they be able to compete? I think it would be especially difficult in both the cable and DSL markets where the infrastructure is already in place.
Then there is wireless - when, or if, wireless broadband becomes competitive, it should open the market up.

zzzzzzzz

Re:economies of scale?

[lynx_user_abroad]

Wireless itself is not an answer.

Look, it doesn't matter whether the bits travel over the air or inside of wire, the problems is the same; the bits will be traveling over somebody else's air or wire. That somebody must either use their position as the carrier to control the communications to their own favor, or they will be economically run out of the market by some other somebody who does (and does it better). Your ability to 'win' this game (as a consumer) has nowhere to go but down.

There are at least three solutions to this problem:

Cultural Layer: Everyone agrees to cultural norms which say it's not fair to take advantage of your position to economically better yourself. People who violate these cultural standards are shunned out of the society.

Financial Layer: This would involve something like per-packet charging. Under this system, it doesn't matter what your packet is carrying, as long as you pay your bills.

Political Layer: Under this system, it becomes illegal to discriminate against a packet, passing one while blocking another. Think of this as "free speech for packets".

In the early days of the Internet, (prior to August '93) things were kept under control by cultural norms. Spamming violated these norms, and was kept under control because of it. We no longer have those cultural norms to keep people in line. It was killed by the spammers and their kin.

We don't yet have the micro-payment infrastructure which would be required to make a financial layer solution work. We're trying to cobble something like this together to keep the World Wide Web alive with things like click-through ads, but it's not working very well.

But throughout all of this, the phone system (remember that?) has kept on chugging because the network providers are prevented (by the equal access/common carrier laws) from blocking, limiting, or degrading the voice channels (narrow band). These laws are the foundation of a political layer solution which now offers the only hope of survival for the Internet as we know it.

If the FCC continues on it's brain-dead course of allowing network providers to choose which packets they'll pass and which ones they won't, the Internet will continue to implode. Those who stick around will find themselves back on CompuServe in the Bad Old Days.

Even after the Internet is run into the ground, FidoNet will survive.

If you support Free Speech, you'll want a Political Layer solution, or a Financial Layer solution.

If you don't trust Governments, you'll want a Financial Layer solution or a Cultural Layer solution.

If you don't trust haxors, you'll want to avoid Cultural Layer solutions and Political Layer solutions.

If you want a free (beer) Internet, you'll want a Cultural Layer solution or a Political Layer solution.

If you're a spammer, clearly you want a Political Layer solution, but you'll settle for a Cultural Layer solution as long as the rest of the people on the Internet will continue to let you get away with murder.

If you're anti-spam, you're either begging for a Financial Layer solution, or you're going to have to take some responsibility for shunning spammers (and their like) who view the Internet as a place where they can ignore social norms and enrich themselves.

It begs the old Nortel question, "What do you want the Internet to be?"

Re:economies of scale?

[ztc]

Your statement regarding the infrastructure already existing for the current cable and DSL providers points at one of the real problems -- telcos and cable cos are the only ones able to *easily* offer broadband because they own a monopoly on the right-of-way of lines in most regions in the US.

This is one of the reasons for the New York appeals court opening up the option of bringing antitrust lawsuits against the baby bells (in particular Verizon aka BellAtlantic) for having an anticompetitive advantage over other broadband providers.

I would most definitely have an unfair and consumer-harmful monopoly over the trucking/shipping industry if I owned all the roads (and the right-of-way to use said roads) in any significant region of the US.

Re:economies of scale?

[t0qer]

Here here man! Look at my comment above yours! I pretty much said the same thing (with a link back to another similiar comment I made)

--toq

Whatever the cable companies do...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't take away my god-given right to surf pr0n!!!

Re:Whatever the cable companies do...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, now, it's only you American bible thumpers who are paranoid about the evils of pornography.

Re:Whatever the cable companies do...

[Minkey Brines]

We Americans all really do have a right to surf pr0n! This country was made by adults, for adults! The quicker we forget this the quicker this becomes the United States of Disneyland.

So the ACLU agrees I should be able to run Servers

[infonography]

I been saying that for years. Nice to see someone else taking up the fight. However it's just a matter of time before AOL and M$N start shouldering in and this may give them some tiny bit of inscentive.

Time Warner not so bad?

[theCoder]

I'll admit, I had apprehensions when I first moved to central Florida (graduated, new job) and got the cable Internet through Road Runner installed. But so far, everything seems to be exceeding my expectations. My upload cap is something like 350kbps (about 45kBps) which is higher than I expected. They aren't blocking any ports (that I can tell, I block most ports on my own for security, but ssh and SMTP are still open) and the installer didn't really seem to care that I had two computers sitting out, one of which is a NAT (though if one of them wasn't Windows, I'm not sure what he would have done with his fancy activation CD).

But most interestingly, I've been seeing (endless) commercials about getting broadband with the choice of Road Runner, AOL, or Earthlink. I haven't investigated this further, since RR is working well for me (why break a working thing?), but this may be a first step to offering more of a choice to cable subscribers. In any case, even limited competition will help keep abusive policies down (assuming they don't collude) which is a good thing for me, the person who writes the check every month.

Maybe it's different in different parts of the country, but I can tell that both my experiences here in Florida and my parents' experiences with AT&T in northern Illinois have been positive. Maybe we've just been lucky, or have been blessed with a smart business person that realizes that keeping the customers happy is better for business than being abusive to them in a foolish attempt to recuce cost. But I'm betting on luck :)

Re:Time Warner not so bad?

[ikeleib]

The choice between AOL and RoadRunner is a farce. THey are the same company.

Re:Time Warner not so bad?

[ogre2112]

If you choose AOL, you are given a local-network style IP address.

I don't know what the term is offhand (Class C? Crap I dunno.. I'm a hardware tech).

But this address cannot be routed through a typical Linksys-type home branded router. This isn't the case if you ask them for RR instead of AOL Broadband.

Re:Time Warner not so bad?

[halfwatt]

I also live in Central Florida and have had Road Runner since it was first available. The first couple of months were rough while they were sorting things out but have been great since. I have four computers at home networked and the two times I've had a tech to the house to fix some wiring problems they said no problems with multiple computers. Linux is dirt easy to set up to use it and whenever I mention Linux they take it stride. When someone brings a computer to my house to work on it only takes a couple of minutes for me to get it online to download drivers or whatever I need.

Road Runner has been really good and I couldn't imagine being without it. Speed is good, service is good, and they are Linux friendly. Works for me.

Cable companies are trying to stake claim on 802.1

[t0qer]

I made this comment just today, the cable companies have a plan that I think could effectively drown out all individual owned 802.11 equipment.

According to this article published just today, the cable companies are investing in set top boxes with 802.11 built in. Their ability to mass
produce and distribute these machines is probably more than I could imagine. What I forsee is the equivelent of 802.11 spam from a private corporation that could ruin the fair and public use of the 2.4ghz spectrum.

Quote from the article
Many people don't realize that if current policies continue, a handful of big monopolies will gain power over information flowing through the Internet,

I think the ACLU should go investigate this because it is an infringement on my rights to use public spectrum. Public spectrum is like public land, I don't want to see it littered with pay per view movies, or QVC. I
don't wan't some corporation to run a big freeway through it, or pass through it all the time.

Cable companies already have broadband wires stretched everywhere and even before the article was written they had the monopoly on that. (A monopoly that grew because it went unchecked in it's early stage) It's a huge
multiheaded monster now that has it's hands in the pockets of politicians and legislators everywhere.

Well, that's enough ranting for now. I think the ACLU should nip the 802.11 boxes in the bud before it's too late.

What about the cable co's use of the spectrum?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have just as much right to use it as you do since it belongs to them (their shareholders) in the same way it belongs to you.

What about the customers who want to use the 802.11 spectrum. Do you have the right to tell them what 802.11 devices they can connect to it? Would they have the right to do the same to you?

Re:What about the cable co's use of the spectrum?

[t0qer]

Ok but when you're talking about shareholders, how many people are you referring too? 300-500 at the most? So you mean to tell me that those 300-500 people are entitled to more bandwidth than the other 4 billion people in our country?

Look at what commercial overfishing did to the average joe fisherman. It totally wiped fishing out to the point where you have to get on a boat and go 30 miles offshore to get good fishing. Why should I have to go 30 miles offshore to use my 802.11? Time warner isn't joe average, and their 300 shareholders are not joe average either. Both are wealthy, probably drive lexus's, and to them joe average is a back for doing meanial tasks.

It's just an issue of not letting any single entity gain complete control over what is supposed to be a public spectrum. If they want to do mass spamming on a network spectrum, let them pay the FCC the license rights to do it. Give them some other spectrum to use.