BitTorrent's Bram Cohen against Network Neutrality

wigwamus writes "BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen warns on potential 'absurdity' of Network Neutrality laws and concedes that his hook-up with Cachelogic is creating a system that might contravene Network Neutrality. He suggests there'd be no difference between big media footing the bill for their own upload costs of their offerings and subsidizing the consumer's download costs of the same."

Comments

This is what neutrality is really about

[saterdaies]

"when you're talking about large file transfers going to very large numbers of people there frequently are significant costs involved"

While it would be terrible for an ISP to block Google or Amazon, it probably won't happen because neither service puts a strain on their resources. But there are internet uses which do put a strain on an ISPs resources. For example, while this isn't true today, it is quite possible that we will download DVDs which, even compressed using XVID or something, will still be a couple gigs a piece (maybe as low as 1GB). Imagine a Netflix/Napster-like subscription service for video downloads!

Currently, ISPs oversell their capacity because most of the time, we use very little of it. Like while I'm writing this comment, I'm using 0kbps and when I submit it, my connection will burst up to give me a fast experience. But if I was using a lot of this connection a lot of the time, my ISP would have a problem - and I don't think it's too hard for us to imagine IPTV or the like for the future which would present such a problem.

Personally, I would prefer usage charges (charges per GB levied against the user) than charges to the content provider. I'd rather pay for it myself than just get the content that a company will pay for, but it seems like Bram has realized that, with high-bandwidth services becoming more and more prevalent, there will be a point at which ISPs need to do something about that extra used capacity - whether that means charging the users sucking all that capacity or charging the content providers enabling the users to suck all that capacity.

Re:This is what neutrality is really about

[Qzukk]

they can afford a 10% drop in their profits

Great. So google shells out 10% of their profits to help comcast. Then they shell out 10% of their profits to help ATT. Then they shell out 10% of their profits to help AOL... When does it stop?

When did capitalism become so communist? If comcast needs more money then it should charge its customers more, not demand companies who have no connection to comcast's network at all to pay them more money.

As much as like Bitorent

[bigsexyjoe]

I know there are more important issues at stake than fast music downloads.

The internet has proven to be wonderful tool for people to communicate. TV and radio were supposed to fulfill these promises but big business has subverted them.

We have seen that bloggers can actually force big media to carrry there stories, that the internet is an invaluable research tool, and that it gives voice to the voiceless, from Iranian dissedients to disgruntled corporate employees.

The free music is a nice side beneift, but let's not lose track of our priorities.

I believe Bram Cohen is just very naive

[LinuxDon]

I read TFA, and I find it to be very naive.

If there would be no Network Neutrality anymore, the following could (and probably will) happen:
- Netcache has to pay to the user's provider as well as for it's own upload costs it already has.
- The user still pays the same amount of money he does now.
- There is no incentive anymore to upgrade those main pipes, the company's that want good network performance to the end-user will just have to pay up extra.
- PROFIT (For big providers like AOL).

In the end, there will be no (speed) advantage to anyone. Everything will just get more expensive! This is what history should have taught us by now.
Network neutrality should be guarded!

I think Bram Cohen is just making a BIG mistake here! (Or he is simple misquoted)

Caching violates net neutrality?

[kilonad]

If the services that Cachelogic offers violate net neutrality at some level, then the internet hasn't had net neutrality since the mid 1990s. Akamai and Squid Proxy do very similar things with data (replicating it in multiple locations for faster downloads). Cachelogic and Akamai still have to pay the backbone providers, just like everybody else. What violates neutrality is the backbone providers setting aside a certain amount of bandwidth (or setting up a second network) to make transfer speeds from some sites faster than others.

If the ISPs want to create a second network of their own to push their own media services at much higher speeds, let them. I equate it to getting your internet access from your cable company. Your TV and your net access come down the same wire, and TV is a media service, so that's really nothing new. If you don't agree with that, then you can think of it as whatever the ISP wants to provide being on a faster LAN (since it originates "locally"), whereas the rest of the internet is still on a WAN.

That said, the article's analogy to toll roads was an excellent choice, as anyone in the Northern Virginia area can tell you. When they first open, the toll roads are significantly faster but cost a fortune to use, with the promise that the prices will go down once it's paid for. But then it fills up to the point where it's only a tiny bit faster than the equivalent free roads, and the prices go up even more to cover the costs of expansion. After a few years, your choices are completely clogged free roads where you go 15mph, or a $3/each way 15 mile road where you go 35mph after the fourth or fifth mile.

The conclusion that it doesn't matter if the media company buys more bandwidth the old fashioned way or pays the ISPs for the use of a secondary faster network is spot on. However, the customer will end up paying the same amount either way, which means there is no advantage for the customer by switching to the new tiered network model.

He's got good reason to oppose it

[MikeRT]

How can things like IPTV come into being if companies like Verizon are barred from building up and reserving the capacity to provide them? Why should Google, Microsoft, etc. be allowed access to that bandwidth since it's not impeding their ability to provide their services? Not allowing the telecoms and other large ISPs to do this would akin to not allowing Google to invest in dark fibre for its own purposes. Hmmm is that the smell of hypocrisy among the slashdot crowd once again?

Both sides are being dishonest here. The content companies have no right to the entire network, and the ISPs don't want to provide the full service that they sell. There is supposed to be an implicit gentleman's agreement that if someone buys a leased line, they won't face arbitrary tolls. That's the point that a lot of talking heads can't seem to understand. They think that the content companies want to be free-riders when all they want is to be able to deliver their content at full f$%^ing speed to their customers. The "toll" is more like a warlord in Africa charging a "toll" to let legitimate businesses use the government-built roads. The customers on both ends paid for the bandwidth. If there is a problem with not making enough money, then the ISPs need to go back and rethink the wisdom of charging only $15 for broadband.

Re:Encourage telcos to go under

[NormalVisual]

Most cable companies are already starting to offer VoIP.

Yeah, often at *substantially* higher costs than what is available from the independent VoIP providers, and with no guarantee that QoS can be maintained once the packets leave your provider's network.

Cohen's reasoning:

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read the blurb?

"[Cohen] concedes that his hook-up with Cachelogic is creating a system that might contravene Network Neutrality"

Only an idiot would want legislation to pass that would make his current business project fail.

Re:Cohen's reasoning:

[dgatwood]

Mod parent up insightful.

In fact, the same can be said about everybody who has been "against" network neutrality. Cisco has the most to gain because they make routers and... guess what... all those QoS things that the telcos propose will require them to buy new routers.

Thus far, everyone against net neutrality legislation has had a profit motive. Most of the people against it do not, though some (like Google) have a "we don't want to bleed red" motive. Most folks want net neutrality because a lack of net neutrality allows big telcos like AT&T who have lots of end users to strong-arm smaller companies like hosting providers and similar for what amounts to protection money to avoid having the performance of their customers' access to those end users artificially degraded. The result will be less availability of services, and a gradual compartmentalization of the Internet by ISP, and eventually a complete breakdown of the power of the Internet to serve the consumer.

Net neutrality should be mandated. As for future technologies, the LAST thing we ever want in the future is a technology that would regress us back towards a pay-per-bandwidth system. As a consumer, I won't do it (which is why I don't have a data plan on my cell phone). I want to see MORE swing away from pay-per-[insert unit of measurement here] and towards flat rate services. Flat rates are good for the consumer because they encourage people to try new technologies that otherwise would not be affordable.

Would the iTMS be here if we had to pay our ISP per kilobyte for those downloads? Doubt it. Would we have things like Google Video/YouTube? Nope. In fact, I would say that all of the companies that are actually innovating in the technology space (as opposed to leaches like Cisco and AT&T that do pretty much the same thing year after year, only faster) benefit greatly from net neutrality.) When those companies benefit, innovation increases, and the consumers ultimately get cool new technologies that simply would not exist if companies like AT&T had their way.

Of course, flat rate services are the last thing AT&T and friends want. They'd like to sell those downloads themselves. They'd like to be the only ones who can afford to do so just like with their cell phones. Too bad for them. They can take my net neutrality when they pry my DSL modem from my cold, dead hands.

totally free markets will never work until...

[zogger]

you repeal the law of humanness. A totally free market would result in MEGABIGCO Inc. owning the world and everyone being some sort of electronic plantation worker for them, never quite making enough "money" to ever get out of debt to them. You will inevitably go from lot of companies to cartels to a monopoly, because that makes more money for the monopoly owners, and because humanness means that they will continue to impose their will on governmental processes. We already went through this crap and debate in our semi recent human past. it's been tried and found severely lacking. A "free" market means zero environmental regulations, what is in it for them? They don't care if their factory pollutes the water table over someplace, the bosses and owners will just live where that doesn't happen and buy up all the land around them to give them a clean environment, and stuff like that. It means no minimum wage,back to child labor, no safe working conditions, etc, because that is their historically proven over and over again humans as bosses track record back before these regs existed. This is *precisely* because companies are run by humans and megalomaniacs and greedsters strive for top dog positions all the time,and they get there, "by hook or CROOK", hence why those sorts of bad news policies flow downstream in the "giving orders" chain of commands structure, in government or business.

The "free" market is one of those things that it is easy to say and might sound sort of good in theory, but it won't ever fly or work as advertised without tremendous negative effects. For an example of an area with more or less "anything goes free markets", look at the horn of africa.

Re:totally free markets will never work until...

[NickFortune]

Monopolies ONLY occur due to government licensing

mmm... and are there no exceptions?

If I remember correctly the East India Company used to maintain a private army to enforce its self proclaimed monopoly over trade in India. Eventually Britain came to depend on that trade so much it sent its own troops to protect British interests, and ended up conquering the place. But in the beginning, the East India Company enforced its own monopoly. In blood, if need be.

MEGABIGCO won't occur in a free market if there are no barriers to entering that market.

In a purely deregualted market, MEGABIGCO will create it's own barriers to entry. Quite possible by sending men round with hammers to break up your equipment and hospitalise your staff.

But if you pass law against organised violence and intimidation, then you're interfering with the market. That may not be the primary intent of the law, but if you have a business model that relies on violence and intimidation for income then you probably won't see it that way.

From that, I think it's clear that some level or regulation is required, unless we want the the markets to be dominated solely by the vicious, brutal and unprincipled.

On the other hand, I don't think this completely invalidates your points either. Bad regulations can be abused, and often seem designed to be abused, in order to enable monopolies.

I think the problem is binary thinking. The question is not "is regulation good or is regulation evil?" The question we should ask is "what level of regulation best serves the public interest, and while we're at it, how do we thing the public interest is best served?"

Incidentally, please don't take this personally. I agree with a lot of hat you write. On this occasion though, I think you're arguing mainly from theology.

Wow.

[Woundweavr]

"MEGABIGCO won't occur in a free market if there are no barriers to entering that market"

Thats all well and good except that the barrier to market entry and not government created. They are fundamental to capitalism. Since it costs initial capital to enter a market, a company can not enter the market and be competitive immediately. There is a reason you or I couldn't start making cars that ran on butter tomorrow.

"Monopolies ONLY occur due to government licensing."

Ridiculous beyond comprehension. Learn about economics and its history. See: John D Rockefeller and Standard Oil. In an unregulated system, the natural equilibrium is monopoly.

"Not true. A provider of a product or service will provide what the consumer wants, including making sure that they abide by whatever environmental restrictions the market demands. Pollution is better covered by trespass and realistic tort laws than by regulation -- regulations of the environment today just move polluters around. The biggest polluter in the country is the US government, by the way."

First of all, a dichotomy between "tort laws" and "regulation" is patently false and intellectually shallow. Furthermore, pollution is not well-suited for tort law. Not only are harms that occur due to pollution often societal, but they are difficult to trace to individuals or companies as the cumulative effect brings about such negative consequences. Tort law focuses on private property and pollution harms the common good, public property and society in general.

"No, child labor has occured during the beginning of markets because the older workers were not able to adapt to the new markets. In most situations, children will be less productive if the government stops restricting how it pays employees. Minimum wage laws create unemployment because they rob uneducated non-productive people from finding jobs that won't pay them what they're worth until they prove their worth as employees. Many foreigners come into the country to work illegally for less than minimum wage, but quickly start earning much more than minimum wage once they've proven their worth."

Factually wrong. Its that simple. Child labor did not occur because older workers were not able to adapt. Its insulting that anyone would actually post such tripe. Children are not working in South East Asia for three generations because the older people couldn't adapt. Children didn't work in Western Europe and the United States from the start of the Industrial Revolution until nearly WWII because their parent's couldn't adapt. The children of children who were forced to work were also forced to work, are still forced to work at the same jobs.

"Go read Mises, Rothbard, Hayek and Goethe. You'll drop your Keynesian theories right quick."
Ah it all becomes clear. How about this - don't try and drape ideology as economics. The Austrian School is all about how economics 'should' be. Its horrible at predicting how things are. Its also fundamentally anti-labor (relying solely on the marginal utility to produce value has no fundamental origin of the system). There's a reason the Austrian school has been a fringe theory of economics in every society (except ironically under the National Socialists).