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.'"

Comments

Meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wolves propose sheep "Bill of Rights".

BobB-nw

[alphadogg]

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

Re:BobB-nw

[QuantumFlux]

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)!

Catch

[pipatron]

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.

Re:Finally!

[erroneus]

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?

responsibility

[TheSHAD0W]

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.

Re:Finally!

[hey!]

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.

Re:Exactly.

[Solandri]

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 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.