Why Comcast's BitTorrent-fux0r is bad for quality of service
First, Comcast is not guaranteeing quality of service. Just the opposite. It is actively degrading service for subscribers, many of whom subscribe to high-bandwidth services precisely for the purpose of getting access to muckin' big files (or, frankly, they'd stick to much cheaper dial up). So when Comcast here speaks of “a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good experience online,” it really means “We are trying to screw up traffic of high-bandwidth users in a non-obvious way so we don't have to make expensive upgrades or engage in in obvious metered pricing.” As I have written before, cable operators in particular face network capacity constraints because of the way they constructed their systems. So they are allowed to advertise their “always on, all you can eat” speed based on certain theoretical assumptions about network usage that are increasingly unrealistic.Link (Thanks, Ken!)Comcast's basic problem here is it wants it both ways. It wants to advertise all you can eat connections of the highest speed — because that sells so much better than alternatives like metered pricing or explicit bandwidth caps. But it doesn't want to deal with the consequences of the user behavior this sort of advertising generates. i.e., people using their Comcast connection all the time and expecting the advertised speed. Nor does Comcast want to deal with this the traditional way, by spending the money to build more capacity, then charging a higher price for the new “top speed.” Comcast, like any other profit-maximizing firm, would prefer to avoid expenditures and, if it must spend money to gain revenue, would prefer to minimize expenses and maximize revenue. Inserting reset packets to degrade the reliability of BitTorrent, and therefore discourage its use overall, is much cheaper than upgrading from existing hybrid-fiber-coax to fiber. So, as I predicted over a year and a half ago Comcast makes the logical choice and degrades traffic that eats bandwidth rather than pay to upgrade.
See also:
How the AP busted Comcast for blocking BitTorrent
Comcast actively blocks P2P traffic
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You would think there's got to be a good market out there for people who want to:
1. Have a high bandwidth
2. Have no usage caps
3. Have a fixed IP
4. Run servers (web, game, etc)
Even if a company charged a lot more for that service, I'm sure there would be demand. The only way I know of to get these things now is to go with a "business" account, which is far more expensive, presumably because they expect to have to provide more tech support.
What this whole thing makes me wonder about is "Are Comcast World of Warcraft players having trouble patching WoW?"
WoW uses a torrent to send out patches.
I'm sure they're not the only company that likes to issue updates or even whole new programs over a torrent file, but as has been previously noted in BoingBoing, there are more WoW players in the US then there are farmers - and they ALL use BitTorrent for vital updates.
Has anybody pointed out that this is actually illegal. Comcast has been engaged in a campaign of FALSE advertising. Actually, I just saw a billboard the other day on the way back from Oakland advertising "unlimited" bandwidth and "fastest speed" available.
Are there any class-action lawsuits regarding false advertising? It is illegal to promise a certain service, then provide a different one.
Not only are they likely guilty of false advertising, but under US criminal code,
TITLE 18. CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE
PART I--CRIMES
CHAPTER 47--FRAUD AND FALSE STATEMENTS
Whoever --
5)(A)(i) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(ii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or
(iii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage; and
(B) by conduct described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of subparagraph (A), caused (or, in the case of an attempted offense, would, if completed, have caused)--
(i) loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period (and, for purposes of an investigation, prosecution, or other proceeding brought by the United States only, loss resulting from a related course of conduct affecting 1 or more other protected computers) aggregating at least $5,000 in value;
I'm not a lawyer, but that kind of looks like if if WoW, or any other business entity incurred more than $5000 in increased hosting costs for non-bittorrent distribution of stuff Comcast is breaking federal fraud statutes.
To be fair, my understanding is that the Bittorrent Effect only impacts people who are serving (uploading) files, not downloading them.
So yes, people who buy Comcast high speed internet expect to be able to download big honking files really quickly and in my experience, they can. I get ridiculous download speeds through my service.
If they expect to run a file server, then frankly they need to get a better connection. You're not going to get high speed servers for the cost of Comcast cable. That type of service will cost you a whole lot more and you'll probably get it from some other company. My upload rates are frankly crap and I wouldn't even attempt to run so much as a Team Fortress 2 server from my home. For that, I rent other servers.
Eh, best to get it over with and make steganographic protocols indistinguishable from streaming video.
"Has anybody pointed out that this is actually illegal. Comcast has been engaged in a campaign of FALSE advertising. Actually, I just saw a billboard the other day on the way back from Oakland advertising "unlimited" bandwidth and "fastest speed" available."
But the language in the contract you sign has weasel words about "excessive" utilization.
Frankly, I wish they'd just publish what the caps are instead of their current routine which is to punish users when they go over the limit which is known only to Comcast.
Tell me I can only download/upload Xgb/ygb per month/week/day/whatever rather than this "we'll throttle you if you go over the cap, but we won't tell you what the cap is" bullshit.
Comcast, like any other profit-maximizing firm...
That might be better phrased as "any other short-term profit-maximizing firm...". The weakness in the libertarian position as a practical organizational principle is that few decision-makers maximize long-term profit, instead opting for cash flow, short-term profit or short-term satisfaction. Theoretically, libertarian economics might still work, if the Adam Smith assumptions are applied; they have never been applied on a large-scale. It's impossible to say what the results of an entire planet collectively choosing to maximize long-term profit would be, because the experiment has never been done.
A significant debate is underway in the courts, the Congress and federal regulatory agencies regarding decisions that are being made within the electronics, content and computer industries - about how to best protect copyrighted material in a digital world. Right now the internet is not safe for users to view or download files without potentially infringing on copyrights and suffering large fines, penalties or even worse.
An ever-increasing number of unlicensed downloads are taking place in private homes all over the world. According to recent data, over twelve million people are simultaneously sharing 1.08 billion music, movie, and software files on the Internet at any given moment.
Imagine a person or child sitting down in front of a Television with a remote and selecting a few dozen channels or video on demand selections and finding out later that they have committed copyright infringement and are being asked to pay several hundred thousand dollars in fines. What makes this even worse is there is really no way to determine if a certain piece of content is appropriate for use, copyrighted or not, until the damage is already done.
A typical internet user does not build the internet applications, program the search engines, or manage the internet networks that they use. More could be done with these key elements of the internet to insure that standards are set that provide a higher degree of safety from copyright infringement or exposure to inappropriate content. We live in a society that requires people to wear seat belts; Why?, because they provide an additional layer of protection from unnecessary injury.
A national copyright and rating database could serve as a seat belt for the internet to protect users from injury as well. Copyrighted materiel could be registered along with an associated audience rating of the content allowing internet applications, search engines and network operators to establish national standards for digital rights management.
Now is the time for us all to work together to provide a level of protection from unnecessary injury and make the internet safe again for average citizens in their homes.
Thank you for your leadership in this important social and technological issue.
The real problem with any statement that defends a firm's behavior from criticism on the grounds that it is "profitable," is that it presumes that the orderly functioning of the market doesn't include criticism of this behavior.
IOW: free marketers will tell you that a restaurant that offers bad food at bad prices with bad service will lose sales as word gets around about its badness.
But how does the "badness" get around if critics of the restaurant don't spread the word?
What if someone said, "Don't eat at Joe's -- they're expensive, the food sucks, and the waiters are rude." And the response was, "Well, what do you expect? They're a money-making business -- why should they cut into their profits to provide good food, service and prices?"
The market only works when critics criticize bad products and services, leading to reduction of sales, loss of profit, and improvement in behavior. Criticism of bad market practices is part of the market, and "yes, but it's profitable" isn't a valid answer, because the rejoinder implicit in criticism is, "Not for long, once I get through with it."
@JL:
While it'd be nice to have the kind of "seat belt" that you propose, there are problems inherent in any kind of centralized database of "things that are ok to do".
At face value, this seems fine - companies can register content that is ok to download with this database, and your downloading program, OS, or legal system can poll the database whenever you want to access content.
Implementation issues aside, problems arise when you try to determine who gets to change the database. If you allow everybody to provide access to content that they claim is theirs, there's no difference from the current system where anyone can share any file they want, just with the added overhead of everybody polling a centralized database. If you decide to disallow access to individuals, not only are you robbing people of their freedom of speech, you're stifling creativity. Think of the effect it would have on independent artists who are unable to notify people that their IP is ok to access. Innovation as we know it would end.
Whether you like it or not, there's no way to keep people from stealing content without also neutering our ability to create content. The ability to produce and distribute perfect digital copies of works makes this problem more apparent, and arguably more serious, than ever before, but by the same token, it allows people to innovate more, faster, and in ways never previously thought of.
Personally, I think it's worth it.
Interestingly, IP is telescoping in much the same way as technology and history on the whole; all of this has the effect that IP is being created faster and in greater volume than ever before, but it also becomes obsolete faster as well. So maybe it's not bad that huge copyright magnets are finding that they can't squeeze money out of their IP for as long - since we're able to create more content faster than ever before, maybe we should take a look at how effective our current copyright system really is.
@NoneSuch
The way many BT programs are setup you get significantly better download speeds the more you upload. This is to encourage everyone to share just as much of a file as they downloaded. This is based on the settings of other users and so you can't just change a setting on your machine to cancel this effect. So throttling upload speeds has a direct effect on download speeds.
I've downloaded Ubuntu Linux, perfectly legal use of BT, with 100s of seeders online and gotten 30-50kbps. I checked the statistics and over 70% of the available users were "available" but kept loosing the connection.
@8
That might be better phrased as "any other short-term profit-maximizing firm...". The weakness in the libertarian position as a practical organizational principle is that few decision-makers maximize long-term profit, instead opting for cash flow, short-term profit or short-term satisfaction.
Correct, that this is largely ignored, but fail to see how this is a problem unique to libertarianism since ultimately every system ends up putting these same short-sighted decision makers into some system of authority and organization.
Regardless, Comcast can make these short-sighted decisions to piss off its customers precisely because it has very few competitors in any given market.
... but fail to see how this is a problem unique to libertarianism since ultimately every system ends up putting these same short-sighted decision makers into some system of authority and organization.
I agree, short-term thinking is not unique to libertarianism. I've been really obsessed of late with people's failure to be 'good at being selfish'; most people don't even make decisions that will benefit them a week from now, let alone years in the future.
Why would Comcast screw their customers over? Because it makes them a little more money today? Do all the Comcast decision makers plan on working for other firms five and ten years from now? Does management think customers are infinitely replaceable?
Why did people support the PATRIOT act in 2001, when the most superficial examination of history shows that giving government lots of power comes back to bite you later?
Why do people smoke cigarettes? Hell, cigarettes have consequences five minutes from now, when non-smokers don't want to stand near you!
Why do people drive 20 miles per hour too fast to be safe, to save five minutes travel time? Aren't they weighting the remaining 70 years of their life sufficiently?
I'm still trying to think my way through human psychology, and figuring out what I mean to say, so please pardon me if I'm unclear. The reason I think of libertarianism specifically when thinking of profit, both long-term and short-term, is that the libertarian assumptions seem to require the maximization of long-term profit (or satisfaction, or utils, et cetera) to justify a broadly free market, where other market strategies may or may not need a long-term view. I've moved to the left a lot in the last ten years, because the people running businesses often seem completely oblivious to long-term issues, and the right-wing view depends on people seeing their own long-term benefit.
For a more lighthearted (and slightly retarded) look at the issue: http://www.grinn.net/blog/dev/2007/10/comcast-vs-bittorrent-issue-resolved.html