BitTorrent Slowing Said to Hurt Video Delivery Firms,Publishers

“We must have enforceable rules,” said Jay Monahan, Vuze general counsel. “We, like many others, have been playing a sort of cat and mouse game with network operators to avoid any significant interference for our business,” he said. For example, BitTorrent uses encryption to avoid service slowing by Comcast, he said. “I have no confidence we and our colleagues in this space will continue to be able to do that effectively indefinitely,” he said. “Nor are we willing to rely on a promise of good faith by all network operators.”

“Market forces” drive operator treatment of BitTorrent, Klinker said. “In markets where a particular [operator] is forced to compete with an offering like FiOS,” they are less likely to slow or block traffic, he said: “They're actually coming to us trying to find ways to make BitTorrent faster for their users.”

“The ‘market power’ of broadband network operators is overstated” and the tech industry shouldn’t be so quick to support a net neutrality bill (HR-5353) introduced this week by House Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, D-Mass., Progress & Freedom Foundation President Ken Ferree said Thursday in a blog. Evidence is scant of unreasonable past discrimination, and there’s “no credible argument that it is likely to occur in the future,” he said. “Indeed, the instances of network discrimination that have achieved the greatest [attention], including the recent case involving the slowing of certain P2P applications, have in fact been nothing more than efforts by network operators to manage Internet traffic efficiently for the benefit of all customers.”

Vuze and Miro mainly fear that Comcast is a competitor “to all of us who deliver high-resolution video content,” Monahan said. “What we really have here is a horse race” where “Comcast and network operators not only own a horse in the race, [but] they own the whole race track.” Carriers say, “Don’t worry, we're just going to slow your horse down by a few seconds,” he said, but “Which horse would you bet on in a race like that?”

“Comcast is not engaging in this debate in good faith,” Reville said. “Imagine two neighbors on the same Comcast service and one of them starts downloading hours and hours of Comcast-brand, on-demand HD video,” he said. If it “starts degrading the service of their neighbor, what do you think the chances are that Comcast is going to start restricting the protocol that their customers are using to download HD video? It’s extremely unlikely.”

That Comcast says its BitTorrent slowing only affects a few users is “troubling,” Monahan said. “I doubt that our millions of users would consider interference with their content a trivial matter.” And Comcast’s “assurance that the traffic is only slowed during peak periods doesn’t give us much comfort,” he said. “What they're saying is they're only slowing down content when you want it the most. And for a business like ours, that’s critical.”

Slowing content is as bad as blocking it, Monahan said. Vuze’s “tech-savvy” users “want their content fast, they want it now,” he said. They will dump a video delivery firm if service is slow or unreliable, he said.

Rather than slow or block content, operators should optimize network efficiency and build more infrastructure, Monahan said. Telcos aren’t complaining about limited bandwidth the way cable is, showing that net neutrality rules only offend those who lack capacity, he said. Users should decide what content they want to view, not the operator, said Free Press general counsel Marvin Ammori. To control those who consume lots of bandwidth, operators could charge for excess usage or impose bandwidth caps, he said.

Improved BitTorrent congestion control could resolve ISP woes, Klinker said. BitTorrent has a “long history” of working with operators and has “deep relationships” inside many companies, he said. BitTorrent and Vuze belong to P4P, a Distributed Computing Industry Association working group researching technology that “might accommodate the needs of both ISPs and P2P companies,” he said. If ISPs’ problem is degraded service caused by congestion, “then we feel the innovative solution… is simply better congestion control.” -- Adam Bender

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The FCC “immediately” should stop network operators from blocking or degrading Internet traffic, Vuze told the FCC in comments on network management practices (CD Feb 14 p6). Vuze, an online entertainment distributor, is among those who filed petitions in January asking the FCC to clamp down when networks go too far in managing traffic. The company, which singled out Comcast for criticism in its petition, said the cable operator and others claim that it’s proper to slow traffic to ease congestion. “However, the reality is that ’slowing’ of traffic causes significant harm to… platforms such as Vuze that rely on fast and efficient delivery of content.” Free Press, Public Knowledge and five other public interest bodies told the FCC they “refute” Comcast’s argument that network management is needed to keep data moving when traffic peaks. The commission “should declare through a ruling or rules that network providers cannot engage in discrimination against particular applications and that network providers must disclose their network management policies,” said the groups, which in January petitioned jointly for FCC action. They were joined by the Media Access Project, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, the New America Foundation and the Participatory Culture Foundation.

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CTIA told the FCC that it should not regulate how carriers manage traffic “in the yet nascent and rapidly evolving mobile wireless broadband market,” answering a question the agency posed in a public notice (CD Feb 14 p6). The ability of carriers to manage traffic is particularly critical in the wireless world, CTIA said. “Voice and data users share the same network capacity,” the group said. “As a result, left unmanaged, wireless data users’ bandwidth intensive applications have the potential to impact other wireless users’ voice calls, particularly as carriers move to IP-based networks.” The Wireless Communications Association agreed, arguing that competitive market forces are preferable to government mandates. The FCC should “preserve its light (and heretofore successful) regulatory touch where broadband network practices are concerned,” WCA said.