Why AT&T's Plans To Filter The Internet Will Only Do More Harm To AT&T (And Everyone Else)

from the not-a-good-idea dept

AT&T announced last summer that it was going to start filtering traffic for copyrighted content -- so we're still not entirely sure why many in the press seem to think it was something new when discussed at CES a few weeks ago. However, this new burst of attention has many more people pointing out all the reasons this is bad for AT&T itself. As we said, this seems to make no sense at all, unless it's some bizarre attempt to come up with an excuse to get rid of net neutrality. In that post, we noted that any filtering would likely open up additional liabilities for AT&T, potentially losing its safe harbors from being a service provider (safe harbors that AT&T itself spent a lot of effort lobbying to have put into the law). Tim Wu has a lot more detail on that aspect of this plan (which he calls "corporate seppuku"). However, there are many other problems for AT&T as well. For example, it won't take long for someone to accuse AT&T of violating wiretap laws, a charge which may be accurate. But the biggest point is that this won't even do what they hope it will do. It won't stop unauthorized transfers from happening and it won't reduce network traffic. As we've discussed in the past, every move to do this kind of filtering will only drive up the market for encryption technologies, and that encryption actually adds more overhead to internet traffic. The PC World article linked above notes that 20% of all bittorrent traffic is encrypted, and if that number goes up, as it will under a filtering regime, the network load will only increase. So, if AT&T actually thinks (as it sometimes claims) that filtering will decrease the burden on the network, it's likely very mistaken.

45 Comments | Leave a Comment..

ISP Inserts Its Own Messages Into Google

from the a-bit-intrusive dept

For most people, broadband ISPs are really little more than dumb pipes. We want our connections to the internet and that's all. Many people use third party email offerings (especially from portals) and set their own home pages. Unfortunately, being a dumb pipe is the last thing that these broadband providers want. It makes it a lot more difficult to communicate with customers and especially to try to charge them for premium services. It appears that Canadian ISP Rogers is testing a system where it inserts its own messages into Google's home page. In the screenshot, Rogers inserts a huge message at the top of Google's homepage to let a user know that he or she is approaching the monthly bandwidth limit on the account. This is troublesome for a number of reasons. There's simply no reason to hijack a site like Google (and, in fact, I'd imagine that the folks at Google wouldn't be particularly pleased about an ISP messing with its page). If an ISP really wants to communicate with people, why not just pop up a proxy page when the browser is first opened? Most importantly, though, it shows how some ISPs feel about its position in the value stream. They feel that they are more important than the content and services you are using. This is what leads to all those network neutrality debates, where the ISPs forget that they're providing just a pipe and think that they are the most important part of the process and have the right to change how everything else works. This doesn't mean they should be regulated -- but it does mean that both users and service providers (such as Google) should make it abundantly clear to ISPs like Rogers that this will not be tolerated.

43 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Verizon's DNS Policy May Be Bad, But It's Not A Network Neutrality Violation

from the red-herring dept

While Comcast has been getting a lot of flack for blocking BitTorrent, some network neutrality activists have also been calling out Verizon for the way its DNS servers work. The DNS specification requires that servers return an error if the user tries to look up an invalid domain name. Instead, Verizon's DNS servers re-direct users who mistype an address to a Verizon-branded search page where Verizon gets to display advertising. (Incidentally, my ISP, Charter, does the same thing.) I agree with Ed Felten that this "feature" is obnoxious, especially because it can break applications that expect to receive DNS error messages. But I don't think it's really a network neutrality issue. Verizon's DNS server does not "block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade" anyone's access to Internet content or services, which was the standard proposed in last year's Snowe-Dorgan legislation. Users who type correct URLs aren't impeded in any way from accessing the sites they want to visit. Responding to a failed DNS query with a search page is probably a bad idea, but it's very different from "redirecting a user from Google's search page to Verizon's," which the article implies Verizon might do in the future. Moreover, it's worth keeping in mind that you're not required to use your ISP's DNS server at all. ISPs provide DNS servers as a courtesy, the same way they might provide you with a free email account. But you don't have to use it. You're free to point your computer to another DNS server, such as OpenDNS, just as you can use a third-party email service such as GMail. And if you do that, the settings of Verizon's DNS server won't affect you at all. It's definitely fair to criticize Verizon for failing to follow the DNS specification, but calling it a network neutrality issue is a bit of a red herring.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

30 Comments | Leave a Comment..

AT&T Asking For Trouble With Filtering Plans

from the let-me-count-the-ways dept

Businessweek reports on AT&T's bizarre plan to placate Hollywood by adding antipiracy technology to its network. This is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. For starters, it's completely unnecessary; ISPs are protected from copyright liability by the DMCA's safe harbor provisions (which AT&T itself helped enact), so there's no reason AT&T needs to do anything at all other than follow the procedures specified in the DMCA. Second, the technology almost certainly won't work; the Internet is far too complex and fast-changing for any one piece of software to reliably filter out pirated content. On the other hand, filters invariably make mistakes, as we learned when Comcast accidentally blocked Lotus Notes traffic when it was trying to block peer-to-peer protocols. If AT&T starts aggressively blocking content it thinks is pirated, it will almost certainly block a lot of non-pirated content in the process, leading to angry customers and a lot more bad publicity. Finally, any move to filter Internet content will give renewed momentum to the campaign for network neutrality regulation. One of the most powerful arguments against new regulations has been that proponents' concerns were almost purely hypothetical. Between Comcast's shenanigans with BitTorrent and AT&T's anti-piracy plans, a lot of fence-sitters may decide that the danger of network discrimination is no longer so hypothetical, and that the FCC needs the power to regulate ISPs' routing policies.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

26 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Comcast Still Dancing Around Its Content Jamming Operations; What's Wrong With Admitting It?

from the shhhh,-it's-a-secret-that-everyone-knows dept

With the news coming out that Comcast's broadband jamming operations actually interfere with other apps as well, Comcast is now trying to respond to the complaints in every way other than telling people what it is that they're doing, which at this point really does appear to be the only sensible response. Comcast went to Reuters (since it was AP who confirmed the original story) and repeated the carefully worded claim that Comcast is not blocking any kind of traffic. Of course, people aren't saying that it's completely blocking any traffic -- just that it's quietly pulling some background tricks to slow down certain types of traffic without letting its customers know. That's the key part, and it's the same complaint that people have had for years with Comcast concerning its fuzzy bandwidth caps. The company advertises unlimited service, but if it's not unlimited, why not come out and explain what the limitations are? It seems only fair.

Perhaps an answer comes from Tim Lee, who was invited to a conference call today with Comcast to help "clear up" the misperceptions Comcast feels are being spread in the media about its actions. The only problem is that Comcast doesn't clear up anything. It basically admits to the traffic shaping but says it can't tell people that it's doing that, as it could help them get around the shaping. Well, sorry, too late for that. Besides, what's wrong with simply telling people what the limitations are and then going after the violators for terms of service breaches? In being so secretive and misleading about it, all it's doing is causing many more people to get upset with Comcast and think that they're being targeted (even if they're not). It's a ridiculous PR situation for Comcast to be in -- and it could be solved easily enough if Comcast stopped beating around the bush, stopped giving gobbledy-gook doublespeak responses that don't actually answer the questions people are asking and simply told people what they're doing and why. It really is that simple. If the company has a legitimate reason for doing what it's doing (and some people say there is) then why not explain that?

31 Comments | Leave a Comment..

What Else Is Comcast Jamming? Gnutella? Lotus Notes?

from the might-help-to-be-a-little-transparent dept

After the AP confirmed that Comcast was clearly blocking some aspects of Bittorrent, Comcast continued to issue its oddly worded denial statement about how it doesn't specifically block access to any application or content. Of course, that can mean different things to different people, and as the EFF is discovering, perhaps Comcast is being half-truthful in saying it doesn't specifically pick on BitTorrent trafffic. However, that's only because it's doing similar kinds of blocking on other types of traffic, such as content using Gnutella or even Lotus Notes. The EFF has been running a variety of tests and has found that Comcast appears to send forged reset packets for Gnutella, and it points to someone else who found the same thing for Lotus Notes.

Of course, Comcast can do what it wants on its network, but to deny it and not be even remotely transparent about it is pretty questionable (and potentially a violation of FTC rules). Once again, this is the type of thing that wouldn't happen if there were true competition in the broadband market. If people knew that Comcast was arbitrarily cutting off what they could do on their network with no indication (and, actually, actively hiding the fact that they were doing so) many people would look for alternatives. The only problem is that there often aren't any alternatives. Even in the cases where there are, the alternatives often include one other player: a telco like AT&T who seems to be gearing up to do the same thing as Comcast in blocking certain types of content online. It really is a simple question, though: why won't Comcast tell its own customers what it's blocking? When you find out that the company is blocking completely legitimate applications and services with no recourse (or even information admitting it), it's really quite troublesome.

44 Comments | Leave a Comment..