New Mockumentary Highlights Why An Open Internet With Real Competition Is Important

from the though-a-bit-over-the-top dept

A new “mockumentary” called The Internet Must Go launched today, in conjunction with the latest court hearing in the Verizon case against the FCC over the FCC’s net neutrality rules. I got to see a “preview” showing of the film last week with the filmmaker. You can see the whole thing below, or at the link above, which includes a number of extras. The premise of the mockumentary is that the major ISPs have hired a clueless market researcher to figure out how to convince Americans that we don’t need an open internet with basic non-discriminatory end-to-end connectivity. That researcher then goes out and talks to a bunch of net neutrality supporters who school him on the importance of an open internet.

There are a bunch of appearances in the film from folks you may know and recognize, like Larry Lessig, John Hodgman and Alexis Ohanian. As the filmmaker explained to us last week, the goal of the film is to try to make more people in the general public aware of the issue of “net neutrality,” so it’s more generally targeted at folks who don’t spend a lot of time on these issues and who aren’t generally aware of what’s going on. On that front, perhaps the video will be successful, though I have to admit that, on the whole, the presentation is a bit disappointing. As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m a huge supporter of the concept of end-to-end neutrality and an open internet, but the movie badly caricaturizes the nature of the argument, and what’s actually at stake, at times. The issues are a bit more complex than they’re laid out, and it feels like that takes away from what could be a more informative film.

Frankly, where the film shines best is the part where it gets a bit away from the loaded term of net neutrality, and gets to the real problem: the lack of competition in broadband. For almost a decade, we’ve been pointing out that the so-called “fight” over net neutrality is really just a symptom of the lack of true competition in the broadband space. Get real competition at the service level and the issue of net neutrality fades away. What the ISPs claim is an attempt to get rid of “net neutrality” is really just an attempt to leverage a dominant position to get people to pay twice for the same bandwidth. So the part in the middle of the film where they start to look at the lack of competition, and how certain areas are completely underserved by the major ISPs because of this, the film gets more interesting.

Overall, the message that an open internet is worth protecting, and that we need a competitive and innovative broadband infrastructure, is absolutely true. I’m just not sure the film really presents that message in the best way possible. It’s way over the top in how it paints the goals of the ISPs, and that takes away from what could have been a stronger message about how to actually tackle the lack of competition.

Filed Under: alexis ohanian, broadband, competition, fcc, internet must go, isps, john hodgman, larry lessig, mockumentary, net neutrality, open internet, susan crawford

What Exactly Does The EU Plan To Do On Net Neutrality?

from the confused?-you-will-be dept

There are few areas in tech policy where the waters are so muddied as those swirling around net neutrality. That’s as true for the EU as it is for the US. The latest statement by the person responsible for this area in the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, does little to clarify things.

First, she addresses the issue of blocking and throttling:

Huge innovation can be found online: we must safeguard it for everyone. Currently too many Europeans find that services are blocked and throttled by their internet provider. I believe every European should have access to the full and open internet, absolutely guaranteed, without such discrimination. And so I am coming forward with new rules to bring such practices to an end once and for all.

That’s clear enough. But Kroes goes on:

I agree that the Internet is an important platform for freedom of speech; and that is why I intend to guarantee access without restriction — the first ever time such a guarantee exists across Europe. But permitting premium services does not in any way restrict that freedom. For almost any kind of product you care to name — from postal services to the petrol in your car — having premium products hardly diminishes freedom for users: if anything it offers them more choices. If you decide not to pay that extra premium, of course, you still deserve a good product: and under my proposals, the “best-efforts” Internet will get better.

It’s not at all obvious how “premium products” will magically boost the “best-efforts” Internet. On the contrary: if companies are allowed to pay for their IP packets to be given priority over “best-efforts” services, this will result in the latter be pushed into the Internet’s slow lane. Net neutrality will be dead, and innovation threatened, because deep-pocketed incumbents will be able to promote their services at the expense of underfunded startups, or non-profit projects. Moreover, telecoms companies will have a perverse incentive to make that slow lane as bad as possible, in order to “encourage” people to pay for the “premium products” that offer a decent performance.

Kroes discusses the general issue of regulation:

if you aim to protect an open network, overregulation is exactly the wrong way to go. The fact is, many innovative new services depend on fast connections over IP networks. If you want to invest in (say) new videoconferencing equipment, an IP TV, or a new cloud computing contract, you will also want to know your connection will support it. If EU laws banned such quality guarantees, we would risk effectively outlawing many of those new services too.

Those in favor of net neutrality do not argue for “over-regulation”; instead, they want one very minimal rule: that all IP packets are treated equally for a given connection. If services need fast connections, then just upgrade the speed so that all applications benefit. Maybe that is what she means — it’s really not clear from her post — but fast connections are not normally described as “premium products”, and they are already available as part of most ISPs’ standard offerings. So what exactly is the EU proposing to do here?

And for those who are worried about any kind of regulation, here’s what someone who knows what he’s talking about here — Tim Berners-Lee — said on the subject back in 2006, when net neutrality was under threat in the US:

Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can’t photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.

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Filed Under: eu, neelie kroes, net neutrality

Deutsche Telekom Dumps Net Neutrality; Will Limit Bandwidth For Competing Video & Voice Products

from the net-neutrality-is-for-other-people dept

It appears that Deutsche Telekom has decided that it can and should ignore the basic principles of net neutrality. It is setting up limits on how much traffic its customers can use, and saying that competitors’ video products will automatically be throttled to 384k, which makes them basically useless. But, of course, this throttling does not apply to Deutsche Telekom’s own video offerings.

The data traffic generated by the use of Telekom’ own IPTV platform Entertain won’t be attributed to the volume integrated in the tariffs. “With Entertain, customers book television. We will therefore ensure that they will not suddenly sit in front of a black screen,” explained Hagspihl. Also, voice telephony through Telekom’s fixed line subscription will be excluded.

But… competitors? Well, too bad. This is a fairly bold move by DT. Of course, telcos have long wanted to do this, trying to force people and lock them in to their own (often overprice and underpowered) services, but to directly punish competitors is a pretty blatant statement by Deutsche Telekom that it thinks it can get away with this because of its dominant position in the market. Of course, if I’m a Deutsche Telekom customer, I’d be incredibly pissed off that Deutsche Telekom is basically telling me that I’ll be penalized for using other video or voice services, even if they’re better. Yes, those competing services will work fine beneath a certain traffic level, but people don’t realize just how much data they often use these days — especially when you’re talking about bandwidth-heavy video.

Deutsche Telekom’s explanation for this is almost entirely bogus.

“We want to continue offering our customers the best network in future into which we invest billions of euros. However, constantly increasing bandwidths can’t be financed through constantly dropping prices. We will have to charge customers with very high data consumption more in future,” said Michael Hagspihl, managing director marketing at Telekom Deutschland.

First of all, broadband remains an incredibly profitable business, and while the telcos love to make these claims, they’re simply not supported by the data. They’re making money like crazy on their existing networks, and although keeping up with the growth in bandwidth does require some investment, it’s easily affordable under the current structure. What this is about is exactly what everyone knows: killing off competitors, limiting the market from disruption and trying to control these other services, like video and voice, so that people are forced into using Deutsche Telekom’s own services.

In fact, Deutsche Telekom’s CEO more or less shows off the standard hubris of telco execs these days, believing that the only thing that’s important on the internet is his network, and everything else you get is only because of him:

“Without our telecommunications networks and modern primary products there wouldn’t be any online services coming from Google or Apple,” [Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene] Obermann told the Deutsche Presse Agentur.

Uh, I think you mean that without your monopoly power over the network people wouldn’t have to use your lines to reach those services, which is what they really want. The “value” here that people get isn’t Deutsche Telekom. They supply the pipes. The value is in all of the various services available, and Deutsche Telekom is trying to make those useless… oh, unless, those service providers want to pay up. It’s the same old net neutrality story. The telcos overvalue their networks and they try to get paid twice for the same thing. They want customers to pay to reach Google and Google to pay to reach the customers.

Thankfully, the German government isn’t too keen on where this is going:

Economic Minister Philipp Rösler voiced concern in a letter to Telekom’s CEO Rene Obermann on Wednesday, a copy of which Spiegel Online obtained.

In the letter, Rösler warned of possible restrictions for “flat rate” customers. He said Federal government and consumer protection authorities would “follow very carefully further developments in relation to the varying treatment of Telekom’s own services, and that of others, in terms of network neutrality.”

Federal Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner also criticized the new policy in an interview with Spiegel Online. “At first glance, progress for the customer can not be seen,” she said. “Limiting flat rates is certainly not consumer-friendly,” the Bavarian conservative CSU minister said.

Deutsche Telekom has its dominant position in the market because until not that long ago it was the state owned telecom provider. Trying to block out competitors with bogus excuses and limitations for consumers certainly seems like a pretty big abuse of that position.

Filed Under: germany, net neutrality
Companies: deutsche telekom

France, Cradle Of 'Three Strikes' Punishment, Explores Another Bad Idea: Killing Net Neutrality

from the what's-the-Internet-ever-done-to-them? dept

Not content with giving the world the “three strikes” approach to copyright enforcement, France has recently shown signs of wanting to undermine one of the Internet’s foundations: net neutrality. This has come about as a consequence of the French ISP Free’s decision to block ads on its service. As Mike noted, this was essentially an attempt to persuade Google to pay the ISP an extra fee to carry its traffic, even though Free’s customers already do that. That was resolved, at least for the moment, when France’s Digital Economy minister Fleur Pellerin stepped in and persuaded Free to restore the ads.

Pellerin also called a meeting between interested parties to discuss net neutrality in France, since this is fundamentally what is at stake: if ISPs like Free can arbitrarily block or throttle elements of the IP stream, net neutrality is dead in France. However, rather than come to any final decision on this increasingly contentious area, Pellerin did what most politicians do in the circumstances: she announced that yet another group would be looking at the question and reporting back.

Given that in July 2012 Pellerin seemed to be a staunch defender of the idea — she said “in my view, neutrality must be the rule” — this conspicuous lack of support for net neutrality seems a clear sign that the French ISPs and telecoms have been lobbying hard and successfully. As the digital rights organization La Quadrature du Net put it:

Yet again, today’s debate on Net Neutrality will have been a smokescreen. The voluntary speeches fall short with the referral of the issue to an obscure committee created by Nicolas Sarkozy, the CNN (Conseil national du numérique), all to finally justify the failure to adopt a serious position. Operators are left free by the State to restrict and monitor our online communications. While all the elements on the table demonstrate the need to act quickly by enshrining Net Neutrality into the French legislation, Fleur Pellerin still evades the issue.

Two days later, an opinion piece appeared in the French newspaper Libération, written by Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the Europe Commission with responsibility for the Digital Agenda, responding to these events. As Techdirt has reported before, she has some surprisingly advanced views on copyright, but her position on net neutrality is far less clear, as the English translation of her Libération article indicates:

On net neutrality, consumers need effective choice on the type of internet subscription they sign up to. That means real clarity, in non-technical language. About effective speeds in normal conditions, and about any restrictions imposed on traffic – and a realistic option to switch to a “full” service, without such restrictions, offered by their own provider or another.

So does that mean that “any restrictions imposed on traffic” are permitted, provided they are explained in non-technical language? Is Kroes signalling her own reluctance to defend this technical cornerstone of the Internet, just like Pellerin? At this stage it’s still not clear. But what is evident is that net neutrality is under attack in Europe as never before, with France once more in the vanguard.

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Filed Under: france, net neutrality

On This Internet Freedom Day, Download A Free Book: On Internet Freedom

from the enjoy dept

Lawyer Marvin Ammori has had an uncanny knack for being deeply involved in a few key battles for internet freedom over the years, including the SOPA fight last year. As today is the one year anniversary of the big January 18th blackout that effectively killed SOPA/PIPA — a day many are calling “Internet Freedom Day” — Ammori has put together a fantastic Kindle Single (i.e., short ebook) entitled On Internet Freedom. Just for Internet Freedom Day, the book is available free. If you don’t have a Kindle device, but do have a smartphone/tablet, you can still download it today for free and then read it whenever you get around to it. Ammori shared a draft copy with me, and it’s a very worthwhile read. Not only does it discuss a variety of battles concerning internet freedom, it pulls them all together to look at why these battles are happening… and why they’re going to continue. As such, it’s an important book for people to read to understand some of the larger issues at play, and why we need to continue to be vigilant in making sure the internet remains free and open. If you don’t pick up your free copy today — or if you just want to support some good causes — after today the ebook will still be available for $4.99, with all of the profits being donated to Demand Progress and Fight for the Future, two of the leading activist groups fighting on these issues.

Filed Under: internet freedom, marvin ammori, net neutrality, pipa, sopa, threats

Fight Over French ISP Blocking Ads Really Just A New Perspective On Net Neutrality Debate

from the internet-wars dept

At the beginning of the year, some folks in France, who used the popular ISP Free (whose name is a bit misleading, as it is not, in fact, free), discovered that the company had started providing a service in which it blocked all internet banner ads. There was no whitelist. It was either all or nothing (and if you went “all,” you were trusting that it wouldn’t over-filter). This quickly raised an awful lot of questions — with the biggest among them being “can they do that?” According to the French Digital Economy minister, the answer apparently is no. Free was quickly told to turn off its ad blocking software.

The French minister said: “No actor can jeopardise the digital ecosystem in a unilateral way.”

Of course, the reason for doing this was not to make their subscribers happier but rather to attempt to force Google to pay them more money for carrying their traffic. It was related to the story we just had about France Telecom degrading YouTube performance. Both were examples of these French companies effectively seeking to break basic end-to-end principles of the internet, in an effort to get Google to pay more, since Google is so popular. As we’ve noted, some European telcos have been desperately trying to make the argument that successful internet companies should pay them more money to carry their traffic.

The whole thing leaves me conflicted. Obviously, some will argue that I’m biased, since a significant part of our revenue comes from banner ads on this site. However, as I’ve made clear in the past, I have no problem with users who choose to make use of ad blocking software themselves, such as AdBlock, if they feel that ads on a site are too annoying. Many sites get upset at users who do this, or even try to punish them. We do not and would not do such a thing. We consider it an incentive to try to figure out ways to make money that don’t annoy our readers.

However, what Free is doing is different than that. Not only does it not really have anything to do with creating a benefit for the user, the fact that it’s universal with no control is quite worrisome. Furthermore, while some consumers will (obviously) argue that removing all ads is a major benefit, they might want to be careful in thinking about the slippery slope they’re stepping on when it comes to “net neutrality” issues. If an ISP is able to simply block all advertising, unless it gets paid directly from the ad platform, what’s to stop it from blocking other content (like all YouTube videos, all Netflix movies, all Spotify plays, all Skype calls, etc…) unless those companies pay to reach the ISP’s subscribers as well.

In some ways it’s a clever play by Free, who likely hoped consumers would support this move, without recognizing they were really supporting the same tool being applied across other content that they actually want.

Of course, given all that, I’m still a bit conflicted, since it’s uncomfortable to then see a government official step in unilaterally, and tell an ISP what they can and cannot do. This is, obviously, the net neutrality debate in a nut shell but pushed into an alternate perspective, thanks to the fact that it’s about advertising, rather than content subscribers really want. In the end, I find it problematic that the ISP is doing this unilaterally — whereby it seems like it really should be the end user’s choice to set their own rules for how their internet connection works, not the ISP in the middle.

Filed Under: ad blocking, content blocking, france, net neutrality
Companies: france telecom, free, google, youtube