DISQUS

Richard, I was under the impression that Comcast's TCP resets afflict all seeders who reside in areas where Snadvine has been adctivated. i.e. once you finish downloading a file, then your torrent app switches to seeding mode instead of leeching mode, Sandvine kicks in. Correct me if i'm wrong, but if I'm not, then sandvine affects a good number of torrent users. many might unwittingly seed post-downloading, but back when I used torrents regularly I usually seeded for a while after downloading. it helps share ratio on private torrent communities, plus is a matter of giving back for what you've taken. if nobody seeded beyond the first seeder, torrents wouldn't get very far. anyway, i agree that very few people seed torrents from the beginning, although my wild guess is that 0.1% of torrent users is a bit low, but still admittedly small in the grand scheme of things.

That DataTreasury's patents are valid under current law doesn't mean they should be valid under an ideal set of IP laws. If Tim is correct that DataTreasury's patent on digital check clearing essentially prevents any bank from implementing its own distinct system that accomplishes the same end, then DataTreasury's patents are a perfect example of flawed IP laws letting companies enjoy massive unearned windfalls simply because of a lucky but not especially nnovative intellectual creation.

Property rights may sound like intellectual property rights, but they aren't the same. Property rights are inherent, but intellectual property rights are artificial government monopolies granted by society as a compromise to promote innovation, not to protect the little guy.

As Tim mentioned, the USPTO has on many occasions upheld unreasonably broad or obvious patents. That's why Congress must act. Whether the Sessions amendment is a good idea is a tough call. It reigns in the excesses of deficient patent protection, but at the same time hurts taxpayers without moving the patent debate in the right direction.

And Don, IPI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit non-partisan organization, so demanding transparency about a possible relationship between IPI and DataTreasury is irrelevant and unfair. Even if DataTreasury happened to be an IPI contributor, that has no bearing on the validity of Tom's piece. IPI has a consistent track record on ideological advocacy--do you really think if the banks cut a check to the IPI, then IPI would have argued against patents and for the Sessions amendment? Perhaps DataTreasury supports strong patents and agrees with status-quo IP laws. Shouldn't IPI be able to accept funds from DataTreasury and still argue for patent protection? The logic and validity of Tom's op-ed has nothing to do with IPI's supporters. It has everything to do with the actual content of the piece, and the relative merits of the argumentation.

Matt, I'm with you fundamentally, but I prefer not to shape the argument in those terms. The percentages you cite are complete guesswork, and based on the estimates I've read, your figures may be exaggerated in Bittorrent's disfavor.

Here's what we can reasonably conclude:
-a small but not insignificant minority of Comcast customers use Bittorrent
-Bittorrent consumes a substantial and disproportionate amount of bandwidth
-A sizeable portion of torrent traffic is copyright infringement.

Many torrent users who've suffered on the account of Sandvine neither pirate nor consume excessive network resources. On the other hand, as you rightly point out, a large majority of Comcast customers are at this point well served by a network free from P2P-induced congestion.

The broadband market is functioning like it should, and Comcast and other ISPs are experimenting with methods to deal with increasing demand for bandwidth.

Hance, you are absolutely right that competition can function fairly well even with a duopoly. Cable and DSL are fairly close substitutes for most uses, and a substantial majority of people can get both.

And with Wi-Max just a couple months away from official launch in DC and Chi, and LTE on the not-so-distant horizon, wireless competition may come sooner than we think. Who knows what firms will do with the 700mhz band when analog NTSC stops in 2009?

Plus, the telcos can only service 79% of U.S. homes with DSL, largely due to CO distance limitations. AT&T; would love to offer broadband to such customers, if only an economically feasible option existed. The 700mhz spectrum, for all we know, could be used for broadband, albeit modest, in areas not served by DSL.

200kbps doesn't meet my personal definition of broadband. But 800kbps--sustained throughput, not burst speeds--is broadband, and it's what EVDO Rev A offers. Rev A devices are now available to let PCs browse the web at these speeds. So, while most people still have 2 options, a growing number have 3. Half of Americans are now covered by Rev A.

Also don't forget Sprint's new unlimited voice and data plan. No hidden caps, no usage limitations.

Steve, corporations are far from perfect, and some can act downright evil. But choosing which corporations to patronize is significantly easier than choosing which federal government to endure.

Plus, when a corporation is being evil, the public often figures it out and can actively decide to switch to a less evil company. Google even uses "Don't Be Evil" as a marketing mantra, and in my opinion Google has lived up to its promise better than most.

We should bash corporations when they do things we don't like, and libertarians aren't typically corporate apologists. Still, firms have a market incentive to not be evil, unlike governments, and few corporations succeed in the long run by engaging in evil activities.

Steve, the ocean isn't much like the airwaves. With a few limited exceptions, the open seas are a non-rival good. There is so much space for relatively few ships that every firm can transport goods across the ocean without preventing any other. Spectrum, however, is quite scarce, and there are plenty of firms which would love to utilize the airwaves if only barriers to entry were not so high.

Also, even having several "private FCCs," with each owning a separate chunk of spectrum, would be far superior to the status-quo. Competition would enhance social welfare by spurring product differentiation through market incentives. Currently, a single regulatory agency is in charge of the whole spectrum, and firms relying on spectrum have no choice but to work within the constraints of the current system.

Treating the spectrum like a public good for a benevolent government to parcel out is the wrong approach. Eminent domain should still apply to the spectrum, of course, as it applies to land. But like land, private ownership is key to efficient resource allocation. What if instead of buying a piece of land from a realtor, you had to convince a bureaucrat you would utilize land for a legitimate public purpose?

Dimitris, you make a good point, but many of your concerns would be addressed by spectrum liberalization. If firms could truly control the spectrum with no usage mandates or transfer limitations, secondary spectrum markets would surely emerge. People won't just be able to buy the rights to airwaves from the government--they would be able to purchase comparatively small chunks from spectrum resellers. Again, high entry barriers resulting from the artificial scarcity imposed by the FCC preclude truly vibrant secondary spectrum markets.

would that it were...

Enigms, I think you misinterpret Adam's argument. The decline of newspapers isn't necessarily a good thing, but it is reality. The market is changing, and consumers are less interested in spending money on print media. FCC ownership rules will only make things harder for newspapers to compete with online media.

While many papers will be forced to close, others may well remain profitable, and I wish them all the best. As a WSJ subscriber, I dread the day that paper goes bust. But if it does, so be it. Rest assured that, thanks to natural market processs, online journalists will be waiting in throws should traditional media continue on its present path.

Changing ownership rules might not make newspapers more profitable, but, as Kevin Martin himself argues, it probably will. Economies of scale make it easier for large media companies to cover news cost-effectively. But regardless of newspaper profits, media coverage of public affairs will remain just as useful.

This isn't a call for regulation. It's a reminder of the government's increasing irrelevance thanks to the Internet. Was Kevin Martin the first to discover Comcast's interference with p2p? Not even close. Funchords posted his report on DSL Reports, and a few weeks later the AP picked up the story, before regulators were even clued in to the matter. Before the FCC had a word to say, the blogosphere was ignited and pretty much everybody clued in to tech policy was aware of Comcast's transgressions.

Sure, the looming threat of fines and regulation played its part, but the main reason Comcast is backpedalling is due to all the negative press and consumer backlash that has emerged since Comcast's RST packet-injection was revealed.

Comcast cares about making money. Losing customers, or discouraging new ones from signing up, is exactly what Comcast wants to avoid.

Funchords, aren't you happy that your ISP will soon begin managing traffic in a protocol-agnostic matter? I thought that was exactly what you wanted to happen. 9 months won't come soon enough, but at least they have made a clear-cut committment.

As you mention, more broadband competition is crucial. Neutrality rules telling private ISPs how they can manage their networks will not encourage new entrants. We need spectrum liberalization and local franchise reform so people will have more options.

Still, 78% of U.S. households with a phone line can get DSL. So roughly 4 of 5 Comcast customers angered by Sandvine can just switch to DSL. There are drawbacks (lower throughput and more latency due to interleaving) but advantages as well(lower prices, very lenient bandwidth caps, minimal traffic shaping).

Cable and DSL aren't perfect substitutes, but they are both high-speed internet options available to most people. And if and when LTE or Wi-Max become common that's another choice as well. Just because the free market can't perfectly meet every consumer need does not mean government regulation is the answer.

This is a very good analysis of the patent bill. It's still probably a baby step in right direction, don't you think? Making it easier to challenge patents seems like a good idea, and so does the apportionment of damages and elimination of venue-shopping.

The hardest question to me is whether we ought to switch to a first-to-file system. This article about Canada's experience with patents argues that many of the theoretical problems with first to file do not often manifest in practice.

Taming the corporate beast with the mere threat of regulation is indeed preferable to regulation itself, but still less than optimal in many cases. Threats work quite well, though. Verizon Wireless and AT&T; have changed a lot of policies lately to pre-empt Congressional action. From open-access to pro-rated termination fees to allowing users to unlock phones, the wireless companies are gradually evolving both in response to competitive forces and government pressures.

And I'm not sure about proclaiming "Problem Solved" just yet. Comcast may be negotiating with Bittorrent, Inc, but that company is a tiny part of the phenomenon that is the Bittorrent protocol. It remains to be seen whether one company's development of a protocol that has since been unleashed into the wild will have much effect on users.

What if the "friendlier" version of Bittorrent makes for slower download speeds despite smoother network operation from the ISP's standpoint? Legit P2P firms may adopt the next Bittorrent, but unless huge numbers of people stop using regular old torrent files to pirate massive amounts of media, the capacity strain isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Bebo only discourages those bullies too dumb to anonymize. There are a lot of them out there, though, so it seems like revealing IP addresses may be wise.

You mention Tor, and there are lots of other methods of achieving online anonymity. Daisy-chaining free foreign proxy servers is a quick and dirty way of staying "off the grid" while browsing. Paid services like Relaaks and Anonymizer offer strong privacy assurances and VPN connections albeit using the vulnerable PPTP instead of IPSec.

Bebo also reminds us that IP addresses don't really correspond to the individual ISP subscriber. In the Internet's infancy it was a fairly safe bet that a transmission from an IP address is origianlly from the PC of the subscriber, but no longer. The Courts still treat IP address like a physical address, ignoring the key distinction between the two.

And baddies aren't the only ones with good reason to anonymize. With privacy concerns growing as behavioral advertising and government surveillance become more widespread, I envision a future where a lot of people use anonymization strategies. I support ads based on behavioral targeting, but if some users don't want their web history tracked, the market will provide solutions for obfuscating browsing habits.

If an employer is concerned about maintaining a good public image. I don't see why they shouldn't screen applicants on Facebook or other social networking sites.

That said, were I in HR, I wouldn't expect (or even prefer) squeaky-clean applicants who never take risks or have a good time on the weekends. But for some businesses, maybe that's just the kind of employee they're looking for. And since Facebook lets you control pictures of you tagged by others, there isn't much risk of compromising photos being linked to you without your permission.

Good paper. I think this recent public obsession with cell phone rights comes from consumers, and lawmakers, lacking an understanding of how markets or businesses work.

Cell phone contracts exist for a reason. Most people like cheap, high-tech cell phones, and once they find a good carrier they stick with them. Some people would love to change carriers or phones often, and with pay-as-you-go plans they can, if they're willing to pay the price.

Consumers seem to have a utopian vision, where cell phones remain affordable but contracts go away. Then people can switch whenever they want, and their carrier is stuck with a used cellphone of diminished value. If Arizona forces this upon companies, I doubt cell phone companies will see much incentive to invest finite resources in improving service in Arizona when other states have far better opportunities for success.

With regard to the term "liberal", I remain on the fence as to whether using the term in its modern derogatory sense to refer to statists is desirable. I am a proud liberal--a classical one. Would that libertarians could reclaim the term liberal, restoring it to its original meaning, and find a new term to attack big-government statists that is not merely a rebadged term.

I don't believe Comcast has negotiated settlement-free interconnection with any Tier 1 carrier. So presumably they have to pay for bandwidth on a metered basis, as Tom suggested. And since Bittorrent is a major source of bandiwdth usage by Comcast customers, anything that can be done to reduce file sharing traffic means lower costs for Comcast.

On the other hand, testing of the methods used by Comcast to shape traffic has determined that RST packets are being forget to restrict seeding exclusively, and downloading via Bittorrent is unaffected. Comcast's focus on upstream traffic suggests their main concern is high upstream traffic causing saturation of local cable nodes.

I'd be interested to learn more about how the peering agreements of Tier 1 ISPs like Qwest, Verizon, and AT&T; deremine their management of peer to peer traffic. Because they do not pay for bandwidth on a byte-per-byte basis, Tier 1 carriers have an incentive to fill up their pipes at all times while using QoS to prioritize traffic that is latency-sensitive like VoIP or highly valued like Email and web browsing.