I have different Net Neutrality worries.

I admit to being somewhat confused about net neutrality, but that probably means I’m only slightly less confused than any of my friends who feel confident they understand it.  My instinct is that (once again) the Internet industry is sowing a bit of fear that (once again) the Internet is in grave danger of not working as it should for “the people.”  I say this because the headlines, cartoons, and editorials most often shared by my generally progressive-leaning friends all convey some variation on the theme that without net neutrality, we will wind up with two Internets — a very very fast Internet for big entities with deep pockets, and a very very slow Internet for the rest of us.  On this matter of the extremely bifurcated web alone, I say hogwash if for no other reason than the fact that no entity stands to benefit from “slowing us down” as it were.  Instead, it is more likely that the fear of being disenfranchised is being dangled in front of consumers because Silicon Valley corporations would like us to subsidize their enterprises — that is more than we already do.  Writes the Chairman of NewCompetition Scott Cleland in an editorial on The Daily Calller:

“The rub here is that what big video streamers, like Google-YouTube & Netflix, really want is for the FCC to ban “paid prioritization” — i.e., the prioritizing of Internet traffic that depends on real-time delivery ahead of traffic that does not.

Translation: Silicon Valley covets a proverbial free lunch on Internet consumers’ tab.”

So, regarding the prospect of the “two Internets” rhetoric, suppose we have an entity called Netflix, which is presently the largest consumer of bandwidth worldwide.  And suppose there are other services just like Netflix, all of which expect to grow in terms of volume, in terms of image and sound quality, and in terms of consumer demand.  Now, suppose we have an ISP or some other entity considering the prospect of making stranded investments in the infrastructure required to enable continued delivery to meet increasing demand for more data-intensive content (e.g. 4K video).  The first question is why it would be unreasonable to propose that the Netflixes or the YouTubes or the Hulus of the world pay rates commensurate with their demand on this infrastructure; and the more important question for consumers is why such a proposal would necessarily result in a lack of access to high-speed connections at affordable prices?  In such a scenario, both the Netflix (content distributor) and the ISP (infrastructure investor) will lose their shirts.  It is in nobody’s interests anywhere to disenfranchise consumers from high-speed access to the web; it would be like filling a store full of expensive inventory, locking the doors, and expecting to make sales.

We do see stories from time to time of a more conspiratorial nature, invoking ideological motivations when implying that a not-for-profit or a start-up will be slowed into extinction on the dusty wagon trail of the “slow” Internet while the big, corporate interests and well-funded political organizations race along the sleek superhighway.  But, again, this doesn’t make any sense from a technical or a policy perspective per se.  The mall across the river from my house has a whopping electric bill in contrast to mine because it demands much more from the power plant than my house ever could.  Nevertheless, the lights in my house come on just as instantly as the lights in the mall.  There is no reason why a major user of bandwidth paying more for that use should slow down a relatively small user of bandwidth.  Moreover, we already have a precedent for “uneven” access in place, and it’s actually more fair than in years past.  ISPs in most, if not all, markets offer tiered pricing for access at different speeds, and this makes sense.  If your neighbor wants to play video games online and needs top speed, why should you subsidize his use, if all you want is email and basic website loading?  We can argue whether or not the prices in place are reasonable, but the principle that consumers pay for what they actually need or want or can afford is hardly unfair. And, again as Cleland points out, this is how the technology works:

‘”Virtually every Internet user also understands that different broadband technologies — fiber, coax, copper, satellite, fixed wireless or mobile wireless — all naturally generate a range of broadband speed lanes because of physics.

The technology one chooses to use naturally creates faster and slower Internet lanes.”

Setting aside overlapping concerns about mega-mergers (I honestly believe that’s a separate issue), one of the interesting aspects of this hotly-contested kerfuffle over net neutrality is that it is so typically American with its many ideological contradictions.  One the one hand, we like to believe that “the internet belongs to everyone,” but of course the only way to make that manifest with regard to investment in maintaining and upgrading the system would be to do so exclusively with public funds.  Such an approach would likely rankle conservatives and progressives for different reasons — free-market, anti-socialist arguments on one side, and keeping the government from “controlling the Internet” on the other.  Thus, ironically enough, by insisting that the “internet belongs to the people,” we functionally insist that it belongs to private enterprise and hope that the people’s government can create a regulatory structure to protect our common interest in having a “free and open internet,” whatever that means.  But not too much regulation, mind you, because again, we don’t want the government to have control;  but we also don’t want the corporations in charge either because all they care about is money and ruling the universe.

So, if you think you’ve got net neutrality all sussed, my hat’s off to you; but if you prefer as I do not to have your day ruined trying to track the many players and their various agendas, my instinct is that I wouldn’t worry too much about the “fast lane/slow lane” thing because none of the big stakeholders has anything to gain from this outcome.  I’d be much more concerned about who’s disseminating this over-simple explanation and what it is they’re after.

Talking Cyberlockers with Dr. David Price (Podcast)

This time last year, I had the opportunity to talk to Dr. David Price of London-based NetNames shortly after they released a report on the scale and scope of media piracy worldwide.  Presently, Dr. Price is in Washington DC where, along with collaborator Tom Galvin of the Digital Citizens Alliance, he officially released a new report on piracy, this one focused entirely on sites known as cyberlockers.  Titled “Behind the Cyberlocker Door,”  the report focuses on the top thirty sites that use this technology to facilitate and profit from the illegal distribution of copyrighted content like motion pictures, music, books, and video games.  The report describes how these black-market businesses function, and how they earn their money.  And among the more striking aspects of the study is the fact that Visa and Master Card, despite claims to the contrary, are facilitating transactions for these cyberlocker sites.  Moreover, users of these sites may be surprised to learn that signing up for premium accounts to enable faster downloads could well expose them to malware designed to enable identity theft.

Guess who the real victims of piracy are…

People like to tell themselves and others that piracy of entertainment media is a victimless crime, by which they typically mean that their one little download of a major motion picture doesn’t hurt anyone when the studio that produced said picture is making millions.  I’ve assailed this fallacy in more than a few posts, but a report released today by London-based NetNames, in collaboration with the Digital Citizens Alliance, makes quite clear that if you’re a user of a pirate site, the most vulnerable victim in the transaction may well be you.

This time last year, Dr. David Price authored a report for NetNames called “Sizing the Piracy Universe,” which as the title implies, took a very broad look at the global piracy ecosystem.  This new report “Behind the Cyberlocker Door” specifically examines the mechanics and finances of the top 30 cyberlocker sites, which are designed specifically to facilitate mass theft of copyrighted material.  Fifteen of the sites were direct download sites, and fifteen were streaming sites, and all were found to be profitable enterprises deriving revenues from a combination of advertising and the sale of premium accounts, primarily process through Visa and MasterCard.

For readers who don’t know about cyberlockers, think of the system as a vastly more robust version of a legal cloud storage service like Dropbox designed to share a limited volume of files with family, friends, and business colleagues.  These cyberlockers facilitate uploading and downloading of unlimited files worldwide among complete strangers, and  the report states unsurprisingly that the majority of the content (roughly 80% not including pornography) found on these sites is comprised of illegally distributed copyrighted works — movies, music, books, and video games.  The 30 sites studied earn collective annual profit of about $69 million.

These may not be compelling statistics to the staunch piracy advocate or even the casual piracy dabbler, who wants to convince himself that these enterprises are just a reaction to outdated scarcity caused by unreasonable copyright regimes and greedy producers.  But just because Kim Dotcom, the founders of The Pirate Bay, and even Internet industry advocates like to make grandiose, ideological claims about piracy, people should not be fooled for a second that the owners of these sites are quite so high-minded as all that.  In fact, parents of kids with unfettered access to computers ought to pay particular attention because these sites can be plain dangerous.  Dr. Price’s report indicates that more than half of all cyberlocker sties are responsible for malware infections on computers.  This is particularly worrisome as more and more consumers gravitate toward mobile devices, and the threat of identity theft through malware will likely become more acute.  Mobile devices are typically less secure than home computers, and people are storing an increasing amount of personal and financial data on mobile devices through apps designed to make transactions and communications more convenient.

A typical way in which malware is introduced by a content-theft cyberlocker, one offering downloads of movies for instance, is to sell users premium accounts and/or third-party software to expedite downloads and playback of motion pictures.  Not only do these sites charge for the service — and we’ll come back to that — but the process stepping users through sign-up and/or downloading player software is designed to mask the introduction of malware to a computer that can then be used for identity theft.  The money made by advertising and selling premium accounts to infringing material is good money for these sites, but that business model is really just bait to attract users to these sites in order to exploit their data in some more substantial fashion.  So, I know it’s terrible that content producers would ever presume to charge dirty dirty money for legal access to their works, but $3.99 to rent a movie seems like a way better deal than letting some hacker in Ukraine roam around in my personal data.

One might rationally ask why someone would pay $10/month for a premium account on one of these cyberlockers but refuse to pay $8 for an account with a legal distributor like Netflix.  The answer will invariably come back that a Netflix or a Hulu, for instance, doesn’t have every film or TV show ever made whereas these sites that don’t enter into legal agreements with producers do have just about every title you can name.   I suppose for some, that rationale is enough justification for doing harm to producers as well as risking their own data security, but the premium account phenomenon does give lie to all that nonsense calling copyright a form of “artificial scarcity.”  I mean, what are the pirates doing offering slow downloads for free and fast downloads for a price other than “creating artificial scarcity” in their own black-market paradigm?

Quite simply, piracy is a business that exploits the labor of one segment of society in order to fleece another segment of society who think they’re getting away with something.  And if that other segment is you and your data gets hacked, maybe all this pseudo-progressive talk about piracy as a social good will start to sound more like the hogwash it is.