Law Students

: Law Vibe

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Technology Under Fire By CRTC in Canada

By C. C. (index)

P2P (Peer-to-Peer) is a technology, not an activity.

File sharing is an activity uses P2P technology.
P2P is about sharing content and resources with peers.
The internet has always been about sharing resources with peers.
Bandwidth is a resource.

In the beginning it was military computer peers. Then it was academic researcher peers. Now it?s the consumer public peers.

Many ISPs emulate the original internet and peer with each other to save on transit data thereby clearing the internet highways for traffic is not generated locally.

Empirically, closed access (non P2P) detracts from a country?s economy by artificially restricting trade and encouraging ?gray marketing? or pirate marketing of products.

The CRTC in Canada is now taking submissions from the public on throttling DSL connections.

Consumers feel it?s because the Telcos want to push their own content onto users (which of course is not throttled.)

Users also unrealistically expect $20.00 per month entitles them to 6.5 mbps for the entire 730 hours.

The CRTC receiving evidentiary submissions from industry experts, lobbyists, big iron sales people but so far I haven?t seen a single net economist give evidence.

Being Australian, I guess my input is not really warranted for what Canadians consider to be an internal countrywide matter.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world is watching Canada, and the RBOCS/Bells and large carriers are awaiting the outcome – sitting on the edges of the chairs whilst they do so.

Will the CRTC give them a precedent that will allow them lobby their own governments for similar treatment resulting in being able to implement packet prioritization ensuring higher corporate profit margins?

Any economist would tell you throttling should depend on several things:

Are all services being throttled identically? i.e., if P2P is being throttled, are the Video on Demand services also being throttled an equal amount?

If not, an obvious case of abusing their position as dominant market player by Bell may need to be investigated.

The solution to the problem is quite simple.

If Bell Canada is not prepared to peer with all ISPs and insists on ?applying to utilize DPI for throttling only P2P traffic,? an as a result, the CRTC finally accedes to their request, then:

The CRTC needs to mandate DPI traffic management across all ISPs with each DPI activity being monitored by the CRTC and logged in a database.

The database needs to collect – network segment traffic flow, reason for throttling – % of throttling.
The throttling needs to be reset to zero as soon as traffic conditions warrant it.
Any unfair throttling needs to be logged by CRTC for anti-competitive disciplinary action (fines).

I?ll revert to an analogy ?->

If all traffic lights were always green at all intersections, there would be a high number of collisions, specifically during morning and evening rush hours.

Eventually, traffic would stop flowing altogether.

Traffic lights are therefore recognized by the public necessary to ensure a smooth transition from point of departure to the destination.

The timing of traffic lights alter per hour, and sometimes per minute, depending on the traffic flow in other parts of the city grid.

Sometimes there?s more demand on the East West axis, and therefore North-South traffic needs to wait longer for the lights to change.

The timing is calculated by computer database, and over-sighted by human operators, who curiously are Government officials.

Adding freeways changes traffic patterns (in many cases improving the flow for a limited period ? until the population catches up) but traffic lights are still needed at the on and off ramps to regulate the traffic flow.

Bandwidth throttling should be managed in exactly the same manner.

Ambulance traffic, fire and police get first priority followed by mass transit vehicles, thereafter minibuses, motorcycles with single seater V8 sports cars coming last.

In the Internet World this translates to:

Why am I selecting Video on Demand as one of the most required items for throttling? Because the model is extremely net unfriendly and is the least important content.

1000 – 3000+ kbps (.TS MPEG) is required to be streamed by a single host to a single client.

This example utilizes a T3 connection for every 5 clients.

A T3 wholesales in the USA for $3,000 (USD) per month.

If each client is watching a 90 minute movie, a T3 is only capable of delivering 2433 movies per month ? or essentially, a wholesale bandwidth price of $(USD)1.23 per movie.

However, P2P delivery of the same movie at 750 kbps with every ISP in Canada being mandated to peer (without exception) would deliver the same movie to a user for the bandwidth cost of approximately $0.21 cents

ISPs in Canada have absolutely no hope of competing on a commercially level playing field basis with Bell Canada ?- unless the delivery of on demand video content is either delivered via P2P or Bell Canada is instructed to throttle VoD.

Utilization of a P2P software solution to deliver the video through a client like MIRO can be monetized for those desiring to deliver video on demand.

The downside is transport stream DRM would need to be revisited in conjunction with developers who can add a flag into file sharing programs.

Unfortunately, the one downside of this proposal is DPI be utilized in the execution of the proposed throttling.

Checks and balances need to be put into place to ensure a private users data is never revealed.

While I realize this isn?t within the CRTC bailiwick and involves the privacy commissioner, I?m fairly sure the following methodology would satisfy all parties as it doesn?t in any way alter the current status quo.

This can be achieved by each transaction on a network being allocated an incident number by the ISP. With only the ISP capable of relating incident number to user IP or User login details.

The importance of a CRTC database with every throttling action logged is to ensure dominant market players do not continue to abuse their market dominance to the detriment of Canadian users and the Canadian economy.

NB In Australia of course, references to Bell or Bell Canada should be transposed in readers minds with the name ?Telstra?.

[thanks to mlaaker and tom koltai via cc]