MUST READ NYTimes.com: Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic "People seem to be missing the point."

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Michael O'Dell [mo () ccr org]
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 9:01 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   NYTimes.com: Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic

David Farber wrote:
> ________________________________________
> From: Bob Frankston [bob37-2 () bobf frankston com]
> Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 8:13 PM
> To: David Farber; 'ip'
> Subject: RE: [IP] NYTimes.com: Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic
>
> I’m going to mull a letter to the NYT – in the meantime I need to shout.

People seem to be missing the point.

Since bit *rate*, not bit mass, is the instantaneously-exhaustable
resource in packet network, if they were actually worried about
network engineering, they'd be going to the burstable charging
model which is known to worth both technically and economically.
it relates the charges directly to the exhaustion of the
finite resource - bit *rate*, not bit mass.

but they aren't using charge pushback that does anything useful
from an engineering perspective. Therefore i conclude they are doing
it for a different reason and the "network engineering" claims
are just red herrings to distract them what don't know any better.

so what *would* be a reason for limiting bit mass if it
doesn't correlate with network performance?

hmmmm - charging for mass will obviously provide an incentive
to move fewer bits, which means not moving *big files*.  why would
they care about file size? oops! if it's expensive to move big files,
they kneecap downloading "large scale media" (read "movies", "tv", etc)
without having to start a fight over some selected types of information
being inherently more valuable than others.

I conclude this is all about controlling file-sharing, not because
of any performance impacts, but because of the sharing, per se.
it becomes a crude form of Digital Denial Management.

the fact this impacts information freely created and shared as
well as some information assumed to be copyright-infected is
no skin off their noses. the more publicly-available media,
the less people will pay-per-view for studio content,
so this collateral damage is actually a feature, not a bug.

So we get to this question: how should the public react to
bit-moving providers who gerrymander the service offering
to the benefit of their Media Masters? If there were any
real competitive alternatives, they could vote with their feet.
without that alternative, however, are they simply at the mercy
of the media giants to bend everything to their will?
at what point does this become anti-competitive behavior?
does anyone in gubmint care about that anymore?

        harumph
        -mo






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