So yesterday morning over coffee I was doing what most people do over their first daily cup o' joe, which is bring up technorati and see if anybody's talking about me. That process took me to Joho's page [1], from which I learned that the FCC was to be holding an hearing on why Comcast sucks, I mean Net Neutrality broadband network management practices only hours thence. Now although to my surprise & delight, Wetmachine, thanks to the work of my fellow wetmechanics Harold Feld and Greg Rose has become quite the FCC policy site with a side-order of net neutrality, I had never been to an FCC hearing. A quick check of the boat and bus schedules showed that I could probably make it to Hahvahd in time for most of the festivities. I decided to go. So, after securing the blessings of Dear Wife and throwing a few things in a bag, off I set to lose my FCC-hearing virginity.
Below the fold, some totally subjective impressions of the day, told in that winsome wetmachine way that you've come to treasure, or if you haven't yet, which you soon will. More sober-styled reports have surely appeared by now, and I'll dig up some links & post them at the end for those of you who like a little conventional reportage to ballast what you get from me.
After an ill-advised taxi ride from South Station that cost as much time and a whole lot more money than a ride on the Red Line would have done, I found myself at the Hub of the Universe, Harvard Yard, and eventually at the Law School. I knew I was in the right place by the people standing outside carrying placards saying things like
FCC: You Cannot Keep the Internet Open behind Closed Doors!
I discovered that there were no available seats at the hearing, which was taking place in the auditorium one flight of stairs. A few dozen people were milling about in corridors on the first floor, noodling on their laptops, talking in bunches. They told me that some of them had gotten there an hour before the official opening time of the hearing (11:00) and found the hall already filled to capacity. Some people were listening to an audio stream of the event going on upstairs, but when I tried to do that the server was maxed out. So there I was, so near but yet so far, feeling stupid and $100 poorer.
Pretty soon, however, it was like old home week, as I discovered that I was setting next to Jon Bartholomew, Harold and Greg's co-author [2]. We had a pleasant little chat, met a few of the other people that were also waiting to see if they could get in, carved our initials into the Group W. bench, swapped lies, swatted flies, and so forth. Jon introduced me to several good folks that he knew from righteous organizations like Free Press. Whenever I introduced myself as being from Wetmachine, they said, "Oh, you mean Harold's blog!"
To which I would mutter to myself, "so what am I, chopped liver?"
The "Comcast bussed people in" rumor surfaces
There was a rumor going around that the reason the hall was filled was because Comcast had hired a lot of people from job banks, bussed them to Harvard, and paid them to take up space. I got this story from several people, including a nice young reporter from the Boston University newspaper, who was trying to track down proof.
I said, "well, I would like to blog about that, but it's only a rumor, so I guess I won't."
Then there was a bit of a buzz, and it so happened that the nice gentlemen of the Harvard U. police had said since people had been trickling out & not returning, they were going to let in some of us who had been waiting go in, standing room only. Eventually I got in. It was about 1:30 by then.
The Policy Panel
* Marvin Ammori, General Counsel, Free Press
* Yochai Benkler, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School
* The Honorable Daniel E. Bosley, State Representative, Massachusetts
* David L. Cohen, Executive Vice President, Comcast Corporation
* The Honorable Tom Tauke, Executive Vice President — Public Affairs Policy and Communications, Verizon Communications
* Timothy Wu, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
* Christopher S. Yoo, Professor of Law and Director, Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, University of Pennsylvania Law School
I missed the prepared statements & most of the discussion. As I took my place along the wall, the first panel was answering questions from Chairman Martin.
Armori and Wu were saying generally intelligent stuff about the value of the Internet as a tool for democracy, and how privileging one class of application over another was inherently bad, or similar. (I wasn't taking notes yet.) Then Commissioner McDowell asked about whether certain classes of applications might be better suited for some physical substrate of network (cable versus wireless? Not sure what he meant; the question didn't make much sense to me), and whether the Commission should require, in the interest of disclosure, that "makers of protocols" advise that certain applications (for example Bittorrent? Games? VoIP?) might not work as well on some environments as others. Armmori and Wu kind of scratched their heads and replied, "no."
Then there was a discussion of why regions outside the US have much better broadband access than the US does, and what kind of "network shaping" policies they might use in, for example, Japan, Korea, China. The chasing-of-the-tail phenomenon was discussed, whereby increased bandwidth availability causes more demand, etc. Video over the net was chewing up all the newly available capacity! We can build more bandwidth, but that will be consumed too! It's a neverending tale of Sisyphus [3]! Aiieeeeeeee!!!!
They were already way passed the designated lunch break time, and Martin asserted control to wrap up with a few questions for the Verizon and Comcast execs. I forget his first question, (something about "network shaping", I think?), but the next question was brilliant. It went something like this:
Martin: "Congressman Markey does not believe that the FCC has the clear authority to issue directives about how you manage your networks, and so he has introduced legislation to expressly give us this authority. I don't think that legislation is necessary, because I think we have that authority implicitly. What do you think? Does the FCC have the authority to regulate this?
Verizon Guy: Verily, Sahib, if you say it is so, it must be so. Verizon will be honored to implement the wishes of the most exalted commission. So it is written, so it shall be done!"
Comcast Guy: [clears throat, looks at ceiling. . .] Um. . . well. . . um. . ah. . .[mumble] [bullshit bullshit bullshit. . .] um. . . er. . .no.
Martin What's that? I can't HEAR you! Does the FCC have the authority to tell you you cannot throttle back bittorrent applications?
Comcast Guy: [clears throat, looks at ceiling. . .] Um. . . well. . . um. . ah. . .[mumble] [bullshit bullshit bullshit. . .] um. . . er. . .
Martin: Blast you, fellow! Answer the question!
Comcast Guy: Well, 90% of our filing on this complaint says that there is no problem to solve, but 10% says that, no, you don't have the authority. You cannot enforce regulations that you said were unenforceable when you promulgated them and blah blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit, your mother wears army boots!
Martin: So you're saying we can't make you.
Comcast Guy: That's right, you can't make me. What are you going to do about that, Mr. Bigshot?
Martin: We have the authority to regulate unreasonable business practices. So, if we told you to stop doing it, would you stop?
Comcast Guy: [pause. . .] I'll have to get back to you on that.
Martin then adjourned the hearing for 15 minutes, and I got a seat.
Panel Discussion 2: Technological Perspectives
Each of these guys gave a brief presentation (about 7 minutes each). There were powerpoints, of course.
* Daniel Weitzner, Director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Decentralized Information Group
* Richard Bennett, Network Architect
* David Clark, Senior Research Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
* Eric Klinker, Chief Technology Officer, BitTorrent
* David P. Reed, Adjunct Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab
* Scott Smyers, Senior Vice President, Network & Systems Architecture Division, Sony Electronics Inc.
Weitzner started off by saying that some kind of network management was essential, the question was how to do it. Then he said "we're all peer to peer now".
1) People use the Web in a peer-to-peer, synchronous way. P2P is more than just bittorrent. It's the web itself.
2) Over 25 years the Web/Internet has evolved into a complex and finely tuned thing based on accepted conventions and a lot of goodwill.
He illustrated his point by showing an image of his personal web page, which has a Flickr box, an Amazon wish list, and a few other widgets. Blog-style applications, Web-2.0 applications depend on a user pays model, he said. "As a blog publisher, I don't want to have to negotiate with Amazon, Flickr, and so forth." Then he said,
"What's at stake is everyone's ability to communicate with everyone else."
He concluded by repeating that the web was "a complex and delicately balanced set of agreements based on historic principles that have been in place for twenty-five years and which have allowed the Internet to become the force it is today." By implication, Comcast was violating those principles.
Next Richard Bennett, an unaffiliated engineer that I heard (unconfirmed) was there at the recommendation of Comcast (note that no Comcast engineers were on the panels), went on with a little tutorial about how their were two questions:
1) Was it OK to practice network management?
2) Was it OK to practice network management based on applications?
Briefly, he was of the opinion that the answers were Yes and Yes. Some applications, like voice, are very jitter-sensitive. Others, like web pages, are less jitter-sensitive. Still others, like file transfer, are not jitter sensitive at all. And then of course there were messages that the net sent to itself to keep itself up and going; those needed to be prioritized above all. Also, congestion arises. So, entities that provide netorks need to be able to "shape" traffic, by application, to everybody's benefit.
At some point he actually said that if the Free Press had their way and no shaping was allowable, the the Internet would become "Deadwood", after the HBO series about a lawless town. There were some guffaws in the audience.
And then he reintroduced the Sisyphus theme, and said that we were stuck with network management, get over it, that Comcast should be given medals for their bold forays into network management on behalf of all of us, that their throttling back of Bittorrent without telling anybody what they were doing was the moral equivalent of what E Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment did at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and that he, for one, welcomed his Comcast Overlord masters.
David Clark then spoke. He had some authority, inasmuch as he was Chief Protocol Architect [4] when the whole damn "Internet" thing started.
He said that since the lawyers had spoken about engineering in the first panel, he, an engineer, was going to talk about pricing. His basic point was that flat pricing for unlimited access was going to have to go away, although "it will take a while for consumers to get educated about this." He said that "the internet is what the economists call an experiential good" which means that you have to try it for a while to figure out what its value is to you. He discussed possible pricing models for a while; I didn't think it was very interesting, but I know the FCC eats that stuff up so it was probably wise on his part.
But next he got into the bits and bytes, where I'm more comfortable (hey, I wrote my first TCP/IP