FCC chief to Comcast: Hands off BitTorrent
Comcast cable’s boneheaded campaign to choke off bandwidth for file-sharers has made a powerful enemy: FCC chairman Kevin Martin.
The FCC chief said Friday that Comcast must stop singling out users of the BitTorrent file-sharing application, and reveal to customers what sort of “traffic shaping” activities it was employing.
At this year’s CSS, Martin announced a probe of Comcast’s activities in limiting bandwidth for users of P2P applications. Martin’s ruling, which needs a sign-off from the rest of the commission, does not include penalties or sanctions for Comcast’s previous data-nanny behaviors.
The order looks like a major vote for network neutrality, the often-debated concept that ISPs need to keep their noses out of how customers use the Internet.”The Internet is based upon the idea that consumers can go anywhere they want and access any content they want,” the FCC chieftain told the New York Times in an interview. “When they show they are blocking access to some sort of content, they have the burden to show that what they are doing is reasonable.”
In late March, BitTorrent and Comcast came to an uneasy peace over the issue with an agreement that the cabler would transition to “protocol agnostic” bandwidth management — meaning BitTorrent wouldn’t be singled out. BitTorrent is most widely used for the sharing of movie and TV files, while Comcast sells pay-per-view programming to its cable TV customers.
BitTorrent’s charges of anti-competitive behavior — which could have wrought legal and governmental headaches for Comcast — were enough to get the cabler’s attention.
BitTorrent has said it’s developing new distribution methods that would reduce the drag on bandwidth providers.
Eric Klinker, chief technology officer of BitTorrent, said at the time of the agreement: “Recognizing that the Web is richer and more bandwidth-intensive than it has been historically, we are pleased that Comcast … wants to collaborate with us to migrate to techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent.”
The FCC chief said Friday that one of the problems with Comcast’s bandwidth crackdown was the cabler’s lack of clear communication with customers.
BitTorrent users on Comcast complained that not only was bandwidth choked off for them while using the P2P application, they were systematically blocked from seeding — the first P in the P2P end of things, in which users with complete files remain online, “seeding” other downloaders.
The relative youth of FCC chief Martin, a Bush appointee, probably figures into what looks like an unusual ruling against a big operator such as Comcast. Basically, Martin gets it. Score 1 for Generation X.
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Digital dump on Hollwood: nothing new
The digital Godzilla that splatted the music industry is headed full speed for the movie and TV business.
So says a top Lehman Brothers analyst, whose downgrade of the entertainment sector from “neutral” to “negtive” roiled major Hollywood stocks early this week — even though all of this gloom has long been factored in to media stock prices.
“Owning a collection of movies in this new digital world is really just not that cool for young adults in the target demographic that we look to for the future of the business,” Anthony DiClemente proclaimed during a conference call.
Then he let loose the dreaded words: “Content may no longer be king in the entertainment business.”
DiClemente trotted out the usual suspects: digital distribution via outlets like the iTunes Store and Amazon’s Unbox, illegal movie downloads, ad-killing DVRs, the overall downtrend in the aging DVD format.
He downgraded 20th Century Fox, News Corp., Time Warner, CBS and the Walt Disney Corp., media giants he said were particularly vulnerable to digital disruptions. Paramount took less of a hit.
News Corp., for example, saw the target price for its stock fall from $25 to $15 a share in Lehman’s eyes. Time Warner’s slid from $20 to $14.
“The structural shift created by ubiquitous technological change — a shift that has materially impacted the music industry — could also disrupt the core economic models of the film and television studios,” DiClemente said.
Most of the stocks DiClemente cited failed to participate in Tuesday’s broad stock rally, but their losses from Monday’s bashing seem over.The Lehman report saw a lot of press because of its doom-and-gloom headlines, but anyone with an active interest in this topic knows there’s nothing new there. Almost all of the analysts rounded up for comment blew off DiClemente’s report.
DiClemente, of course, had to justify his sector downgrade, so don’t blame him for stating the obvious.
He did make a point we don’t hear often enough. The era of owning an artifact — an album, CD or DVD — in order to enjoy entertainment is coming to a close. The forward-looking musician Todd Rundgren was making this point 15 years ago, but no one was listening.
Most of us have heard of kids who buy CDs, download the music, and then throw away the disc before someone cool sees them with the dumb thing.
The Hollywood stock slide in my opinion doesn’t present a buying opportunity (outside of overall market cheapness). I don’t own media stocks (aside from some GE stock I’m looking to dump) — and that’s from someone who’s worked in media most of his life.