Sometimes I wonder if people really understand how peer-to-peer file sharing works. I listened to the CRTC discussions and I am following some of the “post-game analysis”.

Some of the rhetoric is just plain silly. Frankly, I think that there are a lot of outspoken people who might want to stop to listen and think before speaking out.

Like the call for a class action lawsuit that I read about on Tech Media Reports:

Yet Rogers disclosed that the upload speeds are actually identical for P2P traffic as they are both throttled equally. I find that extremely deceptive and can’t help but wonder whether they open themselves up to a class action lawsuit by Extreme subscribers who don’t get the service they think they do.

I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that before someone sues someone else, you need to have someone who experienced some harm.

Let’s go back to look at the first principles for what is meant by P2P file transfer in order to understand why there is no harm to the uploader.

Most consumers subscribe to an asymmetric internet connection. That means that it works faster in one direction than the other. For most of us, we receive information (download) faster than we can provide it (upload).

So, lets say that I want to download a file that you have. If I get it from you directly, the fastest I could possibly receive it would be based on your upload connection speed, regardless of my faster download speed. I might get frustrated because I subscribe to a fast download capability and I might even blame my ISP, even though the real problem is that the source of the traffic is what is slowing down the transfer.

So, either you could upgrade to a very expensive symmetric internet service, or I might find a creative way to get the file faster. Many of the types of files that I want to get from you (music, movies, courseware, etc.) are sitting on other computers, not just yours. So some bright minds thought that I could get the file twice as fast faster if I got a few pieces from you, and a few pieces from another person at the same time. After all, you may only be uploading at say, 640 kbps and my download capacity is 8 times that. So, if two is better than one, why not try to get 8 streams working at once, or even more.

The P2P file transfer software tries to find people from around the world who have the file that I want and gets them all to provide pieces so that we all max out the upload and download capacity of our pipes. And, as soon as I get the first piece of the file, my computer gets identified as a potential source for other people.

You get the picture.

The software, by design, is supposed to keep the pipes full.

When I use the peer-to-peer file sharing application, my purpose is to have access to files found on other people’s computers. While I may altruistically want to contribute the files on my computer to the global pool of access points, I am trying to imagine a situation where I have a real concern about whether other people can get my files at full speed versus any kind of upload constraints that are imposed by my ISP.

After all, by design, the software will find other computers that are also sources for the file, so the person downloading from me isn’t harmed either.

I understand frustration by users in having an ISP manage download speeds. That could add to the time it takes to receive the whole file. But even those more aggressive management techniques don’t impact real-time applications like streaming video or other bulk file transfer protocols such as direct point-to-point downloads, such as those used by most companies.

P2P file transfer is not how you send an email or send your photos or update your blog or file your term paper, or do real time streaming. What is wrong with managing P2P upload speeds to ensure the proper operation of the rest of the applications – for you and everyone else served by your ISP?

Sometimes, I wonder about who is reading this blog.

There are various webtools that count hits on the blog website, subscribers to my RSS feed, Twitter followers, or whatever. I have noticed that while there are a lot of you reading, there are not a lot of comments. Perhaps I have attracted a shy demographic readership. Or, so many of you are in positions of influence in corporations or government and, while you may want to shout criticisms or platitudes, your pension-influenced discipline holds you back.

In the early days of my blog, I was told that this medium enables a public conversation. Often, it seems more like a radio talk show – anyone can be a host and no one screens the callers.

A recent tweet from one of the people I follow asks:

Can reasonable debate occur online if people kick back from anonymous posts. its not like we live in Iran

He expounded further on his blog

So is this is what the fight for net neutrality is all about? The right to opine in 140 characters or less and to boil down complex debate into nuggets like “you suck”. Great. With all the opportunity for enlightenment that the Internet offers we get”Pounder” and his ilk instead.

A few years ago, I wrote about “4 degrees of impersonal communications“. The four degrees were: face-to-face; telephone; email; and web-based.

The Progress & Freedom Foundation has released a submission by its president, Kenneth Ferree, to the FCC [pdf, 345KB] that makes for an entertaining read. C’mon, how many regulatory submissions are able to squeeze in a citation for Nietzsche by the top of the second page?

I found that many of the arguments are as applicable to Canada as the US market for which it was targetted. As the press release states:

Ferree takes issue with claims that a duopoly in landline broadband markets would necessarily be, by nature, market failure. Instead, because of the high fixed costs associated with networked industries, price competition between too many providers could impair investment.

How many competitors should there be? We hear similar complaints in Canada.

As Ferree’s paper observes, a failed market might observe excessive returns by market participants. But, as the paper observes for the US (and equally applicable in Canada), the supposed duopolists aren’t making excessive profits. Margins for network providers are consistent with other companies. Other so-called duopolies exist in other sectors without the same calls for government intervention, such as Coke and Pepsi; or, Lowes and Home Depot.

By far, my favourite line from the submission deals with the issue of broadband adoption among people that have access to competitive supply of services:

As hard as it is for some in Washington to believe, there may be a large swath of middle-America that would rather sit on the front porch, sip lemonade, and chat with their neighbors than update their profiles on Facebook.

I have written about this phenomenon in Canada [here and here]. What we define as affordable, universal access isn’t enough to get people to subscribe.

The submission is a great contribution to the debate about the role of government in intervening in the marketplace for broadband services. Lines like “When confronted with actual facts, the advocates of heavy-handed regulation are forced to retreat to rhetoric” serve as a challenge to move beyond sound-bites into genuine analysis.

The Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights has launched a campaign to get the public to “Send A Letter To Ottawa To Stop The Canadian DMCA“.

This is the group that wants to enable greater copying rights and I just thought it was funny that they couldn’t even depend on their supporters to create their own letters.

At least it is consistent for them to be sending copies of the same letters.

Globalive founder Tony Lacavera was on BNN last night praising the CRTC’s revised timetable for its ownership review, as we updated yesterday. The CRTC has indicated that it will have the review wrapped up within 30 days of the hearing concluding.

I’m fully supportive of the CRTC review, and as we were with the Industry Canada review. We were fully compliant with the Industry Canada review and received the licenses earlier this year and now the CRTC is conducting its control and ownership review. So, we don’t anticipate any show stopping issues with this.

In the interview, he expressed his support of the CRTC and the process.

He told BNN that the competitive landscape is shaping up quite nicely for consumers, even in advance of the launch of the new competitors.