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Europe seen needing regulation on Internet access
22 December, 2010

LONDON – Europe’s confidence that it need not follow the United States in adopting rules to ensure fair Internet access may be short-lived, as competition between mobile operators and service providers like Skype intensifies.

A debate over net neutrality — the principle that all Internet traffic be treated equally — has been heating up in the United States for years but has so far generated little public concern in Europe.

At stake is the ability of Internet service providers (ISPs) to ration access to their networks, allowing them to manage congestion but running the risk they will favour their own services or those who pay more, restricting consumer choice.

The US communications regulator on Tuesday adopted rules that banned high-speed Internet service providers from blocking lawful traffic but allowed them to ‘reasonably’ manage their networks.

In Europe, telecoms operators such as Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom or Telefonica — former state monopolies which typically have close relationships with national governments — still have the upper hand.

The European Commission has so far refrained from legislating to avert a looming conflict with the likes of Skype, Google or Facebook, which offer virtually free voice communications and messaging, striking at the heart of the carriers’ business.

But Internet service providers (ISPs) — mainly telcos in Europe — already actively manage traffic to make it more efficient, and the potential to do more to protect their own services or earn extra revenues may be too much to resist.

‘Mobile operators will be sorely tempted to do all they can to block the competition and stop them from cannibalising their revenue streams,’ says Bengt Nordstrom, chief executive of Nordic telecoms consultancy Northstream.

‘While operators have dodged the net neutrality bullet for now, they can expect further intrusion from the European Commission in the not-too-distant future,’ says Nordstrom, who predicts such intervention will come in 2012.

Europe’s competitive environment is different from that in the United States, with fiercer rivalry among more mobile carriers operating in smaller markets, and a less-developed cable infrastructure.

This has led some to argue that the need for legislation in Europe is far less, as competition between ISPs allows customers to easily switch to an alternative provider if they are not getting the services they want.

At the same time, the operators argue they need and deserve help to upgrade their networks, which have begun to creak under the weight of traffic generated by services like Google-owned YouTube, Facebook and the BBC iPlayer.

‘What is evident is that Internet search engines use our networks without paying for it. That’s real luck for them and a disgrace for us,’ Telefonica Chairman Cesar Alierta said this year. ‘We do everything. I mean, they just have algorithms.’

Bernstein analysts wrote in a recent research note: ‘In Europe, unlike the US, the net neutrality debate can, and we think will, be cast not as a battle for free speech but instead as a battle between aggressive over-reaching, freeriding US content companies and homegrown European infrastructure providers (that also happen to be the number two or three employer in each respective country).’

They said their stock preferences to play this state of affairs was for European telcos and US cable operators.

Vodafone Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telefonica and Telecom Italia have all complained about Google, Facebook and Apple using their networks to deliver services without contributing to network investments.

So far the European Union has taken a wait-and-see attitude, having directed national governments to ensure ISPs adopt non-discriminatory and transparent policies — something they will have to put into practice by May 2011.

Meantime, it is consulting to determine whether traffic-management tools deployed by ISPs constitute a problem.

‘There is cognitive dissonance. The service providers say we’re not doing any of this, the likes of Skype say their services are being throttled,’ says one senior EU official. ‘It’s clear that you have to be vigilant about these issues.’

Who holds the balance of power in the delicate relationship between the telcos and the content providers is ‘the $64,000 question’, according to Andrew Bud, founder and chief strategy officer of mobile transmission and billing firm mBlox.

‘That power balance is continually shifting,’ said Bud, who has long argued companies that want to push their content and services through networks to consumers should pay. He sees Europe as past the need for a net-neutrality debate.

‘I can see events accelerating towards a new consensus,’ he said, citing most recently a speech by British Communications Minister Ed Vaizey in which he said it might make sense for content providers to pay for differing levels of service.

Northstream’s Nordstrom reckons that consolidation in the trillion-dollar telecoms industry will pick up pace, changing the status quo, and predicts that European regulators will step in to legislate in 2012.

He points to carriers’ past reluctance to self-regulate in the case of roaming charges for making mobile calls abroad — costs that were eventually slashed by the EU — saying operators tended to exploit favourable conditions for as long as possible.

‘Nothing happened until regulation came, and now it’s data. Operators are rather waiting to be regulated and trying to leverage the situation as much as they can,’ he says. ‘There’s a lot of money to be made before regulation comes in.’ – Reuters

Survey: Little Support for Net Regulation – TheStreet:

By Theresa McCabe 12/28/10 – 12:55 PM EST

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Consumers aren’t in favor of the Federal Communications Commission regulating the Internet as it does radio and television.

In a survey conducted by Rasmussen following the FCC’s vote to pass new open Internet rules regarding net neutrality, only 21% of U.S. voters came out in favor of the FCC’s involvement.

On Dec. 21, the FCC passed a new set of net neutrality rules that prohibit broadband providers from blocking consumers from lawful Web sites or Internet traffic.
>>FCC Passes Net Neutrality Rules

Despite strong opposition from the two Republicans on the five-member commission, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski and his two fellow Democrats on the board passed the rules with a 3-2 vote.

In Rasmussen’s Dec. 23 telephone survey of 1,000 likely U.S. voters, 54% said they are opposed to the FCC’s regulation of the Internet. Only 21% said they were in favor and 25% said they are not sure.

By a 52% to 27% margin, voters believe free market competition would protect Internet users better than rules and regulation.

The survey also shows that voters fear imposed regulation by the FCC and other regulatory groups will be used to promote a political agenda. 56% of voters believe that the FCC will push a political agenda while 28% disagree and believe the commission would regulate in an unbiased manner.

Through the net neutrality regulations, Internet service providers will be required to treat all information traveling over broadband networks equally and wireless providers will be prohibited from unjustly discriminating in transmitting lawful traffic over a consumer’s wireline broadband Internet service.

The rules will prevent network operators from discriminatory pricing against Internet traffic that might offer competitive services. Internet carriers such as Comcast(CMCSA_) and Verizon(VZ_) will not be able to block consumers from using Netflix(NFLX_).

– Written by Theresa McCabe in Boston.

U.S. Judge Blocks Porn BitTorrent Suits Filed in W. Va. – XBIZ.com

By Rhett Pardon
Friday, Dec 17, 2010 Text size:

MARTINSBURG, Va. — A federal judge has quashed thousands of subpoenas that were requested in seven porn BitTorrent suits, ruling that the cases improperly join mass defendants together.

U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey, in each of the orders, threw out all of the defendants with the exception of one John Doe for each claim. As a result, 5,462 unnamed defendants have been pared from suits filed by Combat Zone, Elegant Angel, Third World Media and West Coast Productions.

Bailey, in his ruling, said that the cases reeked of misjoinder, finding that it is an ‘ undeniable fact that each defendant will also likely have a different defense.’

In each of the cases, Bailey said that he would sever all Doe defendants except the first Doe of each suit. He also said that because so many ISPs were identified with each suit, ‘[allegations making] the propriety of joinder even more tenuous.’

Bailey also said that if plaintiffs’ counsel want to proceed they can do so by filing fees for each of the amended complaints, which would be assigned separate civil action numbers, but only if the defendants are located in West Virginia, where the cases were filed.

In the seven cases, Time Warner Cable moved to quash subpoenas seeking the identities of accused filed sharers.

Kenneth Ford of the Adult Copyright Co., which filed the suits, did not immediately respond to XBIZ for comment.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed amicus briefs in the cases, lauded the judge’s ruling, calling it a ‘big victory in the fight against copyright trolls.’

The EFF said that the studios in the seven suits were ‘abusing the law in an attempt to pressure settlements.’

‘In these cases — as in many others across the country — the owners of the adult movies filed mass lawsuits based on single counts of copyright infringement stemming from the downloading of a pornographic film, and improperly lumped hundreds of defendants together regardless of where the IP addresses indicate the defendants live,’ the EFF said in a statement.

‘The motivation behind these cases appears to be to leverage the risk of embarrassment associated with pornography to coerce settlement payments despite serious problems with the underlying claims.’

The West Virginia order comes on the heels of a ruling by a judge in the District of Columbia earlier this month that dismissed hundreds of individuals from across the country named in the U.S. Copyright Group’s campaign due to lack of personal jurisdiction in Washington, D.C.

Feds please no one with first official net neut rules

By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Posted in Networks, 22nd December 2010 00:39 GMT

The US Federal Communications Commission has officially approved rules meant to ensure ‘net neutrality’. But it’s unclear whether the commission has the legal authority to back them up. And whether it does or not, just about everyone thinks the new rules are crap, including net neutrality zealots.

The rules demand that internet providers divulge their ‘network management’ practices, and they prohibit providers from blocking certain traffic. But they apply separate regulations to wireline and wireless outfits, and they don’t prevent providers from charging extra for prioritized traffic.

The FCC approved the new rules on Tuesday after a 3-2 vote, which split – predictably – along party lines. Democratic commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn joined Democratic Chairman Julius Genachowski in supporting the rules, while Republican commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker voted against.

‘For the first time, the FCC is adopting rules to preserve basic Internet values,’ Genachowski said in a canned statement. ‘While the Commission had in the past pursued bipartisan enforcement of Open Internet principles, we have not had properly adopted rules. Now, for the first time, we’ll have enforceable, high-level rules of the road to preserve Internet freedom and openness.’

In August 2005, the FCC laid down a policy statement (PDF) meant to encourage a so-called open internet, but these policies never had the legal power the FCC would have liked. In April, a Federal appeals court unanimously vacated the 2008 FCC order that famously barred cable giant Comcast from busting BitTorrent traffic.

In September 2009, five months after he was installed by President Obama, Genachowski proposed formal net neutrality rules that would expand on the 2005 principles, and following months upon months of debate, the rules have arrived in a form few outside of Genachowski are pleased with. Even Coops and Clyburn concurred with the rules only in part. And net neutrality advocates are accusing President Obama of breaking his campaign promise to prevent corporate censorship on the interwebs.

The FCC’s rules begin by stipulating that both wireline and wireless net providers must be ‘transparent’ about how they manage their networks. ‘A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service shall publicly disclose accurate information regarding the network management practices, performance, and commercial terms of its broadband Internet access services sufficient for consumers to make informed choices regarding use of such services and for content, application, service, and device providers to develop, market, and maintain Internet offerings,’ says rule number one.

The new rules also prohibit wireline providers from blocking internet traffic – subject to ‘reasonable network management’ – but they take a different approach to wireless. Wireline providers ’shall not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices,’ while wireless providers are prohibited from blocking ‘consumers from accessing lawful websites.’ But wireless providers are specifically barred from blocking applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services.

Lastly, a third rule bars wireline providers from discriminating against network traffic. ‘A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic over a consumer’s broadband Internet access service. Reasonable network management shall not constitute unreasonable discrimination,’ it reads. It does not address wireless networks.

In his prepared statement, Copps said that although he voted for the new rules, he’s concerned that they don’t prohibit providers from charging extra for prioritized traffic. ‘I would have preferred a general ban to discourage broadband providers from engaging in ‘pay for priority’ —prioritizing the traffic of those with deep pockets while consigning the rest of us to a slower, second-class Internet,’ he wrote. He also wanted complete parity for wireline and wireless.

‘After all, the Internet is the Internet, no matter how you access it, and the millions of citizens going mobile nowadays for their Internet and the entrepreneurs creating innovative wireless content, applications and services should have the same freedoms and protections as those in the wired context,’ he said.

The world’s net neutrality zealots are making similar noises. ‘Chairman Genachowski ignored President Obama’s promise to the American people to take a ‘back seat to no one’ on Net Neutrality,’ reads a statement from Free Press managing director Craig Aaron.

‘He ignored the 2 million voices who petitioned for real Net Neutrality and the hundreds who came to public hearings across the country to ask him to protect the open Internet. And he ignored policymakers who urged him to protect consumers and maintain the Internet as a platform for innovation. It’s unfortunate that the only voices he chose to listen to were those coming from the very industry he’s charged with overseeing.’

And he was not alone. ‘The rules passed today by Obama FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski absurdly create different corporate censorship rules for wired and wireless Internet, allowing big corporations like Comcast to block websites they don’t like on your phone – a clear failure to fulfill Net Neutrality and put you, the consumer, in control of what you can and can’t do online,’ reads one online petition seeking to hold President Obama accountable for his campaign promises.

Copps also seems to question whether the new rules have the proper legal muscle behind them. The Democratic commissioner advocated the reclassification of broadband traffic as telephony under Title II of the Telecommunications Act to ensure FCC authority, but this had yet to happen. ‘I continue to believe that a reassertion of our Title II authority would have provided the surest foundation for future Commission action,’ Copps said. ‘And I note with interest that the Commission’s Reclassification docket will remain open.’

Republican commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker believe that if the FCC attempts to enforce the rules, it will just wind up in court. Again.”

Air Force Blocks Sites That Posted Secret Cables – NYTimes.com

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: December 14, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Air Force is barring its personnel from using work computers to view the Web sites of The New York Times and more than 25 other news organizations and blogs that have posted secret cables obtained by WikiLeaks, Air Force officials said Tuesday.
State’s Secrets

When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says ‘Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,’ according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.

Some Air Force officials acknowledged that the steps taken might be in vain since many military personnel could gain access to the documents from home computers, despite admonishments from superiors not to read the cables without proper clearances.

Cyber network specialists within the Air Force Space Command last week followed longstanding procedures to keep classified information off unclassified computer systems. ‘News media Web sites will be blocked if they post classified documents from the WikiLeaks Web site,’ said Lt. Col. Brenda Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Space Command, a unit of which oversees Air Force cyber systems. ‘This is similar to how we’d block any other Web site that posted classified information.’

Colonel Campbell said that only sites posting full classified documents, not just excerpts, would be blocked. ‘When classified documents appear on a Web site, a judgment will be made whether it will be blocked,’ she said. ‘It’s an issue we’re working through right now.’

Spokesmen for the Army, Navy and Marines said they were not blocking the Web sites of news organizations, largely because guidance has already been issued by the Obama administration and the Defense Department directing hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to read the secret cables and other classified documents published by WikiLeaks unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.

‘Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,’ said a notice sent on Dec. 3 by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads.

A Defense Department spokesman, Col. David Lapan, in an e-mail on Tuesday night sought to distance the department from the Air Force’s action to block access to the media Web sites: ‘This is not DoD-directed or DoD-wide.’

The Air Force’s action was first reported on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site late Tuesday and underscores the wide-ranging impact of the recent release of secret State Department documents by WikiLeaks, and five news organizations, including The Times. It also illustrates the contortions the military and other government agencies appear to be going through to limit the spread of classified information that has become widely available in the public domain.

‘It is unfortunate that the U.S. Air Force has chosen not to allow its personnel access to information that virtually everyone else in the world can access,’ said a spokeswoman for The Times, Danielle Rhoades Ha. A senior administration official said Tuesday that the administration’s policy contained some leeway, for instance, to allow certain employees to download information in order for them to be able to verify that classified information was leaking into the public domain, and to assess damage to national security and potential danger to sources.

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a secrecy specialist, said dozens of agencies, as well as branches of the military and government contractors, had issued their own policy instructions based on the Office of Management and Budget memo.

‘It’s a self-defeating policy that will leave government employees less informed than they ought to be,’ Mr. Aftergood said.

US Government Responds To Domain Seizures, Ignores The Big Question: “The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have just confirmed the seizure of 82 domains as part of Operation in Our Sites 2. The authorities claim the actions were targeted at websites that were involved in the illegal sale and distribution of counterfeit and copyrighted goods, but fail to explain why a BitTorrent meta-search engine was included.

Last Thursday we reported on the seizure of the music linking site RapGodFathers. As it turned out this was the first target in a growing list of domains that were seized in the days that followed, including the BitTorrent meta-search engine Torrent-Finder.

All this time the authorities remained silent on the purpose and scope of the actions, until today. Apparently the DOJ and ICE had picked the label ‘Cyber Monday Crackdown’ for their actions, and this meant that they couldn’t release their statement earlier.

However, today a press release was finally issued, detailing which sites were targeted and why.

‘As of today – what is known as ‘Cyber Monday’ and billed as the busiest online shopping day of the year – anyone attempting to access one of these websites using its domain name will no longer be able to make a purchase. Instead, these online shoppers will find a banner notifying them that the website’s domain name has been seized by federal authorities,’ it was announced.

‘The coordinated federal law enforcement operation targeted online retailers of a diverse array of counterfeit goods, including sports equipment, shoes, handbags, athletic apparel and sunglasses as well as illegal copies of copyrighted DVD boxed sets, music and software.’

‘By seizing these domain names, we have disrupted the sale of thousands of counterfeit items, while also cutting off funds to those willing to exploit the ingenuity of others for their own personal gain,’ said Attorney General Holder in a subsequent press release.

Since 95% of the domains were related to counterfeit goods, this explanation was kind of expected, but one question remains unanswered. In fact, this is the question that prompted so many news outlets to pick up the story over the last few days.

Those who took a careful look at the list of seized domains will have noticed that there are some odd entries. Among the replica watches and fake sport shirts are three sites that were directly or indirectly linking to music. That’s not counterfeiting, although releasing music before it hits the stores is a criminal act so these targets can be explained.

But there’s an even stranger entry, and that is Torrent-Finder.

Torrent-Finder is not a typical torrent site where one can download torrent files. It’s merely a meta-search engine that redirects users to other sites. The site simply displays a search box and has no browsable archive. The site is not encouraging or even facilitating copyright infringement any more than other search engines such as Google.

So the question that we’d like to see answered is what the grounds were to seize Torrent-Finder? Could it have been a mistake? Or perhaps a test?

If the US authorities were to target BitTorrent sites then Torrent-Finder is arguably the least likely target. Still, the owner lost its domain without even receiving a notice. That doesn’t seen right somehow.

If it’s so easy for the US Government to obtain a seizure order for a website that is simply a meta-search engine, and not by any means involved in linking to or hosting copyrighted material, then where does it stop?

Meanwhile, TorrentFreak has been made aware of (many) additional domains that are on a Government seizure list. More info on this is expected to trickle in later in the week and might reveal more about the future direction of Operation In Our Sites 2 after ‘Cyber Monday Crackdown.’

Article from: TorrentFreak.

“

(Via TorrentFreak.)

U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown: “The Web addresses of several sites that posted unauthorized copies or aided in searches for downloadable films and music were seized by an arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

(Via NYT > Technology.)

U.S. Government Seizes BitTorrent Search Engine Domain and More: “Following on the heels of this week’s domain seizure of a large hiphop file-sharing links forum, it’s clear today that the U.S. Government has been very busy. Without any need for COICA, ICE has just seized the domain of a BitTorrent meta-search engine along with those belonging to other music linking sites and several others which appear to be connected to physical counterfeit goods.

While complex, it’s still possible for U.S. authorities and copyright groups to point at a fully-fledged BitTorrent site with a tracker and say ‘that’s an infringing site.’ When one looks at a site which hosts torrents but operates no tracker, the finger pointing becomes quite a bit more difficult.

When a site has no tracker, carries no torrents, lists no copyright works unless someone searches for them and responds just like Google, accusing it of infringement becomes somewhat of a minefield – unless you’re ICE Homeland Security Investigations that is.

This morning, visitors to the Torrent-Finder.com site are greeted with an ominous graphic which indicates that ICE have seized the site’s domain.

‘My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!’ the exasperated owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak this morning.

‘I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN,’ he explained.

Aside from the fact that domains are being seized seemingly at will, there is a very serious problem with the action against Torrent-Finder. Not only does the site not host or even link to any torrents whatsoever, it actually only returns searches through embedded iframes which display other sites that are not under the control of the Torrent-Finder owner.

Torrent-Finder remains operational through another URL, Torrent-Finder.info, so feel free to check it out for yourself. The layouts of the sites it searches are clearly visible in the results shown.

Yesterday we reported that the domain of hiphop site RapGodFathers had been seized and today we can reveal that they are not on their own. Two other music sites in the same field – OnSmash.com and DaJaz1.com – have fallen to the same fate. But ICE activities don’t end there.

Several other domains also appear to have been seized including 2009jerseys.com, nfljerseysupply.com, throwbackguy.com, cartoon77.com, lifetimereplicas.com, handbag9.com, handbagcom.com and dvdprostore.com.

All seized sites point to the same message.

Domain seizures coming under the much debated ‘censorship bill’ COICA? Who needs it?

Update: Below is an longer list of domains that were apparently seized. Most of the sites relate to counterfeit goods. We assume that the authorities had a proper warrant for these sites (as they had for RapGodFathers yesterday), but were unable to confirm this.

Update: A spokeswoman for ICE confirmed the seizures in the following statement. ‘ICE office of Homeland Security Investigations executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names. As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional details available at this time.’

Update: The authorities have revealed further details on ‘Cyber Monday Crackdown.’

Article from: TorrentFreak.

“

(Via TorrentFreak.)

US orders data lock down in wake of Wikileaks release: “

Shuts stable door on ‘largest data spillage in American history’

The US government on Monday enacted new policies designed to prevent mass leaks similar to one rolled out over the weekend, when Wikileaks released thousands of classified diplomatic cables.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Senate Hearing on Digital Trade Protectionism: “posted by Heather West, Policy Analyst

This afternoon Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon put the spotlight on an issue close to our heart and business operations: the need to protect and promote the free flow of information in international trade agreements. In a hearing on International Trade in the Digital Economy, Senator Wyden called for the U.S. government and others to come together to combat protectionism against digital exports — a position that mirrors themes we raised in the trade white paper we released earlier this week.

At the hearing, Senator Wyden noted how the international reach of American technology companies directly affects the ability of all American companies to export goods and services, both digital and otherwise. The hearing noted the effect of these restrictions on all kinds of American companies, holding back trade and exports whether it is in digital services or physical goods.

We commend the Subcommittee’s leadership on this issue and agree with the fundamental principle that new trade agreements should require governments to preserve the free flow of information on the Internet. As a company, we’re particularly focused on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiations among the United States and eight Pacific Rim nations that we hope will produce a first-rate modern trade pact for today’s information economy. Embedding the free flow of information into this agreement will be critical.

Testimony and video of the hearing should be online soon at the Subcommittee’s website.

“

(Via Google Public Policy Blog.)