Protecting people on the ‘Net

• “Governments of the Industrial World, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of the mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”– John Perry Barlow (1996)

1997: Supreme Court strikes CDA down in Reno v. ACLU

• Says vagueness of statute violates First Amendment

• “Although the Government has an interest in protecting children from potentially harmful materials, the CDA pursues that interest by suppressing a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to send and receive”

• “The CDA's burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the Act's legitimate purposes.”

Protection from deceptive e-mail• CAN-SPAM act

– Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.

– Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.

– You must provide honest opt-out information.

Alan Ralsky sentenced to 51 months for violating CAN-SPAM law

Protections from identity thieves

• Identity theft, a Federal crime when anyone knowingly transfers or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of Federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable State or local law.

Protections from monopolies

• Sherman Antitrust Act (1890): Illegal to monopolize in restraint of commerce or trade

• USA vs. Microsoft settlement (2001)– Microsoft must share

application interface data so 3rd party developers can build applications for Windows

Protections from lawsuits• 47 U.S.C. Sec. 230, commonly

known as Section 230, shields “interactive computer service providers” from liability for information posted or published by users of their systems:– “No provider or user of an

interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

Protections from moral censorship• 1996 Communications Decency

Act, illegal to send or display to – a person under 18 years of age,

any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs, regardless of whether the user of such service placed the call or initiated the communication.

Protections from anti-competitive practices

• Madison River case (2005): FCC stops a North Carolina ISP/telco from blocking Vonnage VoIP traffic

• Consent decree includes $15,000 payment

Telecommunications Act of 1996

• Eliminated market barriers• Abandoned the utility

model of media regulation (one company in charge of cable, telephony, etc)

• Anybody can get into anything: phone, video, ISP service

Brand X decision• FCC rules that cable

systems are not common carriers, they are “information providers”

• Don’t have to follow common carrier rules

• Don’t have to interconnect with smaller DSL providers

• Takes cable ISPs off the deregulatory hook

• Unlike South Korea, Japan, and France

• “consumers are entitled – to access the lawful Internet

content of their choice”– Run applications of their choice”– Connect their choice of legal

devices that do not harm the network.”

– Have competition among network providers”

The FCC’s Internet Policy Statement (August 2005)

Peer to peer (P2P) networking

• A system in which a network of people have the same files, and they allow their computer to become part of an open network for sharing files

Did Comcast engage in P2P blocking?

• Associated press and EFF share digital version of King James Bible using BitTorrent

• It repeatedly gets slowed down and blocked

• Comcast admits it uses network management techniques, then admits that it just plain blocked the app

FCC decision on Comcast, August 2008

• Comcast must disclose the details of its discriminatory network management practices to the Commission

• ·Submit a compliance plan describing how it intends to stop these discriminatory management practices by the end of the year

• Disclose to customers and the Commission the network management practices that will replace current practices

FCC hearing at Harvard Law School: Up top: Timothy Wu of Columbia; below right: David Cohen of Comcast

Why the FCC sanctioned Comcast (1)“Peer-to-peer applications,

including those relying on BitTorrent, have become a competitive threat to cable operators such as Comcast because Internet users have the opportunity to view high-quality video with BitTorrent that they might otherwise watch (and pay for) on cable television.”

FCC Chair Kevin Martin

Why the FCC sanctioned Comcast (2)

Comcast didn’t just delay BitTorrent traffic, it injected RST Packets into BitTorrent streams, terminating the connections.

• “It is never correct to say that Comcast has delayed P2P packets or P2P sessions, because the P2P traffic will never flow again unless the end system initiates a new session to the same device, even though it now believes that device is unable to continue a transfer. The argument that terminating a P2P session is only delaying because a device may attempt to initiate a new session some time later is absurd.”

Why the FCC sanctioned Comcast (3)

FCC has authority under the agency’s Internet Policy Statement

andSection 230(b) of the

Communications Act:It is the policy of the United States

"to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet" and "to promote the continued development of the Internet."

FCC’s Michael Copps

Why the FCC sanctioned Comcast (4)

• “we predict that prohibiting network operators from blocking or degrading consumer access to desirable content and applications on-line will result in increased consumer demand for high-speed Internet access and, therefore, increased deployment to meet that demand.”

Why the FCC sanctioned Comcast (5)

• When we approved the acquisition of Adelphia Cable by Comcast and Time-Warner, we stated that the Internet Policy Statement “contains principles against which the conduct of Comcast [and] Time Warner . . . can be measured.”

Why the FCC sanctioned Comcast (6)

• We are moving very cautiously and with very mild sanctions– Including no fine or removal of acquisitions– Just instructions to Comcast to change its

behavior and disclose its new practices

Why the FCC sanctioned Comcast (7)

• Comcast had other options besides interrupting, such as– Charging higher rates for some users– Slow the connection speeds of some users– Try other network managing techniques, such as

slowing down all uses during periods of high congestion rather than targeting one specific application

McDowell’s dissent (1)

• Does Section 230(b) give the FCC the right to regulate anything having to do with the Internet?

Robert M. McDowell,

far right

McDowell’s dissent (2)

• Evidence? • “The truth is, the FCC does not know what

Comcast did or did not do. The evidence in the record is thin and conflicting. All we have to rely on are the apparently unsigned declarations of three individuals representing the complainant’s view, some press reports, and the conflicting declaration of a Comcast employee.20 The rest of the record consists purely of differing opinions and conjecture.”

McDowell’s dissent (3)

• Do we really have evidence of anti-competitive motives from Comcast?

• “If Comcast intended to harm its competitors, would it not have targeted other online video providers? Americans download more than eleven billion Internet videos per month, yet the record contains no evidence that Comcast is interfering with sites like YouTube which do not use pipe-clogging P2P software.”