Re: Mr Rogers on Externalities

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Dave Phelps [dave () ddnets com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 12:28 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: re: Mr Rogers on Externalities

I snipped just the relevant part of Mr Finkelstein's email to which I wish to respond.

There is a significant flaw in the logic here. In this case, Mr Torrent has not taken dimes from anyone at all. The 
dimes are paid by the subscribers to the ISP to pay for the bandwidth promised by the ISP. Mr Torrent's users are 
simply using what they're already paying for.

The truck analogy is well-written, but isn't exactly accurate. Mr McFeely would send just as many trucks as Mr Torrent 
if he could just load them at the distribution center (server) fast enough. The problem is that Mr McFeely has a 
distribution center can't load the trucks fast enough. Mr Torrent, on the other hand, doesn't even need a distribution 
center, since he can just copy the stuff from the same users who want the stuff, so he avoids the distribution center 
bottleneck.

The ISP's have created this congestion problem themselves. They have been promising huge amounts of bandwidth to their 
subscribers but can't deliver it, and never could. Huge oversubscription ratios are catching up with them--and somehow 
it is someone else's fault (Mr Torrent perhaps). Most ISP's were just trying to outdo each other in the "who can give 
you more bandwidth" game over the last 10 years. Now that applications that can use the bandwidth are here and becoming 
more popular, the ISP's are screaming "not fair!" What's not fair is that some ISP's now want to start limiting the 
bandwidth that they've been promising.

Bittorrent is just an easy target for the ISP's who don't want to upgrade infrastructure to match demand. It could be 
FTP or youtube.com<http://youtube.com> next. What will they do when the traffic that is overloading their networks is 
ftp or http? I'll just bet some will start RSTing high-volume sessions. They may be already.

IANAL, but I can see potential for a class action for any ISP that inhibits service for nothing more than using the 
bandwidth they've promised to deliver. Even if there is an AUP which denies bittorrent, since the real problem isn't 
bittorrent, it is any heavy usage. The real argument is that the ISP is trying to find legal ways to avoid delivering 
the bandwidth they've promised.

Dave Phelps




From: Seth Finkelstein [sethf () sethf com<mailto:sethf () sethf com>]
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 2:59 PM
To: David Farber; ip
Subject: Mr Rogers on Externalities

[Note, I didn't write this, Nick Weaver wrote it - it's a
counter-argument to ""Captain Kangaroo" on File Sharing"]

# From: "Nick Weaver" <nweaver () gmail com<mailto:nweaver () gmail com>>
# Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2008 22:13:31 -0700

[snip]
You would say "sure". But what if Mr Torrent, in saving you $1, takes
a dime from 500 people? [1]

Well, to you, this doesn't matter. Mr Torrent has helped you, and you
saved a dollar. But to society as a whole, Mr Torrent cost everybody
else $49. This is an externality.

So you understand why the people who's dimes are stolen are naturally
mad at Mr Torrent, and would want him to go away? Especially when he
promises to deliver stuff for thousands of people?

Now lets say you are getting stuff from Mr Torrent. Mr Torrent has a
lot of connections, and can deliver it to you very quickly by using
lots of trucks. But in the process, he cloggs the roads for everybody
else, because each truck causes its own bit of congestion, and he also
sends twice as many trucks as Mr. McFeely to move the same amount of
stuff.

Your stuff gets there, but everyone else sees a traffic jam and gets
stuck in traffic [2]. So you understand why the people in charge of
the roads want special traffic lights to reduce the number of trucks
Mr Torrent can place on the road? Again, this is an externality.
[snip]

-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com