Live from the Tech Policy Summit: PRO-IP and Network Management
Thursday, March 27th, 2008 by Patrick RossHOLLYWOOD, Cal. — Two keynoters at the Tech Policy Summit here are familiar faces in Washington, and both had positive things to say about copyright and artists' rights.
It should be no surprise that one bullish supporter of copyright is Howard Berman, chairman of the House Judiciary IP Subcommittee. Berman, in a "fireside chat" with CongressDaily's Andrew Noyes (no fireplace, unfortunately, guess they're hard to find in LA), said "piracy is a very serious problem," and stated his determination to see the PRO-IP Act that recently cleared his subcommittee to continue moving through Congress. He said the bill found reasonable ways to stiffen penalties and enforcement for copyright violations. He acknowledged some resistance from the Bush administration, but noted that no administration likes being told how to structure the White House and its agencies by Congress, which is of course what PRO-IP does.
As many know, this is the last year that Berman will chair the IP subcommittee, as he is now also the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. While he not surprisingly declined to share his thoughts on who he'd like to succeed him as head of the subcommittee, he said people shouldn't assume that he won't be involved in IP in his new post. "It's not like Foreign Affairs doesn't have anything to do with intellectual property," saying he can raise the issue's profile on the agenda with other countries.
Berman also said it was an open question to what extent ISPs should be asked to go beyond notice and takedown when infringement is clear. That touches on current network management issues, and FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell addressed that in his Thursday morning address. In an interesting bit of timing, Comcast and BitTorrent had just announced an agreement to collaborate on network management that would be protocol-agnostic. Being here at the conference, I have not seen as much as I'd like on the details of this agreement. I would just note that while Comcast can reach an agreement with the corporation that is BitTorrent, which distributes licensed works, the bittorrent protocol also carries a boatload of infringing content via the Pirate Bay and other sites, so it's not entirely clear to me how this solves Comcast's upstream problems.
It may solve their regulatory problems, however. McDowell seemed to feel the problem was now resolved, and former FCC Commissioner Rochelle Chong said the next FCC hearing on network management was now likely in doubt. McDowell, noting he was in Hollywood, not once but twice pointed out that the vast majority of traffic through ISPs is infringing P2P material. He also noted that it's not just a matter of building more network capacity, because Japan has built far more than us but their carriers are also maxed out due to infringing P2P.
Many intelligent people have many different positions across the spectrum on the issue of network neutrality, which as students of the debate know is not a black/white issue but is actually filled with multiple shades of gray. I would just ask that everyone in the debate acknowledge that networks are being overrun by infringing creative works via P2P. Studies from Big Champagne, CacheLogic and others find this repeatedly. What that means from a business, technology or policy perspective can be debated, but let's not deny what is obvious.
