The War On Bullshit

Bell insists that throttling Internet services is necessary. More specifically, Bell engages in “deep packet inspection,” which means they figure out what kind of data your downloading, and slow down the stuff they don’t like, i.e., peer-2-peer traffic. They argue that this is all for their customers: before traffic throttling, 5% of users ate 33% of the bandwidth, so the other 95% of users were being victimized. Therefore, Bell has to inspect what you’re downloading to make everything fair, right? Bullshit.

1. What you download and how much you download are different issues.

You don’t need to snoop on what people are downloading to even out traffic. You just cap users’ bandwidths or total downloads. I have no problem having to pay more to download 100 gigs per month than someone who downloads 10 gigs a month. I don’t think anyone has a reasonable complaint against paying more for a faster connection than a slower one. This has nothing to do with net neutrality, it’s just about charging people based on usage. (Which is a topic for another post.)

HOWEVER, charging people more for 1 gig of torrent videos than for 1 gig of streaming video, on the other hand, is precisely the kind of online-freedom-destroying-shenanigans that should be punishable by public beating.

2. Throttling screws over independent ISPs.

See, Bell owns the fiber network. It doesn’t make sense to have 25 competing ISPs, all with their own fiber networks. So the little ISPs rent the bandwidth from Bell, thus providing a kind of confounded, screwed-up, pseudo-competitive environment. But Ma Bell doesn’t like competitors, and wants to go back to being a big ol’ fashion monopoly. So Bell invents throttling practices that drastically decrease the bandwidth of these little ISPs while holding prices constant to run them out of business, all the while claiming it’s in their customers best interests. Yeah, right.

3. It’s none of their damn business.

When did telecoms become the thought police? Or in this case, the data police? It’s none of Bell’s goddamn business what I choose to download. If they can’t be held, legally, as accessory to crimes committed by their users, then they have no business inspecting their users’ browsing habits. You wouldn’t stand for the UPS opening all of your packages, would you?

4. They’re infringing consumer choice.

When you pay for 5 mb/s interenet service, you should expect to get 5 mb/s, regardless of what you decide to download or when you decide to do it. I understand that speeds may decrease when the network gets overloaded, and that things slow down if you download from a slow server. But what Bell’s doing is more like: if Bell doesn’t like what you’re downloading or when you’re doing it, they impose their bullshit morals on you by slowing down your connection. If I wanted moral guidance from a monopoly I’d…. well, I don’t know what I’d do. Perhaps shoot myself for being such a fucking retard.

5. Bell’s in bed with the RIAA/MPAA

Bell is certainly coming under pressure from the recording and movie industries to help curtail unauthorized downloading. Internet throttling is a clear manifestation of Bell’s siding with these big industries over the preferences of their customers.

6. Bell didn’t ask their customers what they wanted.

Anybody who says they are doing something for their customers without asking their customers what they want is a lying sack of shit. Bell didn’t ask me what I think of their plan. Did they ask you? Didn’t think so.

Conclusion

Bell’s Bullshit Claim: We’re slowing down your downloads to improve your service.

Bell’s Hidden Agenda: We’re throttling traffic to quietly strangle our competitors so we can regain our monopoly, leach our customers for every cent we can and tighten our grip on media by decimating net neutrality. We want to control everything you see and hear so we can tell you how to think and act, and make the internet a one-way medium like TV and radio.

Edit: It’s not P2P traffic that eats all the bandwidth anyhow, it’s streaming video.

Previously in this segment, I discussed how the RIAA fabricates a link between unauthorized music downloading and shrinking music industry profits. After some insightful discussion, I also differentiated the treatment of piracy in criminal and tort law. Today I turn to what might be called the Robin Hood argument.

Francois writes:

“And even if such a correlation [between music downloading and profit erosion] could be demonstrated, it still would not justify bullying and threatening teenagers… [I think] the current RIAA strategy of blackmailing teenage students is … mafia-like.” (Post-press note: Francois wasn’t happy with the way I presented this - see his comment below)

Dar Al Harb writes:

“I always feel for those bastards who lost a few million. Never mind who they hurt or how they hurt in thier endevour to make millions of dollars”

These quotes exemplify a common attitude, especially prevalent in western society, that the big bad corporation deserves a little payback and should not pick on poor, helpless teenagers, students, seniors, etc. I call this the Robin Hood argument: Robin Hood isn’t a bad guy because his victims are rich and his beneficiaries are poor.

This sort of reasoning is undesirable in the context of P2P file sharing for two broad reasons.

Reason 1: The Big Bad Corporations are owned by regular people.

When someone argues that the music industry is comprised of evil, faceless corporations, they forget who owns those corporations. The owners aren’t just old white megalomaniacs; these are public companies owned by a wide variety of people. It’s not even just people who own stocks, either. Do you invest in mutual funds? retirement savings plans? bonds? exchange traded funds? other derivatives? When the big music companies lose money, it’s not just the wealthy that lose money, its also the middle class and even the poor who have directly or indirectly invested in them.

Reason 2: Poverty does not justify theft of non-essential goods.

If a penniless parent with a family on the brink of starvation steals a loaf of bread, I think many of us will forgive him or her for taking the lesser of two evils. However, music is not food, it’s entertainment, and humans generally do not need entertainment to survive. I suspect that most property crime is committed by people of limited financial means. If a guy steals your car stereo, do you want him let off the hook just because he’s poor? As a society, we do not accept poverty as a defense for crimes or wrongs against others; therefore accepting poverty as a defense for piracy would set a dangerous precedent.

Being poor may be an excuse for stealing essential items like food, but it does not justify your nephew’s 80 000 track pirated music library.

Qualifier

Please take note, I am not saying that P2P file sharing is theft, or that the Music Industry hasn’t screwed over artists for years. I’m not saying that file sharing is unethical or causes the Music Industry’s “losses,” and I am not saying that the RIAA is justified in its absurd legal behavior. All I am saying is that if the Music Industry were being victimized by downloading, the fact that the downloaders are poor while the Music Industry is rich is not a defense. It is not to dilute strong defenses by combining them with weak defenses like the Robin Hood argument.

Several interesting points came up in the discussion of my last post, which addressed how the RIAA deceives the public regarding its imaginary losses due to music piracy.

Paul wrote:

“Saying that it’s not a loss if the person wouldn’t buy it if it weren’t available for free is like saying it’s not stealing for me to take a Ferrari without paying for it, because I wouldn’t buy it otherwise.”

On the one hand, I am in fact claiming that the RIAA does not experience a loss when someone downloads a song without paying, if that person would not have been willing to buy the song if it were not available for free. Furthermore, I agree with Paul that taking a Ferrari is stealing whether or not I would buy it otherwise. So haven’t I just contradicted my previous post? NO!

This discussion highlights the difference between tort law and criminal law, a distinction common to most developed nations. Loss is a topic under tort law; theft is a topic under criminal law. When you download a song through a P2P service, the RIAA can sue you (tort law) for losses they incurred due to your actions, while society can prosecute you (criminal law) for theft. These are distinct actions. If the RIAA sues you and wins, the RIAA gets the money. If society prosecutes you and wins, either you go to jail or society gets the money. Take a wild guess which route the RIAA is apt to take.

If the RIAA tries to sue you in tort for losses caused by your actions, they have to show that your actions in fact caused a loss. As I explained last time, the RIAA’s losses are imaginary, so they have no basis to sue you. To continue the analogy, if I break into my neighbor’s garage and steal his Ferrari, he loses the Ferrari, and can therefore sue me for his loss. If I download a song from the internet, the music industry cannot sue me because I have not caused a loss. The music industry didn’t lose the song, or income associated with it.

Whether or not downloading music constitutes theft in your country depends on how theft is defined in your criminal code, or equivalent. I’m not going to debate this, because 1) it depends on the country, and 2) the interpretation of law is best left to judges. However, I welcome a debate regarding whether downloading should be regarded as theft.

In conclusion, unauthorized music downloading may or may not be theft, depending on your country. However, unauthorized music downloading does not cause a loss to the music industry; therefore, the music industry has no legal basis on which to sue downloaders.

On to Part 3 –>