(Opinion) Will BitTorrent’s Paid ‘Fast Lane’ Violate ‘Net Neutrality’?

[Matrix]

BitTorrent and TRON have an ambitious plan to improve the BitTorrent protocol. Not only will users be financially rewarded for seeding, but they can also pay for faster access. While this may sound good to some, we wonder how this rhymes with BitTorrent's fight for Net Neutrality and its advocacy against paid prioritization.

A few month ago, BitTorrent and its new owner TRON announced a novel plan to extend the BitTorrent protocol with an “in-client token economy.”

The idea behind Project Atlas, as it’s named, is to add ‘currency’ to the BitTorrent protocol through a series of extensions. This makes it possible to financially reward seeders, or to speed up torrents by paying for faster access.

Earlier this week BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun confirmed the ambition when he announced the new BitTorrent token (BTT) that will be used to pay “to improve network speed.”

While it’s hard to review a product that has yet to be released, the descriptions we’ve seen so far do raise a crucial question. Is the ‘token-economy’ proposed by Project Atlas compatible with Net Neutrality?

We ask this question because BitTorrent has been a fierce proponent of an open Internet. It has been a frontrunner in advocating for Net Neutrality, repeatedly criticizing paid traffic prioritization and so-called “fast lanes”.

BitTorrent went as far as creating the dedicated “Internetbetter” website, avenging FCC’s plans to meddle with the ‘Open Internet,’ advertising its campaign on a massive billboard.

“The FCC’s proposed changes to Net Neutrality would create a preferential fast lane for designated traffic,” BitTorrent wrote at the time.

“Those with the deep pockets to pay for this fast lane will have the ability to access and distribute content at higher speeds. Those who lack the purchasing power will be disadvantaged. This moves us towards an Internet of discrimination.”

These efforts didn’t prevent the Net Neutrality rules from being repealed in the US, but it appears that BitTorrent’s own plans may not be in line with an ‘open’ Internet either.

 

Internetbetter
 

 

In FCC’s case, the fast lanes often refer to companies that pay for improved access to consumers, while others are relegated to the slow lane. In other words, those who pay get better access.

This brings us back to Project Atlas, which promises to pay seeders for their bandwidth. While that may sound great to many, there’s also an input side to this token economy; people who pay for faster access or other features.

While details are scarce, it’s clear that with the BTT token users will be able to pay to speed up their downloads. It’s not clear how this will work, but it’s likely that a paying downloader will get priority over others.

That sounds a bit like a “fast lane” and paid “prioritization,” albeit on a different scale. Large companies are not paying for faster access in this case, but ‘wealthy’ BitTorrent users are.

TorrentFreak asked both TRON and BitTorrent about their thoughts on this Net Neutrality argument and if it presents a problem. The TRON team said that it couldn’t comment on the matter, while BitTorrent didn’t respond at all.

How much of an issue this Net Neutrality angle will depend on the eventual implementation. There’s a reason for concern if BitTorrent users can indeed get a bigger chunk of the available bandwidth in a swarm, as that means that others will receive files slower.

That said, the payment incentives may also increase the overall speed of the swarm as people will seed more. That could benefit everyone, which is less of a problem, of course.

Perhaps it’s fitting to end with two cautioning quotes from BitTorrent itself, again taken from the Internetbetter site. They referred to the FCC’s then-looming Net Neutrality repeal, but they may help the Project Atlas team as well.

“We are at a crossroads, and the decisions made in the upcoming months will set a precedent for decades to come. We want to be on the right side of history,” BitTorrent cautioned.

“This is the generation that will decide if tomorrow’s Internet will be a platform for freedom and opportunity, or a tool for control and monetization,” the company added

Wise words…

 

  Original Article.

[steven36]

No, BitTorrent's Plan for Cryptocurrency-Fueled Speed Boosts Doesn't Violate 'Net Neutrality

 

 

 

from the ill-communication dept

For a subject we've been collectively discussing ad nauseum for the better part of two decades, it's kind of astounding how many people still don't really understand how net neutrality works.

Case in point: last week, BitTorrent (or what's left of it under new owner TRON) announced yet another business model revision, stating it would be integrating cryptocurrency into their BitTorrent platform. One of the goals of this "Project Atlas" is to develop a system that would financially-reward folks who seed files. TRON put the project plan this way:

Quote

"The new token, also called BitTorrent (BTT), will be issued by BitTorrent Foundation, established in Singapore and will enable users to exchange tokens to improve network speed. By providing users with the ability to use BTT tokens for faster downloads, the company aims to accelerate the overall speed of torrents. “BitTorrent token is the first in a series of steps to support a decentralized internet,” said Justin Sun, founder of TRON and CEO of BitTorrent. “In one giant leap, the BitTorrent client can introduce blockchain to hundreds of millions of users around the world and empower a new generation of content creators with the tools to distribute their content directly to others on the web."

Whether the blockchain can magically somehow make BitTorrent a sustainable business (a decade long quest at this point) is a subject for another day. More interesting to me was some of the reaction to TRON's announcement, including this piece over at TorrentFreak attempting to paint BitTorrent as a hypocrite for advocating for net neutrality, then itself embracing "fast lanes" on the internet:

Quote

 

"While details are scarce, it’s clear that with the BTT token users will be able to pay to speed up their downloads. It’s not clear how this will work, but it’s likely that a paying downloader will get priority over others. That sounds a bit like a “fast lane” and paid “prioritization,” albeit on a different scale. Large companies are not paying for faster access in this case, but ‘wealthy’ BitTorrent users are.

 

TorrentFreak asked both TRON and BitTorrent about their thoughts on this Net Neutrality argument and if it presents a problem. The TRON team said that it couldn’t comment on the matter, while BitTorrent didn’t respond at all.

 

The difference here is that users can choose to use another BitTorrent client if they're not happy with what BitTorrent is doing. That's not the case for broadband, where the lion's share of Americans only have access to one ISP at speeds of 25 Mbps or greater. Net neutrality violations are just a symptom of this limited competition, which lets giant telecom operators like AT&T or Comcast abuse their roles as natural monopolies. Net neutrality rules were simply a telecom-specific stopgap measure until somebody, anybody, is willing to actually challenge these companies politically and embrace real, pro-competitive policies.

 

Somehow, people take this telecom-specific paradigm and weirdly try to casually apply it to other sectors, as TorrentFreak does here. You'll often see the same mistake made when folks like Mark Cuban call for "search neutrality" or "app neutrality." Again, you can generally choose to not use a social media website or app store if you're not happy with the business decisions they're making. You can't do that in telecom. That's why net neutrality is a concept specific only to broadband and the lack of competition there that's plagued consumers for the better part of two decades. In broadband, users often have no other choice.

 

That's not to say there aren't valid criticisms for what TRON is doing here. But again, you can't call this a net neutrality violation because the term applies specifically to core telecom networks, not software platforms where users have the option of numerous other clients. The monopoly-dominated dance of dysfunction in telecom is a very unique animal, resulting in the creation of a very unique term in "net neutrality." It can't just be thrown about casually every time you see someone engaging in dubious behavior. That's not how any of this works.

 

Source