As an eternal optimist, this is difficult to admit: the Web is dying a slow, but painful, death.
The wonderful, Wild West, anything goes landscape that has made the Web so fascinating, innovative, fast-paced and useful is poised to disappear just like the buffaloes did when the settlers appeared and proceeded to slaughter nearly 30 million of these majestic animals.
On the Web today, the “settlers” are the telephone carriers, cablecos and government agencies who are hell-belt on re-making the Web to fit their economic and political agendas. If they succeed, there is no doubt they will savagely attack the Web – maybe not to near extinction like the buffaloes – but into something unrecognizable than what exists today.
This aggressive multi-pronged attacks starts with something seemingly innocuous – technology called traffic shaping that makes high-speed networks more efficient for the majority of customers by deliberately slowing down some traffic such as P2P and video that uses a lot of bandwidth.
While traffic shaping doesn’t seem evil because it’s aimed at all those bad music and movie downloaders, it is an alarming trend because an increasing number of high-speed service providers are inspecting everyone’s traffic and taking direct control of how traffic flows on the Web even though consumers are paying a pretty price for access.
It’s encouraging to see the Canadian Association of Internet Providers put the spotlight on traffic shaping by filing a complaint with Canada’s telecom regulator against Bell Canada’s traffic shaping activity. The CRTC has asked Bell to provide “full rationale” why it shapes traffic, which could offer some valuable insight into how traffic shaping being implemented.
In the U.S., traffic shaping was thrust into the spotlight earlier this week when Charter Communications unveiled plans to test an “enhanced” service where in which it will monitor how it customers surf and search on the Web so it can deliver contextual advertising. Charter is essentially saying that it not only wants its customers to pay for high-speed access but also wants the ability to squeeze more money out of them by selling their souls to advertisers. That’s troubling.
While the carriers and cablecos do their their best to castrate high-speed service, regulators in North America continue to waffle over issues such as Net Neutrality and whether the Web should be regulated.
In Canada, the CRTC made a smart decision 10 years ago by deciding not to regulate the Web. Now, it’s thinking about getting into the regulation business by
holding public hearings next year amid complaints from content makers that their efforts are being broadcast in a, heaven forbid, regulation-free environment.
Gee, I can’t wait to see government regulation of the Internet if, in fact, it is possible to regulate it.
Finally, let’s talk about the cost of high-speed access.
Let’s face it, high-speed access has become a utility like electricity, water and the telephone. It’s a public utility that has gone private and, in the process, competition has disappeared. Not to look too fondly at the days of slow dial-up access but at least there was a healthy competition as opposed to the monopolies and oligopolies that exist today.
For the most part, high-speed access is not inexpensive but it’s something people are happy to purchase because it gives them a big pipe to the Web that they can use how they like – be it just checking e-mail and surfing the Web, or legally downloading or watching/listening to movies and music. It’s like owning a car, and being able to drive it wherever and however you like (within the limits of the law, of course!)
Unfortunately, ISPs aren’t happy happy just to sell high-speed access that’s being marginalized by traffic shaping technology. Now, they want to put a cap on how much bandwidth you consume – a move some suggest is anti-competitive. Rogers, for example, has placed a cap of 60GB, which will disappear pretty quickly if you want to download high-def movies.
Of course, Rogers and other ISPs will be more than happy to sell you more bandwidth – a move that makes their lucrative high-speed businesses even more lucrative. (Note: You notice that broadband carriers and cablecos don’t break out the profitability of their high-speed units? Probably because they’re very, very profitable.)
I’m going to miss the free-wheeling, anything goes Web. Although the Web had a relatively short existence, it left nothing on the table and lived life to the fullest.
Mark, I think you’re blurring 3 separate issues because they rely today on the same technology infrastructure (packet inspection).
Net neutrality is primarily an issue between ISP’s and publishers (writ large). It’s an extremely important one, in the same way that regulation of the broadcast airwaves has been an important one for the last 60 years, because it dictates who can get what information to whom. It’s an area where market power can have an adverse affect on what we normally consider the basic tenets of a free society. But it’s quite a bit more complicated than is often presented by EFF and other, for the simple reason that the costs of ensuring those freedoms are not equally spread among market participants. Technologies like P2P skew the costs entirely in the ISP’s direction, almost completely removing any delivery costs the publishers once bore (i.e. for CDN’s)
Network Utilization Management is primarily an issue between ISP’s and their customers. It’s certainly debatable that ISP’s are gouging customers at the same time as they’re scaling back service (unlimited –> limited). Personally, as a consumer, I don’t think the value proposition is all that skewed, but ultimately, competition should take care of much of this issue. Sure, we don’t have competition as robust as I’d like, but we’re a country of 11M households, and given the network costs involved, it’s unreasonable to expect much more than we’ve got. The fact that most markets do have 2 players is something we couldn’t always say. But if you do want to spur more competition, open up the market to foreign entrants…I’m sure Sprint/Clearwire would love to rollout WiMax in Toronto, and it would end the cozy relationships our entrenched players have with the regulators.
Finally, there’s the issue of privacy, which has recently jumped a level. Charter’s announcement is abhorrent to me, as is, to a lesser extent, Rogers taking over my browser to deliver system messages (though this is probably just intrusive, rather than a violation of privacy) . Canadian ISP’s have traditionally been more protective of customer privacy than their US counterparts (AT&T probably being the most obvious example). For example, they’ve been loathe to cooperate with the music industry in tracking down file sharers, typically doing so only with a court order. But if Charter shows they’re money in violating our privacy, that will change in a heartbeat. You’ve rightly pointed out that our regulator is clueless and hamfisted, and I have no faith whatsoever that they’ll get out in front of this issue.
Erik’s comments make a lot of sense. I particularly like the idea of opening our telco landscape to foreign entrants. We’d see how long bandwidth caps and other consumer unfriendly practices would last in a world with REAL competition.
Eric,
Thanks for the comment and insight. You’re right, it is multi-faceted, complex issue with different players and interests intimately and actively involved.
What I would hate to see happen is the Web controlled to the point where the innovation and joie de vivre disappears. It’s been a fascinating ride so far, and it will be interesting to see how it evolves over the next few years.
Mark
The one other thing which has started to occur on the web in the last couple of years is the erection of national borders. The first W of WWW is increasingly inaccurate as more content is only availabe to people in a certain country. This is particularly the case for media content – Canadians cannot access US shows on network web sites, iTunes Store, etc. It is time that the creators of this content rethought their licensing and started to use a global rather than a national model.
Wayne, don’t hold your breath…the rights situation is a mess, but for largely good reasons. You have to remember that the companies that commission the content and distribute it in the US, typically have little brand presence internationally. NBC, CBS, etc. have no desire to keep their programs on their website internationally, because who’d go see them? They’d rather license these rights to the local broadcaster who has the audience, marketing machine, and most importantly, ad sales team to do it properly.
We sometimes lose this in Canada because we we receive US broadcast signals (from Buffalo, Seattle, etc) in addition to our local ones, so we’re more familiar with the originating broadcast brand than most of the world. But the reason we don’t get this content is largely because CTV, Global, etc. haven’t paid for the rights. They’re now starting to…CTV has signed the first significant deal for this…but it’s a purely economic proposition.
WinExtra » From the Pipeline - 5.17.08
[...] The Web As We Know It is Dying :: Mark Evans – this is a post everyone should grab a coffee and sit down and read. Times change and so will the net as we know it – the question is how. [...]
In an attempt to subscribe to your blog feed with Google Reader, I an “error occurred…” possibly proving your point. The Interwebs are all Cobwebby today. Cruftolicious.
Richard,
Sorry you ran into problems. You can always try to click on the FeedBurner chicklet if the RSS widget doesn’t work.
Mark