[fccboston08] FCC hearing: BitTorrent demo
The head of Vuze, Gilles BianRosa, is showing a demo of his BitTorrent client. There have been 20M downloads of Vuze in the past 12 months. It delivers high-def TV. He says Vuze enables viewers to find producers and vice versa. He connects live to a science video with gorgeous astronomical videos, although he can’t show it in high-def beause of Harvard’s projector. He hits the play button on the PBS channel. He then drops down into advanced view (= the old Azureus client). He explains that because it’s peer-to-peer, throttling some of the peers clocks it (or lags it) for everyone else.
So, the basic argument is that Vuze is used for legitimate TV time shifting via Net delivery. It uses BitTorrent. Throttle BitTorrent keeps this new form of Net TV to function well. Great example of a insurgent competitor being hurt by packet discrimination, with the implication that the discrimination is coming from companies that should see Vuze as a threat.
“We are not against reasonable network management. We are against network mgt with no boundaries.” Comcast owns the racetrack but also has a horse running in the race, he says. “The market should determine which services should win,” but markets need ground rules.
[Well done.]
Martin: I want to make clear that you have relationships with media companies, so the programming you’re providing is legal.
A: We are an open platform so people can upload what they want, but we feature legal content.
Martin: Your tech doesn’t allow users to exceed the upload capacity they’ve bought, right?
A: No, they couldn’t. [I think Martin’s making a point, not really asking.] [Heck, we’re not even allowed to use all the bandwidth we’ve purchased!]
Adelstein: How much traffic does uploading by your users generate?
A: Generally, upload is 10-20% of download capacity.
McDowell: The 1996 Telecom Act is the backdrop for this. We’re talking here about cable companies. Did you try to work around the inefficiencies present with cable companies?
A: We are agnostic about the network. By cooperating we can be more intelligent in distributing the strain.
McDowell: Are you one size fits all even though the networks have different limitations?
A: Of course.
Martin reiterates that Vuze does not allow users to exceed their capacity. They can only use the capacity they’ve purchased. [Excellent. This says something very positive about Martin’s stance (imo)]
Categories: Uncategorized dw
