The Comcast/BitTorrent Kerfuffle: Let’s Take a Few Steps Back

For months the Comcast/BitTorrent kerfuffle has raised hackles on all sides, and in an interesting twist last week Comcast and BitTorrent made nice with each other - at least on stage. What is really going on here, and what do these events portend for the future? To make sense of it, let's take a few steps back and analyze the interests of the key stakeholders in the current peer-to-peer video content delivery chain.

In our view there are four key stakeholders in the chain: content originators, content delivery technology vendors, ISPs, and content consumers. For peer-to-peer video content to flow well to consumers, the interests of all four stakeholders must be aligned. The Comcast/BitTorrent spat erupted because Comcast quite understandably viewed the popular BitTorrent content delivery technology as pesky, and quietly applied a network pesticide to it. Because stakeholder interests were misaligned, the ISP link in the delivery chain broke, thus denying consumers access to requested content.

What happened next is a testament to the power of the court of public opinion. While attempting to protect its own interests, Comcast failed to foresee that its actions would so alienate a cadre of vocal content consumers and their passionate allies that it hurt its own interests more than if it had taken no action at all.

The fact is that each player in the delivery chain needs the others for the system to work, and when one player shoves too hard with an agenda that is misaligned with others in the chain, the system breaks and everybody loses. It appears that this lesson is not lost on Comcast, who is at least going through the motions of working with BitTorrent to repair the peer-to-peer content delivery chain.

It is wise for all of us, regardless of whose side we take and how high our emotions run, to remember that we are all in this together, and the best course is to work things out responsibly. The BitTorrent users in the current scenario are early adopters, which means we had better sort all of this out soon because as video entertainment delivery shifts to the Internet, demand for this type of service will increase big time.

Aligning all of the stakeholders' interests is easier when there are economic incentives and not just fears of public outrage and/or federal regulation. There are some peer-to-peer video delivery models, such as one promoted by Massachusetts-based PeerApp, in which ISPs who embrace rather than shun peer-to-peer video delivery technology benefit by reducing peer-to-peer traffic and potentially even receiving revenue by serving cached peer-to-peer video content within their networks. We expect these models to gain traction because they can strengthen and align relationships within the delivery chain.

We predict that ISPs will increasingly respect the self-policing nature of the Internet, and as time passes they will become less inclined to pursue network management practices likely to break content delivery chains, raise hackles, and raise the specter of regulation. Smart, motivated, socially networked Internet users have access to a growing collection of tools and information that enable them to detect when network pesticides or similar practices are in use - and if they do uncover such practices, they will communicate that information to a network of passionate outspoken allies faster than you can say kerfuffle.

• Network Management
• BitTorrent
• Comcast
• net neutrality
• PeerApp