Ramble

AT&T seems to have lost its corporate mind. First, it agrees to spy on Americans for the NSA. Now, it has decided to become an enforcer for the Hollywood and Record Companies. According to an LA Times article,

AT&t Inc. has joined Hollywood studios and recording companies in trying to keep pirated films, music and other content off its network… [emphasis added]

There are two big issues I have with this. First, AT&T, as stated in the article, is “the nation’s largest telephone and Internet service provider and operates the biggest cross-country system for handling Internet traffic…” Therefore, its network should probably be read as the Internet. This is obviously very bad for those of us concerned about free speech online. Not all copying of copyrighted works is piracy and as we have seen with the RIAA and MPAA tactics so far, they are generally taking a wide net approach, trapping all kinds of innocent people with very flimsy evidence and over what, a downloaded movie? There is a whole other discussion to be had about what is piracy and its actual harm. The article itself parrots the standard Hollywood point of view of piracy costing billions of dollars per year. This leads me into my second major concern, the assumption in this debate about what is culture.

AT&T is quoted in the article as saying, “We do recognize that a lot of our future business depends on exciting and interesting content.” Presumably, this means content from the big Hollywood and music companies. What about all the content that is created by amateurs? I’m not just talking about the majority of crap on YouTube, but about amateur musicians, writers, movie makers, etc. that are creating great works, but aren’t part of the mainstream distribution system that Hollywood and the music industry uses; independent artists who are increasingly relying on the Internet to provide the marketing and distribution of their work that once was the exclusive domain of the big movie and music companies.

What if the future really is about decentralization of the culture industries? If AT&T has locked down the Internet (or their significant fraction of it) in the name of protecting copyright, what kinds of effects will that have on all the producers and consumers who are outside the domain of the big content corporations? The consequences of the technology implementation chosen could be profound. If AT&T’s definition of Fair Use (as codified in the network architecture) differs greatly from the generally accepted legal definition, then they will have effectively created their own law without democratic oversight.

There is also a whole raft of legal problems AT&T may bring on itself. Once they start actively screening traffic for copyrighted works, any false positives become a legal liability. As we’ve seen with past attempts at screening, there will probably be a whole lot of false negatives, too. Enough of these and the whole point of the system will be undermined. Why bother with all of this trouble? If AT&T just stuck to being a common carrier of bits, we would all be better off, but AT&T couldn’t make as much money.

The biggest problem with the AT&T announcement is how it is yet another prelude to an increasingly centralized Internet where control is on the network level instead of at the edges, where content is assumed to be that created by big corporations and sold to consumers for a fee. Where, communication is one way and where we are left with yet another mass media system instead of a mass collaboration system.