Net Neutrality

What is net neutrality? Network neutrality is “the idea that Internet service providers (ISP’s) should treat all data that travels over their networks equally” (EFF.org). This includes packet forgery, slowing down the transfer for certain files, restrictions on tethering, and restricting certain sites from a provider or Wi-Fi network. My understanding of this is that internet providers need to treat all data transfers as equal regardless of origin or destination. They would have to treat Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon video streaming services equally. Just as many colleges claim to be “need blind,” internet providers must be “blind” to the data. For example, Netflix could not pay AT&T U-verse to have them speed up Netflix traffic and slow down their competitor’s data. AT&T U-verse needs to treat all streaming as equal.

To continue with the example of Netflix, Netflix has a majority of the market share claiming they reach 63%, Hulu is next with only 35% or market penetration, and Amazon only hit 28% (Fool.com). Using these statistics, Netflix hits the same amount of the market as its two biggest combinations combined. It would be incredibly east for Netflix to just pay the big internet providers a nice lump sum every quarter to promote the traffic of their data, and slow down their competitors. Or they could be even more unethical, and just give ‘bonuses’ to a select few executives in the network providers companies to ensure their data’s priority. Either of these agreements (and half a dozen other sketchy agreements) would quickly and efficiently knock out their competition and further increase their market share. But network neutrality provides a reason and a moral argument (in my opinion) for network providers to not accept this money or make any sort of non-monetary agreement. IT encourages companies like Netflix to engineer lean, optimized products rather than just take the easy way out and pay to knock out their competition.

On the counter side of the argument, how is the net neutrality bad? Netflix is a streaming service, its bread and butter is sending huge amounts of data at a rapid pace. But what would happen to their business if it was transferred slowly? Say at the same pace emails are transferred? They would crash and burn and never be able to make another dollar because their videos would have to be buffered and be stuttering so often people would get sick of it and give up. Emails are transferred at a relatively quick speed, only because they are not a lot of data. So it makes sense for service providers to charge Netflix a premium to push their data through at a much higher speed.

I am still straddling a middle ground on whether I think net neutrality is 100% good or bad. I think there is an interesting argument to be made in both directions. It make sense for Netflix to not be able to box out their competitors, but they should absolutely be able to pay the premium to maintain their business. In theory net neutrality is fantastic, but putting that theory into action proves to be an incredibly difficult task.

Response to the Letter to the Editor on Encryption

What does encryption mean to me? How valuable is it? How important is it to my social wellbeing, comfort, and trust? Sure I like my privacy just as much as the next guy. I don’t like the idea of someone snooping around my personal data, or thinking that anyone can just hack into my phone or my email and see everything I have. We as Americans are entitled to some extent of privacy. But honestly, I think I am an anomaly when it comes to the meat of it. I stand the middle ground on where I think encryption is good or bad. I think encryption is good, but only to a certain extent. Encryption is good, but when nessisary, the data should be able to be decrypted.

If there was an investigation underway and having the police ok through my data could help with it, I really wouldn’t mind. If a stranger (within law enforcement – lets not go to the extreme like a pervert or a criminal) was sifting through my data, I see no problem with that. I have nothing to hide, nothing I am ashamed of, and nothing I would sincerely mind them finding. But I think a distinction needs to be established. I wouldn’t mind a law enforcement stranger going through my data but I might feel differently if you told me it was going to be my mother going through it all.

And I think that distinction is the key. If Apple or phone carriers or what have you wanted to install a back door way for law enforcement to have access to phones with a search warrant, I am a supporter of that. I think Apple and the carrier its and other mobile software providers are smart enough to create an encryption algorithm that is robust enough to not get hacked by even the most sophisticated hackers. And if they are not that good, then why haven’t iPhones and such been hacked already?

I believe that we are all entitled to our privacy, but just as if a policeman knocks on your door with a search warrant we have to allow him to search the property, I think our data is just the same. We can have our encrypted privacy, but we should comply with the law to aid in investigation. As much as we all hate speeding and parking tickets, there are only there to do good.

I don’t think there are a lot of good reasons why we shouldn’t treat our data just the same as we treat all our other stuff. If we had all of our data in hard format files sitting on our desk, and a police officer had a warrant they could sift through all those files and take what they want. Why should our phones and computers be treated any different? I think they ar one in the same. Especially if the encryption is done in such a way that it’s only available to be decrypted by law enforcement agencies.

Project 3: Encryption Letter to the Editor

Piracy

After reading several of the articles, I think there are two interesting conversation pieces: where people get their music, and maybe more interesting, where people get their movies. So first let’s look at music. I think the article is right; most people nowadays are not pirating music nearly as much. Granted my opinion is based in only the people I am exposed to – which is generally tech savvy college kids, who when they want something for free or illegally) they can find a way to get it. Just as nearly all college students found creative ways of getting booze while they were underage, getting music has always been at the top of that priority list. When we were all younger, LimeWire and other sites were incredibly easy to use, incredibly accessible, and made it seem like it was totally legit. This is what we got used to, this was our norm. Then as we got older things started to change and thus we had to adjust our methods slightly. But as we started to have less time to scour the internet for good quality copies, places like Spotify and Apple Music have become a lot more common. I think a majority of college kids use a streaming site rather than pirating their own music now. Having the huge library of music at their fingertips rather than having to hunt and peck for a certain track, makes it a lot more appealing and a lot more usable.

But what I think is an interesting point, but I don’t have a real response to it, is what percentage are willing to pay for that convenience (Spotify Premium, Apple Music, Pandora Plus, etc.) versus people like me who are perfectly content with hearing a commercial every now and then as long as I have access to all the music on free platforms (Spotify Free, Google Play, etc.).

Moving onto movies. Nearly everyone you come in contact with “has Netflix.” But what I want to know is how many actually have Netflix. Its one thing if their parents have Netflix and them and their siblings all use it, but it’s a completely different story when their friend’s parents have Netflix and they use it even though they have almost no connection to the actual owner of the subscription. I am fairly confident that if I did not have access to Netflix as I do right now, I could send out ten texts asking for login credentials and I would receive at least five responses with their info. Netflix is the unique example of this, and I know it breaks the Terms & Conditions in Netflix’s agreement package, but how prevalent is this? And how would Netflix go about stopping it effectively?

With music there are a lot of work around to receiving content for free while maintaining legality. But when it comes to movies, there are not any streaming sites (or at least none that I know of) that gives their content for free.

And just to wrap up on a completely unrelated note, I found all of the Kanye nonsense incredibly comical. Especially since I am not a fan of him, so I love the fuel to make fun of him.

Patents

After reading over the patent section of “What is Intellectual Property” I think the creation of patents are incredibly useful. It provides inventors with a method of protecting their ideas from being stolen or copied, but it also allows for the benefaction of technology. What I mean by this is if I was an expert in lighting, and I saw a new light bulb patent, I could review it, and notice the error or room for improvement and continue to make the light bulb better. I think it would be morally correct to give credit where credit is due to the original creator, but for the improvements I created I am entitled to a patent myself. And to my understanding, that is how the patent system works. I am allowed (and encouraged) to use other people’s patents to create new, better things, as long as my idea is completely new and I give credit to those parties involved.

I do see a slight problem with the limited time clause of a patent. 20 years seems to be a short amount of time for protection of an invention. Let’s hypothetically say I think of a brilliant idea, get it patented and start trying to get funding to start a company or produce my product. I could go to the big firms and they could easily see my idea and know I don’t know how to start or manage a business and so they could pass on funding knowing that eventually the idea will become part of the public domain and they can get it for free. For a big corporation, 20 years is not a long time, so waiting is not an issue. I think the solution to this problem is to guarantee someone sole use of their idea for 20 years, but then when those 20 years expire, maybe guarantee a percentage of the profits gained from using that patent for a much longer length of time (perhaps their life span, or even they can pass the patent right to one of their children and it will last their lifespan). That way if a truly good idea is invented, the inventor and their family will be the ones to benefit, and make it much harder to exploit their idea.

I really don’t think companies like IBM are using the patent system properly. Sure they are entitled to protect their property, but I think there is a difference in protecting your technology and tying to harm someone else’s. It seems like IBM is going out of their way to find ‘infringements’ upon their patents even though it’s questionable whether or not there is even an infringement.  If IBM was suing a competitor for the infringement, I could understand it a lot more. Just as Maersk and Shell are both oil companies but are not competitors (Maersk manages oil rigs, Shell manages processing crude and selling oil), Twitter, Amazon, and Groupon are all non-competitors to IBM. They are simply tech companies in a different sector of the business. And to me that seems like they are almost picking fights with people they know would rather just settle than actually spend the time and money to arbitrate. If they were going to sue everyone who deiced to use a menu on their page or limit the number of ways to log in to their app, IBM would be suing every website in the world almost.  I think that is a misuse of the system.

Data Collection and Advertising

In my personal opinion, I think the whole discussion on behavioral analytics is simply fascinating work. How they can predict what we are going to want and when and even the why. It’s all lofty stuff that is over my head but I still think it’s interesting to read about. But that is beside the point to the topic of online advertising. I think there are a couple questions to be asked and each of those has different answers.

First, should companies be allowed to collect data about you as the customer? Yes, absolutely. It is in their best interest to target each person as a specific new market and target them for products they are more likely to buy. But how should they go about this? Should they be allowed to buy data from companies as to target more effectively? No, I do not think this is nearly as ethical. Going off the example in the Target article, if I go to target and they want to track my purchases via my credit card swipes at their stores, I have no problem with that. They are entitled to know what I bought in their store, what time of day it was, what time of year it was, where I was (was I at my local one I go to often or was it an out of town or cross town location), and numerous other statistics you could take via just that. But should they be able to buy my demographics data from someone, or learn even more personal information about my credit cards or my house or anything that cannot be learned by studying me in the store? I have some moral qualms with that. I think companies should be limited to collecting data independently. Could they hire an outside, more specialized company to collect the data and analyze it? Sure, why not. But it needs to be conducted in store only, not invading into my personal life outside of the shopping experience.

I think this same premise can be extended and applied to online. If Target wants to look at my mouse clicks and what things I am viewing online and see if I’m attracted to certain sales and such, great. I have no problem with that. But again, it should only be done via the Target website. When I go to the Walmart website, say, I only want Walmart to be able to collect the data about my key strokes and viewing history. The data mining that is done across the entire web, where if I look at a watch on one website, suddenly I am getting watch adds when I scroll through my Facebook feed, is just insane. It’s amazing how they can work through all the analytics. But I think it is an extreme invasion of privacy for a company to collect that data via my browser or whatever and then sell it to advertising groups.

The overall message and opinion I have is that data collection for targeting ads is permissible if and only if it is done in the right context – privately and only “in store.”