Our intrepid reporter, Tom Koltai, has been following with great interest the recent announcements by The Communications Minister, Senator Conroy about his intentions to filter the Entire Internet for Australian Internet Users. Here is his take on the proposed Internet Filter Legislation: (updated 27th December 2008)
I have been following with great interest the
recent announcements by
The Communications Minister, Senator Conroy about his intentions to
filter the Entire Internet for Australian Internet Users.
I represented at the Senate Committee Hearings in 1995 that the internet
could not be regulated or adequately filtered (Scroll down to Section 3.24)
Specifically I said :
o the content of the Internet cannot be regulated because of the 'sheer volume';
o there are technical difficulties in achieving regulation
because: no sooner is information filtered from one source than it becomes
available from another site;
o graphic image format (GIF), such as a photograph or a digital
image, is very difficult to automatically scan for offensive content,
since to a computer it is a series of bits and bytes;
o as the Internet grows even more people will want to publish material, making control even harder; and
o anti-porn software filters on the receiving computer in the
home or school work only on text, but then have difficulty coping with
the volume. Filtering of multi-media messages, involving animation,
video or voice, is impossible. (Evidence, 12.10.95, pp. 137-8).
Now the senator has announced that the filter will also filter P2P.
Unfortunately the P2P methodology is not the exclusive domain of
P*dophiles (asterisk required to ensure we don’t get filtered) illegal
music or film downloaders.
The internet is a selection of starburst nodes, each node consisting of
a cluster of users and an ISP, connected to other starburst nodes.
It started as such in 1979 and still operates the same way. The design
is intended so that traffic from one user on Starburst node A can get
to either a single or multiple users on starburst node B.
In other words Person to Person (or Peer 2 Peer). The difference with
the Internet is that it added two elements to the traditional
methodology of delivery: routing ability and packetization.
Metaphorically, if we used Australia Post to send a postcard from A to B and it
accidentally became mangled somehow in one of the sorting machines and
had a corner torn off it, it is highly unlikely that that the corner
with no address details would ever be rejoined with its lost
counterpart (the rest of the postcard).
Packetization enables the disassembly of data (pictures, videos, songs,
letters) into small delivery packets that are sent over and over again
until the user at B says “Got it!” or in Internet Packet parlance “ACK”
which is literally derived from “Acknowledged Receipt”.
Routing is all about finding detours when the bridge is washed out. The
internet automatically heals itself for small outages and re-routes its
packets via network C or D or E.
However, there is a problem, and its very similar to the problem that
many in built-up areas encounter every morning during morning
ablutions: "where has the water pressure gone?" In other words, when 2
million people all have a shower at 7:00 am the water pressure drops a
little.
The internet is the same. The peak load periods are traditionally 9:00
am to 9:30 am, 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm and 8:00 pm to 9:30 pm. At this time
there is minimal bandwidth availability (water pressure) because everyone
is doing their thing.
The problem started to become severe when video services like YouTube
began streaming across the internet. After all, they are very large
files and benefit only one person, the viewer. If every person in
Australia wanted their own TV channel we would soon run out of channels
(most televisions can't handle more than 999 channels).
To solve this problem, companies started writing software that would
take advantage of the popularity of the videos being watched by people
on the same network segments as you.
These programs utilize the P2P method to offload bandwidth from the
network. The easiest analogy I can give is the old “Party Line” telephone system
that existed (mainly in regional areas) up until the late 1960’s. A line was shared between several users. If the call was for
the Smiths, the phone rang twice, if it was for the Browns, it jangled
three times, if for the Jones, 2 short and one long ring. And quite
often, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Jones would all get on the
phone together to share their news simultaneously. In this manner
gossip was streamlined and delivered instantaneously to everyone.
That’s basically P2P. In your network there are three users watching
the same program. If all three were to download the file from YouTube, that would require three separate download streams across the entire
internet. If however, all three users were to download a different part
of the file and share the parts amongst themselves, then everyone would
get the file faster and more economically.
Unfortunately for us, this is the future of the Internet. Why do I say unfortunately ?
Because the Senator is about to Filter the Internet and P2P and almost
50% of P2P content is legitimate content provided through software like
Miro, TVU, POPEYE and the UK’s BBC Networks extremely popular I-PLAYER.
Another example of Politicians not really understanding the technology
Tom Koltai – 27th December, 2001
