Subject: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

From: "Vijay K. Gurbani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:03:34 -0500

Folks: To ratify the consensus during the IETF 74 meeting in
SF, we will be adopting two documents as WG deliverables:

1) draft-marocco-alto-problem-statement-05 will be adopted
as the deliverable for the "problem statement" charter item.
A new -00 WG version will be submitted by the editors shortly,
and we will proceed to WGLC after that.

2) draft-kiesel-alto-reqs-02 will be adopted as the deliverable
for the "requirements document."  A new -00 WG version will
be submitted by the editors shortly.  This draft will remain
"alive" for a while as other issues (protocol, discovery, etc.)
are worked on.  The editors will -- in a symbiotic relationship --
track the emerging consensus  on these issues as well as contribute
to these issues and update the requirements draft as consensus
emerges.

Please post on the list if there is any objection to moving the
above two drafts ahead.

Thanks.

- vijay (on behalf of Jon and Enrico)
-- 
Vijay K. Gurbani, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent
1960 Lucent Lane, Rm. 9C-533, Naperville, Illinois 60566 (USA)
Email: vkg@{alcatel-lucent.com,bell-labs.com,acm.org}
Web:   http://ect.bell-labs.com/who/vkg/

---

From: "Martin Stiemerling" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 17:26:05 +0200

I'm in favour of making both WG items.

  Martin

[email-masked]

NEC Laboratories Europe - Network Research Division
NEC Europe Limited | Registered Office: NEC House, 1 Victoria Road, London W3 6BL | Registered in England 2832014 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Vijay K. Gurbani
> Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 4:04 PM
> To: alto
> Subject: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents
> 
> _______________________________________________
> alto mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/alto

---

From: "Woundy, Richard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 14:03:17 -0400

I also am in favor of making both items into WG items.

Incidentally, is there a WG deadline for objecting?

-- Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Martin Stiemerling
Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 11:26 AM
To: Vijay K. Gurbani; alto
Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

  Martin

[email-masked]

NEC Laboratories Europe - Network Research Division
NEC Europe Limited | Registered Office: NEC House, 1 Victoria Road,
London W3 6BL | Registered in England 2832014

---

From: "Vijay K. Gurbani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:12:31 -0500

> I also am in favor of making both items into WG items.

Rich: OK, thanks.

> Incidentally, is there a WG deadline for objecting?

Interesting question.  I don't think there is a deadline
for objecting to an I-D.  Technical dissent and solving
it through consensus is the life-blood of a WG, so objections
can be raised at any point in the process -- pre-WGLC, WGLC,
Gen-Art review, and finally, IESG review.

Even after a I-D becomes an RFC, errata can be filed against
the RFC.  In the most egregious case, the flawed RFC can
be obsoleted with a new RFC.

I must preface in that the above is my understanding, subject
to corrections from the AD or other parties with more
information and experience on the process.

Thanks,

- vijay

---

From: "Woundy, Richard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 16:12:40 -0400

> I don't think there is a deadline for objecting to an I-D.

You are correct that objections may come at any time in the lifecycle of
an I-D (and errata can be posted against an RFC).

But it does help to set a "weak deadline" for objections to accepting
these documents as WG drafts, for a few reasons:

1. Deadlines help prioritize effort. If the WG knows that there is a two
week deadline to object (say), then individuals can schedule time in the
next two weeks to read the two drafts
(draft-marocco-alto-problem-statement-05 and draft-kiesel-alto-reqs-02)
and make their own decision: adopt, object, or not offer an opinion.

2. If no one objects by the deadline, then the WG chairs have a good
sense of WG consensus. And it avoids 'voting'.

3. Adopting the drafts as WG drafts is a matter of efficiency. While the
drafts are not 'done', at least they represent the best written
understanding of the WG with regards to the problem statement and
requirements. Non-WG members can see the adopted drafts on the WG
webpage, e.g. http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/alto-charter.html. So
the sooner that the WG chairs can gauge consensus, the better it is for
everyone.

4. If someone's objection misses the deadline, it is not a catastrophe,
as only an RFC is permanently published. Regardless, it would be helpful
to the efforts and direction of the WG as a whole if the deadline was
honored.

-- Rich, a former WG co-chair :)

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Vijay K. Gurbani
Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 2:13 PM
To: Woundy, Richard
Cc: alto
Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

Rich: OK, thanks.

Thanks,

- vijay

---

From: "Vijay K. Gurbani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:25:04 -0500

> these documents as WG drafts, for a few reasons:
[...]

Ah, OK.  I am with you now, Rich.

So, after consultation with my other esteemed co-chairs, let
me issue a clarification on my prior email:

OLD:

NEW:

   Please post on the list if there is any objection to moving the
   above two drafts ahead.  If there are no objections by **Wednesday,
   April 15th, 2009,** draft-marocco-alto-problem-statement-05 and
   draft-kiesel-alto-reqs-02 will be accepted as WG documents
   fulfilling the "problem statement" and "requirements"
   deliverables, respectively.

> -- Rich, a former WG co-chair :)

- vijay, learning the ropes of being a WG co-chair ;-)

---

From: "DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:52:26 -0400

In the draft problem statement is the following paragraph on caching:  

"2. Content awareness:  Since caches need to store the content being
delivered, they are subject to legal issues whenever the user does not
have the right to access or distribute such content.  This limitation
makes caching approaches that do not (or cannot) support digital rights
management unusable for distributing copyrighted material.  Since, it is
very difficult for an abstract file sharing proxy to know all of the
legal parameters around distributing content, this makes caching
unusable for many file-sharing systems.  Since this is a legal and not
technical issue, the solution would be at the legal, not network,
layer."

Nothing prevents a cache from receiving a black list of hashes and then
not caching those items.  This of course avoids the acceleration of
illicit content -- the root cause of network congestion today.

In contrast to the current draft's assertion, caching can be supportive
of both traditional DRM (i.e., encrypted files) and legal enforcement
activities.  It *is* a technical issue.

There is also a certain strangeness in the section on Security
Considerations where the authors, among other things, hypothesize about
rogue ISPs: "...in cases where the ALTO service provider maliciously
alters results returned by queries after ALTO has gained popularity..."

More important is the fact that the authors' fail to address the
fundamental issue of content security (i.e., copyrights) that
contributes to a situation that many find undesirable, indefensible and
inexcusable.  Consider recent observations from Eric Schmidt (Google)
and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.  

Mr. Schmidt noted that the Internet is fast becoming a "cesspool."  "Let
me just say precisely, it's a sewer out there." [Advertising Age, April
7, 2009] 

Sir Andrew's description to the House of Lords was similar: "The
internet is a Somalia of unregulated theft and piracy." [Media Guardian
April 3, 2009]

Contrary to the current draft, the issue isn't the potential for a
wayward ISP to harm an innocent P2P application (or its unblemished
user).  Rather, it's the need for all applications to abide by some
agreed-upon rules of the road.  Respect for the property of others is
one such rule we'd be wise to honor.  

Doing so would begin to clean up the mess we've allowed to accumulate
and fester.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Vijay K. Gurbani
Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10:04 AM
To: alto
Subject: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

Thanks.

---

From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:27:38 +0300

Hi, Greg,

On 2009-4-15, at 23:52, DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal) wrote:
> This of course avoids the acceleration of

I'm not aware of any study that shows that illicit content is the root  
cause of network congestion today. I've heard you say this multiple  
times in the past; would you please point me at the source of this  
information?

Thanks,
Lars

---

From: "DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:23:57 -0400

It's an important question - thanks for asking.

a)  ipoque GmbH's Internet Study 2008/2009 notes that P2P generates the
most traffic in all regions.

"Peer-to-peer file sharing still generates by far the most traffic in
all monitored regions - ranging from 43 percent in Northern Africa to 70
percent in Eastern Europe.  The regional differences can probably be
attributed to varying subscriber access bandwidth, availability of
localized content, and cultural habits."

http://www.ipoque.com/resources/internet-studies/internet-study-2008_200
9 

b)  Per an AP story about Sweden's new ipred law dated April 1, 2009: 

"Statistics from the Netnod Internet Exchange, an organization measuring
Internet traffic, suggest that daily online activity dropped more than
40 percent after the law took effect on Wednesday. Henrik Ponten of the
Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau welcomed the plunge in Internet traffic as a
sign that file-swappers are reducing their activity for fear of getting
caught. "There's no other explanation for it," he said."  

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090403/ap_on_re_eu/eu_sweden_online_piracy_
3

One might be tempted to argue that all this P2P traffic is legal file
sharing of home movies, World of Warcraft updates, Linux downloads, or
"sharing" of the Bible.  Clearly Eric Schmidt and Sir Andrew don't
believe that's the case.  

c)  A recent study at Illinois State University in the US found 119k
"likely infringements" in a one-month period (April 2007).  What makes
that number astounding is that there are fewer than 6k students living
on campus.

Jon Peha (Carnegie Mellon University), the FCC's new Chief Technologist,
did the data analysis and you can find his paper ("Dimensions of
Piracy") here:  http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~peha/dimensions_of_piracy.pdf 

The headlines are:  42% of students in residence halls use P2P; no
evidence of legitimate P2P use; men more likely than women; 24k titles
accessed; 119k "likely infringements".

To me, the conclusions are inescapable:  P2P constitutes the majority of
network traffic and almost all P2P is "sharing" of copyrighted content
without the copyright holders' permission.

-----Original Message-----
From: Lars Eggert [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 3:28 AM
To: DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)
Cc: Vijay K. Gurbani; alto
Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

Hi, Greg,

information?

Thanks,

Lars

---

From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:46:18 +0300

Hi,

> a)  ipoque GmbH’s Internet Study 2008/2009 notes that P2P generates  
> the most traffic in all regions.
>
> b)  Per an AP story about Sweden’s new ipred law dated April 1, 2009:
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090403/ap_on_re_eu/eu_sweden_online_piracy_3
>
> “likely infringements” in a one-month period (April 2007).

thanks for the pointers! They do illustrate that P2P traffic makes up  
a sizeable fraction of Internet traffic in some regions (a), and that  
at least some fraction of P2P traffic in some regions is transferring  
copyrighted content without permission (b + c).

> To me, the conclusions are inescapable:  P2P constitutes the  
> majority of network traffic and almost all P2P is “sharing” of  
> copyrighted content without the copyright holders’ permission.

I wouldn't feel comfortable making this broad generalization, based on  
those three studies alone. (My interpretation is above.) But without  
additional data, we could argue about what is accurate forever.

I would like to point out though that none of the three studies say  
that illicit content is the root cause of network congestion today  
(which was your claim that I responded to). Or, to turn this around,  
that network congestion would disappear if the transmission of illicit  
content somehow suddenly stopped.

It's clear that some volume of traffic would be removed from the  
network if that happened, but whether that volume is sufficient to  
alleviate network congestion to some degree depends *a lot* on many  
other factors.

Lars

---

From: "DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:20:31 -0400

You stated:  

"I would like to point out though that none of the three studies say  

"It's clear that some volume of traffic would be removed from the  
network if that happened, but whether that volume is sufficient to  
alleviate network congestion to some degree depends *a lot* on many  
other factors."

a)  The easiest way to determine how much network traffic is illegal P2P
is to ask a large network operator.  You'll need to sign an NDA and I
encourage you to do so.  

b)  You might also think about ipoque's numbers.  The company notes that
66% of network traffic in Southern Africa is P2P, 65% in South America,
44% in the Middle East.  What percentage of those numbers do you think
is scientific data sharing, Linux downloads, or WoW updates?

c)  You might also go to any index site and check out the Top 100
downloads in any category and in the aggregate.  Perhaps I missed it but
I could not find one piece of content in either group that was not
copyrighted.

It's easiest to turn a blind eye and I hope you won't.  

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Lars Eggert
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 4:46 AM
To: DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)
Cc: alto
Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

Hi,

> a)  ipoque GmbH's Internet Study 2008/2009 notes that P2P generates  
> "likely infringements" in a one-month period (April 2007).

> majority of network traffic and almost all P2P is "sharing" of  
> copyrighted content without the copyright holders' permission.

Lars

---

From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:44:36 +0300

Hi, Greg,

> It's easiest to turn a blind eye and I hope you won't.

I'm not. It's pretty obvious that varying fractions of Internet  
traffic are illicit, depending on the region, and the sources you  
point to illustrate this with some datapoints.

What those datapoints in my opinion don't support is stating as fact  
that illicit traffic is - in your words - "the root cause of network  
congestion today." I wouldn't argue if you had stated it as an  
hypothesis or a possibility, but it's not a verified fact.

(We might also have a terminology mismatch - "congestion" has a pretty  
precise meaning in the transport community.)

Lars

---

From: "DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:49:00 -0400

Page 3 of the ipoque white paper (Content Protection in the Internet),
under "Reality Check", contains the observation:

"P2P networks are a good example.  While the overwhelming proportion of
exchanged content violates copyrights, the networks themselves are
important new technologies."

http://portal.ipoque.com/downloads/ 

I suspect that's not sufficient for you and note that ipoque is in a
unique position to have such knowledge.  Perhaps they could be invited
to do a presentation at Stockholm and we might put this matter to rest?

Till then, and to the extent you genuinely wish to know the answer to
your question, you might reach out to your local ISP -- they have the
specific knowledge you seek and can speak authoritatively. 

And on the non-zero chance I might be correct, I encourage you to think
about ways to incorporate content protection into ALTO.  

There's little to lose and much to gain in terms of network efficiency
and user experience -- not to mention the benefit of making the Net less
of a mess.
 
-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Lars Eggert
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 10:45 AM
To: DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)
Cc: alto
Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

Hi, Greg,

Lars

---

From: "Woundy, Richard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:04:12 -0400

> a)  The easiest way to determine how much network traffic is illegal
P2P is to ask a large network operator.  You'll need to sign an NDA and
I encourage you to do so.

It may not be as simple as this.

>From page 7 of
http://downloads.comcast.net/docs/Attachment_A_Current_Practices.pdf:

"The Sandvine PTSes, as deployed on Comcast's network, do not inspect
the content. These devices only examine the relevant header information
in the packet that indicates what type of protocol is being used (i.e.,
P2P, VoIP, e-mail, etc.). The equipment used does not read the contents
of the message in order to determine whether the P2P packet is text,
music, or video ... or try to discern whether packets are personal or
business, legal or illicit, etc."

Additionally, the network operator may be able to detect that traffic
appears to be encrypted P2P by the pattern of traffic, without being
able to tell what particular content is being transferred.

We have an idea of the amount of P2P traffic, eg see the Sandvine paper
on traffic demographics from
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/rai/trac/wiki/PeerToPeerInfrastructure.

We also know about the quantity of DMCA notifications we send to
customers for alleged copyright infringement.
http://www.comcastvoices.com/2009/03/a-few-words-about-copyright.html 

-- Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 9:21 AM
To: Lars Eggert
Cc: alto
Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

You stated:  

-----Original Message-----

Hi,

Lars

---

From: Enrico Marocco <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:55:01 +0200

> about ways to incorporate content protection into ALTO.  

Greg, the ALTO working group has been chartered to standardize a
protocol for carrying information related to the physical network, and
that has really nothing to do with the pieces of content some
applications running on top of such a network may or may not decide to
exchange. Not for some philosophical reasons, but just because
separation of very different problems -- like network proximity and
content legality enforcement are -- is generally considered essential
from an engineering point of view. This of course does not mean that
there is no room in the IETF for working on content issues, but I really
don't see how the ALTO WG could the venue for that.

-- 
Ciao,
Enrico

---

From: Nicholas Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:07:46 -0700

> to do a presentation at Stockholm and we might put this matter to  

The economics incentives for P2P are huge from the content provider's  
viewpoint.

Just look at CNN's lesson:  You get the user to click "trust" on  
whatever installer is involved in the streaming video, and now the  
user can act as a P2P node, cutting your bandwidth bills by 30% or more.

One of the rolls of Alto in particular should be to get ahead of this  
trend.

Right NOW, P2P may be largely for infringing content (although Linux  
ISOs really are better this way, and even at 10M customers, a 10M  
update is only 100TB of data).

But its not going to be that way even next year, when ABC (which  
already gets users to click "trust" on a Java applet), Hulu, Netflix,  
and YouTube look at just how much it costs to deliver content, and  
also realize that their performance, frankly, is poor.

Shifting to P2P removes their cost of transmitting the popular  
content, and depending on the CDN they are currently using, also  
significantly improves user experience.

Incorporating "content protection" into Alto really does no good,  
either, from the viewpoint of content providers.  If you want to  
protect your content from open world piracy, that why you crawl the  
torrents and email nastygrams which are forwarded to the end-users,  
thought whatever manual or automated DMCA notification mechanisms the  
ISPs provide already.

---

From: "Jan Seedorf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:36:29 +0200

Dear Greg,

Thanks for your comments. We discussed these among the editors of the problem statement draft.

We agree that the text on caching you highlight below is potentially misleading, and also that the phrasing of a "malicious" ISP is probably a bit strong. Thanks for raising these points. Accordingly, we rewrote the text on caching and parts of the security consideration section. You can check out the new text in the next version of the draft, which we will publish shortly.

Regarding content security: as Enrico has already pointed out on this list, the goal of ALTO is content-agnostic optimization. Thus, we did not address content security in the security considerations section since it is out of scope for ALTO (as stated in the ALTO charter).

Best regards,
 - Jan

> Sent: Mittwoch, 15. April 2009 22:52

---

From: "DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:19:47 -0400

My apologies for my delay in responding and thanks for taking my
comments into consideration.

As for content security being "out of scope" of the charter and ALTO a
"content-agnostic optimization," I can only note that mistakes and
oversights are a part of life.  The good news is that we can correct
them.  

After all, the charter wasn't written by God.  What stops us?  

-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Seedorf [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 10:36 AM
To: DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal); Vijay K. Gurbani; alto
Subject: RE: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

Dear Greg,

Thanks for your comments. We discussed these among the editors of the
problem statement draft.

We agree that the text on caching you highlight below is potentially
misleading, and also that the phrasing of a "malicious" ISP is probably
a bit strong. Thanks for raising these points. Accordingly, we rewrote
the text on caching and parts of the security consideration section. You
can check out the new text in the next version of the draft, which we
will publish shortly.

Regarding content security: as Enrico has already pointed out on this
list, the goal of ALTO is content-agnostic optimization. Thus, we did
not address content security in the security considerations section
since it is out of scope for ALTO (as stated in the ALTO charter).

Best regards,
 - Jan

---

From: "Vijay K. Gurbani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:38:24 -0500

[As co-chair]

> comments into consideration.

Greg: Thank you for your input to the draft.  More inline.

> After all, the charter wasn't written by God.  What stops us?  

The charter reflects the consensus of the list participants
as to the nature of the problem we have agreed to solve.
While not cast in stone, it does reflect deliberations and
negotiations with IESG and, to a lesser extent, the IAB.  Being
part of the discussions stretching back to summer 2008, you
can very well appreciate the time it has taken to get a
workable charter out.  Thus, it is not a trivial matter to
expand the scope of a charter.

Furthermore, a decision was made to focus on legal traffic only
going back to the May 2008 IETF/MIT workshop.  Nothing in the
list discussions since then has indicated a path other than
that one.  Given the urgent need for a workable solution, and
also given the fact that any ALTO solution will not preclude
existing or future content management or rights control
mechanisms, we feel it is best to let the ALTO work proceed
as chartered.

Finally, procedures for WG rechartering are defined in RFC 2418.
Since the process is quite expensive -- it's roughly comparable
to the chartering process that took about 6 month, a BoF and
sifting through many email exchanges -- it would be very much
appreciated if such a process was carried on limiting the
impact on current activities (i.e. on a separate list.)

Thanks,

- vijay

---

From: "DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:49:33 -0400

With apologies in advance:    

"Furthermore, a decision was made to focus on legal traffic only going
back to the May 2008 IETF/MIT workshop."

Come again?  By what mechanism is ALTO limited to "legal traffic only"?

-----Original Message-----
From: Vijay K. Gurbani [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 12:38 PM
To: DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)
Cc: Jan Seedorf; alto
Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

[As co-chair]

Thanks,

- vijay

---

From: "Vijay K. Gurbani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:09:18 -0500

[As co-chair]

DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal) wrote:
> "Furthermore, a decision was made to focus on legal traffic only
> going back to the May 2008 IETF/MIT workshop."
> 

Paul Jessop wrote:
> I objected strongly at MIT, asked that the notes of that meeting be
> changed to reflect the fact (which had been glossed over) and made
> subsequent posts to keep the illegal content issue on the table.

Greg, Paul: IETF is an international organization, as such it is
probably in a suboptimal position to arbitrate on the distinction
between legal and illegal content.  As others on the list have
pointed out when we last had this discussion [1], what is legal
for one locale may well border on being illegal for another locale
(and, of course, vice-versa.)

I fail to see how forcing ALTO to protect content rights will
eliminate the dissemination of illegal traffic; ALTO is, after all,
an advisory protocol.  Furthermore, as you have noted as
part of the same thread [1], there are a number of companies that
demonstrate working technical solutions to identify copyrighted
content.  As such, there is nothing in ALTO precluding you
from using such solutions.  Whether or not the IETF will
standardize such solutions is a question for another day, and
I don't see why we should hold up the progress of ALTO while
that question is decided.

At the risk of repeating what I said earlier, given the urgent
need for a workable solution, and also given the fact that any
ALTO solution will *not* preclude existing or future content
management or rights control mechanisms, it is best to let the
ALTO work proceed as chartered.

[1] Thread "[alto] Paper on "Pushing BitTorrent Locality to the
  Limit," IETF ALTO WG list, December 3, 2008. Archived at
  http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/alto/current/msg00029.html

Thanks,

- vijay

---

From: Nicholas Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:59:23 -0700

> that question is decided.

Additionally, this is an argument against "privacy preserving" in  
ALTO.  Not only does privacy preserving vastly complicate ALTO's  
design (the ALTO server really does need to know this), not only is  
privacy preserving largely illusionary, but privacy preserving is  
largely a benefit for illegal content, with very little benefit for  
legal content.

Knowing that someone at IP X is watching "Heroes" on a P2P-enhanced  
Hulu is, lets face it, far less damaging than knowing they are  
torrenting a video-cam leak of "Wolverine".

You don't really NEED content protection in ALTO if it's not privacy  
preserving, as the incentive structure is wrong to use ALTO for  
pirated content.

---

From: "DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:46:22 -0400

I suspect this entire exchange will ultimately prove to be quite
embarrassing for IETF.

The answer to Paul's question ("...where... is it legal to traffic in a
pre-release copy of a recording or a movie?") is Somalia.  

We can do better than that.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Jessop [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 12:26 PM
To: Vijay K. Gurbani; DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)
Cc: alto
Subject: RE: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

> IETF is an international organization

This is such a bogus (and lame) excuse for doing nothing. Perhaps you
could enlighten me as to where exactly it is legal to traffic in a
pre-release copy of a recording or a movie?

Paul

Paul Jessop
Consultant to RIAA

-----Original Message-----
From: Vijay K. Gurbani [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: 28 April 2009 20:09
To: DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal); Paul Jessop
Cc: alto
Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

[As co-chair]

Thanks,

- vijay

---

From: Jon Peterson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:44:44 -0400

I have no doubt that there are reasonable use cases for content delivery
services that involve various forms of policy enforcement for content
(irrespective of legality or lack thereof). The question is whether or not
those components of the envisioned architecture are necessarily, or even
plausibly, the responsibility of the ALTO service, given that ALTO plays a
relatively small role in that ecosystem - as Vijay said, an advisory role.

The mere fact that the broader architecture might encompass that use case
does not in any way argue that the ALTO service can or should. Moreover, the
fact that ALTO is an optional step in determining what source of content
should be preferred suggests strongly that it would be a poor place for
policy enforcement, which a provider would normally expect to be applied
universally.

Arguing the validity of the use case is a rat-hole for this group, I'm sure.

Jon Peterson
NeuStar, Inc.

---

From: "DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:39:36 -0400

I understand your frustration and hope you'll feel my pain.

There are a couple of things missing in your critique.  

One is the history of ALTO, its arbitrary exclusion of content
protection, and the total inability of anyone to articulate the reasons
for it having done so other than to say a decision was made (over the
objections of content creators) and that's that.

As for the role an ALTO server might play in the piracy ecosystem, I'd
welcome that discussion.  Your second paragraph minimizes it as ALTO "is
an optional service."  

Yet it seems to be a law of nature that options must, over time, become
standard features. So I worry.

But my larger point is that it's just wrong to leave open the potential
to expedite delivery of any pirated content.

Why would an organization that prides itself on protecting privacy,
ensuring network security, and free speech (all of which represent
values) ignore theft (an assault on values)?

So I point out that we can do better; let's stop feeding the beast.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Jon Peterson
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:45 PM
To: DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal); Paul Jessop; Vijay K. Gurbani
Cc: alto; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [alto] Adopting two I-Ds as WG documents

I have no doubt that there are reasonable use cases for content delivery
services that involve various forms of policy enforcement for content
(irrespective of legality or lack thereof). The question is whether or
not
those components of the envisioned architecture are necessarily, or even
plausibly, the responsibility of the ALTO service, given that ALTO plays
a
relatively small role in that ecosystem - as Vijay said, an advisory
role.

The mere fact that the broader architecture might encompass that use
case
does not in any way argue that the ALTO service can or should. Moreover,
the
fact that ALTO is an optional step in determining what source of content
should be preferred suggests strongly that it would be a poor place for
policy enforcement, which a provider would normally expect to be applied
universally.

Arguing the validity of the use case is a rat-hole for this group, I'm
sure.

Jon Peterson
NeuStar, Inc.

---

From: Enrico Marocco <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:16:06 +0200

> objections of content creators) and that's that.

Greg, reverting a decision made some time ago is not the problem -- it
happens so often in the IETF that we have RFCs defining procedures for
that. The problem is that there is strong consensus that there is no
effective way for asserting content legality in the protocol the ALTO WG
is supposed to specify.

Let me try and summarize the many discussions that drove the group to
such a conclusion. The protocol will be used between applications and
some kind of servers to exchange information related to the topology and
the policies of the underlying network, to let applications make
better-than-random decision when they can choose among a large set of
endpoints to connect to. The mechanisms for content protection
considered for this scenario -- at least those the group was aware of at
the time of the discussions -- are all based on some sort of content ID
sent by the client (i.e. the application) to the server; however, while
the server could use such IDs for optimization (e.g. to pass additional
endpoints he's aware of, most likely caches), because the content could
be virtually everything (other than pirated movies, also YouTube-like
user generated content, porn of any kind, or even, in the case of Pando,
large email attachments), it would not have any reasonable means for
asserting their authenticity. In other words, if a client sent a fake ID
in a request -- say, the ID of the King James version of the Bible if
not a random token -- the server would not be able to detect it without
relying on huge databases (that would be a nightmare to maintain) and
DPI solutions whose costs would immensely exceed the savings due to the
reduction in cross-domain traffic.

Now, since the group agreed to reflect such a conclusion in the charter,
this discussion is currently out of scope for the ALTO WG. However, if
people are aware of other content protection solutions not considered to
date that would integrate well with ALTO, I will be happy to discuss
them and to help investigate opportunities to extend the current charter
as per RFC 2418. But that has to be done off the ALTO mailing list.

> to expedite delivery of any pirated content.

Any improvement in the network has the potential to expedite delivery of
pirated movies, as well as communications among terrorists, exchanges of
pedo-pornographic content and many others. Unfortunately nobody can
address them all at the core of the technology; the approach engineers
are used to following and that proved to be quite successful at least in
the designing of the Internet consists in defining building blocks, as
simple and extensible as possible, upon which they and others can then
implement solutions for any sort of higher level problems. And I'd say
that this is the right approach for ALTO too, not because a decision was
arbitrarily made months ago, but because so far the WG has shown strong
consensus to do so.

-- 
Ciao,
Enrico

---

From: Nicholas Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:54:35 -0700

On private discussion with Greg DePriest, I think I understand his  
viewpoint, but also that the viewpoint arrises from a misconception.

	ALTO will basically operate in one of the following manners (exact  
mechanism is subject for debate, but this is the general concept):

1) Client queries "Who should I talk to who's participating in  
identifier ID" (Q? ID)

2) Client queries "Who among this list of participants is best to talk  
to" (Q? IP-LIST)

3) Client queries "For ID Q, who among this list of participants for  
identtifier ID" (Q? ID, IP-LIST)

	And there are significant advantages to #1 or #3.

	Greg has been operating under the assumption that it is either 1 or  
3, and that ID must be stable, meaningful, and reasonably long lived.   
Which is the case for IDs (hashes) in P2P protocols.

	If that is the case, then his argument is "At least allow us to play  
Whak-a-mole by saying 'these hashes are bad'".  Which does work to  
some degree.

	And if ALTO was a distributed caching or distributed search protocol,  
I'd agree with him, 100%.

	For in those things, ID generally has to relate to the content (its a  
hash, and its long-lived), so with an automated system, you can play  
automatic DMCA Whak-a-mole and have an effect.

	However, I believe (and I think there is a consensus) that IDs are  
opaque data to ALTO, simply a blob of bits provided by the P2P  
protocol, and are probably best specified as UUIDs.  And ALTO's IDs  
only need to be for a very short time, sufficient to rebalance the P2P  
network.

	Thus if ALTO provides a significant performance gain for P2P (as  
opposed to an aggregate cost savings, where I believe the benefits  
lie), a pirate data source can simply churn IDs very quickly:  "For  
the next 20 seconds, all peers should reoptimize using this NONCE".

	And there are reasons for such reoptimizations on purely legitimate  
P2P, (eg, churning ID's allows you to "reoptimize now" and avoid  
problems with stale data in ALTO) so you can't block that behavior.

	Thus since IDs don't have to be long lived for this use, nor related  
to the file content, you can't play whak-a-mole, and building that  
facility into Alto's infrastructure doesn't help content providers vs  
the pirates but would hugely complicate and compromise the design of  
ALTO.

	Since an "exclude these" model wouldn't work due to churn, the only  
way ALTO could provide content protection is an "include only" rule:  
only identifiers which are specifically ADDED by a "trusted" source  
are supported, and I believe that would be a huge compromise in ALTO's  
usability (why don't these trusted sources just pay for Akamai and not  
use P2P?), and even that might not work as pirates could optimize on  
"lightly used but allowed" identifiers and just ignore the false  
matches.

	This is the best reason why "Content protection is not in the ALTO  
charter":  ALTO, by its limited nature and viewpoint, can't provide  
content protection, and attempting to provide such functionality  
anyway would significantly compromise alto's design.

---

From: "DePriest, Greg (NBC Universal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:19:38 -0400

Thanks to Enrico and Nicholas for providing additional background and
explanations.

The key point of disagreement seems to be that adding a content
protection requirement to ALTO would "hugely complicate and compromise
the design of  
ALTO."

I'm not an expert in such matters, have very limited exposure to the
area, and can't help but wonder if that is, in fact, correct.

Was there a serious investigation or did someone simply do a
back-of-the-envelope analysis.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Nicholas Weaver
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 9:55 AM
To: Enrico Marocco
Cc: Paul Jessop; [email-masked]; Nicholas Weaver; alto; DePriest,
Greg (NBC Universal)
Subject: [alto] The origins of the piracy debate...

	On private discussion with Greg DePriest, I think I understand
his  
viewpoint, but also that the viewpoint arrises from a misconception.

	ALTO will basically operate in one of the following manners
(exact  
mechanism is subject for debate, but this is the general concept):

	Greg has been operating under the assumption that it is either 1
or  
3, and that ID must be stable, meaningful, and reasonably long lived.   
Which is the case for IDs (hashes) in P2P protocols.

	If that is the case, then his argument is "At least allow us to
play  
Whak-a-mole by saying 'these hashes are bad'".  Which does work to  
some degree.

	And if ALTO was a distributed caching or distributed search
protocol,  
I'd agree with him, 100%.

	For in those things, ID generally has to relate to the content
(its a  
hash, and its long-lived), so with an automated system, you can play  
automatic DMCA Whak-a-mole and have an effect.

	However, I believe (and I think there is a consensus) that IDs
are  
opaque data to ALTO, simply a blob of bits provided by the P2P  
protocol, and are probably best specified as UUIDs.  And ALTO's IDs  
only need to be for a very short time, sufficient to rebalance the P2P  
network.

	And there are reasons for such reoptimizations on purely
legitimate  
P2P, (eg, churning ID's allows you to "reoptimize now" and avoid  
problems with stale data in ALTO) so you can't block that behavior.

	Thus since IDs don't have to be long lived for this use, nor
related  
to the file content, you can't play whak-a-mole, and building that  
facility into Alto's infrastructure doesn't help content providers vs  
the pirates but would hugely complicate and compromise the design of  
ALTO.

	Since an "exclude these" model wouldn't work due to churn, the
only  

	This is the best reason why "Content protection is not in the
ALTO  
charter":  ALTO, by its limited nature and viewpoint, can't provide  
content protection, and attempting to provide such functionality  
anyway would significantly compromise alto's design.

---

From: Nicholas Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:58:57 -0700

> back-of-the-envelope analysis.

For me, its "Intuition backed up by a threat analysis and usage cases":

We have legitimate uses which requires ID churn: its the only way to  
guarantee that a rebalancing is fresh.  Especially since nodes churn  
all the time, and ALTO may not have notification when nodes leave.

We have legitimate uses which require IDs to be arbitrary (rather than  
representative hashes): ALTO is not just for file distribution, but  
other P2P optimization (eg, optimizing for low latency for DHTs) where  
hashes don't have meaning.  ALTO doesn't want to deal with particular  
P2P protocols, which all may have different representations of what  
data or blocks are.  And doesn't want to deal with colliding  
namespaces from different P2P programs.  Thus defining ID as a UUID or  
other opaque identifier means ALTO doesn't have to deal with these  
problems.

We have legitimate uses which require IDs to be creatable at-will by  
any party:  Otherwise, ALTO becomes an admission only system which  
limits utility.

Yet all three decisions (allowing churn, opaque-data IDs, at-will ID  
creation) and there becomes an easy countermeasure to ANY system  
predicated on "block bad IDs", as long as that system has a slower  
response time than the P2P network you are trying to prevent  
optimizing its communication, and you can't do "only allow good IDs"  
if IDs are creatable at-will by any party.

And "if a defense has a trivial countermeasure, don't bother deploying  
it".

Thus this means the only way to make ALTO "content protecting" is to  
remove one of those three constraints.  But all three features are  
very valuable in a localization service.

Additionally, there is a large bias in the network community in  
general to be "content neutral".  Any time you cease to be content  
neutral on the technical level, it must necessarily impose constraints  
and costs on the system.

---

From: Richard Bennett <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:58:10 -0700

As long as ALTO is defined as a service that maps a content ID to a 
collection of paths, it seems to me that it's piracy-neutral. I'm 
disturbed by a system that is passed a collection of paths and asked to 
rank them, as that would seem to have a definite pro-piracy bias. But I 
agree with Nick (I think) that a system that accepts a transient content 
ID and returns a list of paths is neither pro-piracy or anti-piracy. The 
rights management function can be layered on top of ALTO, as I think it 
should be, as a kind of DNS-for-content that takes some sort of textual 
description of the content and returns an identifier that ALTO can then 
use to guide toward the best paths. The higher level function - the 
content mapper - can be developed independent of IETF guidance and in 
accordance with some sort of deal between content producers and network 
operators. The content mapper is where the rights management goes, not 
in ALTO.

RB