Internet Content Providers Research Articles

Sponsored Data: Cooperative Pricing and Subsidizing Strategies of Mobile Telecom Carriers and Internet Content Providers

Sponsored Data: Cooperative Pricing and Subsidizing Strategies of Mobile Telecom Carriers and Internet Content Providers

Case Analysis on the Liability of Internet Content Provider for Contempt of Court

Peguam Negara Malaysia v Mkini Dotcom Sdn Bhd & Anor [2021] 2 MLJ 652 set a precedent as the internet content provider was found guilty of contempt of court for publishing readers’ postings containing contemptuous comments. Due to technological advancement, people can freely express their opinions through various online platforms, including social media, by linking everyone nationwide and globally. In Malaysia, the Federal Constitution guarantees freedom of expression where Malaysian netizens can comment on the administration of justice using various online platforms, including social media. However, freedom of expression is not an absolute right. This study discusses the issue of liability on the internet content provider in contempt of court over comments posted by third-party subscribers. This study implemented a qualitative method to analyse the issue of duty and liability of the host platform provider. The findings from this study can be used to examine the extent of the internet content provider’s liability for the impugned comment by the third party. Therefore, this study proposed clear guidelines for internet content providers for contemptuous comments posted online by third-party subscribers.

StarFront: Cooperatively Constructing Pervasive and Low-Latency CDNs Upon Emerging LEO Satellites and Clouds

Internet content providers (ICPs) typically exploit content distribution networks (CDNs) to provide wide-area data access with high availability and low latency. However, our analysis on a large-scale trace collected from seven major CDN operators has revealed that: from a global perspective, there are still a large portion of users suffering from high user-perceived latency due to the insufficient deployment of terrestrial cloud infrastructures, especially in remote or rural areas where even the closest available cache server is too far away. This paper presents, a cost-effective content distribution framework to optimize global CDNs and enable low content access latency anywhere. collaboratively builds CDNs upon emerging low earth orbit (LEO) constellations and existing cloud platforms to satisfy the low latency requirements while minimizing the operational cost. Specifically, exploits a key insight that emerging mega-constellations will consist of thousands of LEO satellites which can be equipped with high-speed data links and storage, and thus can potentially work as “cache in space” to enable pervasive and low-latency data access. judiciously places replicas on either LEO satellite caches or terrestrial cloud caches, and dynamically assigns user requests to proper cache servers based on different constellation parameters, cloud/user distributions and pricing policies. We have implemented a prototype in our testbed, and extensive trace-driven evaluations covering multiple geo-distributed vantage points have demonstrated that can effectively reduce the global content access latency with acceptable operational cost under representative CDN traffic.

When Should Competing Mobile Telecom Carriers Provide Sponsored Data Plans Under Cross-Side Network Effects?

ABSTRACT The competition among mobile telecom carriers, serving as two-sided market platforms, is becoming more intensive in recent years. To gain additional profits from Internet content providers, mobile telecom carriers charge subsidization fees to Internet content providers by providing sponsored data plans wherein end users are subsidized by Internet content providers for the cost of data traffic consumption. This study employs a game-theoretical model to investigate the optimal strategies of competing mobile telecom carriers on providing sponsored data plans under cross-side network effects. We find that both mobile telecom carriers (only one mobile telecom carrier, neither mobile telecom carrier) will provide sponsored data plans in Nash equilibrium when the cross-side network effects are weak (moderate, strong). Also, considering the effect of sponsored data plan in terms of the increment in both the total number of end users and the average amount of data traffic each end user consumes, we find that both mobile telecom carriers (only one mobile telecom carrier) will provide sponsored data plans in Nash equilibrium when the effect of sponsored data plan is weak or strong (moderate). Moreover, in the scenario wherein a proportion of end users multi-home to mobile telecom carriers, we verify that end users’ multi-homing will conditionally benefit or hurt mobile telecom carriers, which is also a novel finding different from prior studies. In the scenario wherein end users are partially subsidized, when the cross-side network effects are not too large, the larger mobile telecom carrier will always totally subsidize end users while the smaller mobile telecom carrier may choose to totally, partially, or not subsidize end users.

Emerging Regulations on Content Moderation and Misinformation Policies of Online Media Platforms: Accommodating the Duty of Care into Intermediary Liability Models

AbstractDisinformation, hate speech and political polarization are evident problems of the growing relevance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in current societies. To address these issues, decision-makers and regulators worldwide discuss the role of digital platforms in content moderation and in curtailing harmful content produced by third parties. However, intermediary liability rules require a balance that avoids the risks arising from the circulation at scale of harmful content and the risks of censorship if excessive burdens force content providers to adopt a risk-averse posture in content moderation. This piece examines the trend of altering intermediary liability models to include ‘duty of care’ provisions, describing three models in Europe, North America and South America. We discuss how these models are being modified to include greater monitoring and takedown burdens on internet content providers. We conclude with a word of caution regarding this balance between censorship and freedom of expression.

DDS: Deepfake Detection System through Collective Intelligence and Deep-Learning Model in Blockchain Environment

With the spread of mobile devices and the improvement of the mobile service environment, the use of various Internet content providers (ICPs), including content services such as YouTube and video hosting services, has increased significantly. Video content shared in ICP is used for information delivery and issue checking based on accessibility. However, if the content registered and shared in ICP is manipulated through deepfakes and maliciously distributed to cause political attacks or social problems, it can cause a very large negative effect. This study aims to propose a deepfake detection system that detects manipulated video content distributed in video hosting services while ensuring the transparency and objectivity of the detection subject. The detection method of the proposed system is configured through a blockchain and is not dependent on a single ICP, establishing a cooperative system among multiple ICPs and achieving consensus for the common purpose of deepfake detection. In the proposed system, the deep-learning model for detecting deepfakes is independently driven by each ICP, and the results are ensembled through integrated voting. Furthermore, this study proposes a method to supplement the objectivity of integrated voting and the neutrality of the deep-learning model by ensembling collective intelligence-based voting through the participation of ICP users in the integrated voting process and ensuring high accuracy at the same time. Through the proposed system, the accuracy of the deep-learning model is supplemented by utilizing collective intelligence in the blockchain environment, and the creation of a consortium contract environment for common goals between companies with conflicting interests is illuminated.

Big Winners and Small Losers of Zero-rating

An objective of network neutrality is to design regulations for the Internet and ensure that it remains a public, open platform where innovations can thrive. While there is broad agreement that preserving the content quality of service falls under the purview of net neutrality, the role of differential pricing, especially the practice of zero-rating , remains controversial. Zero-rating refers to the practice of providing free Internet access to some users under certain conditions, which usually concurs with differentiation among users or content providers. Even though some countries (India, Canada) have banned zero-rating, others have either taken no stance or explicitly allowed it (South Africa, Kenya, U.S.). In this article, we model zero-rating between Internet service providers and content providers (CPs) to better understand the conditions under which offering zero-rating is preferred, and who gains in utility. We develop a formulation in which providers’ incomes vary, from low-income startups to high-income incumbents, where their decisions to zero-rate are a variation of the traditional prisoner’s dilemma game. We find that if zero-rating is permitted, low-income CPs often lose utility, whereas high-income CPs often gain utility. We also study the competitiveness of the CP markets via the Herfindahl Index . Our findings suggest that in most cases the introduction of zero-rating reduces competitiveness.

Should subscription-revenue internet content providers adopt sponsored data plans by mobile telecom carriers in duopoly market?

• This study investigates novel mobile online-content service involving ICPs & MTCs. • A game-theoretic model is developed to analyze subscription-revenue ICPs' strategy. • Two-dimensional effect of sponsored data plan (SDPs) is defined and verified. • When one ICP adopts SDPs, the competing ICP can become better off or worse off. • Both ICPs may get to the "win-win" equilibrium, or a prisoner's dilemma game. • Only when the effect of SPDs is strong enough will an MTC provide SPDs. Internet content providers (ICPs) adopt sponsored data plans provided by mobile telecom carriers (MTCs) to allow end users (EUs) to browse online content without counting towards their monthly data caps. The revenues of ICPs from subscriptions increase rapidly, and more web-based content or service sites turn to subscription-based business models. In this study, we develop a game-theoretic model to analyze competing subscription-revenue ICPs’ strategies on setting subscription fees and adopting sponsored data plans provided by an MTC. We find that each dimension of the two-dimensional effect of sponsored data plan, that is, the growth rate of the number of EUs and the growth rate of the average data traffic consumed per EU, has opposite impacts on optimal strategies of ICPs regarding whether to adopt sponsored data plans or not, which is significantly different from prior studies focused on advertisement-revenue ICPs. Particularly, when only one ICP adopts the sponsored data plan, the competing ICP can become either better off or worse off, or even be pushed out of the market. When both ICPs adopt sponsored data plans, they may get to the “win–win” equilibrium, or fall into a prisoner’s dilemma game. We also find that the average consumer surplus does not always increase under a sponsored data plan. In Extensions, regarding the strategies of an MTC on providing sponsored data plans to two competing ICPs, we find that only when the effect of sponsored data plan is strong enough will an MTC provide sponsored data plans. From the perspective of the system comprising an ICP and an MTC, the ICP can increase its competitive advantage by investing in or merging with an MTC, while the competing ICP becomes worse off. At last, when ICPs fix their subscription fees under sponsored data plans, it is optimal for the two ICPs to choose the same strategy, both adopting or rejecting the sponsored data plans.

Стратегічна взаємодія провайдерів диференційованих інтернет-послуг

По мірі того, як обчислення та Інтернет-з’єднання стають технологіями і послугами загального призначення, спрямованими на широкі глобальні ринки, виникають питання ефективності таких ринків з точки зору суспільного добробуту, участі в них провайдерів диференційованих послуг і кінцевих користувачів. Проект Iridium глобального зв’язку фірми Motorola завершився у 1990-х роках внаслідок подібних питань, вперше досягши мети технологічної спроможності такого зв’язку. Оскільки Інтернет-послуги характеризуються високою інноваційністю, диференційованістю та динамічністю, то для них можна застосовувати відомі моделі диференційованих продуктів. Проте функції попиту у таких моделях є гіперболічними, а не лінійними. Крім того, подібні моделі стохастичні та включають провайдерів з різними способами конкуренції. В екосистемі Інтернету важливими є зв’язки між постачальниками Інтернет-послуг (Internet service providers — ISPs) як операторами телекомунікаційної мережі та провайдерами послуг контенту, особливо потужними провайдерами відеоконтенту, що передбачає високу пропускну здатність. Оскільки підвищення пропускної здатності потребує нових інвестицій у спроможність мережі, то мотивація до таких інвестицій має бути як у провайдерів відеоконтенту, так і у ISPs. Для аналізу взаємозв’язків між провайдерами Інтернет-послуг і контент-провайдерами в Інтернет-екосистемі запропоновано обчислювані (computable) моделі, основані на побудові функцій виграшу всіх учасників цієї екосистеми. Введення платного перегляду контенту мотивуватиме провайдерів Інтернет-послуг до інвестицій у підвищення спроможностей мережі, яка має тренд експоненціального зростання. Водночас такий перегляд порушуватиме принципи нейтральності мережі, що дає підстави для розробки нових задач мінімізації порушень умов нейтральності мережі та максимізації суспільного добробуту Інтернет-екосистеми. Моделі вказують на важливість ефективності провайдерів Інтернет-послуг, передбачуваності попиту та високої цінової еластичності інноваційних послуг.

On Private Peering Agreements between Content and Access Providers: A Contractual Equilibrium Analysis

Driven by the rapid growth of content traffic and the demand for service quality, Internet content providers (CPs) have started to bypass transit providers and connect with access providers directly via private peering agreements. This peering relationship often raises disputes, e.g., Netflix vs. Comcast, and is not well understood. In this paper, we build a peering contract model and propose the concept of contractual equilibrium, based on which we study the formation and evolution of peering contracts. By using market data, we emulate the strategic peering behavior of providers and shed light on the understanding of private peering~agreements. We reveal that the superiority and market dominance of providers primarily determine their peering strategies. We show that 1) superior providers tend to engage in peering more aggressively, and 2) non-dominant CPs' optimal peering strategies are negatively correlated due to market cannibalism, while the dominant CP often behaves oppositely. Our findings help explain phenomena such as why Netflix and Comcast signed the first peering contract, and reason whether private peering contracts will strengthen in future.

On Multi-Resource Procurement in Internet Access Markets

With the increasing popularity and significance of content delivery services, especially video streaming, stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements have been placed upon Internet content providers (CPs). As a result, CPs have strong incentives to pay for resources such as premium peering bandwidth and cache capacity that ameliorate service quality. In this paper, we study an Internet access market with multiple access resources that CPs can purchase to enhance service quality. We build a detailed content delivery model, through which we characterize the traffic throughput and the resulting utilities of CPs and social welfare. We show that a market equilibrium exists for a multi-resource market, at which the optimization problems for individual utilities and social welfare coincide. Furthermore, we characterize the optimal purchasing strategies of CPs as well as how varying parameters are going to change the market equilibrium via sensitivity analysis.

Zero-Rating and Net Neutrality

An objective of network neutrality is to design regulations for the Internet and ensure that it remains a public, open platform where innovations can thrive. While there is broad agreement that preserving the content quality of service falls under the purview of net neutrality, the role of differential pricing, especially the practice of zero-rating remains controversial. In this paper, we model zero-rating between Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs) and show if zero-rating is permitted, the competitiveness in the market is reduced, where low-income CPs often lose utility and high-income CPs often gain utility.

CP-CDN: Content Delivery Powered By Context and User Intelligence

In order to improve end users' Web access experiences, today's Internet content providers generally employ Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to provide material to end users. To comprehend reasons, methods, and amounts of CP-level intelligences may aid content distribution, we employ a measurement-based approach. The largest content provider in China, Tencent, constructed a CDN, which we first offer as a measurement study. Contrarily, CPCDN may leverage context intelligence—which captures how contents are constantly manipulated then synthesized in various circumstances —in order to optimise the user experience and service quality throughout content delivery since it is aware of the precise environment in which material is consumed. In this study, we use a measurement-based approach to reasons, methods, and amounts of CP-level information may aid content delivery in order to support the quick transition to CPCDN. We proactively replicate content based on interest groups based on crowd patterns so that users can access their desired content from nearby CPCDN servers. CPCDN is able to raise the level of both content delivery efficiency and user experience by using the potent user intelligence that captures how contents are constantly exchanged and disseminated across social networked users.

A Non-cooperative Game-Theoretic Framework for Sponsoring Content in the Internet Market

Data traffic demand over the Internet is increasing rapidly, and it is changing the pricing model between internet service providers (ISPs), content providers (CPs) and end users. One recent pricing proposal is sponsored data plan, i.e., when CP negotiates with the ISP on behalf of the users to remove the network subscription fees so as to attract more users and increase the number of advertisements. As such, a key challenge is how to provide proper sponsorship in the situation of complex interactions among the telecommunication actors, namely, the advertisers, the content provider, and users. To answer those questions, we explore the potential economic impacts of this new pricing model by modeling the interplay among the advertiser, users, and the CPs in a game theoretic framework. The CP may have either a subscription revenue model (charging end-users) or an advertisement revenue model (charging advertisers). In this work, we design and analyze the interaction among CPs having an advertisement revenue as a non-cooperative game, where each CP determines the proportion of data to sponsor and a level of credibility of content. In turn, the end-users demand for the content of a CP depends not only on their strategies but also upon those proposed by all of its competitors. Through rigorous mathematical analysis, we prove the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium. Based on the analysis of the game properties, we propose an iterative algorithm, which guarantees to converge to the Nash equilibrium point in a distributed manner. Numerical investigation shows the convergence of a proposed algorithm to the Nash equilibrium point and corroborates the fact that sponsoring content may improve the CPs outcome.

On Private Peering Agreements between Content and Access Providers

Driven by the rapid growth of content traffic and the demand for service quality, Internet content providers (CPs) have started to bypass transit providers and connect with access providers directly via private peering agreements. This peering relationship often raises disputes, e.g., Netflix vs. Comcast, and is not well understood. In this paper, we build a peering contract model and propose the concept of contractual equilibrium, based on which we study the formation and evolution of peering contracts. By using market data, we emulate the strategic peering behavior of providers and shed light on the understanding of private peering agreements. We reveal that the superiority and market dominance of providers primarily determine their peering strategies. We show that 1) superior providers tend to engage in peering more aggressively, and 2) non-dominant CPs' optimal peering strategies are negatively correlated due to market cannibalism, while the dominant CP often behaves oppositely. Our findings help explain phenomena such as why Netflix and Comcast signed the first peering contract, and reason whether private peering contracts will strengthen in future.

On multi-resource procurement in internet access markets: Optimal strategies and market equilibrium

With the increasing popularity and significance of content delivery services, especially video streaming, stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements have been placed upon Internet content providers (CPs). As a result, CPs have strong incentives to pay for resources such as premium peering bandwidth and cache capacity that ameliorate service quality. In this paper, we study an Internet access market with multiple access resources that CPs can purchase to enhance service quality. We build a detailed content delivery model, through which we characterize the traffic throughput and the resulting utilities of CPs and social welfare. We show that a market equilibrium exists for a multi-resource market, at which the optimization problems for individual utilities and social welfare coincide. Furthermore, we characterize the optimal purchasing strategies of CPs as well as how varying parameters are going to change the market equilibrium via sensitivity analysis.

Cooperative Cache-Aware Recommendation System for Multiple Internet Content Providers

Joint optimization of caching and recommendation is expected to achieve a beneficial tradeoff between caching efficiency and users' quality of experience (QoE). To this end, we study a cooperative cache-aware recommendation system (CCARS) with multiple Internet content providers (ICPs) considering content sharing among them. We first analytically derive the cache hit ratio by modeling users' preference distribution and the impact of recommendation. We then formulate a problem of maximizing the cache hit ratio by optimizing the caching placement and the recommendation policy. Finally, a heuristic algorithm with low computational complexity is proposed to solve the formulated problem. The effectiveness of our algorithm is validated and the advantage with respect to the independent cache-aware recommendation system (ICARS) for each ICP is demonstrated. Numerical results show that the cache hit ratio benefits from the increased cache size at base station (BS) and the augmented content sharing among ICPs.

Cache-Assisted Content Delivery in Wireless Networks: A New Game Theoretic Model

With the rapid increase of mobile data traffic, efficient content delivery in wireless networks is increasingly important to provide broadcast and multicast services. To reduce network cost and enrich end-user quality of experience, Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs) are expected to collaborate to improve content delivery services. However, the influence of content popularity has been generally overlooked, and profit split problem between ISPs and CPs has not been studied. We investigate the novel economic behaviors between ISPs and CPs in the presence of edge caches, and formulate the profit split problem as a centralized model, which can achieve optimal content caching and maximal network benefits. A Stackelberg game is designed to obtain its distributed win–win solution, where a feasible backward induction is proposed and the influence of edge caches and content popularity is analyzed. Simulation results show that the performance of our proposed Stackelberg game model is comparable to the centralized alternative and much better than existing ISP-CP cooperative schemes not considering cache deployment in the network.

Role of Digital Divide in Optimal Zero-Rating Policy

Several Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Content Providers (CPs) have proposed zero-rating plans whereby consumers get access to certain websites without paying for it. While consumer and open-access advocates have decried these plans, arguing that they are anti-competitive and violate the principles of net neutrality, ISPs and CPs have argued that such initiatives enable segments of the world population - especially those in developing economies - to finally join the rest of the world in accessing the Internet. Extant literature on the topic has contributed to this debate by analyzing the optimality of zero-rating policy as an extension of net neutrality. In contrast, our work looks at this issue in the presence of a digital divide. We analyze the ISP's and the CPs' decision-making as well as its subsequent impact on social welfare when a fraction of the population does not have access to the Internet. Thus, the study fills the research gap of analyzing the impact that context (Internet penetration, in particular) may have on different network management strategies, under zero-rating plans. Our research finds that zero-rating plans can enhance social welfare in many cases in the presence of a digital divide. However, Internet regulators need to be vigilant, since the ISPs may sometime deviate from a strategy that maximizes social welfare. The findings have implications for policymakers arguing for their nuanced role in regulating zero-rating policies, rather than indiscriminately allowing or disallowing the practice.

A Stackelberg game-based approach for interactions among Internet service providers and content providers

This paper studies non-neutral market share where Internet service providers (ISPs) charge content providers (CPs) for the content delivery. Each provider seeks to maximize its own profit by determining its price and their service qualities (quality of service and credibility of content). First, we utilize a Stackelberg game to study the interactions between ISPs and CPs. We formulate the interactions among multiple ISPs (multiple CPs) as a non-cooperative game. In turn, the subscribers’ demand for the service of a provider depends not only on their strategies, but also upon those proposed by all of its competitors. Then we provide some interesting results regarding the Nash equilibrium of this game. More precisely, we show existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium under some conditions. An iterative and distributed algorithm based on best response dynamics is proposed to achieve the equilibrium point; additionally, in order to quantify how efficient the Nash equilibrium point is, a detailed analysis of the Price of Anarchy is adopted to evaluate the performance of the system at equilibrium. Finally, extensive simulations show convergence of a proposed schema to the Nash equilibrium and show the effect of side payment on providers’ policies and the effect of bandwidth cost on ISPs’ policies.