Net Neutrality 5-30-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Two sides of net neutrality … Sir Tim vs Bram Cohen

What is more troubling are things like this BBC interview with Bram Cohen—

Bram Cohen, the ‘ubergeek’ who gave us BitTorrent, is right up there in the pantheon of Internet gods. But unlike such luminaries as Shawn Fanning and Tim Berners Lee, Bram still hopes to make money from the fruits of his intellect. To which end he’s done a deal with Warner Brothers to help them to distribute their movies on BitTorrent. . . .

Bram, for all his kudos for creating BitTorrent, has more of an interest in earning money than keeping the Internet open and free. With his deal with Warner Brothers he now has a real incentive to have a multi-tiered Internet. A multi-tier Internet would allow Warner Brothers content to flow faster while the rest of us wait for our e-mail to arrive.

I think that there is a significant opportunity for an enterprising country to set up an free-Internet zone where displaced American businesses could thrive. A place where the world’s Internet traffic could be routed to. Maybe place like Canada. What do you think Mr Harper? Game for Canada to take the lead on the Internet and kick start a whole Canadian tech sector?

The Democratic Web Has Always Been An Illusion

The problem with the democratic web ideal is that no one really owns their own press — not me, not the rest of the blogosphere, not Yahoo, not Google.

Why? Because none of us owns our own internet access. . . .

Whatever democracy there is on the web exists because the ISPs allow it. Now that the ISPs want to take it away, everyone cries out in horror, running to congress to legislate our right to a democratic web.

Let me be clear — I’m a proponent of net neutrality, from the perspective of the public good — but even if the Web is a public good that should provide unfettered access, that doesn’t resolve the issue of who should pay for bandwidth, which is not an unlimited resource.

I pay for electricity, so I should be able to use as much as I want for whatever I want, right? But there’s a reason why I can’t plug a large industrial machine into my wall socket — the infrastructure can’t handle it.

So much for voltage neutrality.

The Web — Not Democratic but open

In any case, I would disagree with Scott’s premise: it’s not so much about democracy as it is about open access — and the telecoms are quite used to dealing with such things, since the telephone network was effectively treated as a public good through “common carrier” legislation. All the net neutrality folks are talking about is doing the same thing for the Internet. If that requires treating the Internet like a utility, then so be it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 5-20-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

More on Underdogs and Net Neutering

Now it seems that while they didn’t quite get the substantive message, consumeraffairs.com has picked up some of the terminology. In a story posted yesterday, it lauded Rep. James Sensenbrenner for introducing a net regulation bill, saying “when it comes to the issue of net neutrality, Sensenbrenner is on the side of the underdog.�

At the risk of becoming repetitive, the underdog in this particular catfight includes the following companies (along with their rank on the Fortune 500 list):

Microsoft (48)
Intel (49)
Amazon.com (272)
Google (353)
Yahoo (412)
ebay (458)

Net neutrality field in Congress gets crowded

“Legislation that prohibits us from providing network management services for the benefit of consumers is a solution in search of a problem,” said Bill McCloskey, a spokesman for BellSouth, which opposes the bill and other regulatory versions like it.

The new bill, like most of its similar counterparts, does outline carve-outs from the rules for network management activities related to security and other consumer protection services.

Also buried in the proposal is a requirement that providers offer their customers the option of standalone, or “naked” broadband services without an obligation to subscribe to cable television, telephone or Internet phone.

Vested interest? Whatever do you mean?

“It is premature to attempt to enact some sort of network neutrality principles into law now,” says the letter, which was signed by 34 companies and sent to House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “Legislating in the absence of real understanding of the issue risks both solving the wrong problem and hobbling the rapidly developing new technologies and business models of the Internet with rigid, potentially stultifying rules.”

Oh yes, let’s all come to a real understanding of the issues, shall we? I know I for one would love to hear an explanation for what happened to the $200 billion in tax cuts and other incentives the telecoms were given to roll out fiber to the home by 2006 (see “We thought you said spend the $200 billion on ‘dark fiber’ “)?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 5-13-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Well since Net Neutrality didn’t pass….

On one hand I agree with the philosophy of the free market. I think it is one of the things that makes this country great.

On the other hand nothing gives a free market a black eye like an out of control monopoly.

And that is what we are up against here. It isn’t that one company has a monopoly. It is that there is an effective monopoly at the county and city market levels.

CIO MAGAZINE The Net Neutrality Debate: You Pay, You Play? BY BEN WORTHEN

Last April, Cisco Systems published a white paper explaining how the companies that own the phone lines and cables that connect homes and businesses to the Internet—the proverbial last mile—could use new routing technology to boost revenue. The technology would allow telephone and cable companies to establish priority lanes . . . and then charge the Googles, Yahoos and Amazons of the world for access to these highway toll roads. Cisco’s paper predicted that this new strategy would allow broadband service providers to create new revenue-sharing business models with any company that sells content online.

The plan had only one problem: It was illegal.

The telecommunications laws that have governed the Internet since its inception require network owners to treat all traffic the same. The laws date to the 1930s and were put in place to force telephone companies to prevent a scenario where one company could refuse to carry calls placed by a rival’s customer. The Internet was designed with the same principle in mind. . . . it was the only thing standing between the telecommunications companies and a vast new revenue stream.

Since then, a Supreme Court ruling and a series of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decisions have eliminated this barrier, prompting Congress to rewrite the nation’s telecommunications laws. The new bill, which could be finalized as early as the summer, will in all likelihood officially eliminate net neutrality as the legal principle that governs the Internet. “If net neutrality goes away, it will fundamentally change everything about the Internet,” says James Hilton, associate provost for Academic IT Works of the University of Michigan.

The impact of these changes on CIOs and their companies will be profound. The telecommunications and cable companies argue that allowing them to govern their networks as they see fit gives them a financial incentive to innovate at the core of the network, and develop new technologies that could guarantee things that CIOs want, like security and better quality of service. Proponents of net neutrality counter that the principle is the reason that the Internet and the corresponding online ecosystem have developed into the commercial and cultural phenomenon they are today. . . .

The new Internet will certainly make telecommunications decisions more strategic. CIOs will not only need to worry about how much bandwidth to buy, but which lane they want their traffic to travel in. And tiered service is just the beginning. Telecommunications companies will be able to rearchitect their networks however they see fit. Over time, the new architectures and the services that network owners deliver will result in complicated payer/payee relationships between companies and telecommunications companies. And if a telecommunications company decides it wants to introduce a new Internet standard, CIOs may be forced to rearchitect their company’s systems.

. . . For all the talk about equal access and treating all data the same, the net neutrality debate is just window dressing for a less gentlemanly argument over who gets to profit in the online economy. More bluntly, Steve Effros, former president of the Cable Television Association, says, “This is about who pays.”

Big Lie of the Week

Here’s a quick guide to help you cut through the industry spin:

The big telecom companies say: “Is the Internet in Danger? Does the Internet need saving? It keeps getting faster. We keep getting more choices.” . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-09-2006

Filed Under Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends | 17 Comments

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

COPE Telecom Bill Affects Net Neutrality, Local Cable Franchises and Funding for Public Access
[via Cause we all know how well it worked with radio...]

AMY GOODMAN: Is this a reprise of what happened when Michael Powell, the son of Colin Powell, who used to head the F.C.C., tried to push through the media consolidation rules, the changes in them?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: I really think it is, because I think what we’re seeing is this across-the-board outrage at the corruption of the process in which powerful special interests sneak through these privileges that benefit only them. And their public relations, when it’s subject to scrutiny, is laughable. It doesn’t hold up. And that’s why they have do it secretly, because they know if once the public hears about this and they go to the websites like savetheinternet.com, which is the intersect that all this coalition, right and left, has come together, where all of the information is collected. Once people hear about this, they absolutely are outraged, and the big guys can’t win, and that’s their main worry now, because we have to stop these bills this summer. We can’t let this go through and force Congress to go through an election cycle this fall and have to answer for this before the voters of this country and then come back next year.

Information Toll Road

Who is in favor of network neutrality, Microsoft, Yahoo, ACLU, Amazon, Guns Owners of America just to name a few. Who is against it, AT&T, TimeWarner, Comcast, and Verizon.

This is not a blue state or red state issue, nor is it a capitalist vs. Socialist, it is the battle of who controls information. As of right now, the information superhighway is open to anyone who wants to pay a small fee for service or to a company to host a site, if this bill passes congress and the senate, the superhighway will turn into a slow toll road.


John Carroll On Net Neutrality by Broadband Issues

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. John Carroll of ZDNet:

The Internet is not threatened by access tiers. In fact, it can be enhanced by making new bandwidth-heavy services more economical and reliable in ways that would be impossible given a naive enforcement of “net neutrality” rules.

I could not have said it better myself. I am terrified of this becoming a large, politically charged issue, in which all rational technical discussion is thrown aside because the Technorati love Google and whatever Google wants, Google gets. I just can’t possibly see how the government can do a better job regulating this problem than the market.

Let’s say, for example, that Comcast decides to degrade all VOIP services except their own. Do you have any idea how loud the outcry would be from their customers? Would they really shoot themselves in the foot like that? Are we all so naive as to think that large businesses truly hate their customers?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Internet Investing

Filed Under Business Life, Community, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog, Trends | Leave a Comment

All of Your Eggs in the Internet Lobby?

“Right now, I would never invest in a business model that depended on protection from Net neutrality”

— Blair Levin analyst with Stifel Nicolaus.

This quote is from the April 27, BusinessWeek online story by Burt Helm, Tech Giants’ Internet Battles. The story discusses how a “host” of tech companies, including Google, Yahoo, and Intel going up against the telcos, AT&T and the cable companies to prevent them from offering favored service to providers of their choosing.

It’s a little scary.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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