Successful Blog

Net Neutrality 5-27-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Net Neutrality Action Alert

This is nothing more than blackmail by the telecoms. We need to counter this push. Committee Democrats need to hear from as many constituents as possible to counter the CWA’s pressure. Here’s the contact information for Democrats on the Committee. (See Matt Stoller’s diary for a full list of Judiciary Committee members.)

Urge them to support the bipartisan Sensenbrenner-Conyers Net Neutrality bill without amendment. The legislation as it stands is great–a CWA supported amendment would be a capitulation to the telecoms.

Mel Watt Needs To Hear From You to Protect Our Internet

“Urge them to support the bipartisan Sensenbrenner-Conyers Net Neutrality bill without amendment. The legislation as it stands is great”

Mel Watt sits on this committee, and he needs to hear from all concerned North Carolinians. If the Telecoms are allowed to have their way, we’ll have a multi-tiered system that will restrict the free flow of information.

Please contact Mel Watt today . . .

Deargenevra,

Our top priority is increasing the number of people who know about this threat to Internet freedom.

One thing you can do right now: Get five friends to join the fight

The struggle in Congress isn’t over. The full House will take up the bipartisan Judiciary bill (H.R. 5417) — as well as the massive rewrite of the Telecom Act — after they return in June. The Senate is also considering major legislation that currently fails to protect Net Neutrality, though a bipartisan group of Senators are lining up behind the excellent Snowe-Dorgan bill (S. 2917).

Our work is not done. But momentum is on our side.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

SOB Business Cafe 05-26-2006

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the title shots to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Take the test with Dr. Deborah Serani to find out the basic psychology of being a customer. It’s quick and surprising.

Oystein, the Advice Librarian, explains how and why (and where to go) to use images to kickstart your writing.

Kyle Bunch at Blogebrity shares the consequences of interns blogging. Follow the links. It’s fascinating.

Keith introduces beggr, a new way to monetize your blog.

Related ala carte selections include

Ohad has one invitation left. Will you be getting paid to play games too?

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like.
No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Net Neutrality 5-25-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Should the Net Be Neutral? [via Free2Innovate.net, and Red Bank TV]

Congress is considering several competing pieces of legislation. One bill, sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas), embodies the phone company view, while another bill recently introduced by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R., Wisc.) supports net neutrality. Both the House and Senate will hold hearings this week.

The Wall Street Journal Online invited Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and a net neutrality proponent, and former White House spokesman Mike McCurry, who heads a phone industry group, to debate the issue. Their exchange, carried out by email, is below.

Network Neutrality and Enterprise Business Article online

This article will introduce the concept of Network Neutrality for business and technical managers. It will survey some of the published viewpoints on Net Neutrality, both for and against, and will begin delving into the potential impact on enterprise business. Let’s begin with background information and published opinions from the Web on the subject. Although not quoted in their entirety, the articles are extensively hyperlinked to ease further research into the discussion.

FCC commissioner indicates that Net Neutrality may be enforceable under current regulations

Nationally there seem to be two prevailing approaches to Net Neutrality:

1. Push for legislation in Congress to give the federal government control over Net Neutrality

2. Let the FCC handle Net Neutrality and then when a telco violates Net Neutrality we let the courts sort it out.

I don’t like either of these approaches.

I favor the approach of using the Cable TV franchise application process to express our concerns to the telcos and to let them know as consumers that if they don’t promise to uphold the tenets of Net Neutrality then we will choose not to do business with them. And when I say “as consumers� I mean as communities, whether at the town level or the state level.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-24-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Berners-Lee: Neutrality Preserves Net Openness

The computer scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web strongly condemned moves by U.S. broadband providers to control their subscribers’ content, saying it threatens the Internet’s greatest strength: openness.

Tim Berners-Lee on Tuesday said some Internet regulation is needed but should be minimal. He said efforts to control content have far-reaching impacts on other areas for users, such as decisions on voting and development of democracy.

“I hope that the U.S. will come to the right decision, and there is a very strong groundswell of opinion for net neutrality,” Berners-Lee said. He spoke at the 15th International World Wide Web conference, an all-week meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, exploring new Internet technology.

Dangerous dolts threaten our internet

When I started reading this story about an effort to use radio bandwidth to provide ubiquitous, cheap or free (ad-supported), broadband internet access across the country, I started to get happy. But then I saw the dolts who were proposing this and the dangerous things they doing and I want to make sure they don’t get anywhere near our internet.

SIVACRACY.NET

The American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries have joined the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, which includes “groups from across the political spectrum that have banded together to save the First Amendment of the Internet: network neutrality.” The coalition has gathered more than 500,000 signatures in support of policies that would block network operators from charging companies for faster delivery of their content to consumers or favoring certain content over other content.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-22-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

NET NEUTRALITY – by Gar Lipow on MaxSpeak, You Listen!

You (or your host if hosting is being donated to you) will not only pay your current ISP (who in turn uses part of your money to pay for backbone). You will be charged by your customers’ ISPs – which they already pay for. Perhaps you will be charged a third time, by some of the backbones your ISP and customers already pay for. Alternatively, if you don’t pay this extra ransom, MaxSpeak will suddenly become vvveeerrrry ssllooww for most of your readers. They may start getting time-outs and be unable to read it at all.

Bear in mind that you would not be suddenly paying for something you now get for free. Someone hosts MaxSpeak and pays for the high speed internet access that allows it. Whoever owns the hosting server pays a monthly fee that includes only a certain number of bits. If that number of bits is exceeded, host access will either be shut off, or an additional fee will be charged. (This may not be explicit; but I’ve known people with “all you can eat� agreements cut off when their usage grew too high.)

For that matter; if a road-owner does not like your comments, they may just decide not to deliver them altogether, regardless of what you pay. Right now all the big pipelines protest that they would never, ever, ever do that to you. But we have already have case of e-mail with certain sig lines or key words not being delivered.

Web inventor sees his brainchild ready for big leap

He [Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented and then gave away the World Wide Web] is also concerned about how some Internet providers in the United States have started to filter data, giving priority to premium data for which the operator receives an additional fee. They can do this, because they own the cables, the service, the portals and other key applications.

“The public will demand an open Internet,” he said.

On his blog, at http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4, Berners-Lee pays hommage to the democratic principles of the designers of the Internet who decided that all data packets were created equal. “I tried then to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform.”

“It is of the utmost importance that, if I connect to the Internet, and you connect to the Internet, that we can then run any Internet application we want, without discrimination as to who we are or what we are doing.”

Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall May 19, 2006 [via The Big News Blog]

Mike McCurry’s takeaway from his catastrophic effort to spin the blogosphere: blogging is “a primal scream in the darkness.” Like the scions Bourbon Restoration he’s remembered everything and learned nothing. People disagreed with McCurry about the net neutrality issue because people disagree about issues. People got so mad at him precisely because of this kind of patronizing attitude. He was peddling flimsy arguments as if it never occurred to him that the blogosphere is full of people who know a lot about the internet and could handle a grown-up argument (see a non-flimsy, though ultimately unpersuasive, anti-neutrality piece if you’re interested).

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Blogging Life Question 12

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What Would You Do?

For those who come looking for a short, thoughtful read, a blogging life discussion, or a way to gradually ease back into the week, I offer this Blogging Question. It’s NOT Hypothetical, tonight it’s a statement of fact.

More Net users would rather give up their cell phones and TVs than their access to the Net.

Internet users are a loyal bunch. The Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School asked Internet users what they would do if forced to give up technologies. Thirty-nine percent of Net users would first abandon their cell phones, 33 percent would switch off their TVs, but only 28 percent would be willing to give up the Net.

[via A day in the life of the ‘net]

So are they talking about you?

Because, yes they are talking about me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Blogging NOT A Hypothetical Question 11
Blogging Hypothetical Question 10
Bloggy Life Question 9