by Liz
I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.
Jon Stewart Lampoons Sen. Stevensââ¬â¢ Net Nonsense
Jon Stewart teed off on Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevensââ¬â¢ instantly infamous speech about Net Neutrality, in which the 85-year-old in charge of regulating Internet commerce betrayed a stunning ignorance of Net fundamentals.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE
by Liz
I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.
Skype and WildBlue ââ¬â A Case for Citizen (Network) Journalists
The sudden failure of Skype over WildBlue on May 15 and the recent sudden recovery may be a good case for citizen journalists. It MIGHT have implications for the Net Neutrality debate.
Users on the WildBlue Uncensored! Forum report that, starting two weeks ago, they regained the ability to connect to Skype and complete calls. Some of them also report usable call quality. As I posted previously, users say they had generally acceptable VoIP and Skype performance over WildBlue prior to May 15. I wasnââ¬â¢t using WB then so have no firsthand knowledge.
Why did Skype suddenly stop working over WB? Why did it suddenly start again? Did WB block or deprioritize Skype or VoIP packets? Or did a Skype update loose the ability to deal with the extreme latency (delay) expected when a satellite is used? . . .
Feltecomplexities of Network Neutrality n’s paper on the
Ed Felten — the Princeton engineering prof who led the effort to crack the Secure Digital Music Initiative and did yeoman work on the Sony BMG DRM fiasco — has published a fast, ten-page white-paper on the complexities of Network Neutrality. Ed describes the many ways in which Neutrality is hard to enforce, and the ways in which tiered, discriminatory service is likely to have grave outcomes: . . .
. . . Network management is complicated, and many management decisions could impact jitter one way or the other. A network provider who wants to cause high jitter can do so, and might have pretextual excuses for all of the steps it takes. Can regulators distinguish this kind of stratagem from the case of fair and justified engineering decisions that happen to cause a little temporary jitter?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE
by Liz
I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.
We interrupt this series on Telecommunication Pricing to bring you an important message. According to a story in Saturdayââ¬â¢s NY Times, Federal District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan is considering major modifications to the already accomplished SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI mergers. Weââ¬â¢re going to mash that up with a quote from Vint Cerf who is now at Google.
ââ¬ÅThrough the eyes of a layperson, the mergers, in and of themselves, appear to be against public interest given the apparent loss in competition,” the Times reports Judge Sullivan wrote. “In layperson’s terms, why isn’t that the case?ââ¬Â
. . . follow the link to read the mash up.
A net neutrality movie: It Happened to Jane (1959)
Unlike the movie, we don’t have a Doris Day to charm “the meanest man in the world.” So it comes down to congress and the FCC in the United States, and similar government organs in your country. Grassroots activism seems the only course since it’s nigh on impossible to out-lobby phone and cable companies.
So:
What will you do for the Internet this week?
How will you defend your right to call unimpeded? And in private?
Who will you call?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE
by Liz
I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.
The Origins of the Net Neutrality Debate
For all the fuss, however, net neutrality was a non-issue one year ago. In the July 7 issue of the National Journal, senior writer Drew Clark asks how the prospect of tiered Internet access suddenly became a focus of public and Congressional debate. He traces the origins of the debate to a few revealing remarks by Ed Whitacre, the CEO of the company then known as SBC (and soon to become AT&T), suggesting that the company was eager to start charging big customers more for access to the company’s Internet backbone connections.
It’s true that Whitacre’s statement raised the alarm among heavy Internet users — but Whitacre was hardly the first to think of turning the Internet into a toll road. . . .
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE
by Liz
I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.
Net Neutrality = A Financial Services Industry Free-Ride?
Iââ¬â¢ve written a little about the Net Neutrality debate , and posted some Blog entries bout it ââ¬â e.g. here, here and here. Itââ¬â¢s a complex and interesting subject, and politicians have clearly had difficulty getting their heads around it. So I was interested to see how Wikipedia would approach the topic.
The entry seemed to me to be a model of its kind ââ¬â well-informed, mostly well-referenced and balanced. But its ââ¬Ëneutralityââ¬â¢ has been challenged and has triggered Wikipediaââ¬â¢s discussion process. The discussion page on the issue is fascinating. Hereââ¬â¢s the bit about the bias complaint. . . .
[What follows is the challenge process at Wikipedia.]
Itââ¬â¢s always irritating to have oneââ¬â¢s views changed by other peopleââ¬â¢s better arguments, but this discussion has caused me to re-evaluate the original entry. I think the point about ââ¬Ëframingââ¬â¢ is right. Wouldnââ¬â¢t it be nice if all public debate about complex issues were conducted this way? Then we really would have a deliberative democracy. Iââ¬â¢m always puzzled by peopleââ¬â¢s hostility to Wikipedia: to me, it looks like one of the best things to have emerged from the Net.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE
by Liz
I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.
Let’s put Net neutrality to bed: Engaging the George
We’re talking about a simple idea, that when you haven’t paid for dedicated capacity at a given throughput and reliability . . . your traffic will travel at the same speed and with the same reliability as everyone else’s traffic. The carriers’ position is that they should be able to define that freedom of access. It is the long and successful tradition of the United States that it does not allow a monopoly or duopoly to operate free of regulations which define a minimum common good that they must fulfill in exchange for their market positions.
Battle Lines Drawn Over Net Neutrality
InfoWorldMike writes ââ¬Å. . . Determining the full effects of Net neutrality can be difficult, however, in part because the concept is hard to define precisely. Most of the debate has taken place inside the Washington Beltway, where lawmakers and outsiders have proposed several different versions. InfoWorld has a Special Report up exploring the issue with a debate between experts Bill McCloskey and Jon Taplin and some of the news that has captured the issue as it developed.ââ¬Â
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE