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Net Neutrality 7-7-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.

Sen. George Allen is deceiving constituents on Net Neutrality

Republican Sen. George Allen is deceiving constituents about his recent vote AGAINST Net Neutrality and Internet freedom–and he’s doing it using taxpayer dollars.

Allen has accepted $113,000 in campaign cash from phone and cable companies AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner. Last week, he voted to let them put tollbooths on the Internet and have more control over what you see and do online–a blow to Internet freedom.

Allen is now using his taxpayer-funded website to say he “voted yes” on a bill that “addresses the issue of Net Neutrality.” Indeed, as MyDD’s Matt Stoller also points out, the bill Allen voted for “addresses” Net Neutrality by putting it on the road to elimination. He voted no on preserving Net Neutrality.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-6-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.

Net Neutrality : Lawyers silence is deafening

Looks like the majority of lawyers publishing blogs are taking the easy way out and taking no stand on net neutrality.

It’s an embarrassment to the legal profession which should act as champions of a citizen’s rights. Heck, even if you against net neutrality so that telecoms can create a tier two Internet system, at least come out and say so.

Senate Scorecard: AT&T 1, Google 0

If the telcos don’t soon match cable’s three-product package of phone, Internet, and video service, they risk falling dangerously behind in the race to win customer loyalty over the next decade. “We expect accelerating access line losses (from phone companies) throughout the next three years” as cable companies are able to market their full lineup of products to their customers by 2007, Bernstein’s Jeff Halpern told analysts in a recent conference call.

FAST TRACK TO TV. Another crucial element of telecommunications law centers on the process of applying for licenses to sell TV services in new markets. Currently, phone companies must apply for franchise licenses on a city-by-city basis—a process that could take years and slow the telcos’ TV rollout to a crawl. AT&T and Verizon want legislation that lets them apply for a nationwide license.

The Senate committee, hoping to stimulate competition, is open to putting phone companies’ TV plans on the fast track. Its bill essentially allows for TV franchising to be determined at the national level by setting a time limit of 90 days for local government to grant the franchise. If not acted upon after 90 days, the franchise is deemed approved for 15 years. But again, Stevens needs full Senate approval, and leaving TV licenses in the hands of national regulators looks as though it faces opposition among some in the full Senate.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-5-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.

Google says bill could spark anti-trust complaints

SOFIA (Reuters) – Google warned on Tuesday it will not hesitate to file anti-trust complaints in the United States if high-speed Internet providers abuse the market power they could receive from U.S. legislators. . . .

“If the legislators … insist on neutrality, we will be happy. If they do not put it in, we will be less happy but then we will have to wait and see whether or not there actually is any abuse,” Vint Cerf, a Google vice-president and one of the pioneers of the Internet, told a news conference in Bulgaria.

“If we are not successful in our arguments … then we will simply have to wait until something bad happens and then we will make known our case to the Department of Justice’s anti-trust division,” he said on Tuesday.

On Net Neutrality

Subject: Foe of net neutrality clearly explains his argument

Dr. Pournelle,
Here we see a shill…er… Opponent of net neutrality clearly state why he thinks the government should not enforce net neutrality on the internet, which is by-the-way in large part government subsidized and run by companies kept in business by government regulation.

http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/?entry_id=1512499

By his argument, my ISP should chop bandwidth to your site unless you or your ISP coughs up extra money, because ones and zeroes to and from your site should somehow be more expensive than ones and zeros to and from sites on my ISP’s subnets… That is, unless you pay EXTRA. See, paying for bandwidth only ONCE isn’t enough, and to ensure that this senator’s internets (I think he meant email but he could mean pRoN) isn’t held up a few minutes by me browsing your site once or twice a day, ones and zeroes passing along the public funding subsidized internet should pass through various tollbooths, with each carrier charging whatever they can get on top of the network access and bandwidth fees I personally pay.

Most places call this extortion, and the mob made quite a living doing this.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-4-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Net Neutrality Update: Dorgan’s Promising a Fight

So far, everyone I’ve spoken to has been very receptive, but many, if not most, of the people I’ve spoken to have been tricked by the misleading TV and print ads. On Saturday, out canvassing for a local congressional candidate, several volunteers had to be convinced that the positions they held were not anti-Net Neutrality, but in fact pro-Net Neutrality. The early publicity and framing are crucial to this fight, and right now the big cable and telecom companies have us beat. Since the Dems can’t do it on their own, please help them out in shaping the debate. No one wants to lose the internet. The battle is in making sure people understand what is at stake.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-3-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Getting serious about Net Neutrality

[Quoting David Sims] . . . “The Senate bill’s main focus is creating a national video franchise system that would allow phone and cable companies to bypass the sometimes lengthy negotiations with local authorities over offering pay-television service,” [cable industry observer Amy] Schatz writes. “But the bill also contains a wide variety of other requirements, from antipiracy technologies for television broadcasts to changes in a federal fund that subsidizes phone services in rural areas.”

Is this going to be another case where the public starts complaining only when they’ve discovered what they’ve lost?

IT’S ONLY THREE PARAGRAPHS. Read it. Then go to the source.

Net Neutrality: It’s Pretty Simple, Really.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-2-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

What If End-Users Owned Their Access Pipe?

PBS tech columnist Robert Cringely has penned an intriguing (and I think important) piece called “If we build it they will come: It’s time to own our own last mile.” It’s apparently based on conversations he’s had with Bob Frankston, who years ago wrote the VisiCalc program (which Cringely describes as “the first killer app”) and who last year authored an essay entitled “Connectivity is a Utility.” Cringely describes Frankston as “one of the smartest people I speak to.” . . .

If We Build It They Will Come. It’s time to own our own last mile. by Roger X.Cringley

To Bob [Frankston, the programmer who wrote VisiCalc] the issues surrounding Net Neutrality come down to billability and infrastructure. While saying they are doing us favors, ISPs are really offering us services they can bill for. Nothing is aimed at helping us, while everything is aimed at creating a billable event. Take WiFi hotspots, for example. Why should the telephone or cable company care about who connects to my WiFi access point? They are my bits, not the ISP’s. I paid for them. If I can download gigabytes of pornography why can’t I share my hotspot with someone walking down the street wanting to check his e-mail? Frankston’s analogy for this is accusing someone of stealing your porch light by using it to read a street sign.

It isn’t about service, it is about creating billable events, that’s all. And billable events, by definition, are things we have others do because we are unable or unwilling to do for ourselves. So a Verizon or a Comcast does us a favor, they say, by licensing rights to a movie and allowing us to buy or rent it over the Internet. We could buy the rights ourselves, but who would know where to even go? And wouldn’t Verizon, as a big buyer, necessarily get a better price? When you have a preferred or exclusive provider versus a competitive marketplace, prices are always higher, not lower. In this case the ISP isn’t doing us a favor, they are forcing us to buy from them something that we might well be able to buy from someone else for a lot less. . . .

The New Paranoid style in American politics By Andrew Orlowski

The “Net Neutrality” campaign – which created little excitement except on the outer fringes of the web – suggests that the left is now just as capable of being haunted by paranoid fantasies as the right.

What the internet has achieved, with its twisty maze of echo chambers all alike, is a rapid acceleration of this paranoid discourse, which expels nuanced and complex reasoning. Let’s have a look what was being written this week, after the Senate failed to pass those “Neutrality” provisions, as these hundreds of Nation States of One broadcast their distress signals.

“This could mean the death of small internet businesses,” wrote one MySpace blogger, quoted on CNET. A Republican opponent of the “Net Neutrality” legislation was graced, on the same site, with this riposte:

“Thanks, Jim, for being a fascist and promoting fascism in our country.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE