Successful Blog

Net Neutrality 5-19-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

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

Sensenbrenner, Conyers Introduce Bipartisan Net Neutrality Legislation

WASHINGTON, May 18 /U.S. Newswire/ — House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.), along with Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) and others, today introduced bipartisan legislation to preserve Internet freedom and competition. . . . Internet access has dramatically enhanced the ability of Americans to access this medium and has been a catalyst for innovation and competition. H.R. 5417, the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006,” would ensure competitive and nondiscriminatory access to the Internet.

Chairman Sensenbrenner remarked, “This legislation is a necessary step to protect consumers and other Internet users from possible anti-competitive and discriminatory conduct by broadband providers. The FCC recently reported that 98 percent of American consumers get their high speed broadband from either a cable company or a DSL provider. This virtual duopoly creates an environment that is ripe for anti-competitive abuses, and for which a clear antitrust remedy is urgently needed.”

“This legislation will provide an insurance policy for Internet users against being harmed by broadband network operators abusing their market power to discriminate against content and service providers. While I am not opposed to providers responsibly managing their networks and providing increased bandwidth to those consumers who wish to pay for it, I am opposed to providers giving faster, more efficient access to certain service providers at the expense of others. This legislation will ensure that this type of discriminatory behavior will not take place, and will help to continue the tradition of innovation and competition that has defined the Internet,” continued Chairman Sensenbrenner.

The Wall Street Journal Blows it Big Time
[Wall Street Journal Article Follows]

The change the providers want to make is hard to describe because the double charging concept is so foreign to us. Basically it’s without precedent. But I’m going to try.

It would be like setting up a toll interstate highway system. As it stands now, everyone getting on that highway system would have to pay a toll to each state where you get on the highway. How much you currently pay determines whether you can get into the fast lane, or if you have to stay in the slow lane.

Now imagine a different, additional, toll structure. Say a truck was going from Florida to Wisconsin. Under the new system (what the internet providers want to do), the truck would pay his toll to Florida like he always did and get into which ever lane he paid for. But now he would also have to pay an additional toll to Wisconsin the moment he got on the highway or he wouldn’t be allowed to get off the highway there.

It might almost sound reasonable except where the analogy falls apart when you translate it to the internet. Be cause with the internet, you put your data on in one place, but it doesn’t get off in one place, but many. And under the new system you would have to pay an additional toll everyplace you wanted your data to be able to get off the highway.

The Web’s Worst New Idea

Under a law like this–variations are floating around both houses of Congress–the country could look forward to years of litigation about the extent and nature of the rules. When the dust settled we’d have a new set of regulations that could span the range of possible activities on the Net. What’s more, the rules aren’t likely to stop with the phone and cable companies that have Mr. Markey and his friends at Moveon.org so exercised.

Non-discrimination cases could well be brought against Net neutrality backers like Google–say, for placing a competitor too low in their search results. Google’s recent complaint that Microsoft’s new operating system was anti-competitive is a foretaste of what the battles over a “neutral” Net would look like. Yet Google and other Web site operators have jumped on the Net neutrality bandwagon lest they have to pay a fee to get a guaranteed level of service from a Verizon or other Internet service provider. They don’t seem to comprehend the legal and political danger they’ll face once they open the neutrality floodgates. We’d have thought Microsoft of all companies would have learned this lesson from its antitrust travails, but it too has now hired lawyers to join the Net neutrality lobby.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-18-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

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

The New “Pipes� Are Already Paid For!

This doesn’t feel like an original source but it is informative – from Jason Lee Miller at WebProNews on May 12th. “Telcos Lay $200 Billion Goose Egg.â€?

Jason begins this discertation with this;

� The U.S. is ranked 12th in broadband penetration, says AT&T CEO Ed Whiteacre, and in order to bring America up to speed through fiber-to-the-premises (fttp) wiring, content providers are going to have to pony up to use his “pipes.� He doesn’t mention that the new pipes to be built have already been paid for, and they’re very late in coming.�

Already paid for? . . .

Well, here you go – Jason points to Bruce Kushnick’s book “$200 Billion Broadband Scandal. This book documents the largest fraud case in American history!â€?

“Starting in the early 1990’s, the Clinton-Gore Administration had aggressive plans to create the “National Infrastructure Initiative� to rewire ALL of America with fiber optic wiring, replacing the 100 year old copper wire. The Bell companies — SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest, claimed that they would step up to the plate and rewire homes, schools, libraries, government agencies, businesses and hospitals, etc. if they received financial incentives.�

Wall St. Journal gets it [also via Wall Street Journal Straight Up]

From the mountaintop [the Wall Street Journal], straight talk on Internet regulation:

Don’t kid yourself that the issue here is “censoring� the Web. The issue is Internet survival. AT&T talks about the coming Multimedia Explosion as new forms of video traffic rapidly overtake Web-surfing, file transfer and email as the prime users of backbone capacity. Literally, “net neutrality� would result in an increasingly unreliable Internet as more and more high-bandwidth applications contest for space on networks that nobody would have an incentive to expand.

The real issue is where will the big bucks come from to create an Internet capable of handling the services now envisioned, let alone those not yet dreamed up. BellSouth’s Chief Architect Henry Kafka told an audience in March that a typical broadband user today consumes about two gigabytes of data a month, at a network cost of $1. Once TV has gone high-definition and on-demand, a typical user will consume about 1,120 gigabytes a month at a cost of $560 (that’s in addition to the administrative, sales and service costs that today make up the lion’s share of the user’s bill). “Clearly that’s not what the average user is going to pay per month for their video service,� Mr. Kafka said. “That’s why we need help.�


Net Neutrality, and the hope the US could learn some lessons from African experience

As I think back on it, the vast majority of the policy work I did in Africa was, on one level or another, net neutrality work. As Voice over IP became increasingly important in African nations, I was concerned that phone companies would claim authority over any electronic voice traffic, forcing one of the most interesting developments in telephony into illegality to protect their lucrative monopolies… which is precisely what happened in most countries. Some countries are now discovering they have to undo these decisions and make VOIP possible now, because it’s such a powerful technology and economic force, letting people communicate with families overseas because technical innovation and invention has lowered the price of voice transmission.

It would be a shame to see the US make the same mistake many developing nations made almost a decade ago.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-17-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

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

Pro-Internet Democracy Blogs Run Ads for Corporate Takeover of Net: Another Example of Why BuzzFlash Won’t Accept Advertising
[via Truth Dig ]

The ad in question leads to an Orwellian flash that tries to convince the viewers that the government is trying to “interfere” with the Internet and that this will destroy it, which is exactly what the people behind the ads are trying to do. . . . (See http://www.dontregulate.org/)

If you watch the ad, you find it is sponsored by a coalition misleadingly called “Hands Off the Internet”.If you look at the members of “Hands Off the Internet,” they are the very Telecom companies who have given large donations to members of Congress to pass legislation — now having cleared a House Committee — to allow them to squeeze democracy out of the Internet in order to increase their profits. Members of the cynically named “Hands Off the Internet” coalition include AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular, along with some “front” organizations that again employ the Bush tactic of sounding like they are on your side when they are trying to get away with grand larceny (see
http://www.handsoff.org/hoti_docs/aboutus/members.shtml). As many on the Net have noted with contempt, the group is masterminded by former Clinton Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

A BuzzFlash reader pointed out this entire scam to us and how he had tried to get the progressive sites to have the ad removed on their sites, but to no avail.
The ad is part of a package offered by a company known as BlogAds. (See this url if you want to know which liberal blog sites financially benefit from BlogAds: http://www.blogads.com/advertise/liberal_blog_advertising

Proposed Rule Changes Would Tangle the Web

Many people believe the Internet’s decentralized structure guarantees that no company or oligopoly could control it. Internet censorship – whether by corporate or state interests – simply sounds impossible. Yet not only is it theoretically possible, but the history of telecommunications regulation tells us it is probable. By the time the telecoms start changing what you see on your screen, it will be too late to complain.

PDF Panel On Net Neutrality
[via The Original Blog]

Like it or not, the Internet is not a public entity. It is not a company for which others provide service and it is not a public good. It is a nebulous arrangement of interconnections between private networks. If the net neutrality guys would like the government to compensate the private companies that have invested hundreds of billions to make it work, and declare those pipes a public good, that’s fine. The tab will be staggering.

That will do wonders for the deficit and guarantee great service. After all, the government does everything really well, right?

If, instead, you want a competitive environment, then you keep what you have. Existing competition has moved us this far, so why not let it continue? Some suggest the answer is because there are only two competitors – cable and telcos. That ignores the possibility that the DBS guys will ever develop the technology to compete. That ignores the possibility that governments will provide wi-fi as a public good, and it ignores the possibility that Google or someone else will provide wi-max to compete with the cable and telco guys?

It also assumes that two competitors is somehow inadequate for real competition. Honestly, I think a football field would get crowded with four teams.

. . . Cable faces different competition on the programming side. They face competition from satellite and now telcos on video. They face competition for phone service from wireless, VoIP, and the telcos. They face competition for data services from telcos, cities increasingly providing wi-fi, PC by satellite (which admittedly is inferior currently, but that will change shortly), etc.

Competition works. But you have to let it. For Congress to act now, absent an actual threat, would be the height of folly.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-16-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

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

This day is without food blogs

But access to the Internet is not exactly equal now, is it? People pay for varying speed of connection to the Internet, dial-up, DSL, T1, etc. Those with more money can access the Internet at much faster speed than those with less. That’s what you think, yes?

That is something different though. Currently, consumers can pay for different speed of connection, but once they are connected to the Internet, there is no difference between accessing the massive Yahoo.com or the little chezpim.com. But when the new law is passed the service providers will be allowed to dole out different websites or services at different speed.

Net Neutrality and Lying

There’s been some debate lately about whether or not to run the ads from the telecom companies Astroturf campaign “Don’t Regulate the Internet.”

Those who think blogs should run them tend to believe that one shouldn’t stifle free speech – and hey, why not take their money and then write against them?

For me, the issue is simpler – they’re liars. They’re advertising a fundamentally dishonest idea – that the Internet has never been regulated, and that we shouldn’t start now.

The Internet has always been regulated. It started off as a government network designed to survive nuclear attacks (which, as everyone notes, is why it’s so good at routing around damage, including censorship) and along with government research labs its initial backbone was universities.

All through that time, and indeed through the 90’s and almost up to the current day, there was a simple rule – you couldn’t discriminate against traffic. You couldn’t give some packets priority over other packets.

That was the rule. It was the regulation.

The FCC recently got rid of that rule. However they can put it back any time. . . .

If it’s not neutral it’s not Internet [via Jeff Pulver]

The customers of AT&T and Verizon did not ask to get cut off from the Internet. . . . There exist no examples of success with the “walled garden” approach, because the nothing can match the breadth of content and innovation of capacity of the public Internet. The decoupling of connectivity from use and user associated with neutrality makes this breadth of content and innovation possible.

The opposition to net neutrality arises like all regulatory debates as themeans to raise prices, but people in the US already pay more for lessbandwidth than citizens of Europe and Asia.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-15-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

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

Peter Svennson, Hack AP Reporter, Screws Up Net Neutrality Story by Mark Stoller

The public deserves real discourse about this issue. People care about the internet. We should have a real conversation about the public policy implications of what we do with this platform upon which millions rely. And if we decide to hand it over to the telcos, so be it. But the press delivered first apathy, and then warmed over spin and lies. That’s not democracy. That’s not journalism. It’s stenography.

I wanted to believe that the press were working the public’s interest. I really did. I no longer believe this, because of writers like Peter Svennson.

Telecoms Create Front Site to Combat Net Neutrality

Basically, what follows is my analysis of a little site called “dontregulate.org”. They seem inocuous. They’ve got ads going through blogads.org, which, MLW, Booman, and other lefty sites, including ActForLove, use to get ads based upon their sites. Now, they’ve got this fascinating flash video to start the site, and from there, it just turns into arguments against net neutrality, looking all like it’s a regular internet site that regular people put up, with regular drawings and Flash movies…

For more info, SaveTheInternet has also made it the big lie of the week

Soon, The New Design Won’t Matter

But, in a couple of months time, it’s likely that all TechCrunch will have to do is pi** off a large Telco or two (or a congressman in a back pocket) and, ‘voila’, you and I won’t be able to visit them anymore, anyway.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-14-06

by

Net Neutrality Links

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

World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else by Doc Searls and David Weinberger

Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking that:

…the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages.
…the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should filter, control and otherwise “improve.”
… it’s a bad thing for users to communicate between different kinds of instant messaging systems on the Net.
…the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries that feel threatened by it.
When it comes to the Net, a lot of us suffer from Repetitive Mistake Syndrome. This is especially true for magazine and newspaper publishing, broadcasting, cable television, the record industry, the movie industry, and the telephone industry, to name just six.

Thanks to the enormous influence of those industries in Washington, Repetitive Mistake Syndrome also afflicts lawmakers, regulators and even the courts.

Telcos Seek to Deceive Bloggers with Cartoon

Coming to a blog near you is a telecom-sponsored advertisement dressed up as an underground cartoon. It’s the latest in the ongoing campaign by large phone companies to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public.

The cartoon is a product of a front group funded by AT&T and BellSouth. The group, Hands Off the Internet, is headed by Mike McCurry, the former Clinton Press Secretary who has been widely discredited for selling out his integrity to become the telephone industry’s spokesmodel.

McCurry’s group is now attempting to buy its way into the blogosphere, spending tens of thousands of dollars on a misinformation campaign against network neutrality — the principle that keeps the Internet free and open to all.

Hands Off the Internet

Hands Off The Internet is a nationwide coalition of Internet users united together in the belief that the Net’s phenomenal growth over the past decade stems from the ability of entrepreneurs to expand consumer choices and opportunities without worrying about government regulation. We believe consumers across America see the results of this “hands off” approach – through such benefits as expanded distance education opportunities, improved access and speed to almost any information, on-line commerce, and an easier and inexpensive way to communicate with family and colleagues.

[All links today via The Advice Library]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE