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Net Neutrality 7-1-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Stopping the Big Giveaway – by John Kerry

The Commerce Committee voted on net neutrality and it failed on an 11-11 tie. This vote was a gift to cable and telephone companies, and a slap in the face of every Internet user and consumer.

It will not stand.

I voted against this lousy bill for two reasons: because net neutrality and internet build-out are crucial to building a more modern and fair Information Society, and both were pushed aside by the Republicans.

. . . Why are United States Senators afraid to say that companies should be expected to foster growth by building out their broadband networks to increase access?

. . . This bill was passed in committee over our objections. Now we need to fight to either fix it or kill it in the full Senate. Senator Wyden has already drawn a line in the sand — putting a “hold” on the bill, which prevents it from going forward for now. But there will be a day of reckoning on this legislation soon, make no mistake about it, and we need you to get engaged — pressure your Senators, follow the issue, demand net neutrality and build-out.

It’s not just net neutrality that is at stake

Kos wrote yesterday that the Net Neutrality amendment was defeated yesterday in the Commerce Committee, and there have been several diaries about that since. A bill that was kept however has not been remarked upon here. This is the revival of the broadcast flag, which the FCC had mandated several years ago but was struck down by a court. Now the entertainment industry is trying to bring the broadcast flag back with a new law. . . .

With respect to the broadcast flag however, Republicans take precisely the opposite position. By supporting the broadcast flag, they are saying that it is necessary for the government to control which of those transmissions that we listen to or watch on TV we can record: something that is unprecedented. It has been taken for granted up until now by everyone that if you can hear something on the radio or hear it on TV you should be able to record it, but the broadcast flag would change all that. The government would require all electronic devices that are capable of receiving digital TV or radio signals to implement restrictions blocking recording of those signals if the producer of the signal has embedded in it a flag indicating that it does not want the signal recorded. In other words, the government will mandate that you no longer control what you do with your electronic devices, but the corporations of the entertainment industry do.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 6-28-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

The pretense of knowledge by Patrick Ross

We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is based — a communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed.

When F.A. Hayek spoke these words more than thirty years ago in accepting the Nobel Prize for Economics, he was referring to the market as a communications system, a reflection of the increasing role of information as a driver of the economy. But these words also speak to the global communications system we call the Internet or cyberspace. While the individual elements of the Internet are designed by man, its growth and evolution has been almost organic, not unlike the development of the market Hayek described. Hayek devoted his career to championing markets over government planning, and his 1974 speech in Stockholm was no exception. His words ring true today as we hear of plans to impose limitations on this modern communications system, this market if you will, by the government in the form of network neutrality regulations.

Net Neutrality: The Mainstream’s still unconscious

The newspaper of record in our nation’s capital, The Washington Post, correctly observes that the rhetoric around net neutrality “has concealed more than it has illuminated.” However the reporter, Jeffrey Birnbaum, parrots elements of the carrier’s arguments in his column, “No Neutral Ground in This Internet Battle.” He fails to provide both sides of the argument in full, suggesting repeatedly that the carriers’ are the aggreived parties.

Let’s begin with his definition of net neutrality:

Net neutrality, which is shorthand for network neutrality, is one of two possible answers to the following legislative question: Should cable and telephone companies be allowed to charge add-on fees to others for access to their networks.

Under a net-neutral system, the answer would be “no.” If net neutrality were to lose, the answer would be “yes.”

A very different definition of net neutrality than mine: . . .

State governments push for Net neutrality laws

As a U.S. Senate panel prepares for a vote on Net neutrality legislation this week, state attorneys general in New York and California are joining Internet companies in saying that network operators must not be permitted to prioritize certain broadband content and services.

In a letter sent Friday to the leaders of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, urged the adoption of a proposal called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. This is the first time that state officials have entered the Net neutrality debate.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE