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Net Neutrality 7-17-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Net Neutrality and the Flat Tax for Google [via Net Neutrality]

Why is an issue so simple on the surface turning into such a partisan one?

Well, here is the answer. It’s about money not censorship. And its about money that powers activism more than lobbying money. The telecom’s lobbying is one that, like most industries, traditionally plays both sides. The new online media, exemplified by Google, does not.

In truth, there are anti-trust and other legal remedies for anti-competitive discrimination that the market won’t sort out. If censorship was the issue, that could likely generate full bi-partisan support. That is not what is at stake however. What is at stake is that the content and web services business are making a killing in earnings by relying on cheap, available bandwidth that is the same cost to them as it is to your and me. Actually, this isn’t really accurate – it is a lot cheaper for them in bulk than it is for our DSL/Cable access. This doesn’t make the providers very happy. They want those really rich (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc.) to compensate them proportionate to their total “assets” – in terms of users and usage. Basically, Telecom wants the right to progressively “tax” services like Google. After all, Google can always buy their own pipes and equipment if they don’t want to pay. According to many reports, they already are.

Now this is the irony, these same leftists (by their donations and statements) that would likely crow on and on about “the rich paying their fair share” are lining up to have the Congress forbid Telecom for using anything but a “flat tax” on their services. There are no “income brackets” allowed on the Internet according to Google and John Kerry.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-15-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Cerf, Part 1: Excuse me, but we don’t get a free ride at all

Fortune recently ran an interview with Google’s Vint Cerf (I think it’s in the current issue, it’s not up on the site yet). That was unfortunate for Business 2.0, the magazine where I do interviews, because I had recently completed an interview with him as well. Given that B2 is monthly and Fortune comes out every two weeks, Fortune scooped B2, and now the magazine doesn’t want to run my interview.

Well, that’s great for us. Because B2 said I can run it here, a full month ahead of when it would get through B2’s production process, and at greater length.

Vint, who is Chief Internet Evangelist for Google and is widely regarded as one of the fathers of the Internet, does not mince words in this interview. He’s clearly got a point of view, and he is not afraid to explain it. Of note – Cerf understands the Bellhead point of view personally, he spent a fair amount of time at MCI before joining Google….

Here’s Part 1, more coming as I edit it…

–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 6-30-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Net Neutrality Amendment Defeated in Senate Committee

“We are not going to get it solved with one solution or the other,” telecom analyst Jeff Kagan told the E-Commerce Times. “We have to come up with alternatives and compromises. I don’t know what will be acceptable to both sides.”

A U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday rejected an amendment that would prevent Internet service providers from charging Web firms more for faster service to consumers. The amendment failed by an 11-11 vote. . . .

Psst! The Internet just went corporate

Did anybody feel a disturbance in the Force yesterday? Nope, I didn’t either. But Neo was spinning in his cybergrave: The ‘Net went corporate on Wednesday, with the blessing of the U.S. Congress.

Yes, you can still surf anywhere you want on the Internet. But depending on what you’re looking for, it may take forever to load. See, there’s this bill sponsored by the telecommunications industry (uh-oh) intended to remunerate carriers for their support of the Internet. It all comes down to that wonderfully vague and innocuous term “‘Net neutrality”: Right now, everyone’s site is carried with equal speed and service, whether it’s Google.com or Ihaveapetferret.net. But the telco companies want high-dollar outfits (like Google) to pay for better service. That means Ihaveapetferret.net (and any other small site without Google million$ at its fingertips) likely won’t have the cash to pay up — and will get ghettoized by the carriers. Meaning… unless your blog is a blockbuster, no one’s going to read it. It’ll simply take too long to load.

Has Anyone Read the FCC’s USF for VoIP Order yet? To lift from Stephen Colbert, “Is it bad or the worst thing we have ever seen out of Washington?”

All I can do is ask: Was recent DC activity on Capitol Hill a calculated effort of misdirection of David Copperfield proportions (David Copperfield of modern magic and Claudia Schiffer fame, not the David Copperfield of Dickens fame, although many a VoIP provider might, as a result, find itself living in a Dickensian “Bleak House” as a result)?

How come we couldn’t see the humungo elephant right in front of our eyes? While we were amassing all our troops on the hill trying to protect our flank on the eastern front, we were getting wiped out this week on the western front. Why does the FCC say VoIP providers give us all your money?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 6-23-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Net Neutrality: This is serious by Timbl

. . . There have been suggestions that we don’t need legislation because we haven’t had it. These are nonsense, because in fact we have had net neutrality in the past — it is only recently that real explicit threats have occurred.

Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies control what I can access for commercial reasons. (In China, control is by the government for political reasons.) There is a very strong short-term incentive for a company to grab control of TV distribution over the Internet even though it is against the long-term interests of the industry.

Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can’t photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it. . . .

Call the Telecoms’ Bluff on Net Neutrality.

The Government should, henceforth, treat the internet more like the Interstate Highway System than the telephone network.

This would mean that the Gvt, or a federal regulatory agency, should take control of and/or subsidize the building and maintaining of the network from now on. Take the financial burden of it away from the telecoms.

Make it a matter of national security, if you have to, to get that network built up, and to provide unfettered access to it by the public.

This, is a proposal that the telecoms should jump on in a heartbeat for two reasons:

1. The immediate financial windfalls it gives them.

2. It actually has the effect of slowing down the development of alternative high speed internet competition form other sources.

If, as I expect, the telecoms get their wish on Net Neutrality, you will see the rapid expansion of satellite, or other broadband internet technologies takeoff. And the sheer competition from those other sources will force the telecoms to scrap their differentiated charges to various tiers of content providers.

But, in the meantime, I think we should start floating my alternative proposal to take the wind out of the telecoms’ sails. This proposal will show us whether the telecoms are really concerned about building the network, or in just finding a way to make more money.

Larry Lessing on: Tim Berners-Lee on Net Neutrality: “This is serious”

One clue to this Net Neutrality debate is to watch what kind of souls are on each side of the debate. The pro-NN contingent is filled with the people who actually built the Net — from Vint Cerf to Google to eBay — and those who profit from the competition enabled by the Net — e.g., Microsoft. The anti-NN contingent is filled with the entities that either never got the Net, or fought like hell to control it — telecom, and cable companies.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE