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Net Neutrality 8-16-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

The Internet Must Die

The guy behind the brilliant techno remix of Sen. Ted Stevens’ “Series of Tubes” speech has released another pro-Net Neutrality song inspired by the Alaska senator’s rantings.

BoldHeaded:

To piggy-back on the huge success of our last parody of Ted Steven’s techno remix, we released a new track to our podcast subscribers last week

This time, Senator Ted Stevens pulls no punches and reveals his true objective. Hear the geeks speak out!

Link

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-15-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

The Four Faces of Net Neutrality

For Dr. René Alvarez, a surgeon from Homer, Alaska, the debate surrounding network neutrality isn’t about the digital minutia of speeds and tiered services; it could be about life and death.

For his patients in Alaska’s interior, the Internet isn’t a link to movies and games. “The Internet,” he said during a recent meeting in Boston, “is their lifeline, their link to the outside world.”

Alvarez’s biggest fear is that patients living in small towns in Alaska’s interior aren’t in a position to shoulder any additional increase in Internet access charges.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a somewhat larger town such as Bethel, Alaska, has a per capita income of $12,602, which is about half the poverty level for a family of four in Alaska. An increase in Internet access could discourage the use of remote medicine, especially if it’s viewed as a bandwidth-intensive, upper-tier service, Alvarez said.

It is unclear how Alvarez and his patients will ultimately be affected by the nuances of the net neutrality debate in Washington, especially when few actually agree on a definition.

[…]

Lost in the debate are the concerns of millions of forgotten stakeholders such as Alvarez; Kimberly Johnson, a Washington-based educator; Tom McInerney, CEO at Internet startup Guba; and Ralph Riley, product marketing manager for Siemens Communications.

[…]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-14-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Weighing High-Tech Bills in Analog [via Congress, Comic Books, Technology And Passing New Laws]

The fight over House and Senate telecom bills has sparked an estimated $1 million a day in lobbying and advertising by companies and advocacy groups. Urged on by politically powerful phone companies, Congressional leaders have been actively pushing the legislation. Recognizing the momentum, advocates for a variety of technology issues — including a new Internet tax moratorium and anti-piracy measures — are trying to tack on amendments.

But fear of unintended consequences and difficulties grasping the highly technical issues are making some in Congress hesitant to support technology legislation.

[ . . .]

“I’m tired of talking about 18-wheelers,” an exasperated Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) said at a House hearing this spring. “I’d like to know what we’re talking about here.”

[ . . .]

Phone and cable companies, which oppose any new regulations governing whether they can charge for prioritizing content, have seized on that confusion. They’ve warned lawmakers not to act on a vaguely defined potential problem because it could have those dreaded “unintended consequences.”

Those arguments carry weight among lawmakers trying to be careful about intervening in the technology marketplace, said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who chairs a House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet.

“We didn’t want to lock in or lock out future players,” he said. “Who knows what’s going to come down the pike?”

But the debate has frustrated Internet executives.

“To our industry and our customers, very important issues are being decided today in Congress,” said Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of global public policy. “Much of the concern is decisions might be made without a complete understanding of the facts.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-13-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

It’s Our Net — A New Site Announced by Six Apart

. . . . Scientific American published a pretty fair editorial on the topic, which reaches a clear conclusion:

A system for prioritizing data traffic might well be necessary someday, yet one might hope that it would be based on the needs of the transmissions rather than the deal making and caprices of the cable owners. Moreover, personal blogs and other Web pages are increasingly patchworks of media components from various sources. Tiered service would stultify that trend.

That seems like a reasonable analysis, so the natural next step for any Internet-related cause is to get a good website going to help with advocacy. Enter It’s Our Net, supported by everyone from Adobe to Yahoo, and sponsored by Amazon, eBay, Google, InterActiveCorp, Microsoft, and Yahoo! . It’s a simple, effective site combining the latest news, information about how the proposed change would affect the web, and tools to contact your elected officials. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-12-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Common Cause: Stop It With the Astro-Turfing

Common Cause has released a report on the incredible amount of astro-turfing that surrounds telecom reform legislation. Entitled “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing,” the report is a follow-up to an earlier attack on these phoney “public interest” groups, which are, in reality, industry-financed fronts designed to mess with people’s minds.

The report eviscerates five groups: Hands Off The Internet, TV4US, netcompetition.org, The Future…Faster and Video Access Alliance. Common Cause reserves its worst criticism for Hands Off The Internet and netcompetition.org.

If there were an award for Astroturf lobby campaigns, Hands Off the Internet (HOTI) would win hands down. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-11-2006

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

Net Neutrality: What Will It Mean to Web Designers, Marketers and SEO’s?

. . . As I read the comments and articles, pro and con, I keep wondering what this means for web design and SEO? Search engines are getting better at delivering results based on where you live and who you are. How would these changes effect how you apply SEO techniques? What does this do to marketing efforts on behalf of web sites? If Google Adsense Ads no longer reach EVERYBODY, what happens then? How does this work on an Internet where the consumer web site viewing choices are based on how much they can afford or what their ISP will provide?

We’ve been used to designing, optimizing and marketing for an International, fairly wide cross section of people. We know many of our efforts don’t get past Chinese censors. What will it be like if the “censors” are phone companies in the USA? If you incorporate video into sites, do consumers have to pay more to view the web site? What does this mean to sites built outside the USA, who are accessed by American users?

Here are some quotes to consider and links. What do you think about this?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE