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Net Neutrality 8-4-2006

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Net Neutrality By the Numbers

That leads us to the first number today, 60. That’s how many votes Stevens needs to round up before he can bring his bill to the floor. Senate rules require 60 votes to cut off debate on legislation. Otherwise, practically speaking, the bill is dead. So, the Senate leadership has told Stevens he must have the votes in hand to cut off debate before the bill will be brought up for debate. . . .

[snip]

The flip side of the issue is our second number, 41 (corrected from the earlier mathematically challenged version.) That’s how many Senators are needed to keep the bill off of the floor. The objective of those favoring Net Neutrality is not to kill the bill. Rather, we want to fix it and make it better, but the chances of that happening are better if negotiations take place and agreements are reached before the bill gets to the floor than after it gets to the floor. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-3-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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Stevens Scrambling for Anti-Net Neutrality Votes

Stevens is still trying to force a vote on his inaptly titled telco give-away bill, the Communications, Consumers’ Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (S. 2686). But he’s not having much luck so far. . . .

he article singles out Santorum, DeWine, and Chafee as resisting efforts to push the bill to the floor before the elections. Not only are they hearing from constituents on this issue, they are raking in some serious cash from moneyed interests on both sides of the debate. They really don’t want to have to vote on this before the election. . . .

AT&T’s Whitacre: ‘Nobody Gets a Free Ride’

“This thing is growing at a rate that nobody would imagine,” [AT&T CEO Ed] Whitacre said of the market demand for bandwidth. He said AT&T networks are now handling 5.6 Petabytes of data every day. “There’s more and more content, and you need more and more bandwidth, and somebody’s got to build it.”

“If you build it, you have to make a return on that,” he continued. “Nobody gets a free ride, that’s all.”

This kind of language, of course, leaves open the possibility that AT&T will (or already does) offer some of its customers a better ride across its access networks in exchange for fees. But it doesn’t necessarily mean the provider would block content that it disagreed with, which is a fear that most net neutrality backers discuss the most.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-1-2006

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More networked journalism: All for one, one for all

Imagine this from the vision of Tom Evslin: What if all our Skype widgets had a button that allowed us to test and report the speed at which our Skype voice packets were being allowed through by our ISPs. What if then — following the 1 percent rule — just 400,000 of Skype’s 40-million-plus regular users hit that button and reported in how Skype’s — and other applications’ packets — were treated by their ISPs.

This would produce an incredible data base showing whether ISPs are, indeed, discriminating against certain packets and applications to advantage their own. I suspect Cablevision of playing wack-a-mole with my Skype because it works fine on slower lines elsewhere but horribly when I try to do interviews with the Guardian or the BBC (which prefer Skype) from home. But I have absolutely no way of knowing whether this is true. . . .

Now a reporter could take that data and go to ISPs to find out their side and get a good story out of this that has a big impact — one way or the other — on the net neutrality debate. Is there a smoking gun of discrimination to favor ISPs own packets? Or not? Let’s find out and report it.

Now, of course, there is also a sort of Heisenberg principle (using the bastardized definition of it) at work here: When the reporter calls, the ISP may say, ‘Oh, this is a mistake. We don’t discriminate.’ And whatever was switched on gets switched off. Or this could happen simply when the ISPs notice that they are being watched by the magic button. So the act of reporting affects the news reported (but then, it often does).

Now a journalist might say that this ruins the story. But the essential role of reporting remains in force: Journalism is a watchdog and now companies know that their customers are their watchdogs. Every customer is now a reporter.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 7-31-2006

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What’s Microsoft Afraid Of?

Reuters reported last week that the Free Enterprise Action Fund – which holds more than 4,000 shares of Microsoft stock – wants the company to explain its rationale for supporting Net neutrality. The fund wants to put a proposal before shareholders, for an up-or-down vote at the next meeting, which would direct Microsoft management to prepare a report “analyzing the business and economic rationale, regulatory impacts, legal liabilities and any effects on product development and customers” of Net neutrality.

Sounds reasonable enough.

But Reuters reports that Microsoft has “asked the Securities and Exchange Commission if it could exclude the proposal from its annual shareholder vote without facing enforcement action by the agency.”

“What is Microsoft afraid of,” asks Tom Borelli, a portfolio manager at the Free Enterprise Action Fund.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 7-28-2006

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Net neutrality ‘weaklings’ must answer to shareholders – FEAF

Tom Borelli, [The Free Enterprise Action Fund] FEAF portfolio manager, told The Register FEAF thinks companies that “run” to government – especially Microsoft who has a habit of usually going in the opposite direction when it comes to officials and regulation – are acting against “innovation.” They should focus on improving their products not legislation, he said.

“Our antenna goes up when big companies seek regulation. In our view that’s a sign of weakness. A free market should be out there competing and innovating, rather than running to the government to protect the market. That’s a defense strategy.” . . .

[snip]

The group has already used the shareholder resolution tactics over General Electric’s policy on global warming, which FEAF believes is damaging shareholders’ value, at an annual meeting in April. FEAF believes GE has succumbed to non-government organizations and environment advocates who Borelli calls “looters” interested in using GE’s resources to “achieve their social and political agenda.”

FEAF’s actions can be seen in a broader US context. With the argument over net neutrality breaking down along partisan lines, lobbyists and other interested parties are now springing to the fore to shape the issue.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 7-26-2006

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No, it’s “In the Beginning…”

. . . The Net, as Bob Frankston puts it, is the real infrastructure. It’s the superset, not the subset. It’s the ultimate context. TV, phone, radio, publishing, commerce and everything else will eventually come to you over the Net, if it doesn’t already.
The problem is, the Net is really nothing more than the shortest data path between two devices. You want fast and free Internet for the same reason you want a fast and free connection between your computer and your keyboard and your screen.
Think of the Net as a giant three dimensional zero. Everything across it is zero distance from everything else. The cost of using it isn’t zero, but once it’s built, that’s what it rounds to. (As I explained here a few days ago.)
How do we build that out, and who do we trust to do it, without screwing it up? There is plenty of business in building it out, as there is in all forms of construction. But maintenance shouldn’t look like the cable TV or phone businesses, any more than highway maintenance should look like a theme park.
More to the point, why trust building the “first mile” of the Net to people who never wanted it in the first place, who have always felt threatened by it, who can imagine their customers as nothing other than “consumers” of one-way “content”, and who want to create scarcities and insert billing valves everywhere they can? Because they’re the only ones in a position to do it? That’s not a good enough reason. It’s also not true. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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