Successful Blog

Net Neutrality 7-9-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Net Neutrality = A Financial Services Industry Free-Ride?

I’ve written a little about the Net Neutrality debate , and posted some Blog entries bout it — e.g. here, here and here. It’s a complex and interesting subject, and politicians have clearly had difficulty getting their heads around it. So I was interested to see how Wikipedia would approach the topic.

The entry seemed to me to be a model of its kind — well-informed, mostly well-referenced and balanced. But its ‘neutrality’ has been challenged and has triggered Wikipedia’s discussion process. The discussion page on the issue is fascinating. Here’s the bit about the bias complaint. . . .

[What follows is the challenge process at Wikipedia.]

It’s always irritating to have one’s views changed by other people’s better arguments, but this discussion has caused me to re-evaluate the original entry. I think the point about ‘framing’ is right. Wouldn’t it be nice if all public debate about complex issues were conducted this way? Then we really would have a deliberative democracy. I’m always puzzled by people’s hostility to Wikipedia: to me, it looks like one of the best things to have emerged from the Net.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-8-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.

Let’s put Net neutrality to bed: Engaging the George

We’re talking about a simple idea, that when you haven’t paid for dedicated capacity at a given throughput and reliability . . . your traffic will travel at the same speed and with the same reliability as everyone else’s traffic. The carriers’ position is that they should be able to define that freedom of access. It is the long and successful tradition of the United States that it does not allow a monopoly or duopoly to operate free of regulations which define a minimum common good that they must fulfill in exchange for their market positions.

Battle Lines Drawn Over Net Neutrality

InfoWorldMike writes “. . . Determining the full effects of Net neutrality can be difficult, however, in part because the concept is hard to define precisely. Most of the debate has taken place inside the Washington Beltway, where lawmakers and outsiders have proposed several different versions. InfoWorld has a Special Report up exploring the issue with a debate between experts Bill McCloskey and Jon Taplin and some of the news that has captured the issue as it developed.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-7-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.

Sen. George Allen is deceiving constituents on Net Neutrality

Republican Sen. George Allen is deceiving constituents about his recent vote AGAINST Net Neutrality and Internet freedom–and he’s doing it using taxpayer dollars.

Allen has accepted $113,000 in campaign cash from phone and cable companies AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner. Last week, he voted to let them put tollbooths on the Internet and have more control over what you see and do online–a blow to Internet freedom.

Allen is now using his taxpayer-funded website to say he “voted yes” on a bill that “addresses the issue of Net Neutrality.” Indeed, as MyDD’s Matt Stoller also points out, the bill Allen voted for “addresses” Net Neutrality by putting it on the road to elimination. He voted no on preserving Net Neutrality.

–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 7-3-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Getting serious about Net Neutrality

[Quoting David Sims] . . . “The Senate bill’s main focus is creating a national video franchise system that would allow phone and cable companies to bypass the sometimes lengthy negotiations with local authorities over offering pay-television service,” [cable industry observer Amy] Schatz writes. “But the bill also contains a wide variety of other requirements, from antipiracy technologies for television broadcasts to changes in a federal fund that subsidizes phone services in rural areas.”

Is this going to be another case where the public starts complaining only when they’ve discovered what they’ve lost?

IT’S ONLY THREE PARAGRAPHS. Read it. Then go to the source.

Net Neutrality: It’s Pretty Simple, Really.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE