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Net Neutrality 7-19-2006

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Googleman: Congress needs a comic book!

Kid you not, Google’s Vint Cerf in his debate today actually ruminated on the need to create a comic book to educate Congress on the Internet and net neutrality. He also played to the elites in the audience, by giving veiled instructions to a questioner to google “Stevens” and “tubes.” Mr. Cerf apparently is not shy about telling a room full of press that he and his colleagues do not have a very high opinion of the mental aptitude of our national legislators.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 7-18-2006

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Technologists square off on Net neutrality

WASHINGTON–Two Internet pioneers dueled on Monday over whether proposed Net neutrality regulations supported by companies like Google and Amazon.com are the best way to prevent “abusive” behavior by broadband providers.

A debate here hosted by the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan research institute that brags of challenging “conservative thinking,” pitted Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, who co-developed the Internet’s backbone protocols and has emerged as a leading proponent of congressional antidiscrimination mandates for network operators, against Dave Farber, a Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist widely considered to be a “grandfather” of the Internet.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 7-15-2006

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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 7-11-2006

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Good News – Maybe

We interrupt this series on Telecommunication Pricing to bring you an important message. According to a story in Saturday’s NY Times, Federal District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan is considering major modifications to the already accomplished SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI mergers. We’re going to mash that up with a quote from Vint Cerf who is now at Google.

“Through the eyes of a layperson, the mergers, in and of themselves, appear to be against public interest given the apparent loss in competition,” the Times reports Judge Sullivan wrote. “In layperson’s terms, why isn’t that the case?”

. . . follow the link to read the mash up.

A net neutrality movie: It Happened to Jane (1959)

Unlike the movie, we don’t have a Doris Day to charm “the meanest man in the world.” So it comes down to congress and the FCC in the United States, and similar government organs in your country. Grassroots activism seems the only course since it’s nigh on impossible to out-lobby phone and cable companies.

So:

What will you do for the Internet this week?

How will you defend your right to call unimpeded? And in private?

Who will you call?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 7-5-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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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 6-23-2006

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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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