Nowadays you will find that there is hardly a day that goes by in which google is not in the media spotlight. Topics having to do with Google are limitless.

In today's New York times, Op-Ed Contributor Adam Raff, a co-founder of Foundem, an Internet technology firm, is asking people to demand that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) work toward "search neutrality." The premise of his argument is that in order to ensure equal access to the infrastructure of the Internet, FCC needs to impose regulations not only on Internet service providers but also on search engine companies. Raff points out:

Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself.

I think Raff is making an important argument here: search engines are a key part of the Internet's infrastructure. When we consider search engines as infrastructure it puts the Internet into a public utility dimension like electricity, telephone etc. If that's the case, then the public has a right to input into how search engines should work. I don't think there is any neutral search engine (sponsored links anyone?!) but it's worthwhile to think about search engine as public infrastructure.

Currently Google controls over 70% of the search market and over 95% of Google's revenue comes from ad revenue. So it's clear that search results are not all about relevancy but are related to how Google can generate more profit through the placement of ads. If search engines were part of the public Internet infrastructure, then what would it look like? Can we find a model somewhere? How about libraries as a model?

Here's a simple, straightforward and thoughtful piece about what an open and neutral internet architecture means and why it's important.

--that is all.

Net neutrality is again in the news. John McCain has just come out with the oxymoronic S. 1836 "Internet Freedom Act" (as opposed to Representative Markey's H.R. 3458 "Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009"). The bill's actual title is "A bill to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from further regulating the Internet." This is wrong for so many reasons. Net neutrality is the core tenet upon which the internet was built (all packets created equal!"). So in other words the FCC's proposed net neutrality regulations (and remember, the FCC has regulated every form of media communication in the 20th century!) will actually protect the non-regulation of internet traffic from telcos and ISPs who would like to turn the internet into a toll road.

The Sunlight Foundation's Real Time Investigations points out that telecom companies worried about net neutrality have been spreading a lot of $$ around DC and the #1 recipient of their largesse is Senator McCain, the self-professed technological "illiterate", who, took in $894,379.

But don't take my word for it, listen to Xeni Jardin and Jon Stewart describe the silliness of McCain's "Internet Freedom Act":

The Federal Communications Commission has a new blog: blog.openinternet.gov. The blog is intended to have "expert commentary from FCC staff on how best to preserve the Internet’s openness and questions that arise during this debate." And, in the first post on the site, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski says, "Our staff hopes to use this forum not only to share ideas but also to receive them. We encourage all visitors to weigh in with their own thoughts and engage in an open dialogue."

Want a flavor of the blog? Try this bit about network neutrality from a post by the Jon Peha, the FCC's Chief Technologist:

Back in the 1980s, I spent much of my time thinking about an obscure topic – how to manage the flow of packets around the Internet, particularly if anyone were ever crazy enough to try telephone-like or TV-like services over what was obviously just a computer network. Like most grad students, I thought my dissertation topic was important to everyone. Sometimes after parties, my girlfriend at that time would remind me that a handful of engineers might care about such things, but normal humans, including lawyers like her, never would. But two decades later, it was mostly lawyers who were grappling with critical decisions on this topic, while most engineers paid little attention.

The blog will also offer timely information on the FCC’s latest activities to preserve an open Internet.

We've been tracking net neutrality for a while but it seems to have gone below the radar. That is, until today when Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), gave a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. and presented a series of open-access principles, emphasizing, among other things, net neutrality. And groups like Save the Internet cheered!

Genachowski added 2 principles to the FCC's original 4 principles of network freedom mapped out by Michael Powell in 2005 (see other 4 below):

• The fifth principle is one of non-discrimination -- stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications.
• The sixth principle is a transparency principle -- stating that providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices.

(the other 4 principles are: (1) consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice; (2) consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement; (3) consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and (4) consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers. See TechlawJournal for background)

On a side note, the speech was posted to the FCC's beta site called OpenInternet.gov built to "facilitate input and participation in the commission proceedings as this discussion evolves."

[Thanks to Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly!]

Here are some recent items about Network Neutrality that should, alternately, make your blood pressure rise and give you something constructive to do about it! (See also: Net Neutrality on FGI).

• Comcast Blocking: First the Internet — Now the Public February 25th, 2008 by jstearns. "Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part."
• Comcast Manipulating NAACP on Net Neutrality, by: Matt Stoller, Wed Feb 27, 2008. "a flyer calling for a rally protesting the FCC under the NAACP's name, put out by a PR firm, and disavowed by the local NAACP as simply a 'draft', was going around on the same day as a net neutrality hearing that Comcast packed with a crowd they hired to prevent net neutrality advocates from attending.
• Net Neutrality's Quiet Crusader By Cecilia Kang, Washington Post, March 28, 2008; Page D01. [also available here] "A soft-spoken 30-year-old PhD candidate, Ben Scott has become an operator in multibillion-dollar battles involving corporate titans, regulators and consumers debating policies over who controls the media and the Internet."
• Software for Keeping ISPs Honest, by Peter Eckersley, March 28th, 2008. "...the general problem of ISPs doing strange things to Internet traffic without telling their customers is likely to continue in the future. EFF and many other organizations are working on software to test ISPs for unusual (mis)behavior. In this detailed post, we have a round-up of the tools that are out there right now, and others that are in development..."

My Google Alert for podcasts works in strange ways. Today, for example, it sent me a podcast episode by Sen. Barack Obama done in 2006. Why it's flagging it now, I don't know.

But it's an interesting episode that addresses a major FGI interest, net neutrality. You can find the episode at http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/060608-network_neutral/. I think he sums up the issues well:

"It is because the Internet is a neutral platform that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having to go through any corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship or without having to pay a special charge.

But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the Internet as we know it. They say that they want to create high speed lanes on the Internet and strike exclusive contractual agreements with Internet content providers for access to those high speed lanes.

Everyone who cannot pony up the cash will be relegated to the slow lanes."

 If you're aware of other candidate statements on Net Neutrality, feel free to post links to them in comments. Interestingly, Sen. Obama's last podcast seems to have been on April 12, 2007. See all of his topics at http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/. If you're aware of him podcasting somewhere else, let us know by leaving a comment.

Many of you will remember a little over a year ago when it was disclosed that certain phone companies -- specifically ATT, Verizon, and BellSouth -- were providing assistance to the National Security Agency in their illegal domestic spying. In a bizarre example of scratching each others' backs, today the Department of Justice came out against Net neutrality. That's right, since the telcos helped the federal government with their illegal wiretapping, the federal government felt it needed to make a statement again net neutrality. We've been tracking the net neutrality issue for a while, and find this blatent example of political favors very unseemly.

The Justice Department on Thursday said Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic. The agency told the Federal Communications Commission, which is reviewing high-speed Internet practices, that it is opposed to "Net neutrality," the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user. Several phone and cable companies, such as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp., have previously said they want the option to charge some users more money for loading certain content or Web sites faster than others. The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its filing.

A new article from Ars Technica:

Deep packet inspection meets 'Net neutrality, CALEA
By Nate Anderson | Published: July 25, 2007 - 11:10PM CT

Details the promise and peril of a new technology called "Deep Packet Inspection." On the plus side large-scale deployment of this technology might well be able to make large scale denial of service attacks a thing of the past and provide robust virus protection to all.

As this article indicates, this comes with a downside:

Looking this closely into packets can raise privacy concerns: can DPI equipment peek inside all of these packets and assemble them into a legible record of your e-mails, web browsing, VoIP calls, and passwords? Well, yes, it can. In fact, that's exactly what companies like Narus use the technology to do, and they make a living out of selling such gear to the Saudi Arabian government, among many others.

According to the article, this technology can also allow ISPs to determine who can access what, as shown by this example from Great Britain:

What that means in this is that you pay by the gigabyte and by the service. Plans start at £9.99 (around $20) a month for just 1GB of data, though use after 10 PM appears not to count for this quota. The lowest price tier also does not support gaming and places severe speed controls on FTP and P2P use (allowing only 50Kbps at peak periods). Plus.net says that the lowest tier will not work adequately with online games or corporate VPNs. Paying £29.99 (around $60) a month provides 40GB of data transfer and fast P2P and FTP speeds, along with 240 VoIP minutes from the company. All of these tiers feature downloads speeds of up to 8Mbps.

As Congress and the Government Printing Office insist on moving from a custody model (libraries have publications housed locally) to an access model (we link to the Future Digital System), librarians have an obligation to consider what will happen to users if we move from our current net neutrality to a model facilitated by the software described above. Do we think its ok for the government to have a complete record of who is accessing what publications? Are we prepared to turn users away when our ISP informs us that our monthly download limit has been reached? What happens when GPO reaches its Internet quotas in a future world where the government purchases Internet access from private providers?

It doesn't have to be this way. Support Net Neutrality. Educate yourself about digital library technologies and help build the geographically distributed federal depository library system of the future.

Thanks to the folks at Current Cites for pointing out this article.

Berners-Lee: Congress should consider net neutrality by Grant Gross, ITworld.com (3/1/07)

Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, advocated that the U.S. Congress protect net neutrality and questioned the value of digital rights management Thursday.

Berners-Lee, speaking before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in the U.S. House of Representatives, said it was "very, very important" for lawmakers to protect the ability of users to access the Web content they want regardless of their Internet service provider.

Humanity Lobotomy Net Neutrality Open Source Documentary

Excellent video features Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Moyers, Lawrence Lessig, Congressman Ed Markey, and more. It explains why net-neutrality is important for democracy.

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

"Search depends on net neutrality." So says this short piece in Search Engine Watch: Without Neutrality, What Happens to Search? by Deborah Richman (Jan. 16, 2007).

With libraries and users increasingly relying on public search engines like google as a supplement or better alternative to OPACs, Net Neutrality becomes essential.

In addition, web harvesting projects run by libraries could be damaged if we lose net neutrality because "it's possible that URLs could be filtered or treated differently based on still-undefined rules set by broadband providers."

If you are looking for a quick introduction to what net neutrality is all about and why you should care about it, you can't do much better than the "Inside Risks" column in the current issue of the Communications of the ACM.

• Ma Bell's revenge: the battle for network neutrality [subscription required] by Lauren Weinstein, "Inside risks" Communications of the ACM Volume 50, Number 1 (January 2007), Page 128.

If you can't get that, an almost identical version appeared earlier on Weinstein's blog as Why Consumers Should Care About Network Neutrality, Lauren Weinstein's Blog (October 30, 2006). Lauren Weinstein is co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility (www.pfir.org).

He says:

The outcome of this controversy will affect everybody who comes into contact with the Internet...

Neutrality is an aspect of the Internet that is so taken for granted that it seems invisible and intrinsic, but it has been critical to the Internet's success to date.

...most Internet users simply don't realize how drastically and negatively they could be affected if anti-neutrality arguments hold sway. Getting true network neutrality back after it's been lost is likely to be effectively impossible. Except for the anti-neutrality camp itself, we'd all be worse off with a non-neutral Internet, and that's a risk we simply must not accept.

Kevin Taglang has an excellent recap of coverage of what the Wall Street Journal calls AT&T's "capitulation" (Industry Braces for Net-Neutrality Fallout by Amy Schatz, Wall Street Journal January 2, 2007; Page A3 [free today only]) on the issue of Net Neutrality and the Federal Communications Commission's unanimous approval of AT&T's buyout of BellSouth:

• FCC Approves AT&T-BellSouth Deal, by Kevin Taglang, Benton's Communications-Related Headlines (JANUARY 2, 2007)

While some see the recent events as a victory for net neutrality, others question this. The agreement is only for two years and is limited in scope. In addition, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is quoted in the WSJ article as saying "[It] does not mean that the Commission has adopted an additional net neutrality principle. We continue to believe such a requirement is not necessary and may impede infrastructure deployment."

One big case that can affect Net Neutrality is the AT&T proposed buyout of BellSouth. There is news that AT&T has made big concessions to network neutrality, but early reports from those who've looked at their memo carefully show that AT&T is not making any concessions at all. According to TechDirt, "AT&T promises not to violate network neutrality on a network they never intended to use that way, and carves out permission to use it on their new network, where they had planned all along to set up additional tollbooths."

• And By The Time Anyone Reads The Sneaky Fine Print On AT&T's Concessions, The Merger Will Be Done TechDirt (December 29th, 2006)

And David S. Isenberg has more details and links.

• Loophole watch in AT&T-BellSouth merger by isen, December 29, 2006