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Tag Archives: net neutrality
Updates on Net Neutrality
Here are some recent items about [w: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..."
Senator Obama addresses Net Neutrality in Podcast from 2006
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.
Continue readingYou scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours
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.
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We know what you did last night: Deep Packet Inspection
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. Continue reading
House Testimony of Tim Berners-Lee on Net Neutrality
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.Continue reading
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