It may be a while before Congress & Friends get this whole Net Neutrality debate squared away. But that’s no biggie, since Dan Kaminsky has cooked up his own little solution to figure out if your ISP is throttling service.
It’s called N00ter, short for neutral rooter, and Kaminsky showed it off for the first time at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, reports Forbes. → Read More
t’s one thing when one of us here stand up for Net Neutrality, but when Sir Tim Berners-Lee does it you really ought to pay attention. Why? Oh, you know, because he invented the World Wide Web. You wouldn’t be able to click-click-click around the Web if it weren’t for him. Shocking: he supports Net Neutrality. What does he know, right? → Read More
We now know that Net Neutrality, even if what actually passed wasn’t all that special, faces an uphill struggle to remain on the books, having been voted down at a House subcommittee yesterday. What caught my eye this morning was the amount of money involved, with the nation’s biggest ISPs (AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon) giving out literally thousands of dollars to the committee members’ campaigns. Rep. Fred Upton, for example, received some $94,000 from AT&T over the course of his congressional career. That’s quite a bit of money, I think you’ll agree, particularly given that he’s not from a particularly expensive state (from a purchasing commercials and so forth point of view) in Michigan. So I’ve taken a few minutes to see just how much money the big ISPs have contributed to the members of Congress who voted to de-claw Net Neutrality. → Read More
Back to the drawing board. The House of Representatives struck a mighty blow against Net Neutrality yesterday, with the communications and technology subcommittee voting against the recently adopted Net Neutrality rules. The rules will actually remain in place until Congress or the president do something about them, ie, send them back to the FCC for further re-tooling or worse. → Read More
The Republican Party has a bone to pick with the Federal Communications Commission, and you’ll never guess why. Oh, wait, yes you will. Predictably, several Republican congressmen have come out against the evils of Net Neutrality, despite the fact that it passed several months ago, and despite the fact that it could charitably only be called Net Neutrality Lite. What gives? → Read More
Who saw this coming? (Oh, right: everyone.) Verizon has taken umbrage with certain aspects of Net Neutrality, and has taken the rather predictable tract of challenging the FCC’s authority in order to get out of complying with the rules. It’s nothing more than a simple case of if you can’t win an argument based on its own merit attack the credibility of your adversary. Verizon isn’t too keen on the provision that would force it to treat all data on its network equally, so it’s going to court to make sure it doesn’t have to. → Read More
Another day, another Net Neutrality story, this time concerning what the people have to think. As if anyone cares what we mere citizens have to say about all of this! A new Rasmussen Reports poll says that 21 percent of “likely U.S. voters” support Net Neutrality. Unfortunately, the poll’s wording makes Net Neutrality seem far more sinister than it actually is. As we all know, Net Neutrality, as it’s currently on the books, is pretty toothless, so I don’t see why “likely U.S. voters” would be so upset about it. → Read More
With Theopeninter.net, web designer Michael Ciarlo has given you the holiday gift of being able to explain to the less web savvy members of your friends and family what net neutrality means (basically) and why exactly laymen should care about the FCC’s recent attempts to create “enforcable” Internet regulations.
And while granted there’s a lot more complexity surrounding the issue than “All ISPs are inherently evil and want to charge you for Skype.” Theopeninter.net does, as Reddit commenter lolinyerface (yeah I know) put it, “The job of showing how things we get for free now, could one day be per item additional cost.” → Read More
Barely one day after the FCC passed a form of Net Neutrality, pleasing no one in the process, opponents have already committed themselves to repealing the “hostile takeover.” Sen. Jim DeMint, from South Carolina, has come out against the new rules, saying that “unelected bureaucrats rammed through an Internet takeover.” I suppose we should ignore the fact that AT&T, no friend of Net Neutrality, has been his third biggest campaign contributor over the past five years. But that’s just a coincidence. → Read More
With a 3 to 2 vote earlier today, the FCC has put its stamp of approval on Net Neutrality. The funny thing is that it seems both “sides” of the debate are upset. On one hand you’ve got the detractors who say it’s nothing but an “unholy scheme” designed to bring the Internet under the unnecessary (if not unlawful) control of the government. A bit dramatic, but OK. On the other hand you’ve got Net Neutrality proponents who say the new rules don’t go far enough to protect consumers from abuse. → Read More
Reading Drudge and the Wall Street Journal this morning had me concerned that Julius Genachowski, the FCC chairman, was going to smash my modem into tiny pieces with a +2 mace in the name of flexing regulatory muscle. Hardly. It’s true that the FCC will vote tomorrow whether or not to implement some sort of Net Neutrality regime, but considering that it’s already stated what it means to accomplish with the vote, I don’t understand why folks are so upset. But, I’m willing to listen. → Read More
This story is a bit old by now but it’s a doozy. Essentially, what you see here is a presentation slide from Allot and the ironically-named Openet handed out at FierceWireless describing a potential wireless money-maker – tiered, fee-based access to web services on a subscriber basis. Want YouTube? That costs a few pennies per megabyte. Love you some Facebook? Five dollars a month, please! The upside, as they say, is endless! Although no one is currently considering implementing these features, this has been a long-time dream for many carriers and is probably the first step in the slow erosion of user’s rights. → Read More
Editor’s note: Guest author John Borthwick is the CEO and founder of betaworks and in a previous life was a senior strategist for Time Warner and a witness in the Microsoft antitrust case.
Access to fast, affordable and open broadband, for users and developers alike is, I believe, the single most important driver of innovation in our business. The FCC will likely vote next week on a framework for net neutrality—we got aspects of this wrong ten years ago, we can’t afford to be wrong again. For the reasons I outline below, we are at an important juncture in the evolution of how we connect to the Internet and how services are delivered on top of the platform. The lack of basic “rules of the road” for what network providers and others can and can’t do is starting to hamper innovation and growth. The proposals aren’t perfect but now is the time for the FCC to act.
Brad Burnham stopped by our office earlier this week to talk about his proposal for the future of net neutrality. The FCC has circulated a draft of a set of rules about neutrality that the Commission will likely vote on this week. Though the rules are not public, Chairman Genachowski outlined their substance last week. Through a combination of the Chairman’s talk, the Waxman Proposal, and the Google/Verizon proposal, one can derive the substance of the issue and understand its opportunities and risks. I strongly support much of what the Chairman has proposed and I support the clarifications that Burnham outlines. But before further discussing this point, I have to ask, why does this matter now? Over the past few years there has been a lot of discussion, a lot of promises, and some proposals with regard to net neutrality. Here are three reasons why this matters now: → Read More
The FCC has just released its latest report on the sate of broadband in the US of A, and the results are… less than encouraging, and for a number of reasons. The agency found that around two-thirds of Americans’ broadband connections don’t actually qualify as broadband under its definition. (Broadband to the FCC is 4 mbps down/1 mbps up.) What’s sorta odd is that this isn’t a result of the lack of infrastructure or anything, but a result of people choosing low speed plans. → Read More
The political paralysis over network neutrality might be a microcosm of the broader political paralysis in America. Last week, after FCC chairman Julius Genachowksi laid out his Title I compromise strategy to finally resolve this seemingly never-ending debate, radical left and right wing groups conspired to destroy any possibility of consensus. On the left, activist groups like Free Press called Genachowki’s initiative a “fake net neutrality proposal,” while many of the radical right questioned the FCC’s legitimacy and called for a complete retreat from any kind of government involvement in technology policy.
So can the center fight back against this unholy alliance of radical netizens and Tea Party libertarians that seem intent on crushing any kind of network neutrality compromise?
Video ahead. → Read More
This certainly changes things. You’ll recall that the Internet flipped out the other day when it emerged that Netflix‘s traffic carrier, Level 3, said that Comcast was taking advantage of its position as one of the nation’s largest ISPs by demanding more coin to pass on Netflix traffic to its customers. It is, in fact, largely boring tosh, but it speaks to something we’ve been talking about for some time. That is, of course, Net Neutrality, which I tend to capitalize for some reason, almost imbuing it with a greater sense of importance. No matter, for nor Comcast has told its side of the story, and things are quite different in its recollection of events. → Read More
The FCC continues to push for Net Neutrality, with an actual vote set for later this month. The Commission’s chair, Julius Genachowski, is set to give a speech on the subject today, but luckily it’s already been posted online. The reason for all of this? “The animating force behind all of these efforts is a shared appreciation for the Internet’s wondrous contributions to our economy and our way of life.” Or are you against the Internet’s “contributions to our economy and our way of life”? → Read More
*Now* do you people understand why Net Neutrality isn’t merely some thing that Slashdot-dwelling sysadmins argue about during lunchtime? Surely you’ve heard by now that Comcast, one of the largest Internet Service Providers in the U.S., has been fiddling with Netflix traffic? But no, Net Neutrality isn’t worth defending, right? → Read More
Last week’s guest on Press:Here was Tim Wu, author of the new book Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Wu also wrote this guest post for us about why we should all fear Steve Jobs.
In general Wu — who gets credit for coming up with the term “Net Neutrality” — has a really important mission whether you agree with him or not: Raising alarm bells that the Internet, like every mass communication medium that has come before, could one day become strangled and controlled by a handful of companies.
From what I’ve read and from our conversation on and off camera last Thursday, Wu seems to stop short of saying what has happened before on radio, telegram and television will happen with the Internet, saying it could happen. The question, he says, is whether there is something inherently different about the Internet from a technology standpoint that keeps it inevitably open. I think what keeps it from happening is something else: The community around the Internet and the age of modern entrepreneurship in which we live.
Unless the FCC totally screws up on Net Neutrality, big Internet companies just don’t have the luxury of shutting upstart rivals out. You want to be cynical and say money drives policy in Washington? Fine. There is more money on the side of the Internet being open than the Internet being closed. → Read More
A report in the Financial Times suggests that Net Neutrality may, once again, be on the docket. The FCC is looking to have everything wrapped up as early as its December 15 meeting. Whether or not that actual happens—there have been several false starts, of course—who knows? → Read More
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