What are some of the tech implications of Tuesday’s mid-term election? One thing that springs to mind—Net Neutrality. Speculation has begun that the Republican-led Congress (well, House) will be far more willing to chuck Net Neutrality into the rubbish bin, leaving all of us normal folk wondering, “What happened?” → Read More
Your do-nothing Congress is doing nothing—shock! Lawmakers have adjourned their latest session in order to return to their home districts in order to campaign for the upcoming election. Boring, I know. One of the things they left on the table? Net Neutrality legislation. Thanks, Congress! → Read More
Is America losing its edge? This was the rather depressing subject of this year’s Aspen Forum, the annual event put on by the DC-based Technology Policy Institute. Attracting speakers as illustrious as former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, Intel CEO Paul Otellini, Verizon EVP of Public Policy Tom Tauke, Intuit CEO Brad Smith, the author the National Broadband Plan Blair Levin and Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman, the event focused on the public policy side of technology, addressing the political challenges of making American technology companies more competitive in the 21st century global economy.
It’s perhaps appropriate that the event was held at Aspen’s St Regis hotel up in the breathlessly high altitude of the Rockies. For all the broad public policy challenges facing the technology industry, the persistent issue in many of the discussions here – what Verizon’s Tom Tauke described as the “elephant in the room” – is the unresolved Network Neutrality issue. As Tom Sugrue of TMobile remarked, the network neutrality issue is “sucking the energy out of all the other issues. Sugrue is correct. This issue – defined by the often byzantine and seemingly endless public debate between the carriers, the FCC, Congress, technology companies and the pro network neutrality lobby – is threatening to derail the longer term challenges to American edge in the global technology marketplace. → Read More
Editor’s note: Jonathan Askin is Associate Professor of Clinical Law at Brooklyn Law School and Founding Director of the Brooklyn Law and Incubator Policy Clinic (BLIP). He previously worked at the FCC and for the Obama campaign on telecommuncation policy.
I can’t help but analogize Google’s role in the Net Neutrality Wars with Anakin’s shift to the Dark Side in Star Wars.
I’m watching the discussion about the policy framework to govern the Internet with the repelled fascination of a guy who, as a child, loved Star Wars Episodes 4-6 and now, as an adult, begrudgingly watches Episodes 1-3.
In the present drama, Verizon plays the Emperor, Google plays Anakin, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plays the Old Republic, and Internet-Company-Not-Yet-Born might play Luke Skywalker—if the FCC is not blinded by the Verizon-Google Jedi mind trick and can formulate a forward-looking Internet policy framework that will foster competition and innovation. → Read More
It looks like Sen. Al Franken, of Minnesota, wants to be Net Neutrality’s white knight. In the end, it doesn’t matter who want to be “that guy” so long as there’s a voice in Washington saying the right thing. Because as much as we can bang on here about Net Neutrality, we don’t exactly have millions of dollars to lobby Congress to see our point of view. → Read More
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c <td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'Internet Exploiter www.thedailyshow.com http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:350576 Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party Jon Stewart? The next great technology pundit? Nope, but he does have a way of presenting the whole Verzion Google Net Neutrality debate in a different light. Sure, he doesn’t touch on all the issues — Nicholas has him covered there — but it’s a good primer on the subject and worth a couple minutes of your time. Plus, it’s The Daily Show so you know it will be entertaining. → Read More
Last week, a firestorm erupted after Google and Verizon jointly proposed new rules to lawmakers for protecting the “open Internet” and net neutrality. When Google and Verizon professed their love for the open Internet (“Google cares a lot about the open Internet,” said CEO Eric Schmidt), they left out the future of the Internet, the wireless Internet. Instead, they would only apply to the wired Internet.
Plenty of people called Google out for its hypocrisy. Either you are open or you are not. There is no such thing as being half-open (it’s like being half-pregnant).
Telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T want to treat the wireless Internet differently than the wired Internet. But it is not different. It is the same Internet, just accessed by different networks and different devices. It shouldn’t matter how you get there, the Internet should operate under one set of rules. → Read More
Last month, I wrote that it was hard to feel sorry for AT&T. The context there was that their love/hate relationship with Apple over the years has been tough on them. Boo hoo. Today, AT&T is playing the sympathy card again — this time in the context of net neutrality.
Pathetic.
In a post entitled “Wireless is Different,” AT&T makes the case for why they agree with the Google/Verizon net neutrality proposal. Specifically, they agree with the wireless aspect of it, noting that the need policymakers to protect “wireless broadband networks from onerous new net neutrality regulations.” → Read More
The Tea Party, the “American socio-political movement that emerged in 2009 through a series of locally and nationally coordinated protests,” and known for its colorful protest signs (as seen here), hates Net Neutrality. Why does the Tea Party hate Net Neutrality? “I think the clearest thing is it’s an affront to free speech and free markets.” Thus spoke Jaime Radtke, chairwoman of the Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation. Net Neutrality is an affront to free speech? Did I wake up in Bizarro World? → Read More
The past few days I’ve been bookmarking posts about Google, Verizon, and net neutrality to read later. For the past few hours I’ve been doing that — and I’ve barely made a dent. It seems that everyone who has ever written a word on the Internet is up in arms about the situation. And what’s amazing is that nearly all of them are in agreement. There’s no clear consensus as to why Google is selling us out, but the consensus is that they are.
And I have to agree. Further, Google’s response to the backlash today stating the “facts” about their proposal with Verizon sort of pisses me off.
Before I begin, let me just state that there are only a handful of companies I adore because I love their products. Google is one of them. Sure, I love the iPhone more than Android phones — but I love Android phones a million times more than the crap that was out before the smartphone revolution started a few years ago. Out of all the things I do during a day, I’m positive I use Google products the most. Gmail, Google Reader, Chrome, Google Search. It’s all solid gold. Google is a great company.
And that’s exactly why what they’re doing with regard to net neutrality is so disappointing. → Read More
Looks like Google and Verizon were, in fact, in talks over Net Neutrality after all, calling it a “thorny” issue, no less. Hm. Both parties announced, a few moments ago, the creation of a codified framework that they will submit to lawmakers in hopes of being enshrined into law. Many of the ideas are fairly benign, such as giving the FCC power to regulate the Internet a little more forcefully. Other ideas, such as the wholesale exclusion of wireless Internet from any sort of Net Neutrality controls, are a little more controversial. → Read More
Al Franken, the junior senator from Minnesota, wants you to help him save Net Neutrality. Given that Google may or may not be actively plotting to destroy Net Neutrality, it may be worth your time to sign the petition. → Read More
When do you think it would be appropriate to revoke Google’s “Do No Evil?” credentials? Mountain View is in talks with Verizon that would allow the Big V to prioritize Internet traffic as it sees fit. So, if Site A wants to pay Verizon $X so that it loads faster than Site B, Site B has two options: it could either pay Verizon $2X so that it loads faster, or it can be content with the fact that its rival just paid for better access to the same customer base. Internet, we hardly knew ye. → Read More
And so it begins. The European Commission this morning launched a consultation on key questions regarding the contentious issues of net neutrality and the open Internet.
The consultation covers such issues as whether ISPs should be allowed to adopt traffic management practices, prioritizing one kind of Internet traffic over another. This has become an issue with the onset of broadband and Internet services which require more bandwidth, such as VoIP or online TV. Essentially, the EC wants to find out whether these practices would create any problems (economical, technical or otherwise) and have ‘unfair effects’ for users. → Read More
Apologies for the headline, but it was too appropriate to resist. It seems that there is a feature of uTorrent 2.0 now in beta that automatically detects network congestion and self-limits bandwidth to lessen it. This might provide some much-needed relief to ISPs that feel a disproportionate amount of traffic is P2P. I’m not sure whether to call this self-policing action capitulation or accommodation, but either way it probably needed to happen. → Read More
The beauty of the Drudge Report right now is that Mr. Drudge is working against his very interests. He’s got some ridiculous headline right now, JULIUS AT FCC WANTS TO ‘REGULATE’ INTERNET, that’s meant to wile up his easily excitable readership. What’s going on is that the FCC has moved one step closer to bringin Net Neutrality to fruition, and has invited the public to weigh in until January 14. → Read More
This past week saw the resurrection of Net Neutrality as a divisive issue. Some folks (people like Google, and, well, us) are in favor of Net Neutrality, while other folks (primarily the ISPs) are against it. Not long after the FCC announced its intentions, six Republican senators, three of which who received quite a lot of money from AT&T, proposed an amendment to a bill to stop the FCC in its tracks. The senators later rescinded their amendment, saying that they were now open to a “dialogue” with the FCC. → Read More
A bit of an update to that whole AT&T-linked senators story from the other day. Well, our complaining must have worked because the senators will no longer try to block Net Neutrality. USA! → Read More
In what was ostensibly a meeting of the majors last week to advise the FCC on broadband policy, the COO of Paramount was allowed to wax ignorant for 10 minutes on piracy and file-sharing technology. As a major content provider, they should certainly have some input, but this was sheer soap-boxery. Sure, peer to peer and torrent traffic (legal and otherwise) is going to be a major driver of broadband adoption and major consumer of the resource, but Paramount’s contribution to the discussion didn’t limit itself to germane observation and reasonable speculation.
On the upside, we have a fabulous new quote on the level of Ted Stevens’ “series of tubes” that demonstrates how utterly out of touch people like Paramount’s COO are with actual Internet terminology and capabilities. Behold:
“We are uploading it essentially to a ‘cyber locker,’ which is nothing more than electronic locker on the Internet.”
Mr. Huntsberry, we are in your debt for this immortal chestnut of cyber-wisdom. That’s nothing more than electronic wisdom on the Internet, for those of you who don’t know. → Read More
Nicholas “Net Neutrality” Deleon here with truly shocking news: six Republican senators have tacked on an amendment to an appropriations bill that would block the FCC’s attempt to make Net Neutrality a reality. So remember, kids: when you think of a free and open Internet, don’t think of the GOP. It’s not your friend here. → Read More
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