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Net Neutrality 6-04-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Tangled Web [via Daily Kos]

We follow the story of Blip.tv, an ambitious video-streaming startup. They’re fighting for a corner of the Internet marketplace in the midst of a battle over so-called ‘net neutrality’ — the idea that all Internet content and websites are given the same access to audiences and customers.

If telecommunication giants have their way, companies like Blip.tv might be forced to compete in a marketplace wherein firms with large coffers can buy access to greater bandwidth and faster Internet speeds, leaving sites who can’t afford to pay in the slow lane.

Craig Aaron of Free Press, a media watchdog group, says big telecom companies have declared open season on ‘Net neutrality.’ He’s afraid these companies will dictate how we use the Internet.

“I think one of the beauties of the Internet is that it’s been open to views across the political spectrum. And if you hand the control of the information so that some can be preferred over others, you’re going to be handing that control to the big media companies that already control our television, airwaves, radio, you name it,” Aaron says.

For their part, telecom companies argue that a fast lane on the Internet for those willing to pay will allow them to make a return on their multibillion-dollar investment in broadband infrastructure. At present, companies such as Verizon and AT&T only charge for access to the Internet, but make virtually no money from content.

Net Neutrality Is More Than Meets The Eye

What’s bewildering in the net neutrality debate is that both sides say they have the same goals – they want the Internet to maintain its usefulness, to keep maturing, and to continue to get better. At first glance, it would be easy to think that one side wants that done via government regulation and the other through the free market. But that’s really not the case. Network neutrality is a much more complex issue than “Big Business vs. Consumer Rights” or “Big Government vs. Free-market Competition”.

Realist View on Net Neutrality: Only the Lawyers Win

Ray Gifford offers a realist’s prognostication on the likely effects of network neutrality: only the lawyers win.

Not the end of the world if network neutrality laws pass, not the end of the world if they fail to pass. Only, if network neutrality becomes law, low latency high-speed service will be routed through “private networks” while ordinary traffic travels via the “public network” internet. The distinctions between the two will be somewhat arbitrary, but important to the law, and that is why lawyers win. Overall, a sensible if not too hopeful view.

Compare the calm Gifford tone to the more alarmist sounds of eBay CEO Meg Whitman (that’s her smiling face in the picture) in an email sent to members of the “eBay community”: . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 6-03-2006

Filed Under Business Book, Comments, Successful Blog, Trends | Leave a Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

This is what started it all

FYI, here’s the article that but a bee in the bonnet of the special interests who’re trying to shackle the Internet with their so-called net-neutrality regulations:

William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.

Or, Smith said, his company should be allowed to charge a rival voice-over-Internet firm so that its service can operate with the same quality as BellSouth’s offering.

Remedial First Amendment For The Net Neutrality Crowd

I’ve noticed lately that some net neutrality advocates have taken to calling neutrality legislation the “First Amendment of the Internet”. Allow me to point out that the first five words of the First Amendment are “Congress shall make no law …”

When it comes to our communications systems, our first priority should be to keep Congress out of it. The First Amendment says, when it comes to speech, the government simply does not make the call. It is not a question of debating right and wrong in the hallowed halls; the Constitution says simply, the government has no say.

Broadband Providers Lobby Against Internet Neutrality

We’ve been enjoying a resource that many have just assumed would continue. Consider some of the other changes that are occuring. Newspapers are going out of business all over America. Many, if not most, big city papers have been bought out by huge multi-media companies. Those media companies have shown an inclination to limit our access to the news to the point that a paid public service statement from the United Church of Christ is rejected by network TV and a book that lists the top 25 censored news stories is published annually in America.

Newspapers and other written media have been an important part of our democracy since Thomas Paine published “Common Sense” and helped light the fire of revolution and independence from a monarchy bent on exploiting, not nurturing it’s colonies. Today we face a different kind of threat. Very few men control virturally all of our news in the mainstream media and they’ve demonstrated a willness to limit even big stories like Downing St. Memos are still not widely known by Americans.

Al Gore characterized our democracy as “hollowed out” by a dearth of editorial variety in the “marketplace of ideas”. He called for the preservation of freedom on the Internet

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 6-01-2006

Filed Under Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends | 1 Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

AstroSpammers” Attack Net Neutrality Posts

. . . Well, I’m not sure who coined the related term “astrospammers”, but we seem to have this new twist on the phenomenon showing up in blogs discussing net neutrality issues. I first read about these kind of suspicious comments showing up on net neutrality-related blog postings over on IP Inferno, where Ted Shelton noted that after a recent post he wrote about net neutrality three random anonymous strangers went to the trouble of creating brand new blogger accounts in order to post pro-telco comments on the subject.

The Abstract Factory did some sleuthing on one of the new net neutrality commenters called “Net Chick”, and concludes that is likely this persona is a paid spammer supporting an astroturf-like campaign against net neutrality . . .

behind netvocates (and it’s link to customscoop)

I was looking at inbound links this evening and came across one originating behind the firewall of a company called NetVocates which is a “blog intelligence and advocacy service”. The website blurb says, reasonably enough:

“…blogs frequently impact an organization and its products and image in uncontrolled and often unexpected ways. In addition, the sheer volume of blogs, message boards, and other discussion forums makes it difficult for organizations to effectively monitor the activity relevant to them.”

Organisations want to know what people are saying about them online – that makes perfect sense. However, I spent a bit more time on the NetVocates site and found this:

“NetVocates then recruits activists and consumers who share the client’s views in order to reinforce those key messages on targeted blogs – and rebut misinformation when appropriate.”

FAQ on Net Neutrality

Here are five frequently-asked questions about net neutrality. Your challenge: answer each in 150 words or less. Here’s my cut.

1. What does net neutrality actually mean? Is it a meaningful protection for the web, or, as some say, a romanticized ideal that’s getting in the way of progress?

Think of the pipes and wires that you use to go online as a sidewalk. The question is whether the sidewalk should get a cut of the value of the conversations that you have as you walk along. The traditional telephone model has been that the telephone company doesn’t get paid more if you have a particularly meaningful call — they’re just providing a neutral pipe.

This argument is about whether companies selling highspeed transport mechanisms for the internet should be allowed to price discriminate — charge different “content providers” (like YouTube) for the privilege of reaching you and me. Because Americans have so few choices of broadband access providers, allowing these providers to leverage their market power over transport in order to have exclusive control over “programming” online is a matter of great concern.

The risk is that the network providers will keep everyone who hasn’t paid protection money to them at 2001 speeds.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Trendspotting — Where 97.9% Fail

Filed Under Analysis, Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog, Trends | 37 Comments

Learn Everything

Trendspotters 101 logo

We all want that ability to be able to see the next big trend before it happens — what people will be wanting, doing, needing, going to, and buying NEXT. We want to be there ready and waiting for those customers.

Some folks can see that next trend and hit it fairly often. No one can do it 100%. No one can get any customer base to behave 100% predictably.

Good morning, Class.
Find the next trend. Oh yes, 97.9% of you wll fail this test.

Read more

Net Neutrality 5-31-2006

Filed Under Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends | Leave a Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Price, Competition and Net Neutrality

In the comments to that post, I said I really didn’t have an issue with network services differentiated by ability to pay for bandwidth, as long consumers had access to the same services, at whatever bandwidth. That is, I’m not opposed to tiering quality of service based on price. Tiering access to services based on price is a different issue.

In a new comment, Richard Bennett points out that bandwidth is not the only service differentiator.

That’s correct. I’m stating my desire that — where technically possible — all customers at all price levels have access to the same services.

Visicalc co-founder offers a modest proposal

What stands in the way of all this are the Bells. They insist that the phone lines built under regulated monopoly are “theirs,” that no one else (OK, maybe a cable franchise) should be providing that service, and that they should be allowed to use their monopoly power for their own private enrichment.

Into this argument steps Bob Frankston. The Visicalc co-founder has written a satire, in the tradition of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, called Paying by the Stroll.

Sidewalks: Paying by the Stroll

I’ve been immersed in so-called tele-communications issues for a long time but I haven’t posted too much lately because I’m not satisfied with net neutrality and am trying to figure out how to explain that the problem is more fundamental (as in “Telecom Phrase”). How come I have to plead for neutrality when we’re talking about infrastructure that we should own?

One of the classic marketing clichs is that people don’t buy the drill, they buy the hole. A good marketer or, for that matter, politician, knows that people want solutions rather than having to worry about every detail themselves. I must’ve been thinking too much about those who want to do us too much good when I went to sleep last night …

Morning of my First Day in At Your Service Village!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-29-2006

Filed Under Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends | 14 Comments

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

A Long Way From Done

Coming Soon: The Web Toll from Popular Science;

“Welcome to the brave new Web, brought to you by Verizon, Bell South, AT&T and the other telecommunications giants (including PopSci’s parent company, Time Warner) that are now lobbying Congress to block laws that would prevent a two-tiered Internet, with a fast lane for Web sites able to afford it and a slow lane for everyone else.‿

In a thought process straight from “the tunnel‿ Christopher Yoo, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, argues that “consumers should be willing to pay for faster delivery of content on the Internet, just as many FedEx customers willingly shell out extra for overnight delivery. ‘A regulatory approach that allows companies to pursue a strategy like FedEx’s makes sense,’ he says.‿ Of course he, along with so many others, have yet to answer the “charges‿ that the consumer HAS ALREADY PAID!!!

Adam Cohen drinks the Kool Aid

The New York Times isn’t what it used to be. Rocked by scandal over the made-up reporting of Jayson Blair, torn apart by the dramatic ouster of Howell Raines, and shaken-up by Judith Miller’s megaphoning the Bush Administration’s fantasies about Iraq’s nuclear program, it increasingly relies on sensationalized, drama-queen reporting and opinion to hold on to a piece of market share. The most recent example of the Times’ descent into rank hysteria is a column today by Adam Cohen on the pending destruction of the World Wide Web:

Save Free Speech on the Web from Corporate Greed

And here in America, the greed of the big corporations is just as likely to stifle true democracy and freedom as it is to encourage it. As has been pointed out, for example, a free press is only free to those who can afford to own the press. We’ve all witnessed the growing lack of diversity of opinion in the broadcast media, where one or two large corporations, like Channel One, have bought up most of the smaller, once independent radio stations across the nation. Local programming has fallen and so has the rich mix of different voices and divergent opinions that was once the hallmark of local radio.

Now, the Internet also is being threatened, as this article in today’s New York Times shows. The telecommunications conglomerates want to start charging fees for use of the Web. By charging fees, they would be creating a tiered system that would favor large commercial sites that could afford steep fees while marginalizing smaller, independent sites. Those who couldn’t afford the pricey fees would have access only to lower speeds or perhaps no access at all.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-28-2006

Filed Under Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends | Leave a Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Open Email to Bob Cringley about Google

Hi Bob,

We’ve corresponded in the past about our respective blogs.

Just had a thought that I wanted to share with you: What if the real reason that Google is vying against the ISPs on network neutrality is that it wants to leverage those super-powered hardware boxes it has been dropping into its dark fiber for the past few years as accelerators for paying customers? Similar to what Akamai is already doing…

Preserving Net Neutrality

For people who innovate in the area of technology and those who enjoy those innovations, this free and open access to the internet has been a boon. New applications are being developed every hour and are able to be instantly distributed on the web. These new applications coupled with new content, such as broadband television, have the potential to offer a new array of choices to consumers.

Unfortunately, some telecommunications companies have a different vision for the internet. They have floated the idea of charging websites for access. Those who pay will get faster and more reliable delivery of their content to web surfers. Those who do not will see the delivery of their content degraded.

In the interests of openness, I frankly acknowledge that I am a recent convert to this point of view. A few years ago, I publicly expressed my view that regulation to stop impediments to net neutrality was a solution in search of a problem. At that point, I was aware of no telecommunications company that had expressed a desire to do so. That has clearly changed. — John Conyers

Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination

Columbia University law professor Tim Wu coined the term “net neutrality� in a paper he published in the Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law. The paper is an interesting read because it’s sharply opposed to the regulations adopted by the House Judiciary Committee this week, so I’d encourage anyone who wants to have a neutral Internet to go read it. Some of Wu’s more interesting observations follow.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-27-2006

Filed Under Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends | Leave a Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Net Neutrality Action Alert

This is nothing more than blackmail by the telecoms. We need to counter this push. Committee Democrats need to hear from as many constituents as possible to counter the CWA’s pressure. Here’s the contact information for Democrats on the Committee. (See Matt Stoller’s diary for a full list of Judiciary Committee members.)

Urge them to support the bipartisan Sensenbrenner-Conyers Net Neutrality bill without amendment. The legislation as it stands is great–a CWA supported amendment would be a capitulation to the telecoms.

Mel Watt Needs To Hear From You to Protect Our Internet

“Urge them to support the bipartisan Sensenbrenner-Conyers Net Neutrality bill without amendment. The legislation as it stands is great”

Mel Watt sits on this committee, and he needs to hear from all concerned North Carolinians. If the Telecoms are allowed to have their way, we’ll have a multi-tiered system that will restrict the free flow of information.

Please contact Mel Watt today . . .

Deargenevra,

Our top priority is increasing the number of people who know about this threat to Internet freedom.

One thing you can do right now: Get five friends to join the fight

The struggle in Congress isn’t over. The full House will take up the bipartisan Judiciary bill (H.R. 5417) — as well as the massive rewrite of the Telecom Act — after they return in June. The Senate is also considering major legislation that currently fails to protect Net Neutrality, though a bipartisan group of Senators are lining up behind the excellent Snowe-Dorgan bill (S. 2917).

Our work is not done. But momentum is on our side.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-26-2006

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog, Trends | Leave a Comment

h2> Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Net Neutrality Scores A Win by Jason Lee Miller

Net Neutrality advocates got something today they haven’t been used to: a victory in Congress. The Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act, sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner and Rep. John Conyers, won the majority approval of the House Judiciary Committee, passing by a vote of 20-13.

“Today’s vote would have been unthinkable three weeks ago,” said Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, the nonpartisan media reform group that coordinates the SavetheInternet.com Coalition.

Neutrality predictions already coming true

One of my many arguments against net neutrality legislation is that it involves the federal government in an issue with which it wasn’t involved previous. We do not currently have neutrality legislation, and the variety and size of the Internet are growing apace. We are doing very well.

I am not against neutrality as an outcome, if that is what the consumer demands. Sounds fine to me, I might even demand it too.

House Judiciary passes Net-neutrality bill

Specifically, the bipartisan bill amends the Clayton Act to require network providers to run on a nondiscriminatory basis, making it a violation for a provider to refuse to interconnect with other broadband providers and block or interfere with another’s services or content, among other things.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-25-2006

Filed Under Business Life, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends | Leave a Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Should the Net Be Neutral? [via Free2Innovate.net, and Red Bank TV]

Congress is considering several competing pieces of legislation. One bill, sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas), embodies the phone company view, while another bill recently introduced by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R., Wisc.) supports net neutrality. Both the House and Senate will hold hearings this week.

The Wall Street Journal Online invited Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and a net neutrality proponent, and former White House spokesman Mike McCurry, who heads a phone industry group, to debate the issue. Their exchange, carried out by email, is below.

Network Neutrality and Enterprise Business Article online

This article will introduce the concept of Network Neutrality for business and technical managers. It will survey some of the published viewpoints on Net Neutrality, both for and against, and will begin delving into the potential impact on enterprise business. Let’s begin with background information and published opinions from the Web on the subject. Although not quoted in their entirety, the articles are extensively hyperlinked to ease further research into the discussion.

FCC commissioner indicates that Net Neutrality may be enforceable under current regulations

Nationally there seem to be two prevailing approaches to Net Neutrality:

1. Push for legislation in Congress to give the federal government control over Net Neutrality

2. Let the FCC handle Net Neutrality and then when a telco violates Net Neutrality we let the courts sort it out.

I don’t like either of these approaches.

I favor the approach of using the Cable TV franchise application process to express our concerns to the telcos and to let them know as consumers that if they don’t promise to uphold the tenets of Net Neutrality then we will choose not to do business with them. And when I say “as consumers� I mean as communities, whether at the town level or the state level.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

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