When I blogged something positive about Net Neutrality, Seth Finkelstein wanted to know what the alternative was to letting the carriers decide which packets to block, if there is genuine Net traffic congestion.

David Isenberg and Harold Feld have each responded not only in comments to my post, but more fully on their own sites. I like David and Harold’s approaches better than my own hasty and, well, dumb response. (A while ago I’d posted an idea I heard somewhere that I like: The carriers could let users nominate particular sites for especially speedy interaction, limiting the number of times a user could switch in a month. So, if you want to play WoW but don’t care about downloading on-demand movies, you could choose some WoW sites for your express lane, but I could choose on-demand this month and next month decide I’d like really fast P2P video. Or whatever.)

(FWIW, David lists me among those who conflate copyright and congestion. I’m not sure how I gave David that impression. I understand that AT&T’s intention to filter copyrighted material is different from the carriers’ contention that network congestion requires them to filter packets.) [Tags: net_neutrality david_isenberg harold_feld seth_finkelstein att ]

Be the first to comment »

Here’s a worrisome report on AT&T’s willingness to inspect packets, filter out what it thinks are copyright violations, and limit peer-to-peer interactions. Because the reporting is sketchy and is coming through an advocacy group (that I support), I’m not perfectly confident that this is the whole story. But as a partial story, it’s damn disturbing. If Net traffic needs to be “shaped” (i.e., packets purposefully blocked or delayed) because of technical limitations, the carriers are the last people I trust to make decisions about what’s important and acceptable. And that, to me, is the essence of the argument for Net neutrality.

[LATER that same day:] And here’s why we shouldn’t trust the carriers to decide what “content” is most important to deliver and to deliver well: According to the NY Times, “Comcast is already the world’s largest buyer of content, and it is spending about $4.5 billion a year to assemble content from around the world to offer on demand.” The people who make money selling content are the last ones who should be deciding which content to prefer./ [Tags: net_neutrality at&t ]

14 Comments »

Tim Karr recounts the top ten bad telco moments this year. It’s good to be reminded of just how naughty they’ve been. And perhaps increasingly desperate?

[Tags: telcos net_neutrality tim_karr ]

2 Comments »

Great op-ed by Tim O’Reilly, holding out the greed stick to the cellphone companies to induce them to open their networks.

[Tags: tim_oreilly open_networks wireless cellphones telcom net_neutrality ]

Stephen Baker has an excellent, provocative article on “cloud” computing, where “cloud” means gigaclusters like Google’s and not the great amorphous mashup of information known as the Internet.

4 Comments »

Here’s John Edwards on Net Neutrality, plus other responses to TenQuestions….[Disclosure: I occasionally talk with that campaign about Net policy issues] [Tags: politics john_edwards net_neutrality ]

2 Comments »

Harold Feld thinks Google is serious in its bid for spectrum. Here’s what he thinks Google’s aim is:

Google wants to eliminate the entire wireless “phone” industry and replace it with the “mobile broadband” industry. In this world, people do not buy “mobile phone service” with the option to load all manner of various features for additional prices onto their phones. People buy a wireless service contract for a “dumb pipe” similar to what they buy (now) from cable and dsl companies.

Harold, who is a great explainer, talks about the effect of the new anonymous bidding rule on the spectrum auction.

[Tags: google 700mH net_neutrality harold_feld fcc spectrum end_to_end wireless ]

2 Comments »

Mark Sullivan in PC World lists and discusses at some length the top five anti-tech organizations in the US, starting with the RIAA.

[Tags: net_neutrality riaa ]

2 Comments »

Yesterday I blogged Harold Feld‘s analysis of Verizon’s pledge to open its wireless networks. Here’s David Isenberg’s take on it.

If David and Harold — two of the smartest, sharpest, and most dedicated defenders of network values — find hope here, then hope is in order.

On the other hand, Susan Crawford raises an eyebrow of suspicion… [Tags: verizon net_neutrality david_isenberg harold_feld susan_crawford ]

2 Comments »

Harold Feld explains the what and why of Verizon’s announcement that it will open its wireless networks to any device and any application.

[Tags: harold_feld verizon net_neutrality ]

2 Comments »

John Edwards answers Mike Arrington’s tech policy questions, and some questions from readers, at TechCrunch. Edwards has been aggressively pro open Internet. Yay! (Disclosure: I sometimes get to talk with the Edwards policy folks about tech policy.) [Tags: john_edwards politics net_neutrality ]

2 Comments »