Here are David “End to End” Reed’s comments to Congress on Net neutrality. They were apparently well-received.

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Scott Bradner has a terrific column on the FCC’s idea that it will make some spectrum available for free Net access, so long as it’s censored. If the naughty bits can’t be stopped by filters, then the FCC wants the carriers to block it using other means, e.g., perhaps by blocking encrypted data?

I don’t know why the FCC thinks that it has the mandate to censor the Internet. And if they do, why don’t they insist on a morally pure telephone network? Why do they think the Internet consists of content instead of people communicating? And why does the FCC care so much about boobies?

More info: The company behind this. The .doc file with the FCC text. Reuters. M2Z comment (type “m2z” in “filed on behalf of”). DailyWireless.

[Tags: fcc ]

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Ulrike Reinhard, of WhoIsWho, video-interviewed me on our back porch last week. She asked me about the need for serendipity, what an “open” Internet means, the costs of social networks, the new sense of privacy, user-controlled identity systems, Web 3.0, market conversations, categorization and control, Twitter, Obama… (I did notice one huge misstatement. In it I say that the percentage of US households with broadband access is falling, which isn’t at all what I meant. Rather, our ranking in the list of nations is falling. Ack.)

[Tags: ulrike_reinhard ]

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If you want to chat online with a Comcast support person, they cannot do so unless you give them your social security number.

Lessons to learn:

1. Unless restrained, companies will demand more and more identification from us, because violating our privacy doesn’t cost them anything.

2. We cannot rely on market forces to restrain publicprivate sector ID greed.

3. Comcast continues to lead the field in overall corporate suckage.

[Tags: comcast privacy ]

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Steve Pepper has started a blog, and one of his first posts explains — from his insider’s vantage point — how Standard Norway managed to approve OOXML as an ISO standard despite the overwhelming disapproval expressed by the committee members. It is not a pretty story.

The following post on Steve’s blog is about prostitution in Norway, starting with a conversation he had with a woman called Jenny. So, Steve’s blog is off to an appropriately eclectic start! [Tags: steve_pepper iso ooxml standards norway ]

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Tomorrow, for the second to last class of our Web Difference class, John Palfrey is leading a discussion of chapter 11 of Yochai Benkler‘s Wealth of Networks. So, I just re-read it and liked it even more than the first time. Which is saying something.

The book as a whole is at times daunting because of its thoughtfulness, detail, and multi-disciplinary expertise. But, Chapter 11 should be required reading for anyone who cares about the Net’s future. In it, Benkler considers the multiple layers of challenges we face in building (and maintaining) the Net we want … one rich in collaborative creation. Clear, comprehensive, magnificent.

[Tags: yochai_benkler net_policy open_access peer_production webdiff web_difference ]

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Damian Kulash Jr., of the band OK Go, has a great Net neutrality op-ed in the NY Times. He ties it back to the rules of common carriage. Here’s an excerpt:

They won’t be blocking anything per se — we’ll never know what we’re not getting — they’ll just be leapfrogging today’s technology with a new, higher-bandwidth network where they get to be the gatekeepers and toll collectors. The superlative new video on offer will be available from (surprise, surprise) them, or companies who’ve paid them for the privilege of access to their customers. If this model sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It’s how cable TV operates.

We can’t allow a system of gatekeepers to get built into the network. The Internet shouldn’t be harnessed for the profit of a few, rather than the good of the many; value should come from the quality of information, not the control of access to it.

For some parallel examples: there are only two guitar companies who make most of the guitars sold in America, but they don’t control what we play on those guitars. Whether we use a Mac or a PC doesn’t govern what we can make with our computers. The telephone company doesn’t get to decide what we discuss over our phone lines. It would be absurd to let the handful of companies who connect us to the Internet determine what we can do online. Congress needs to establish basic ground rules for an open Internet, just as common carriage laws did for the phone system.

[Tags: net_neutrality ok_go damian_kulash ]

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I was pretty excited about finding myself on a “BetaBlue” JetBlue plane because they touted it as providing free inflight email and more.

It turns out that above 10,000 feet you can indeed do email and more, so long as your email is a Yahoo email account and the more is Yahoo instant messaging. No browsing, no one else’s email or IM.

I really don’t understand JetBlue’s thinking on this. They’re likely to annoy more passengers than they please, some of whom will be petty enough to write snarky blog posts. without even mentioning that they’re posting their snarkiness via the excellent free wifi JetBlue provides at its Long Beach gates.

[Tags: net_neutrality jetblue marketing ]

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Susan Crawford has a brilliant, clear explanation of the significance of Verizon’s winning the auction for Block C in the FCC’s 700MHz auction.

If that sentence made no sense to you once you got past the phrase “Verizon’s winning the auction for,” all the more reason to hie yourself to Susan’s post. Ten minutes ago it didn’t make sense to me, either. Don’t worry. Susan will explain it.

[Tags: susan_crawford auction 700MHz internet fcc verizon net_neutrality ]

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According to this excellent blog, Kentucky is considering a bill banning anonymous online speech. (The blog is the class blog for “The Web Difference” course I’m co-teaching, with John Palfrey, at Harvard Law.)

* * *

And speaking of courses, I find it heartwarming that today I’m able to open our session on whether the Web has changed marketing by using some slides on “what is marketing” from John Hauser’s Spring 2005 course on marketing at MIT, which is available as open courseware. Gotta love the open courseware.

[Tags: berkman anonymity digital_rights marketing open_courseware mit ]

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