Category: Net Neutrality

The Boy Scouts are on the outs with all right-thinking and decent people for their intolerance of gay scoutmasters, although all the shrieking over Mark Foley would almost make you think they were just unfashionably ahead of the curve. In case anybody’s wobbling, there is something to set you straight. The Boy Scouts are oppressing pirates with a new “activity badge” discouraging illegal file sharing:

A Boy Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, etc., etc. If he’s in the Los Angeles area, he also respects copyrights.

Tens of thousands of Boy Scouts here will be able to earn an activity patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies and music. The patch shows a film reel, a music CD and the international copyright symbol, a “C” enclosed in a circle.

The movie industry developed the curriculum as a way of emphasizing the ills of piracy to a generation that has grown up finding free music and video clips on the Internet.

That’s got to be very upsetting to such leaders of the Pirates’ Rights lobby as Larry Lessig, the Stanford law professor who argues that illegal file sharing is central to enlightened democracy. As if poor Lessig doesn’t have enough on his plate, what with being made into a non-entity by former FCC chief William Kennard in the New York Times last Saturday.

Kennard had to the gall to frame the idiotic network neutrality debate as a battle between Super-Wealthy companies such as Google and Amazon and Merely-Rich cable and telephone companies:

Unfortunately, the current debate in Washington is over “net neutrality” — that is, should network providers be able to charge some companies special fees for faster bandwidth. This is essentially a battle between the extremely wealthy (Google, Amazon and other high-tech giants, which oppose such a move) and the merely rich (the telephone and cable industries). In the past year, collectively they have spent $50 million on lobbying and advertising, effectively preventing Congress and the public from dealing with more pressing issues.

As chairman of the F.C.C., I put into place many policies to bridge the narrowband digital divide. The broadband revolution poses similar challenges for policymakers. America should be a world leader in broadband technology and deployment, and we must ensure that no group or region in America is denied access to high-speed connections.

We are falling short in both areas. Since 2000, the United States has slipped from second to 19th in the world in broadband penetration, with Slovenia threatening to push us into 20th. Studies by the federal government conclude that our rural and low-income areas trail urban and high-income areas in the rate of broadband use. Indeed, this year the Government Accountability Office found that 42 percent of households have either no computer or a computer with no Internet connection.

One thing’s for certain about the net neutrality regulations offered by Congressional Democrats and rogue Republicans: they’re not exactly going to stimulate faster build-out of fiber to the home, whatever their other virtues may be.

So where does that leave the heroic few like Lessig who’ve jumped aboard Google’s bandwagon in demanding new regulations on the business models of broadband carriers? Annoyed, mainly:

It’s funny, I hadn’t realized I was a Google tool. I had thought we were pushing to reverse a failed policy because we wanted to enable the next Google (that was my point about YouTube). I thought we were angry because the “merely rich” had yet to provide broadband as broadly as in other comparable nations. And I thought we were fighting the efforts of the “merely rich” to further reduce competition, either by buying up spectrum that would enable real wireless competition, or by getting state laws passed to make muni-competition illegal. I had thought these were important issues for the new economy — keeping the platform as competitive as possible, to keep prices and quality moving in the direction they move in the rest of the developed world.

Once again, Lessig presses his case on virtue grounds. He, and the others on his side who want our regulators to go where no regulator has gone before, are insistent that you see them as the Good People, who appeal to your sense of virtue and fair play, simply because they oppose the Telcos, the Bad People. And you’re to know that the Telcos are the Bad People because, well, that’s the way it’s always been. And you’re to believe that net neutrality regulations are good because, well, that’s the way the Internet has always been. This is not exactly a highly sophisticated argument.

In fact, it’s wrong in just about every way an argument can be wrong: logically, factually, intellectually, and emotionally. The Internet has not historically had regulations on how to treat router queues, and even if it had we would be under no obligation to honor them in all future telecom regulations. The Internet is a part of our society that was devised by engineers to meet a set of objectives, not a perfect essence that descended directly from the Almighty into Bob Kahn’s head in 1981. In the beginning, we wanted it to be a plaything for academics, and now we want it to be much, much more. So we’re thinking about how to regulate it and how to stimulate it to make it grow into the kind of network we all want it to be. The argument from historical essence is garbage.

Kennard is right when he says we should be debating what it’s going to take to get real broadband penetration into American homes, schools, libraries, and businesses. The better the network, the more useful it is, whether we have content taxes or not. Look at this video conferencing system from Cisco with HDTV and “telepresence:”

One industry analyst described Cisco’s system — which the company calls “telepresence” — as far superior to other video conferencing products, typically accessed or run over the Internet.

Chambers has touted the new technology as so lifelike that it could replace corporate travel, saying that Cisco will cut $100 million in expenses by reducing travel 20 percent in the next 12 months.

The system uses software the company created and runs on a network powered by the company’s own routers and switches. The pictures are displayed on a 60-inch plasma screen with 1,080-pixel screen resolution, which is four times better than the standard television and two times better than a high-definition television.

They’re saying this product has the potential to re-shape Cisco, but it would be illegal to operate under the regulations proposed by Lessig’s warriors (the system almost certainly prioritizes packets and may require extra-spiffy service from ISP or NSP to perform properly, and that’s forbidden under Snowe-Dorgan and Markey.)

One might say, somewhat simplistically, that this net neutrality thing boils down to whether you want to protect downloads from a content tax or have a system of fees and regulations that permits us to cut corporate travel and wire both rich and poor homes with superior broadband.

That’s not a difficult choice. Of course, the issue is more complicated, but not much more, so there you are, choose.

And you can also see Matt Sherman for a reasoned critique of Professor Lessig’s latest.

UPDATE: Super-excitable intellectual property attorney Harold Feld is very upset with the Boy Scouts, but he blames the MPAA, all better to imagine dark conspiracies. Feld is one of my heroes.

Progress and Freedom Foundation honcho Patrick Ross liked this humble piece, but Google scholar Richard Brandt didn’t. You can’t please everybody, and I don’t even try. Check Brandt’s photo, it’s a scream.

Bill Moyers is the ordained Baptist minister who was LBJ’s Chief Propagandist during America’s descent into the Viet Nam quagmire. He made a name for himself by pushing Joseph Campbell’s loopy theories about the alleged universality of mythology on PBS and giving a megaphone to voices on the lunatic fringe of American politics such as Noam Chomsky. He’s jumped into the Net Neutrality fray with both horns, airing a 90 minute ad for Bob McChesney’s Save the Internet campaign that trails off into odd conspiracy theories toward the end. PBS has set up a web page to promote it, where you’ll find this gem:

The future of the Internet is up for grabs. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively eliminated net neutrality rules, which ensured that every content creator on the Internet-from big-time media concerns to backroom bloggers-had equal opportunity to make their voice heard. Now, large and powerful corporations are lobbying Washington to turn the World Wide Web into what critics call a “toll road,” threatening the equitability that has come to define global democracy’s newest forum. Yet the public knows little about what’s happening behind closed doors on Capitol Hill.

Some activists describe the ongoing debate this way: A small number of mega-media giants owns much of the content and controls the delivery of content on radio and television and in the press; if we let them take control of the Internet as well, immune from government regulation, who will pay the price? Their opponents say that the best way to encourage Internet innovation and technological advances is to let the market-not the federal government-determine the shape of the system.

Kindly note that this goes beyond the usual refrain of “Big Telco is stealing the Internet and our Democracy will soon be lost” to assert a conspiracy of Big Telco and Big Media. In fact, the last 30 minutes of the show isn’t about the Internet at all, it’s about media consolidation, McChesney’s favorite hobby horse.

Is net neutrality a legitimate part of the media ownership debate, or simply a fear and smear campaign devised to enhance the influence of self-promoters like McChesney and his ilk?

You can probably guess what I think about that.

John Markoff interviewed Sir Tim Berners-Lee on his favorite topic, and got the same tired old claims as before. In case you don’t know,

SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE was a software programmer working at the CERN physics research laboratory in Switzerland in the 1980’s when he proposed the idea of a project based on hypertext — linking documents with software pointers.

Berners-Lee claims:

Some people say perhaps we ought to be able to charge more for this very special high-bandwidth connectivity. Of course that’s fine, charge more. Nobody is suggesting that you shouldn’t be able to charge more for a video-capable Internet connection.

But actually they are, and that’s the rub. The Snowe-Dorgan, Markey, and Wyden bills say the ISPs can’t charge more for video- and audio-capable Internet connections:

(5) only prioritize content, applications, or services accessed by a user that is made available via the Internet within the network of such broadband service provider based on the type of content, applications, or services and the level of service purchased by the user, without charge for such prioritization;

So once again, Berners-Lee says he’s in favor of net neutrality at the same time that he declares himself opposed to its central tenet. I guess he’s a pretty busy programmer these days, but after all this time surely he must have been able to read this little bill that he claims to support.

There’s some other stuff in the interview about democracy and the Internet that’s incredibly silly. The Internet can certainly be used to advance democracy, but it can also be used for oppression, crime, and terrorism. In that sense, it’s certainly “neutral”. Is that a good thing?

Look, all I’m asking is that these “figures” like Berners-Lee, Cerf, and the rest of them do a little diligence before popping off. Read the bills, try to learn how the modern Internet works, learn about the requirements of new applications, and develop a reasonable investment model for the ISPs to follow. If you do all that, and do it honestly, you will come to the conclusion that the regulations on the table will do way more harm than good. If we need to protect the Internet from greed and corruption we’re going to need much more specific definitions than we have now.

The argument for regulation because “telcos are bad people” that the lefty blogs make is ridiculous, and Berners-Lee’s claims aren’t much better.

Public Knowledge has been one of the knuckle-draggers puffing the net neutrality issue out of all sane proportion, so it was surprising to read a rational article on the subject on their blog. Written by guest blogger Phil Weiser, it valiantly attempts to separate fact from fiction. See Net Neutrality: Back to the Drawing Board:

The real concern of net neutrality advocates should not be insisting on a single tiered Internet that—at least for those who have heard of Akamai already know—is a fantasy. (For those who are unfamiliar with Akamai, its caching services provide enhanced performance to the big companies who can afford to pay for them.) The real concern is that with only two broadband providers offering service, there remains a risk of anticompetitive conduct that understandably makes policymakers nervous. The question is thus, in an environment where there are real benefits from improving network performance and possible efficiencies from alternative pricing strategies, what should policymakers do. For Rob Atkinson and I, the answer is embrace a third way—i.e., a course different from the “do little” approach of the Stevens bill and the “no tiering” approach of the Wyden bill. In particular, we advocate transparency requirements (to enable consumers to be their own protectors); a competition policy based regime that would provide after-the-fact oversight of non-discriminatory conduct (evaluating whether a legitimate business reason existed for it); and a requirement that the best efforts Internet continue to evolve (in bandwidth) so those unable to pay for prioritization are still able to develop and deploy new services. For the details on our proposal, see here.

Comments are predictably bone-headed, of course, except for mine.

This letter from 100+ tech companies to the Senate on the neut regs is great.

First, the Internet has benefited greatly from the relative absence of regulatory restrictions, which has allowed content businesses to grow and prosper. Congress has wisely refrained from burdening this still-evolving medium with regulations, except in those cases where the need for policy action has been clear, and it can be narrowly tailored. This is not the time to deviate from this posture.

Second, it is too soon to enact network neutrality legislation. The problem that the proponents of network neutrality seek to address has not manifested itself in a way that enables us to understand it clearly. Legislation aimed at correcting a nebulous concern may have severe unintended consequences and hobble the rapidly developing new technologies and business models of the Internet. Third, enacting network neutrality “placeholderlaws” could have the unintended effect of dissuading companies from investing in broadband networks.

If our industry leaders are heard, the crazy regulatory regime will not be enacted. Said leaders consist of Cisco, 3M, Nortel, Motorola, and a hundred others.

This is heartwarming and inspirational:

Television viewers will ultimately wind up with one-stop shopping for video, phone and Internet services, under legislation approved by the state Senate that would open the video-services market to telephone companies.

No matter what happens with Stevens and Barton this year, those of is in California are cool.

I heard a debate of this bill on the radio with my old nemesis Lenny Goldberg arguing against it, pretty pathetically in fact. Lenny was reduced to arguing that cell phones aren’t real phones and similar rot. The man is shameless, but hardworking. No matter what your cause, he’ll shill for you: public employee unions, higher taxes, alimony, child support extraction, re-regulation of utilities, whatever, he’s there as long as you can pay the freight.

Here it comes, a broadband technology that can move bits at a gigabit per second. And it’s all done without any wires:

On a bus fitted out specially for the occasion in Jeju this week, Samsung demonstrated a new version of 4G technology transferring data at speeds of 100Mbit/s.

The bus was moving at 60kmph – which you rarely see in real life – but it was proof enough, the Korean giant boasted, as the demonstration included handover between cells. 1Gbit/s is 50 times faster than the current Mobile WiMAX specification, 802.16e. At walking pace, the demonstration moved bits at 1GB/s.

What was that about a cable/telco duopoly? Sorry, but technology marches on and today’s reality is tomorrow’s history.

Technological Musings says:

British Telecom makes sure that no other VoIP service can work on their network by blocking commonly used ports.

Is this true? I know that Korea Telecom does this, but I’d never heard this before. The blog contains a number of errors, such as this one: “There are a lot of ISPs in the US, who make sure that Vonage doesnt work on their network,” so I don’t want to take this unsourced claim at face value.

We pointed out the other day that net neutrality fiends want public ownership of the Internet access network. Here’s a report from Broadband News on what that looks like:

Culver City, California was the first Los Angeles municipality to offer the public a free all-access Wi-Fi network. They’re also the first to ban all porn and p2p from that network, according to an announcement made yesterday. The city says they’ve added Audible Magic’s CopySense Network Appliance to filter illegal and “problematic content” from their network.

Be careful what you ask for, kids, you just might get it.

H/T Techdirt.

The current Wikipedia entry for Net Neutrality has a pretty good intro, but you never know how long these things will last:

Columbia University law professor Tim Wu popularized the phrase network neutrality as a term designating a network that does not favor one application (for example the World Wide Web) over another (such as online gaming or Voice over IP).[1] Wu claims that the Internet is not neutral “as among all applications” as it favors file transfer over real-time communication.

The concept of network neutrality has since taken the form of various regulations proposed to govern Internet communications, including commercial interconnection agreements between Internet Service Providers (ISPs), carriers, on-line service providers, and broadband users, usually on the basis of principles of public service obligations associated with special access to public rights of way. In this sense, network neutrality means a state in which Internet providers provide interconnection services on a uniform basis, or “without discrimination”, although there is considerable disagreement about how this principle applies to applications with different needs.

Network neutrality is sometimes used as a technical term, although it has no history in the design documents (RFCs) describing the Internet protocols. In this usage, it is claimed to represent a property of protocol layering in which higher-layer protocols may not communicate service requirements to lower-layer protocols, a highly idiosyncratic interpretation of protocol engineering. (In conventional network engineering practice, each protocol in a layered system exposes Service Access Points to higher layers that can be used to request a level of service appropriate to the needs of higher-layer protocols.

Network neutrality also designates a contemporary controversy local to the United States regarding the role that government should take relative to Internet access providers providing multiple levels of service for different fees. This controversy, which emerged following regulatory developments in the United States, is extremely complex, as it mixes technical, economic, ideological and legal arguments. In essence, network neutrality regulations proposed by Senators Snowe and Dorgan and Representative Markey bar ISPs from offering Quality of Service enhancements for a fee.

This framing is showing up in some of the recent essays on the subject, such as this one from Tech News and this one by Susan Davis for Hosting News.

High-traffic articles in Wikipedia tend to degrade over time and require reformulation as entropy increases.

UPDATE: That didn’t take long. A Google sympathizer going by the name “Wolfkeeper” tried to erase the summary and replace it with a pithy personal opinion. See the history page.