Category Archives: Government

Communications Monopoly

Adm. Elizabeth A. Hight Here’s what happens when you have a communications monopoly:
The Defense Department isn’t trying to “muzzle” troops by banning YouTube and MySpace on their networks, a top military information technology officer tells DANGER ROOM. Rear Admiral Elizabeth Hight, Deputy Commander of Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, says that the decision to block access to social networking, video-sharing, and other “recreational” sites is purely at attempt to “preserve military bandwidth for operational missions.”

Computer_center_400x Not that the 11 blocked sites are clogging networks all that much today, she adds. But YouTube, MySpace, and the like “could present a potential problem,” at some point in the future. So the military wanted to “get ahead of the problem before it became a problem.”

— Military Defends MySpace Ban (Updated Yet Again), Noah Schachtman, DangerRoom, 18 May 2007

How much bandwidth is it using? We don’t know; the Admiral won’t say.

Now if the U.S. military’s real reason is to keep the troops from posting information that could get some of them killed, I could understand that. But if so, why are they trotting out this lame excuse? And for that matter, why is the U.S. commander in Iraq saying military blogs are providing good accurate descriptions of the situation on the ground? Continue reading →

FCC and Wireless Broadband

As we’ve seen, the FCC is trying to decide what to do with some 700Mhz commercial spectrum. Now we hear that:
The upcoming auction of wireless spectrum in the 700MHz band presents an opportunity for wireless technology to be a third broadband pipe beyond just DSL and cable Internet, Martin said.

&mdash FCC chairman champions wireless broadband access, Upcoming spectrum auction viewed as opportunity, By Paul Krill, InfoWorld, May 03, 2007

FCC Chair Kevin Martin said this at Microsoft offices in Mountain View, CA. One has to wonder why he’s announcing a purported competition measure at the offices of the world’s most famous monopoly. But nevermind that. Continue reading →

Home for Cryptome

I wasn’t going to comment on the disconnection of Cryptome by Verio, because I’m not sure I’m in favor of everything Cryptome does. However, the timing of the shutdown just after Cryptome published information on Coast Guard not meeting TEMPEST security standards got my attention. But what really prompted me was this text of a letter from Justin Aldridge of Verio to John Young of Cryptome:
Please refer to our Acceptable Use Policy. Unfortunately, at the technical support level, we cannot provide you with any further information about the termination.

— Cryptome Shutdown by Verio, Cryptome, May 2007

Ok, surely that’s just tech support refering to legal. Continue reading →

Industrial Internet Policy

Susan Crawford posted a laundry list of countries that have an industrial policy (she prefers economic policy) involving the Internet:
  • South Korea: “the government said where they wanted to go, invested in research and development, [and invested money and made micro loans], and they’re now seeing 70% of adults (not just kids) involved in online social networks. Very high speeds, very low cost.”
  • Hong Kong: “also not embarrassed to talk about economic policy and telecom.”
  • India: its “government ‘proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009.’”
  • Japan: Have I mentioned lately that almost every Japanese can get broadband, and usually it’s ten times faster than what we can get stateside?
Now the point here isn’t whether the specific country government policies are good, bad, etc. Continue reading →

Telcos vs. Founding ISPs

Hands Off the Internet conflates more things that just aren’t the same. First, they quote a recent story by a college physics sophomore:
Proponents of net neutrality would like you to think that large service providers had nothing to do with inventing our modern Internet, but this notion isn’t true. Even though explorations into the Internet began at major academic universities for the purpose of research, it is highly unlikely that private companies would never have entered into the market of Internet services. Companies eventually moved into the Internet communications market, albeit backed by government protectionism through such policies as the Communications Act of 1934.

— Net neutrality not for ‘the little guy’, The only ones who would feel the burden of varying price increases would be large content providers, such as Google, Yahoo and Amazon. By Christopher S. Gordon, Daily Texan, 13 April 2007

Nope, what we want you to know is that the big telcos that are the primary Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the U.S. these days had nothing to do with inventing our modern Internet. They also had very little to do with commercializing it. The first two geographically distributed commercial ISPs were UUNET and PSINet, back in 1990. AT&T, MCI, Sprint, and all the other telcos horned in on the party years later. Continue reading →

Net Neutral Musicians are Pirates?

I wondered how long it would take for somebody to try this:
“To what extent are supporters of net neutrality also tacitly supporting piracy?”

— Get Real – The Net Is Not Neutral, By Sonia Arrison, TechNewsWorld, 04/13/07 4:00 AM PT

Speak up for open connectivity and free speech, as Rock the Net is doing, and you’re a supporter of piracy? Continue reading →

Competition Would be Better

Some quotes from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) from 7 Nov 2006:
“Sometimes I think Net Neutrality, who knows about it?,” Waxman said at that meeting. “What’s going on now in the communications area is we are moving to a duoplet. We’ll have the telephone companies. And we’ll have the cable companies. They both have wires that go into the home. You’ll have a choice of one or the other for your telephone services, cable services, and Internet services. Those are going to be provided by one or the other.”

— Silenced: Progressive Sites Censored, by Kriss Perras Running Waters, Malibu Arts Reviews, 8 April 2007

So there’s at least one elected representative who sees a duopoly. Continue reading →

Grad Student Explains Net Neutrality to Elected Official

Rep. Lamar Smith (D-Austin) recently (9 Apr) said he didn’t understand net neutrality “I think it would be foolhardy to cement some fixed notion of “neutrality” – whatever that means – into the law.” So an Austinite explains it to him:
Net neutrality is the underlying principle of a free and open Internet that all users can access the content or run the applications and devices of their choice. These Internet Service Provider companies, from whom you took at least $10,000 each from Verizon and AT&T just last year, will take away our ability to access information by charging higher prices and essentially squeezing out the “little guy” content providers who can’t afford to pay. These companies had nothing to do with inventing the Internet, the World Wide Web or Web browsers. While their infrastructure costs money, they were heavily subsidized for this with our tax dollars, and they already charge for both bandwidth and access. Don’t be fooled into thinking that these companies would not continue to provide these services and innovate if they did not have this additional revenue stream, which will only serve to enrich their shockingly high level of profits.

&mdash A lesson for Rep. Smith on net, Angie Yowell, Public affairs graduate student, 9 April 2007, The Firing Line, The Daily Texan, 11 April 2007

The rest of her post is also well worth reading. Continue reading →

Hostile Corporate Takeover of the Internet

Creative Voices sums up recent FTC and FCC actions (or lack thereof) on net neutrality:
With momentum in Congress building to pass Net Neutrality legislation, the FCC and even the Federal Trade Commission quickly swung into action. The FTC, which has been hostile to Net Neutrality since it emerged as a serious concern, held what it described as a “public workshop on ‘Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy.'” In giving heavily “favored carriage” to panelists hostile to NN, the FTC unintentionally but compellingly demonstrated why NN is so necessary; to preserve the ability of citizens to access all viewpoints over the Internet, including those of independent and diverse voices, and then make their own choices, rather than have the government or the cable and telco companies choose for them.

The FCC also mobilized, launching an official “inquiry” into Net Neutrality. An FCC “inquiry” is often a no-deadline, never-ending process that results in no action. As Brooks Boliek noted in The Hollywood Reporter, critics contend that the FCC “majority on the five-member panel is stalling because they don’t want to do anything to prevent such big network companies as Comcast or Verizon from turning the Internet into their own personal amusement park” That’s spot on; this is little more than an attempt to give NN opponents an argument to fend off calls for meaningful Congressional action to preserve the freedom of consumers to choose what websites they can visit on the Internet.

— Net Neutrality Update, Creative Voices’ 1Q 2007 Newsletter, April 10, 2007

And as we’ve already seen, net neutrality opponents are already using the FCC inquiry for that purpose, even though the inquiry isn’t complete. Continue reading →