“What we have to do is make certain the net does not go the way of broadcast television and commercial radio where only a few corporate voices are heard.”Among other candidates, Barack Obama already answered the question. Hm, looks like Huckabee has, too; more on that in another post.John Edwards: Net Neutrality, answering www.10questions.com, YouTube, Dec 2007
-jsq
Here’s an ISP that centers around net neutrality:
Within and subject to the constraints of the law and our Terms of Service, we guarantee:That third point is a bit difficult to implement, given that Copowi provides its DSL as a reseller for AT&T, Quest, and Verizon, but at least their heart’s in the right place: they’re for equal access, innovation, participation, and lower cost.
- We will not block, degrade or modify data users send or receive over the Internet.
- We will not discriminate between network traffic on the basis of who it came from or where it is going to for some commercial advantage.
- Where possible we will only deal with wholesale service providers who support keeping the Internet open and fair, in the same way.
—www.copowi.com, accessed 11 Dec 2007
Now if they can also deliver reliable and inexpensive service with good marketing….
-jsq
Promising unlimited access, not delivering, and refusing to admit it
is managing a network for the good of the many above the activities of the few?
Pete Abel thinks so:
Earlier this month, Comcast — the nation’s largest cable broadband company — was caught doing what any good Internet Service Provider (ISP) should do, i.e., manage its network to ensure that the online activities of the few don’t interfere with the online activities of the many,The problem with Comcast stifling BitTorrent by faking reset packets from a participant is not that Comcast is trying to manage its network: it’s that Comcast used a technique that if it came from anyone other than an ISP would be considered malicious denial of service, that Comcast still hasn’t admitted doing it, and that Comcast bypassed numerous other methods of legitimate network management, such as those used by PlusNet. Comcast could even use the Australian model and sell access plans that state usage limits and throttle or charge or both for usage above those limits. What Comcast is doing it seems to me is much closer to the false advertising of unlimited access that got Verizon slapped down for wrongful account termination.Fair vs. Foul in Net Neutrality Debate, By Pete Abel, The Moderate Voice, 24 November 2007
The biggest problem with what Comcast (and Cox, and AT&T, and Verizon) are doing is that their typical customer has at most one or two choices, which in practice means that if your local cable company and your local telephone company choose to stifle, throttle, block, or terminate, you have no recourse, because there’s nowhere to go. Competition would fix that.
Abel tries to back up his peculiar interpretation of network management with revisionist history: Continue reading
The same person to bust Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent traffic was called upon to test Cox’s system, and sure enough, he concluded with “conclusive proof” that eDonkey was getting the same treatment.First Comcast, Now Cox Busted ‘Managing’ Traffic by Jason Lee Miller, Webpronews.com, Mon, 11/19/2007 – 10:51.
We asked regular user Robb Topolski, who was the first to discover Comcast’s traffic shaping practices, to take a look at Cox connectivity a little more closely.The main difference between Comcast and Cox is that Cox says it’s doing it, for the good of the user, of course. Still, which users exactly asked for their ISP to fake TCP packets? And how long before Cox trips up some business users, Like Comcast stifling Lotus Notes?According to Topolski, Cox is in fact using traffic shaping to degrade p2p traffic. In analyzing a user log, he has concluded that Cox is using traffic shaping hardware to send forged TCP/IP packets with the RST (reset) flag set — with the goal of disrupting eDonkey traffic. He’s been unable to tell precisely what hardware Cox is using, but he notes that the technique being used is very similar to Comcast’s treatment of BitTorrent.
— Cox Also Disrupting P2P Traffic, Using the same forged packet method as Comcast, by Karl, BroadbandReports.com, 03:35PM Thursday Nov 15 2007
-jsq
Defining net neutrality is simple:
If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.Implementing it is difficult, whether technically (stifling, throttling, blocking, proxying, etc.), legally (spam, phishing, other abuse, fraud, theft, etc.). And politically perhaps even harder. Witness the network neutrality legislation proposed by Senators Dorgan and Snowe:— When I invented the Web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. Tim Berners-Lee
`SEC. 12. INTERNET NEUTRALITY .OK, that’s basically TBL’s definition. But what about devices (think Carterfone)? Continue reading`(a) Duty of Broadband Service Providers- With respect to any broadband service offered to the public, each broadband service provider shall–
`(1) not block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade the ability of any person to use a broadband service to access, use, send, post, receive, or offer any lawful content, application, or service made available via the Internet;’
— Internet Freedom Preservation Act (Introduced in Senate), S 215 IS, 110th CONGRESS, 1st Session, S. 215, To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to ensure net neutrality . Mr. DORGAN (for himself, Ms. SNOWE, Mr. KERRY, Mrs. BOXER, Mr. HARKIN, Mr. LEAHY, Mrs. CLINTON, Mr. OBAMA, and Mr. WYDEN) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, January 9, 2007
Free as in free speech, free association, and free trade:
Milton Mueller drafts an Internet governance paper using net neutrality
as its central principle.
… as a normative guide to policy, network neutrality transcends domestic politics. The network neutrality debate addresses the right of Internet users to access content, services and applications on the Internet without interference from network operators or overbearing governments. It also encompasses the right of network operators to be reasonably free of liability for transmitting content and applications deemed illegal or undesirable by third parties. Those aspects of net neutrality are relevant in a growing number of countries and situations, as both public and private actors attempt to subject the Internet to more control. Because Internet connectivity does not conform to national borders, net neutrality is really a globally applicable principle that can guide Internet governance.Basically, instead of getting mired in discussions of bandwidth or technical methods of stifling, throttling, or censorship, let’s get back to deriving net neutrality from general political and economic principles, which turns out to make net neutrality a convenient lens by which to view those principles and to apply them to the Internet. Continue reading— Net Neutrality as Global Principle for Internet Governance, Milton Mueller, Internet Governance Forum, 5 November, 2007
Why would an administration that currently has access to all data
going over the Internet want more competition in the ISP market?
Mark Klein going to Washington to blow the whistle some more on AT&T on giving NSA unfettered access to AT&T’s network:
“If they’ve done something massively illegal and unconstitutional — well, they should suffer the consequences,” Klein said. “It’s not my place to feel bad for them. They made their bed, they have to lie in it. The ones who did [anything wrong], you can be sure, are high up in the company. Not the average Joes, who I enjoyed working with.”While the Washington Post, for example, does get at one main point:— A Story of Surveillance, Former Technician ‘Turning In’ AT&T Over NSA Program, By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, November 7, 2007; Page D01
Contrary to the government’s depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists, Klein said, much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic. Klein said he believes that the NSA was analyzing the records for usage patterns as well as for content.It neglects to mention an even bigger point: Continue reading
Lauren Weinstein fronts an open source net neutrality detection group:
Joining PFIR Co-Founders Peter G. Neumann and I in this announcement are Keith Dawson (Slashdot.org), David J. Farber (Carnegie Mellon University), Bob Frankston, Phil Karn (Qualcomm), David P. Reed, Paul Saffo, and Bruce Schneier (BT Counterpane).It’s got open membership, a mailing list, and discussion forums. What it doesn’t have is links to and interaction with other groups already working in this area, such as SavetheInternet.com. There are no posts in any of the NNSquad forums yet, although it’s only been a day since he announced, so perhaps that’s not fair. However, there has been some discussion in Dave Farber’s Interesting People list, which is where I saw it.Recent events such as Comcast’s lack of candor regarding their secretive disruption of BitTorrent protocols, and Verizon’s altering of domain name lookup results to favor their own advertising pages, are but tip-of-the-iceberg examples of how easily Internet operations can be altered in ways that may not be immediately obvious, but that still can have dramatic, distorting, and in some cases far-reaching negative consequences for the Internet’s users.
The Network Neutrality Squad (“NNSquad”) is an open-membership, open-source effort, enlisting the Internet’s users to help keep the Internet’s operations fair and unhindered from unreasonable restrictions.
The project’s focus includes detection, analysis, and incident reporting of any anticompetitive, discriminatory, or other restrictive actions on the part of Internet service Providers (ISPs) or affiliated entities, such as the blocking or disruptive manipulation of applications, protocols, transmissions, or bandwidth; or other similar behaviors not specifically requested by their customers.
— “Network Neutrality Squad”: Users Protecting an Open and Fair, Lauren Weinstein, Interesting People List, November 5, 2007 7:49:09 PM EST
I’ve signed up for the NNSquad mailing list. Let’s see what happens.
Back in 2004, Lauren organized a conference to prevent imminent Internet collapse. I guess it succeeded, since the Internet is still here.
One thing NNSquad needs, however, that every other open source project has: a catchy logo. Leave something like that to the users, and you’ll get something like the graphic on this post.
-jsq
Back in June,
John Edwards wrote a letter to the FCC back in June about the 700Mhz auction,
in which he got it about the Internet and participation and opportunity.
Now Barack Obama answers a question from a former AT&T engineer, Joe Niederberger, that made it to the top of a video contest:
Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to re-instate Net Neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint FCC commissioners that support open Internet principles like Net Neutrality?”Part of Obama’s answer:— Net Neutrality becomes issue in presidential race, Extra Technology News, 29 October 2007
Facebook, MySpace and Google might not have been started if you did not have a level playing field for whoever has the best idea. And I want to maintain that basic principle in how the Internet functions. As president I’m going to make sure that [net neutrality] is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward.Here’s the question and answer on video.
-jsq
Let’s study it to death:
The United States is starting to look like a slowpoke on the Internet. Examples abound of countries that have faster and cheaper broadband connections, and more of their population connected to them.On the one hand, this sounds like a popular approach to global warming by its deniers: now let’s ask some scientists to study it. After all, the Okefenokee and surrounds burned more acres than in living memory, western wildfires have increased fourfold since 1970, 30 million people in half a dozen southwest states may run out of water in the next decade or so, and 12 million people in the Atlanta metro area are less than 3 months from having no water. And hundreds of climate scientists have already turned in their verdict. But, hey, now let’s ask some scientists to study it.What’s less clear is how badly the country that gave birth to the Internet is doing, and whether the government needs to step in and do something about it. The Bush administration has tried to foster broadband adoption with a hands-off approach. If that’s seen as a failure by the next administration, the policy may change.
In a move to get a clearer picture of where the U.S. stands, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday approved legislation that would develop an annual inventory of existing broadband services — including the types, advertised speeds and actual number of subscribers — available to households and businesses across the nation.
— U.S. sees some countries overtake it in broadband speeds, but is there a problem? Associated Press, 30 Oct 2007
On the other hand, this is Ed Markey’s committee, and he has seemed serious about doing something, so maybe he’s just cojmpiling a case. Sure, he’s probably reacting to people like this who are taking the same tack as outlined above: Continue reading