council of elderly females

they charge an extra $10/mo if you want their internet service without cable

regional monopolies / duopolies on susancrawford

and the most expensive cell phone service. and the most expensive drugs probably.


Internet Provider As Gatekeeper: FCC Mulls The Limits

Mon. Jul. 7, 2008
by David Hatch

When Verizon Wireless drew embarrassing headlines and recriminations in September 2007 for blocking text messages from the pro-abortion rights group NARAL, Verizon’s reversal on the matter was swift and clear.

Company officials quickly clarified that they don’t condone barring access to such organizations, and vowed that the incident would never be repeated. The mobile carrier even sent a letter to House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell reaffirming its position.

But Verizon has taken a different stance toward Rebtel, a Stockholm-based telecom start-up that’s as rebellious against conventional industry practices as its name implies. Rebtel is part of a growing crop of companies that enable customers to make low-cost -- and even free international mobile calls -- by circumventing the networks of incumbent providers, which stand to lose millions if the trend catches on.

Verizon Wireless has responded by denying the Swedish company access to codes that allow it to communicate with prospective customers via text messaging -- opening yet another front in the ongoing policy battle over the level of control that dominant carriers should exert over their networks.

The dispute underscores the challenges that the FCC’s five commissioners – three Republicans and two Democrats – will face this summer and fall as they deliberate on four petitions requesting tougher rules to prevent high-speed Internet services from acting as content gatekeepers.

A Line Blurred By Technology

As the agency seeks to more clearly define the boundary between acceptable network management and anti-competitive behavior, the line is constantly being blurred by new technologies and innovations that are often unforeseen and not easily categorized.

Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson characterized the dispute with Rebtel to be an “access to advertising” matter involving his company’s wireless network -- but not a “network neutrality” issue, since the Internet is not affected.

“The question is whether we enable a service, not whether we block one,” he said, choosing his words carefully at a time when “blocking” carries negative connotations in policy circles.

Responded Marvin Ammori, general counsel for the advocacy group Free Press: “If you made this argument in the Internet context, people would understand it to be a net neutrality violation.” Free Press is part of a coalition that raised concerns about Rebtel’s treatment in a Dec. 2007 petition urging the FCC to declare that telecom carriers cannot restrict text messaging based on an entity’s views or competitive status.

Advocacy Groups Take On Comcast

The main course on the FCC’s neutrality plate involves a complaint filed by Free Press and another advocacy group, Public Knowledge, alleging that Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, blocked customers from uploading content to BitTorrent, a file-sharing site featuring movies, music, television shows and video games. The FCC is expected to rule on the petition this summer.

Comcast has taken several steps in recent months aimed at tamping down criticism and averting a potentially harsh FCC reaction. These include an alliance with onetime nemesis BitTorrent on optimizing the delivery of broadband content; collaboration with Pando Networks, a file-sharing software company, on an Internet traffic bill of rights; and market tests of a new system to be implemented in late 2008 that manages online content flow without targeting specific applications.

Blair Levin, managing director at the investment firm Stifel Nicolaus, expects the FCC to declare that Comcast erred in blocking BitTorrent and that the firm should have been more transparent about its policies -- but to stop short of imposing fines.

Network neutrality proponents have urged the FCC to send a stronger message by slapping Comcast with penalties. “If it’s an enforcement issue, of course you can have fines,” said Art Brodsky, spokesman for Public Knowledge.

But Comcast officials argue that such a step would be unfair because the agency previously said its guidelines were voluntary and non-binding.

“A commission decision to impose forfeitures in this case would constitute impermissible retroactive rulemaking,” the company argued in a February filing with the agency. Levin and others predicted that Comcast would sue if required to pay.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin “has been on record on multiple occasions saying there’s nothing in the FCC’s rule book that forces carriers to abide by net neutrality,” noted an industry source, who suggested it would be difficult for Martin to reverse course.

One of those times was August 2005, as the FCC adopted four guiding principles governing net neutrality.

“While policy statements do not establish rules nor are they enforceable documents, today’s statement does reflect core beliefs that each member of this commission holds,” the chairman said in an accompanying release.

More Petitions Pending

In another petition, a coalition of consumer groups and academics asked the agency to declare that the practice of degrading so-called peer-to-peer traffic on file-sharing sites violates FCC guidelines. One such site, Vuze, separately has urged the commission to issue rules addressing “reasonable network management” by broadband providers.

One option for the FCC is to tweak its net neutrality principles by transforming them into official rules, leaving no question marks about their enforceability. Another is to adopt a fifth guideline barring non-discriminatory behavior by broadband companies.

Both approaches, however, would be controversial and certain to spark fierce opposition among cable and telecom providers of high-speed Internet services.

Levin expects the FCC to dodge what he considers the thorniest issue in the debate: whether broadband companies can establish Internet toll lanes featuring premium content with faster download speeds. “I don’t think we’ll see anything that goes to that question, and that’s – at the end of the day – the big divide,” he said.

It was uncertain whether these petitions also might be addressed this summer, but sources agreed that the text messaging item is on the slowest track, with action expected in the fall.

Congress Steps Up Oversight

With legislation mandating “neutral” Internet networks stalled in Congress, the FCC is now the premier battleground over the Internet’s future, a reality not lost on House Democrats who have exerted stringent oversight of the agency.

Martin has responded with a series of FCC field hearings on Internet-related issues in or near the districts of three Democrats – the chairman, vice chairman and a veteran member of the House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee. The latest such session is scheduled for July 21 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

The stakes are made higher by the upcoming presidential election and the potential for the FCC to make decisions over the next few months that could shape the regulatory landscape going forward.

Telecom analysts said they will be watching closely to gauge whether the commission quells the firestorm surrounding net neutrality or sets the stage for more substantive action in the next Congress -- particularly if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a strong proponent of tough safeguards, wins the White House.

by David Hatch

(i'm using RELAKKS VPN to encrypt my stuff and route it through Sweeden, although the service is flaky and for my waffles I have set up VPN's on local servers that I have worked for in the past) -- a net neutrality bill would stop buckeye from inspecting it's traffic --

What's John McCain's Technology Policy?
Surprise—he doesn't have one. And how does that compare to Barack Obama?

Jonathan Stein
July 07, 2008 Political observers have made much of John McCain's admission that he cannot use a computer without assistance. In a campaign where McCain's opponent is 25 years younger than him, the factoid is potent ammunition for those who argue McCain is out of touch and too old for the presidency. But not knowing your way around a MacBook doesn't mean you can't be president. And McCain's personal Ludditism isn't a deal breaker for tech leaders. "I don't give a damn if McCain ever turns on a computer or not," Michael Arrington, coeditor of the blog TechCrunch wrote in January. "I just want a president who has the right top-down polices to support the information economy."

And where is McCain on tech policy? Not so shockingly, the computer-free senator's campaign is not as plugged in as his rival's. In fact, his campaign website fails to address America's lagging performance on broadband access or affordability, the technological capabilities of the federal bureaucracy, or the Internet's ability to increase government transparency. "There are red flags," says Brian Reich, author of the book Media Rules!: Mastering Today's Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience and the former editor of Campaign Web Review, a blog that tracked the use of the Internet by candidates, campaigns, and activists.

Barack Obama has embraced the Internet, with his thunderous online fundraising and sophisticated MyBO website. (Plus, he's comfortable talking about what's on his iPod.) Unsurprisingly, high-tech leaders hail his comprehensive tech policies.

Last fall, Obama went to Google headquarters to unveil his proposals related to information technology. He covered the waterfront: broadband access, federal funding for the sciences, using the Internet as a tool to increase government accountability, and more. He promised to appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer, a high-level staffer who will make sure that every federal agency has "best-in-class technologies" and uses best practices.

On his campaign website, Obama provides plenty of data on his information-technology stances:

* He supports net neutrality, a pet issue of the netroots. Net neutrality would prohibit network providers from making websites load faster if their owners pay higher fees. In Obama's America, accessing www.nbc.com will take no more or less time than logging on to www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com.
* An Obama administration would seek to provide all Americans access to broadband Internet, the same way they have access to phones.
* Obama says he would make technology literacy a priority for public schools.
* His administration would aim to use technology—specifically, a nationwide switch to electronic medical records—to make health care more affordable.
* Obama has proposed a "Clean Technologies Deployment Venture Capital Fund," funded by $10 billion annually, that would make sure new renewable energy ideas make it to market.
* He supports increasing federal funding for research in the sciences, and would emphasize math and science at K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels.

Obama also calls for using technology to increase the transparency and effectiveness of the federal government. He has called for creating a single government website to track grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contracts. He'd like to see the business of federal agencies conducted over live feeds that can be watched by anyone with an Internet connection. He calls for the federal government to "employ all the technological tools available to allow citizens not just to observe, but also to participate" in these meetings. And there's more: Cabinet officials hosting national town halls on the Internet; permitting members of the public to post comments on pending bills on the White House website; federal agencies employing blogs, wikis, and social networking tools. He'd like to see the US government as connected—and interconnected—with itself and the citizenry as technologically feasible.

The plan has won over techies. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, a demigod of the tech community, endorsed the Democrat, saying, "Obama has committed himself to a technology policy for government that could radically change how government works." Eric Schmidt, the chairman and CEO of Google, has said, "Senator Obama's plan would help make sure that the Internet remains a free and open platform, and that America maintains an atmosphere of high-tech growth and innovation."

John McCain, as of yet, has few such fans in the tech sector. His campaign website does not have a section about technology. Sprinkled throughout the site are a handful of references to tech issues. He promises to keep the Internet free of taxes, so "this engine of economic growth and prosperity" will not be threatened. He advocates the "rapid deployment of 21st century information systems and technology" that would allow "doctors to practice across state lines." He would set up a $300 million prize for the developer of a "battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars."

Several passages mentioning technology (and using plenty of capitalization) are obtuse:

* "John McCain Will Streamline The Process For Deploying New Technologies And Requiring More Accountability From Government Programs To Meet Commercialization Goals And Deadlines."
* "John McCain Will Ensure Rapid Technology Introduction, Quickly Shifting Research From The Laboratory To The Marketplace."

But McCain's site is most elaborate when it refers to the danger the Internet poses to America's children, noting that McCain "has been a leader in pushing legislation through Congress that requires all schools and libraries receiving federal subsidies for Internet connectivity to utilize technology to restrict access to sexually explicit material by children using such computers." It also reports that "John McCain has taken a hard line against pedophiles that would use the Internet to prey upon children by proposing the first-of-its-kind national online registry for persons who have been convicted of sex crimes against children."

Though McCain echoes Obama's call for greater government transparency, his website says little about how technology and the Internet can further that cause. There is no mention of increasing access to broadband. When asked about this in a ZDNet News questionnaire, McCain adopted a classically conservative approach, saying government policies should "promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher-quality services for consumers."

His website also lacks a statement on net neutrality. When prompted, though, he has seemed to come out against it, saying, "When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment," suggesting a philosophical opposition to neutrality. He has also made a dismissive reference to net neutrality as an attempt to "micromanage American business and innovation."

The McCain campaign did not return an emailed request for comment.

Reich, the former editor of Campaign Web Review, isn't willing to dismiss McCain's thin tech stance out of hand. "Most policy development is done by advisers and staff, so just because he doesn't have a technology policy that is clearly articulated doesn't mean I'm going to give up on the prospect of John McCain being a supporter of future innovation," he says. "But he does have various gaps to fill in."

McCain's problem is that Obama has raised the bar. "All the people I know in the technology space are backing Barack Obama and not John McCain," says Reich. That provides McCain with little incentive to do better. "John McCain probably has thoughts and feelings on technology," Reich adds. "But he doesn't see it as an electoral priority to talk about the role technology is going to play in our society going forward, because he's not going to raise any money from Silicon Valley liberals. I think it's both a policy deficiency in his platform and a political deficiency in his strategy."

Michael Cornfield, author of Politics Moves Online: Campaigning and the Internet and a founder of George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet, describes McCain's approach to technology as "tangential." In a charitable interpretation of McCain's lack of an information technology platform, Cornfield points out that it mirrors the "classic Republican approach to the economy: laissez-faire, except where family values come into play. McCain doesn't post any plans for technological development because the best plan from this perspective is, 'Stay out of R&D's way.'"

There is, of course, a less kind alternative. Andrew Rasiej, the founder of the blog techPresident and the Personal Democracy Forum, says, "McCain's interest in tech policy is about as robust as the Horse Traders Association's interest was in steam engines."

Art by flickr user p373 used under a Creative Commons license.

Jonathan Stein is a reporter in the Mother Jones Washington, DC, bureau.

"Do I need to again cite Andy Lippman’s observation that networking is something we do and not a service we have to buy. The question is not how do ISPs recover their costs -- the question is why we keep insisting on funding our infrastructure by charging for services instead of recognizing that the infrastructure is not a profit center. It’s a means by which we create value everywhere else in society. If you run the infrastructure for a profit all you do is assure scarcity. Creating scarcity is an amazing feat considering the abundance available at essentially no cost compared to the value."

http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-and-mpaa-fund-anti-piracy-politicians/

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/torrentfreak2/127341.html

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/Deep-packet-inspection-meets-net-neutrality.ars

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/exaflood-not-happening.ars

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060308-6339.html