net neutrality

There's something seriously wrong about this.

Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part.

[Update: Comcast admits to paying people to stack the room in their favor. Read the report.]

They arrived en masse some 90 minutes before the hearing began and occupied almost every available seat, upon which many promptly fell asleep (picture above).
MarkeyComcast’s sleeper cell

One told us that he was “just getting paid to hold someone’s seat.”

>> Listen to the audio

He added that he had no idea what the meeting was about.

If he was holding someone else’s seat, he never gave it up.

Many of this early crowd had mysteriously matching yellow highlighters stuck in their lapels.

[Cross-posted from BlogHer]

I am thankful for so many things. It's so easy to take them for granted, especially these days when it can seem like there's so much to fear, so much that needs fixing, so much tragedy in the world. And most of my day is spent focusing on what's next to be done, what problem needs to be solved, what challenge I want to undertake. So, at the risk of sounding self-indulgent, here I remind myself of the good things for which I can be thankful.

I am thankful to be alive and in reasonably good health. I am thankful for my family. I am thankful for my friends.

I am thankful to be living in a country where we can still enjoy the freedoms we have. I am thankful for the education I received. I am thankful for my upbringing. I am thankful that we haven't destroyed the world yet. I am thankful that most of us want to make the world a better place. I am thankful to be living in a time when we all have so much potential to effect so much change for the better.

And, being a geek, I am thankful for computers for they are changing everything. I am thankful for the internet and how it is helping us all connect in ways that were impossible before. I am thankful for net neutrality, such as it is these days.

I am thankful to be alive and involved in such an incredibly interesting field of interactive design and development, with so many untested frontiers, so few written rules, so much potential to change so many things for the better. I am thankful that I can make a living as a geek. I'm thankful for being able to do the work I do. I am thankful for the really great people I work with.

I am thankful for open source. I'm thankful that I've been able to make a living working in open source. I am thankful for the good fortune of having found Drupal. I am thankful for the amazing Drupal community. I am thankful that, years ago, Dries Buytaert saw fit to open source Drupal.

I am thankful for the hope -- the hope -- that we might be able to enjoy the benefits of open source voting.

I am thankful for One Laptop per Child and other initiatives like it.

I am thankful for astonishing medical advances we're seeing these days.

I am thankful for not living under the Communist boot. (Ahem.)

I am thankful for bloggers who make me laugh or cry out in rage or both.

I am thankful for coffee and tea and bagels, and wine and cheese and avacados. I am thankful for sushi. I am thankful for hot water from the tap. I am thankful for my kitty, who comforts me when I'm over-stressed.

I am thankful to be able to write this here.

I am thankful for how truly lucky I've been. Luck is a lot of it. I feel blessed. I am thankful for all these things, and so many more, that help make being alive now a pretty great thing.

Thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Department of Justice has weighed in against Net Neutrality:

The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its filing.

Such a result could diminish or delay network expansion and improvement, it added.

Are these the same network providers who already were paid huge government stipends and tax breaks to expand and improve broadband internet?

The agency said providing different levels of service is common, efficient and could satisfy consumers. As an example, it cited that the U.S. Postal Service charges customers different guarantees and speeds for package delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight delivery.

You gotta love that. Really, the USPS as a success story? Tell that to all the dead trees that are mailed every day straight through your mailbox into the garbage can (or, hopefully, recycling bin).

"Whether or not the same type of differentiated products and services will develop on the Internet should be determined by market forces, not regulatory intervention," the agency said in its filing.

This is a disingenuous argument, as people already are paying varying rates for varying levels of service. If you want a fast connection, you pay more. If you have a website that has a lot of media files to serve, you pay more.

What the DOJ seems to be arguing is -- to use their analogy -- much like having the USPS tell you that you cannot get mail from Chicago, but you can get similar mail from another sender in Atlanta. The telecoms who were paid by the taxpayer to build the backbone and make it stronger and faster now want to control the content on that backbone. This does not serve competition. In fact, undermining net neutrality would have the effect of undermining the free market. Not when individual access to information is choked off and controlled by middleman companies who are playing for the big contracts.

I'm very disturbed by this development, but I have to confess I'm not that surprised. We live in a political and business climate that is suspicious of individual expression and freedom of speech -- or at least places very little value on it.

It has taken me a few days to recover from the intense energy and excitement of attending, participating in and speaking at the OSCMS 2007 (and sundry adjunct events of equal intensity and delight), and so I've been publicly quiet so far about the obscene and possibly illegal cyberbullying that has happened in the past several days regarding one of my favorite bloggers, Kathy Sierra.

If you've somehow had your feedreader in the sand this past week, here's a brief snippet of what Kathy wrote about it on Monday:

We all have trolls--but until four weeks ago, none of mine had threatened death. (The law is clear--to encourage or suggest someone's death is just as illegal as claiming you intend to do it yourself).

At about the same time, a group of bloggers including Listics' Frank Paynter, prominent marketing blogger Jeneane Sessum, and Raving Lunacy Allen Herrel (aka Head Lemur) began participating on a (recently pulled) blog called meankids.org. At first, it was the usual stuff--lots of slamming of people like Tara Hunt, Hugh MacLeod, Maryam Scoble, and myself. Nothing new. No big deal. Nothing they hadn't done on their own blogs many times before.

But when it was my turn, somebody crossed a line. They posted a photo of a noose next to my head, and one of their members (posting as "Joey") commented "the only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her neck size."

The horror gets worse. For more background on this, I refer you to Kathy's own post on the thing, and these various excellent posts on BlogHer here, here, here, here, here and here.

On a couple of email lists, I've expressed the feeling that to respond to trolls is to feed them -- to give them the validation they so crave. They're online terrorists, in effect, who behave the way they do to get attention, and in general I believe it's counterproductive to elevate their status to some sort of Public Enemy, for that gives them exactly what they want, and has the unfortunate effect of elevating them to your status. My sense was that with regard the Mean Kids garbage, the best response was to respond by ignoring these depraved individuals, encouraging the prompt deletion of such content, and moving on.

Mine was not the popular sentiment. In fact, there has been an incredible groundswell of push-back against the Mean Kids trolls, to the point of declaring today, March 30th, as Stop Cyberbullying Day. For better or worse, and I prefer to think it's for the better for now, what has happened to Kathy, and untold other women and men who've been subjected to this kind of online abuse since USENET days, cyberbullying has become the topic of the day.

It's an essentially important subject in this "web 2.0" world of online communities. How do we "police" (for the lack of a better word) such patently offensive and possibly illegal behavior while at the same time while keeping the internet free?

In my session on Building Online Communities, held Thursday last week at OSCMS 2007 (video), we arrived at the subject of dealing with trolls about 2/3 of the way through, and stayed there long past our hour we were allocated. And it became clear that there was no single way. Some folks had more permissive attitudes -- let the trolls vent and be ignored -- while others said it's best to be more proactive, and suspend or ban trolls to protect the community in question.

One thing was agreed: It's essential for the community to have clear standards of behavior, standards which are publicly posted and there for anyone and everyone to refer to in case of any questionable behavior.

What's clear about the meankids.org case is that we're not just dealing with any ordinary trolling, but rather posts that seem to threaten violence, posts that strike me has hate speech. I don't see how we, as a civil worldwide web society, can accept such behavior, and we're long overdue for a public discussion on what really is "acceptable" online.

Personally I'm against any new laws, as threatening violence already is a felony in most jurisdictions, and I hate to see efforts to make the web less like a jungle turn it into a zoo. But I hope the special day today helps start a serious discussion of online community standards.

And maybe, just maybe, some of the misogynist twits out there will realize that their self-indulgent kicks result in real harm of others.

[More via Technorati.]

[via Cory Doctorow who nods to Lawrence Lessig.]

Still, the standard for net neutrality videos is set by the Ask a Ninja video embedded in this post.

[Flash video would not cache. Follow link below.]

More info here [Warning: This is one of those all-Flash "web 1.0-style" websites that starts talking at you by default as soon as the page loads, so you might want to turn down your speakers. Enjoy the cheese.]

Via Jeffrey Zeldman.

["Net Neutrality San Jose", posted by jimiinc]

The news is not reassuring for anyone who counts on unrestricted and uncensored access to the internet.

Despite the flurry of phone calls, emails, videos and pleas from a wide base of passionate pro-Net Neutrality constituents, representing hundreds of thousands of people from all political persuasions and hundreds of consumer groups, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives crushed an amendment to safeguard an equal opportunity Internet.

After just 20 minutes of debate on the House floor, Rep. Ed Markey's proposed amendment to the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE), which subsequently passed without Net Neutrality provisions, was rejected by a vote of 269-152. While the voting appears to be largely partisan, with only 11 Republicans voting in favor of the amendment and a surprising 58 Democrats voting against, Net Neutrality, in its short time in the public eye, is an apolitical issue.

I think what jmiller means is that it has been a non-partisan issue, at least when it comes to the grassroots support of "net neutrality." He doesn't mince words:

But Congressional leadership was largely unconvinced by an idea embraced by a diverse list of organizations that would typically be swinging the political pendulum at each others' faces. Think MoveOn and the Christian Coalition. Think the American Civil Liberties Union and the Gun Owners of America. Think Parents Television Council and the National Coalition Against Censorship. Add their support to the very founders of the medium as Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee stand beside unlikely cohorts Moby and Alyssa Milano.

Even with a constituency like that, whose sudden unity should sound with exponential resonance within the ears of those who represent them, the US House of Representatives ignored it by siding with telecommunications and cable duopolistic entities. The ears of a dinosaur are difficult to reach, but his carrion is easy enough to see - it leaves droplets of green behind it.

Of course, the uproar over "net neutrality" has been largely restricted to the realm of lobbyists and (/vs.?) bloggers.

The mainstream media, especially television and talk radio, which will discuss something as benign as Brangelina's baby or something as polarizing as immigration reform, have been conspicuously silent on the matter, which may account for why the public seems largely unaware of it, as well as the apparent deafness of our representatives.

--Which only goes to show the importance of the internet.

Pamela Heywood on 7c marketing has a news rundown on the "net neutrality" nixing.

jules at tech whisperer looks at the technological trends, including something called IP Multimedia Subsystems ("IMS"), and worries:

IMS isn't about convered services. IMS is about POLICY CONTROL. All those neat little features are just disguising the real impetus behind the technology. Once the network knows who you are and what your bits are doing, they can enforce user policies on what your bits are and what you can do with those bits. That is not cool. Full stop.

I used to be a die hard anti-net-neutrality chick. Now, not so much. I have taken the green pill, and we HAVE to have net neutrality. IMS is going to put entirely too much power into the network. Yikes.

Meanwhile, on AfterSlash, pyza considers the implications:

If there is enough bandwidth then everyone’s traffic will get through regardless of Net Neutrality. If there is congestion though, without Net Neutrality only traffic from sites that paid the extortion fee will get through.

Does this not lead to a situation where it is ideal for an ISP to maintain a certain level of congestion at all times in order to ensure that there exists a reason to pay the extortion fee?

One the other hand with Net Neutrality in place it’s in the ISP’s best interest to maintain an adequate level of bandwidth to make sure everyone’s traffic gets through.

zittiblog is more blunt:

I know most of my fam reading this are proud republicans, which I once was, but it is stuff like this that is totally setting me off!! I still consider myself generally conservative for the record, but anyone who thinks it’s cool that political parties vote right down party lines on issues like this is crazy. It is total crap that anyone looking out for consumers and the good of the internet would vote against net neutrality (see the article). Thank you republicans for paving the way away from a free internet owned by the people to a corporate dominated, paid internet.

You can basically bet that any large website that offers free content will require a paid subscription since they are going to have pay telecoms large amounts for the use of bandwidth, THE SAME INTERNET BANDWIDTH YOU AND I ARE ALREADY PAYING FOR EVERY MONTH WITH YOUR INTERNET SERVICE BILL!!

Kim Krause Berg calls this The Day the Wild, Carefree and Sexy Internet Died:

The gist of the new age of the Internet is that people will no longer have as many choices or even a say about how we get the Internet, or what we get from our ISP's. Everything has been threatened by greed, and we knew that would happen. Eventually.

Now it's here. Some people say that now, what I'm able to get from the Internet may be up to how much I can afford to pay for, or who my Internet provider is and what sites and services they intend on letting me have access to.

I wonder how long this control will last.

Website Services Magazine quotes a "net neutrality" opponent:

Peter Suderman, technology analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute had this to say, "A market in which Internet service providers aren’t allowed to prioritize the content traveling over their networks is one with less innovation and fewer benefits for everyone involved."

That's exactly the point, though -- Why should ISPs decide what you can and cannot see?

Roger Strukhoff asks, Is God on the Side of Net Neutrality?

Now the Christian Coalition of America, headed by well-known religious commentator and political candidate Pat Robertson, has jumped into the pool. A letter from the organization, addressed to U.S. House of Representatives Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) requests that he support "Net Neutrality legislation (that wlll) prevent the large phone and cable companies from discriminating against web sites." The letter cites pending legislation that addresses both sides of the issue, and states that the Coalition is "committed to working on behalf of our supporters to ensure that the Internet remains the free marketplace of ideas, products and services that It is today."

At issue specifically is a bill known as HR 5252, in which the Christian Coalition claims "there is nothing to stop the cable and phone companies from not allowing consumers to have access to speech that they do not support. One of our concerns is this: What if a cable company with a pro-choice Board of Directors decides that it doesn't like a pro-life organization using its high-speed network to encourage pro-life activities? Under the new rules, broadband service providers could block, impair, or otherwise limit access to a pro-life website, harming their ability to communicate."

This almost sounds like the work of Harcourt Fenton Mudd.

[Cross-posted on BlogHer.]

It's not very often that you see MoveOn.org, the Christian Coalition, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Gun Owners of America, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Library Association, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist on the same side of the political fences. (Where's the ninja? Read on....)

Today was a small victory:

The broad, nonpartisan movement for Internet freedom notched a major victory today, when a bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee passed the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006″ — a bill that offers meaningful protections for Network Neutrality, “the First Amendment of the Internet.”

20 members of the Commitee (6 Republicans and 14 Democrats) voted for the bipartisan Bill, and only 13 against.

Today’s vote would have been unthinkable three weeks ago.

There's been some skepticism expressed here about "net neutrality." I hate to disagree with PHAT Mommy, but I don't really see how, by passing "net neutrality,"

Congress could actually hinder the development of new and exciting Internet technologies that we are not even aware of yet. Not to mention pave the way for {shudder} taxation.

As someone who works in what I, at least, consider very exciting new internet technologies, I consider the traditional neutrality of the internet as nothing but a help ... and certainly don't see how "net neutrality" is a gateway to taxation. Congress has refrained from taxing the neutral internet so far. If Congress wants to tax, it will tax. I see that as a separate issue.

The biggest opposition to "net neutrality" is organized under Hands Off the Internet, whose flagship members include the big telcos and cellular companies who want to be able to sell exclusive rights to your eyeballs. I'm much to decided on this issue to present their arguments, so I leave it to them to explain.

For what I think is the most amusing explanation of what "net neutrality" is about, Ask a Ninja!....

[Found via Table of Malcontents.]

For a more scholarly take, on MIT's website, timble offers some historical perspective:

Twenty-seven years ago, the inventors of the Internet[1] designed an architecture[2] which was simple and general. Any computer could send a packet to any other computer. The network did not look inside packets. It is the cleanness of that design, and the strict independence of the layers, which allowed the Internet to grow and be useful. It allowed the hardware and transmission technology supporting the Internet to evolve through a thousandfold increase in speed, yet still run the same applications. It allowed new Internet applications to be introduced and to evolve independently.

When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone's permission. [3]. The new application rolled out over the existing Internet without modifying it. I tried then, and many people still work very hard still, to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform. It must not discriminate against particular hardware, software, underlying network, language, culture, disability, or against particular types of data.

Anyone can build a new application on the Web, without asking me, or Vint Cerf, or their ISP, or their cable company, or their operating system provider, or their government, or their hardware vendor.

It is of the utmost importance that, if I connect to the Internet, and you connect to the Internet, that we can then run any Internet application we want, without discrimination as to who we are or what we are doing. We pay for connection to the Net as though it were a cloud which magically delivers our packets. We may pay for a higher or a lower quality of service. We may pay for a service which has the characteristics of being good for video, or quality audio. But we each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me.

...

1. Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn and colleagues
2. TCP and IP
3. I did have to ask for port 80 for HTTP

In another Save the Internet blog post today, tkarr writes:

Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott [no relation] testified before the Senate to day on behalf of SavetheInternet.com coalition members Free Press, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America. This from his statement:

Civic engagement on network neutrality represents the most diverse public response to a communications policy issues in recent history. A grassroots effort led by the “Save the Internet” Coalition (www.savetheinternet.com) includes nearly 700 organizations, from small community groups to large national organizations. Banded together in this coalition are the Gun Owners of America, Feminist Majority, Parents Television Council, American Library Association, Consumers Union, and Educause. Network Neutrality is also supported by AARP, the ACLU, the Christian Coalition and the National Religious Broadcasters.

More than 700,000 individuals have signed a petition to Congress demanding Internet freedom through meaningful Network Neutrality. Thousands of bloggers of all political stripes and interests, from Daily Kos and Instapundit to video gamers, musicians and educators, have championed the issue and encouraged public involvement in the campaign. The world’s most renowned experts on Internet technology, law, and policy have written prominently on the issue. This massive civic coalition stands next to a similarly large and unprecedented coalition in the commercial sector, joining together the Internet content and technology industries. Google, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft, eBay, are joined by hundreds of smaller online retailers and technology firms. The campaign to preserve Network Neutrality protections is perhaps the most diverse set of public and private interests backing any single issue in Washington today.

Scott urged the Senators on the Commerce Committee to support Sens. Snowe and Dorgan’s “Internet Freedom Preservation Act.” Scott concluded:

The choice before the Committee is clear: allow consumers through an unfettered online marketplace to decide which businesses succeed or fail; or allow the dominant telephone and cable duopoly to use its marketplace power to exclude the entrepreneurs who offer consumers affordable and innovative communications products and services. We urge you to adopt the former direction. The future of the Internet, the health of the communications marketplace and the well-being of consumers depends on it.

Read Scott’s full statement here.

--

Also posted on BlogHer.