What if they’re fighting the last war? Jeff Pulver points out:
Back on August 29th I posted a list of “TV Shows Only Available on the Net.” The following day, Network2 was born. Today 232 shows can be found in the Network2 guide.Exploding TV on the Net: From 80 to 230 shows in 3 Months on Network2, Jeff Pulver, The Jeff Pulver Blog, December 13, 2006
Seems like it would be better risk management for those telcos, not to mention for the public, to be dealing with what people actually want.
-jsq
Psiphon works through social networks. A net user in an uncensored country can download the program to their computer, which transforms it into an access point.They can then give contacts in censored countries a unique web address, login and password, which enables the restricted users to freely browse the web through an encrypted connection to the proxy server.
Web censorship ‘bypass’ unveiled BBC, 27 Nov 2006
So even though Ahmedinejad or Castro may jail bloggers, people in Iran or Cuba could still see foreign bloggers. Continue reading
To some extent, I had given up on America and the prospect that it would develop a regulatory framework that might enable Internet entrepreneurs. In my mind, other countries have been supplanting the US as the havens for Internet innovation. The midterm election, however, has reminded me that, in a democracy, there is always room for a rethink, a do-over, an opportunity for a dramatic policy shift when the national consciousness wakes up and recognizes that its policies might be leading the nation down a backward-heading path.What could this shift be? Continue readingShift Happened: How Might a Democrat-Controlled Congress Affect Media, Internet, Communications and Entertainment? Jeff Pulver, Jeff Pulver Blog, November 09, 2006
Here’s
a picture and a podcast from the
EFF-Austin net neutrality forum of the other day.
Lots of interesting back-and-forth in there, among the panelists
and the audience.
Jonl quotes my blurb about the FCC’s principles emphasizing consumers, i.e., consumers of broadcast media, while Internet growth is fueled by groups of participants; I previously posted a bit more about that.
-jsq
PS: Yes, despite how it looks in the picture, I am wearing a shirt.
In case it’s not obvious why net neutrality is important, a society isn’t just the sum of its individuals; it requires communications, as well, and communications for all purposes are increasingly are carried over the Internet.
Around Austin, there have recently been net neutrality panels or discussions organized by IEEE and by EFF-Austin. EFF-Austin had a discussion, which we’re following up with a panel:
Continue reading…in time all global telecommunications will become Internet Protocol (IP) based.I don’t know what’s more remarkable: that someone clearly says what is the case,or that a newspaper got it right. Continue reading…
In his opinion, this industry has spent too much time and energy on creating rules and regulations to govern the use of VoIP as opposed to embracing the technology and developing it and making it available for wider use in the community. Pulver made the point however, that despite these objections, the use of VoIP continued to grow at a rapid pace, and the threat of this wide spread use resulted in telephone companies in the United States dropping to their overseas rates, particularly to their major trading partners.
All telephone communications will become IP based Jeff Pulver, Jeff Pulver Blog, October 23, 2006, quoted from Jeff Pulver: All telephone communications will become IP based By Randy Howard, Barbados Advocate, Mon Oct 23 2006
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s internet service providers (ISPs) have started reducing the speed of Internet access to homes and cafes based on new government-imposed limits, a move critics said appeared to be part of a clampdown on the media.If the Internet provides a way to get around the traditional, and already controled, media, find a way to repress the Internet. Slowing it down is easier than censoring it. Continue readingAn official said last week that ISPs were now “forbidden” by the Telecommunications Ministry from providing Internet connections faster than 128 kilobytes per second (KBps), the official IRNA news agency reported. He did not give a reason.
Internet technicians say speeds of 256 KBps, 512 KBps or higher are increasingly common internationally. Iranian surfers will now find it much slower to download music or anything else from the Web. Businesses have not been affected by the move.
Iran cuts Internet speeds to homes and cafes Reuters, Wednesday October 18, 03:41 PM
The big file is, well, really big. But, it’s a 1280×640 24fps h.264 file. Maybe if the US infrastructure ever develops to the standards of a modern country, we’d be able to download this easily. 🙂The smiley face may hide that that’s exactly why we need net neutrality.
-jsq
Chris Anderson posts an old Calvin and Hobbes comic in which Bill Watterston anticipated the Long Tail. Google the grocery, eh?
This makes me wonder what would happen if the big telco ISPs that are spending so much effort gaming the legal system to prevent net neutrality instead spent the same effort doing local market aggregators and filters they could sell as value added services. After all, they own the last mile. Who better to do that?
-jsq
The FCC’s definition of net neutrality is phrased in terms of consumers. How does this fit with how people actually use the Internet?
Let’s look at BitTorrent as a social network:
The parent sites are key to the process, where you can go and get information about what has been made available. The other portion of the socialability indexing is that the support sites, where you can get tools, support, help, and FAQ’s on the process is the second level or secondary index of data.
The socialability of Bit Torrent Networks rmorril (Senior Security Engineer), ITtoolbox Blogs, Posted 9/24/2006
Already it’s a bit confusing who’s the producer and who’s the consumer.
Continue reading