Net neutrality advocates led by Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) are working overtime to turn net neutrality into an election year issue. Markey, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, plans to introduce legislation later this month and push for hearings in both chambers. Could net neutrality actually make it through Congress this time?
net neutrality
Comcast Sued For Traffic Meddling
By 11.15.07
Ars Technica is reporting that a California resident has sued Comcast for their traffic shaping shenanigans and is seeking class action status. He’s accusing Comcast of “breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and violating the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act.”
Tell The FCC, Congress To Support Net Neutrality
By 11.8.07
Net neutrality advocates are gathering momentum to take Comcast to the woodshed for an old fashioned populist beating. Comcast believes that deliberately destroying connections to the popular communications protocol BitTorrent amounts to “reasonable network management,” which the FCC permits. Advocates figure if they can’t ride the net neutrality pony to Congressional passage now, it will forever lie dormant in the stable munching on BitTorrent packet hay.
Consumer Groups Ask FCC To Ban Comcast From Blocking Any Peer-To-Peer Activity
By 11.2.07
Advocacy groups and legal scholars filed a network neutrality complaint with the FCC today against Comcast, asking the government to issue a temporary injunction against the cable company that forces it to “stop degrading any applications. Upon deciding the merits, the Commission should issue a permanent injunction ending Comcast’s discrimination.” More importantly, the complaint asks the FCC to classify any blocking of peer-to-peer file sharing as a violation of the agency’s Internet Policy Statement, “four principles issued in 2005 that are supposed to ‘guarantee consumers competition among providers and access to all content, applications and services.'”
Damning Proof Comcast Contracted To Sandvine
By 10.27.07
Comcast told its employees to not comment when customers ask about recent reports in an AP article that it contracted BitTorrent sabotaging to a company called Sandvine, or to even discuss that a relationship exists between the two companies. Too bad that Barron’s financial magazine reported back in April that the two are in bed together:
Comcast BitTorrent Meddling Draws The Attention Of Congress
By 10.26.07
Comcast’s meddling with BitTorrent has prompted a member of congress to say something nice about file sharing. Aww!
Biz Columnist Changes His Mind, Now Says "Carriers Need Regulation"
By 10.25.07
You know telecoms are behaving badly when a business columnist who just a year ago argued for a hands-off government approach has reversed his opinion. “I’ve changed my mind,” he writes. “The behavior of the top telecommunications companies, especially Verizon Communications and AT&T, has convinced me that more government involvement is needed to keep communications free of corporate interference.”
UK Broadband Providers Show US What Real "Competition" Looks Like
By 9.8.07
Even our readers can’t agree on whether net neutrality is a good or a bad thing, so we thought we’d stoke the fire with a nice side-by-side comparison of sample broadband options for consumers in two “free markets,” the US and the UK. Art Brodsky of the Huffington Post (oops, we probably already lost half of you) writes that a British man he met while traveling showed him a spreadsheet he’d put together that compared 59 different broadband providers, so he’d know which one to do business with.
Department of Justice Says No To Net Neutrality
By 9.7.07
The U.S. Department of Justice officially spoke out against net neutrality this week, in a filing with the FCC that says such regulations would “prevent, rather than promote, optimal investment and innovation in the Internet, with significant negative effects for the economy and consumers.” The department says the free market has done just fine so far, and that “precluding broadband providers from charging [content providers] directly for faster or more reliable service” could shift the burden of cost directly onto consumers.
Comcast Tries To Sterilize, Decapitate BitTorrent
By 8.25.07
Comcast is reportedly stabbing at the heart of the file transfer protocol BitTorrent by preventing users from seeding torrent files. Seeds are completed BitTorrent downloads shared with other users; without seeders, the BitTorrent protocol does not work, much the way a garden can’t grow without seeds. Comcast’s draconian throttling solution utilizes a program from Sandvine that affects all files distributed through BitTorrent, regardless of whether the shared file is an illegally downloaded movie, or a legal distribution of Linux. From TorrentFreak: The throttling works like this…
AT&T Censors Pearl Jam
By 8.10.07
“[The muting was] a major mistake by a webcast vendor and completely contrary to our policy. We are working closely with the vendor and the band to post the song in its entirety on this site and ensure that this does not happen again.”
Why Net Neutrality Is Good
By 11.16.06
Just because Verizon gave it link love, you didn’t think we would let that post, “Why Net Neutrality Is Bad,” get away with standing there unopposed, now did you? — BEN POPKEN
Why Net Neutrality Is Bad
By 11.14.06
Voluminous pixels are spilt in defense of Net Neutrality, the premise that ISP’s shouldn’t be allowed to throttle, toll-house, or block access to certain sites because the ISP finds it financially beneficial to do so (e.g. Verizon creates its own videosharing site and blocks YouTube).
Verizon Virally Debates Net Neutrality Over Blogosphere
By 9.26.06
The Borderline Blog has a great expose on Verizon’s attempt to virally influence debate about subjects like Net Neutrality through the Channel Changer blog… which (surprise!) has become password protected since the shit hit the fan.
Daily Show Explains Net Neutrality
By 7.21.06
“The point is that with net neutrality all internet packets – whether they come from a big company or a single citizen – are treated in the exact same way.”
Daily Show Ties Ted Stevens’ Tubes
By 7.13.06
Have no fear people, this crazy old politico isn’t in a position where his uninformed opinions might do harm, he’s only a member of the Senate commerce committee currently deciding on Net Neutrality.
The Internet Is Made of Tubes
By 7.6.06
No matter what you think of the Net Neutrality hub-bub — an insidious plot by clueless telecoms petulantly whining because their role on the web has been denigrated to that of mere pipes, or just the free-market at work — I think we can call agree that Senator Ted Stevens’ explanation of how the internet works stops just short of making it analogous to a stopped-up men’s room toilet:
