For those looking for a primer on the net neutrality issue, Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia, has a FAQ that explains. You should also check out his book, which is a pretty good read.
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A pro-net neutrlaity group in Canada is rallying at Paliment Hill on May 27 to push lawmakers to move on the issue. Those looking to join can sign up here. The issue seems to be gaining more traction every week. The CRTC has recieved hundreds of letters in support of net neutrality which you can read on their website.
We all know the internet is not a big dump truck, thanks to Sen. Ted Stevens. But what if it were an car. Well, Rocketboom considers the possibility to explain why net neutrality is so important.
There’s another net neutrality bill on the floor of the US House. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) proposed the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act (H.R. 5994) this week, a bill that would make net neutrality “an antitrust matter.”
The problem with the bill is that it doesn’t outright ban discrimination against certain types of data. In fact, it would allow an ISP to restrict, say, BitTorrent traffic. However, under the proposed law, if an ISP decides to restrict BitTorrent it has to restrict all torrent traffic equally. This is hardly a step in the right direction since it gives legal protection to ISPs to tell people how they can and cannot access data.
One of the frequent arguments the ISPs make for reshaping net traffic is that file sharing usage has skyrocketed, placing a huge demand on the the ISP’s ability to provide bandwidth to all. So how much bandwidth does file sharing eat up? Wired did an analysis of what turns out to be a very difficult question to answer.
One interesting thing they found is that peer-to-peer traffic may have decreased thanks to free, http-based services like Hulu and YouTube. This undermines their central idea that the people eating up the bandwidth are all thieves engaging in illegal activity.
Over at Public Knowledge, they have a petition going to extend neutrality to text messages. A while back, Verizon blocked NARAL, an abortion rights group, from sending text messages on its network. After a public outcry, Verizon relented.
The issue got people thinking, what right does a company have to block political text messages it does not agree with? Consumers need to be assured that the communication tools they rely on and pay for will actually be good for communicating with people. And not just the people the companies controlling things approve of. Honestly, this is common sense, folks.
PBS’s Moyers on America has some really good resources on net neutrality, breaking down the issue. Also check out the video. It may be the only time you see a representative of the Christian Coalition and MoveOn.org sit side-by-side in total agreement.
To check out the Christian Coalition’s stance on net neutrality, head here. And to see what MoveOn.org has to say on the topic, check out this link.
From some of the people who brought you Don’t Stay a Virgin, here’s a video explaining what Virgin Media is doing in Europe to reshape the internet there.
A few weeks ago, Virgin Media’s boss call net neutrality “a load of bollocks.” The company is actively working to force content providers to cough up extra money if they want their content to move quickly on Virgin’s network, a stance that no US or Canadian company has embraced publicly yet. However, if ISPs on this side of the pond see that Virgin can get away with it, it is only a matter of time before they start trying the same thing here.
Over at Save the Internet a contributor explains the evolution of AT&T’s net neutrality position. In the old days, before the internet and cheap long distance calls, a few phone companies controlled all the nations telephone wires. They could charge you $2 a minute to call your sister in Bakersfield, Calif., or your Aunt in Maine. But then Congress said, no more. From now on phone companies will have to share their wires with third party long distance carriers. Companies like AT&T seized on this, dramatically driving down the cost of long distance by using Bell’s network to offer cheap long distance calls.
Now, however, after their merger with Bell, AT&T owns the wires that bring you telephone service and the internet and suddenly they are not so keen about having to share them with other service providers. They don’t want to be told what to do with them.
The House of Representatives is holding a hearing on Tuesday to consider a net neutrality bill titled the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (HR 5353).
Up in Canada, Industry critic Scott Brison has begun to hold meetings on net neutrality “in order to deepen his understanding of the issue,” according to the CBC. Here’s hoping these meetings will finally get the Liberal Party to take a stance on an issue that has long needed addressing in Canada.