Tim Carter, in the comments, reminded me of this:
Hey Jason! Net neutrality vote tomorrow. You've got to post the pros on cons of this issue, and how they affect internet users. http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/should-the-government-regulate-net-neutrality Don't let Beck turd polish this one. A lot of disinformation out there, as always. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091020184214AAPaXAw http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/net-neutrality-announcement/ Gotta keep Comcast and other ISPs from running the show: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/01/fcc-to-investigate-comcast-bittorrent-blocking.ars And Verizon Wireless: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011600995.html
Good info from Tim. And one link I would ad: comments in a letter to the FCC from Vint Cert, one of the original architects of what we know as “the internet” today, via Google’s Public Policy blog.
The issue is nondiscrimination against applications and against consumer choice. That should be clear by the letter from my colleagues, and by others, that the fundamental concern is that the provider of broadband service not be able to take advantage of that to act in an anticompetitive fashion against others that are trying to provide competitive applications using the same broadband facilities.
Savetheinternet.com has more. And The Seattle Times has a great explanation of tomorrow’s vote: It’s about future proofing the internet. Also, two great videos I found a while ago that explain the reasons for supporting a neutral net very simply (and with humor).
The internet should be wide open for everyone. Even the CIA to monitor blogs like KVNU FTP:
“Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.”
“In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.”
From here:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/exclusive-us-spies-buy-stake-in-twitter-blog-monitoring-firm/
Kind of off topic, but privacy is a big issue that Americans need to address before its too late. Some are on top of it, but it affects us all whether we know it or not:
“The FBI and other police agencies may not eavesdrop on conversations inside automobiles equipped with OnStar or similar dashboard computing systems, a federal appeals court ruled.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that the FBI is not legally entitled to remotely activate the system and secretly use it to snoop on passengers, because doing so would render it inoperable during an emergency.”
from here:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-5109435.html