Network neutrality and attacks on information democracy
Network neutrality bill dies
(Washington Times, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jun. 29–A “network neutrality” amendment to the Senate’s telecommunications reform bill evenly divided the 22 members of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee yesterday, killing the heavily debated measure that needed a majority vote to pass.
FULL
This is not my forte, y’all, but Brian Russell of Audio Activism has convinced me that the whole issue of information democracy on the web is a very serious issue for all of us who have seen the social-change potential in the intelligent application of information technologies.
This announcement today is bad news on this front, and we will need to see this as a serious struggle in the immediate future that will require lots of people understanding more about it. This medium right here has given us the capacity to conduct real journalism AROUND the corporate organs, and real research and scholarship AROUND the academy. The breakdown of these “divisions of intellectual labor” has been a tremendous advance for social movements and a direct incursion into the machinery of power itself, and there is no doubt that the powers-that-be want very much to take all that back. They will not do it all at once, but through incremental, arcanely-articulted, measures that aren’t “sexy” enough to make the headlines.
I am not a techy, far from it. But I hope those who are, and who have kept up with this issue, might use this thread to give us all the language andinformaiton we need to explain this issue, its importance, and how ot organize on it, to other folks who are techno-challenged as me.
Here is a paste-in from Save the Internet:
How does this threat to Internet freedom affect you?
* Google users—Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.
* Innovators with the “next big idea”—Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the “slow lane” with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.
* Ipod listeners—A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that it owned.
* Political groups—Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay “protection money” for their websites and online features to work correctly.
* Nonprofits—A charity’s website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can’t pay dominant Internet providers for access to “the fast lane” of Internet service.
* Online purchasers—Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices—distorting your choice as a consumer.
* Small businesses and tele-commuters—When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won’t be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.
* Parents and retirees—Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.
* Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.
Blocking Innovation
The threat to an open internet isn’t just speculation — we’ve seen what happens when the Internet’s gatekeepers get too much control. These companies, even, have said as much about their plans to discriminate online. According to the Washington Post:
“William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.”
Such corporate control of the Web would reduce your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent ideas that we’ve come to expect online. It would throw the digital revolution into reverse. Internet gatekeepers are already discriminating against Web sites and services they don’t like:
* In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.
* In 2005, Canada’s telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.
* Shaw, a major Canadian cable, internet, and telephone service company, intentionally downgrades the “quality and reliability” of competing Internet-phone services that their customers might choose — driving customers to their own phone services not through better services, but by rigging the marketplace.
* In April, Time Warner’s AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com — an advocacy campaign opposing the company’s pay-to-send e-mail scheme.
This is just the beginning. Cable and telco giants want to eliminate the Internet’s open road in favor of a tollway that protects their status quo while stifling new ideas and innovation. If they get their way, they’ll shut down the free flow of information and dictate how you use the Internet.
****
This must be made into an issue for the 2006 elections. There are united fronts to be built with people we wouldn’t normally meet.
skol:
fascism++!
30 June 2006, 8:45 amA bit of an aside, but not much: this article shows how how can detect if your packet data has been compromised using tracert (only if packets are being routed through SF by AT&T, as far as I can tell). That article bullet points some stuff from this .pdf (class action suit doc) that shows what AT&T is doing in their switching rooms, although it’s censored. Fascinating. Who needs ECHELON when you have AT&T?
lapetrov:
Bill Maher did a funny piece on this in his last episode of the season about a month ago. But, there is nothing funny at all about it and so any laughter is VERY NERVOUS.
Access to information is crucial, it’s fundamental. And must be kept FREE (not as in no cost, as in “liberté”).
The question that keeps knawing at my mind is: can an internet user in China find his/her way around the digital wall there? In my heart I want to believe yes.
And, what to do to *make* it an issue? Bring it up how, to whom, where?
30 June 2006, 1:15 pmDeAnander:
fascism++, or Feudalism v2.0?
either way — yet another way to make the US an international laughingstock and to reduce even further its commercial and intellectual capacity vis-a-vis competitors in Euroland and Asia.
one way out of the iron control of the telcos is some combination of the uucp and bittorrent models — totally decentralised p2p with random routing over ephemeral links and bandwidth allocation based on contribution. but the bandwidth is likely to be very poor compared to that offered by the guys with big pipes in the ground.
another possibility is an underground RR of overlapping wifi hotspots, as in this proposal from the ever-kewl town of portland
http://www.personaltelco.net/static/index.html
and
http://www.socalfreenet.org
(currently down due to isp imposing “bandwidth limit” — yeah right).
what the telecomms assault on net freedom comes down to is this: how can they destroy the person2person and informational freedom of network comms without affecting the huge profit sector of online (Big) business? in other words, our political masters are scared to death of the organising and infosharing potential of the net — and how fast and cheaply it works to debunk their endless costly propaganda blackops. they want it shut down, except for “approved” activities like licensed news channels and consuming/marketing. they can’t shut it down entirely due to the large profit sectors involved in ecommerce. so their minions who run the telecomms are trying to come up with a way to make it work well for approved activities and very poorly for samisdat activities.
that’s how I read these particular tea leaves, anyway.
30 June 2006, 5:46 pmRobin Hering:
I want to find an underground something, to get off the grid. There are some techies setting up solar powered community cafes on hills, by villages, all around Africa, using dishes. That might have some possibilities, along with the overlapping local wifi nets.
Some of this technology has got to go, too. Conflicts/wars arise around locations with the raw materials in our computers. So, sharing devices is more ethical.
I keep wondering why They would want to lose visibility to what’s said. I mean, all the NSA, etc., surveillance must have provided some type of outrage meter.
Not to mention all the implications of energy/powerdown and global warming. The old fashioned way: Pony Express bicycle mail carriers?
I think not having cable TV and highspeed internet has served me well over the past few years. I had to go to a neighbors to find out what Fox News was…
1 July 2006, 1:41 amRobin Hering:
p.s. De, what’s samidat? Also, thanks for the quick answer for Julian re: Jensen’s Language.
1 July 2006, 1:50 amSkol:
Even this site can be essentially converted to plain text + a few server-side goodies. Even yahoo can.
The ISPs are bound to make mistakes, and the hacking community (and the cracking community, and certainly those lines will be crossed) are sure to take advantage of them. ISPs have to impose certain rules on themselves to avoid a huge routing clusterfuck in the first place. As for p2p, its protocol can be pretty dynamic, I’d think, and hard to track. And yahoo receiving more bandwidth than google doesn’t mean anything if the client bandwidth is restricted too; p2p seems kind of safe. the internet is essentially decentralized and the ISPs want to think it isn’t. They can only do so much. Can a user in China get across the “digital wall”? Of course, and in so many ways. The digital wall has thousands of holes.
But IANAE, except for two years in high school cisco courses. Which I, uhh, failed; I had a very impressive attendance record (yay for excuses).
1 July 2006, 5:27 amDeAnander:
Wikipedia:
Worth a read, particularly in light of recent heavyhandedness by the MPAA and RIAA in their attempts to Enclose entertainment-info.
“Those who received a copy would be expected to make more copies” is exactly how bittorrent works, of course…
2 July 2006, 4:15 amDeAnander:
Sorry, that was supposed to say “Samisdat, according to Wikipedia:” at the top and was an answer for Robin.
2 July 2006, 4:15 amb. medusa:
the talking points from save-the-internet.com should be printed up on 3×5 flyers (the size folx don’t throw away) & handed out @ events, farmer’s markets, beauty/barbershops, left @ friendly indy shops, or posted on bulletin boards (the thumbtack variety). this issue is more than just the internet. according to an article i read a few weeks ago on blackcommentator.com, phone cards & go phones (pay as you go mobile phones) use internet bandwidth. basically the same as using cheap voip (voice over ip) & instant messaging (all of which are omitted from the above talking points). folx on the other side of the digital divide may not care about the internet, but they certainly care about their phone cards & go phones, as well as other methods of inexpensively communicating with family & friends.
2 July 2006, 6:53 pmRedDan:
And keep in mind that the FiberOptic cables being claimed as “our pipes” by the Telecoms were paid for by gov’t subsidies, gov’t grants, and gov’t relaxation of rates regulations in return for promises by the Telecoms that they would wire the entire nation at a minimum of 40 Mbps.
They were given money, cheap loans, competitive advantages, and allowed to raise rates and write off losses in return for a promised delivery of enhanced service and faster communication speeds.
Those pipes are US taxpayer property, NOT telecom property.
4 July 2006, 12:40 amRedDan:
Oh, and Hi Stan!!!
4 July 2006, 12:41 amDan:
Lots of pipe overbuilding was done (by companies like Global Crossing) before the dot.com bubble burst. who owns the fiber now? Right, the telcos. They picked it up for pennies on the dollar. Oh, and THEY didn’t get the tax breaks (it was the companies who went out of business)… so they don’t feel they owe the public anything. Who says neo-liberalism is a policy for the third world only? Notice how the baby-bells are all remerging into a big Bell as time goes by?
The next thing after WIFI will be WIMAX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax). Base stations will have a range of about 50 kilometers. The first generation will be expensive, but the second generation, from companies like the guys who make your wifi hub, will be cheap. Intel, of course, wants to put it on a chip. This means it will be IN everything you buy (even Macs - sorry motorola!), which sort of undermines the Telcos’ ability to control it. Ultimately, wherever electrons or radio waves flow, data can flow. Doesn’t mean we’ll have the same free ride we’ve had on the US Government’s IP infrastructure…
One last thing. Don’t feel too sorry for Google. They’re playing the game, and they have the resources. Why doesn’t Google Earth fly me to Tibet? Cuz they want access to the Chinese market.
6 July 2006, 1:00 amBrian R.:
@lapetrov
I believe web proxy servers could help people in China get thru the great firewall of China. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server Examples of similar applications are Tor the Onion router. http://tor.eff.org/
Basically this masks your IP by getting information out on the internet on your behalf (proxy) and send it to you. Problem is it slows down the process.
There’s also darknets. They are virtual private networks that can allow small numbers of people share files. Not just music but everything else available on the internet. This can be done in a secure and anonymous way. One example of software that is similar to this concept is Freenet. http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
I think we all need to be building WLANs. (Wireless Local Area Networks) These networks can be connected to the whole internet but also have parts that are only for the local physical community. This is not to exclude people but to protect information that is HYPER local. Also proxy servers that have LARGE copies of sections of the Internet can be put on these LANs. This will speed up access to Information but can also prevent it from being blocked by evil corporations.
I’ve been formulating a plan B for the Information apocalypse that will happen if corporations impede and/or completely block parts of the internet. We can route around their barriers.
My ideas revolve around peer to peer sharing via personal devices we carry with us as we travel around physically. Imagine your small unobtrusive electronic device has a wireless connection to other devices and knows its latitude and longitude. Or a device can tell if another one is near it in a different way. (YES a scary big brother app could be built with this tech. If you can hide your physical body you can change the data that describes where you or your device are.)
Another devices notices your device is nearby. It says hello and offers to share with you information it obtained from another device and/or another part of the world and Internet. Because there are so many people on the planet word of mouth is still one of the best forms of communication and advertising. This system I’m describing is just a amplification of this natural mode of info delivery. It could multiply info transport a billion fold.
At first I thought this system might be a lot slower than e-mail is now. Then I realized that this asynchronous transport could be even faster. Possibly much more precise and redundant too. Certainly more diverse. The hardware and software to do this already exists. It isn’t a matter of making it but taking existing resources and discovering new methods. I think it can be made affordable for everyone, too. Then we need to show our friends how to do it. Sadly this idea may not catch on on a large scale until broadband internet access is taken away from us. Hyper global connectivity as we know it now is very addictive.
Loving this conversation. Happy to help answer questions all I can.
6 July 2006, 10:05 pm