Cit Media

Washington Post: Comcast Defends Role As Internet Traffic Cop. Comcast said yesterday that it purposely slows down some traffic on its network, including some music and movie downloads, an admission that sparked more controversy in the debate over how much control network operators should have over the Internet.

The admission, after lying to the public about the practice, is useful in that it frames a debate we need to have right away. If the phone-cable duopoly can get away with this — deciding what bits get delivered, at what speed and in what order — they will have control of the Internet in ways that will make current “media consolidation” seem tame.

Meanwhile, rather than investing in new infrastructure to make these control-freak practices moot, Comcast is paying shareholders a new dividend and buying back $7 billion of its stock. This speaks volumes about a company that enjoys its oligopolist status and sees no serious need to invest for the future.

Techdirt: AT&T Does Nothing, Convinces Reporter It Has Now ‘Opened’ Its Network. Basically, absolutely nothing happened here except that AT&T’s marketing crew declared that AT&T’s network is now open, and convinced USA Today to report it as if it were a big deal. If there was any change at all within AT&T, it’s that retail store employees are now supposed to admit that you can use other devices on the network, rather than pretending you can’t. Not quite as exciting as “flinging the network open,” though.

True, the technology change here is precisely zero — it was always possible to use any GSM phone on their network. But the fact that AT&T felt a marketing advantage to proclaiming itself “open” is still a bit noteworthy.

Now, we’re still talking about a terrible company in many ways. Still, let’s be glad for this tiny improvement.

Cory Doctorow has a very smart analysis in Information Week about why he doesn’t fear Facebook taking over the world. Quote:

Every “social networking service” has had this problem and every user I’ve spoken to has been frustrated by it. I think that’s why these services are so volatile: why we’re so willing to flee from Friendster and into MySpace’s loving arms; from MySpace to Facebook. It’s socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list — but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system and send out some invites (of course, chances are at least one of those invites will go to someone who’ll groan and wonder why we’re dumb enough to think that we’re pals).

That’s why I don’t worry about Facebook taking over the net. As more users flock to it, the chances that the person who precipitates your exodus will find you increases. Once that happens, poof, away you go — and Facebook joins SixDegrees, Friendster and their pals on the scrapheap of net.history.

The numbers are getting worse and worse, with a very few exceptions: FAS-FAX: Top 25 Daily and Sunday U.S. Newspapers.

(Note: I own a small number of shares of two newspaper companies: New York Times and McClatchy.)

Timothy Carr, in “AT&T Gets Caught in its Own Spin Cycle,” notes the telecom company’s increasingly “slippery response” when confronted with evidence of snipping out political content on its webcast concerts. The company’s sleazy behavior is no surprise, but nonetheless telling in context of its push to decide what bits will reach customers’ computers in what order, if ever.

Dangerous.

Salon’s Farhad Manjoo, asks, “Is network neutrality a fake issue?” No, he says, at least for people in the U.K. who want to watch BBC videos online:

As several British papers reported over the weekend, large ISPs have threatened to shut down people’s access to the BBC’s online videos — unless, of course, the BBC pays the ISPs a fee.

The ISPs advertise unlimited access, and brag about their networks’ ability to serve video. Then, confronted with people who actually believe them, they attempt to renege or, as here, extort the creator of the videos.

Nothing to worry about here, then, is there? You bet there is.

David Weinberger: Delaminate the Bastards!. We should do to the carriers of Internet signals what we did to the carriers of telephone signals. Bust ‘em up so that the companies that connect us to the Internet don’t also sell us services over the Internet. Providing connection and providing content and services can and should be profitable businesses. They just shouldn’t be the same business…just as you wouldn’t want your local school owned by The Acme Textbook Company, or your safety inspectors supplied by The Acme Burglar Alarm Company. It’s just too hard to resist your own brand.

My Berkman Center colleague Jonathan Zittrain has written a piece for Harvard Business Review, “Saving the Internet.” Quote:

The runaway successes of the Internet and PC with the mainstream public have put them in positions of significant stress and danger. Though the Internet’s lack of centralized structure makes it difficult to assess the sturdiness of its foundations, there are strong signals that our network and computers are subject to abuse in ways that have become deeper and more prevalent as their popularity has grown.

It’s a sober look at some serious issues we all should understand. Highly recommended.

The Freedom to Connect conference starts tomorrow, and one of the speakers may sound a bit unlikely. The keynoter will be Jim Douglas, governor of Vermont.

Actually, his presence at the suburban Washington meeting makes a lot of sense. As Tom Evslin (a Vermonter who’s had some influence in this regard) notes on his blog, Vermont is moving toward becoming a true “e-state” in the best sense of the word, and Douglas, a Republican, is leading the charge.

This initiative could set a real precedent, whether by success or failure. Let’s hope it’s not the latter.

Tim Berners-Lee (who basically invented the Web): Neutrality of the Net. To actually design legislation which allows creative interconnections between different service providers, but ensures neutrality of the Net as a whole may be a difficult task. It is a very important one. The US should do it now, and, if it turns out to be the only way, be as draconian as to require financial isolation between IP providers and businesses in other layers.

The Internet is increasingly becoming the dominant medium binding us. The neutral communications medium is essential to our society. It is the basis of a fair competitive market economy. It is the basis of democracy, by which a community should decide what to do. It is the basis of science, by which humankind should decide what is true.

We cannot afford to allow the new robber barons — the cable and phone giants that are bidding to own the broadband marketplace and decide which bits flow in what order and at what speed — to capture that kind of control.

Read Berners-Lee’s posting, and then read the comments. Lots of great discussion.