ISPs have set themselves up to the be the Robber Barons of the 21st Century.

Comcast has levied a threat that they will throttle Netflix streaming unless a toll is paid.

While this may be psychosomatic, some Comcast customers have already appeared on Twitter wondering why their Netflix has stopped working.

This is why people have been clamoring for Net Neutrality.

This is why the internet needs to be regulated like a utility. No one company should  hold hostage content and access you have already paid for in an effort to bloat their own profits.

It’s been a crazy, busy summer and as you can see, I finally gave in and let Twitter do some blog posts for me.

So, what stories have caught my attention in the last few weeks?

DMCA revision
Back at the turn of the century the House and Senate passed the Digital Millennium Copyrights Act. It’s a real piece of work, and shows the ignorance our electorate has when it comes to the digital medium. First we have to back up and understand why it was passed.

Our copyright system in the US is messed-up. It’s antiquated, it’s abused, and it’s overburdened. Tossing the internet and software explosion on top of it further broke it. The DMCA was meant as a stop-gap patch, heavily supported and written by lobbyists (think the RIAA, MPAA), in an attempt to assert some kind of control of this crazy internet world.

What it did was seriously encumber Fair Use rights, and resulted in all sorts of shenanigans such asby being used to take down any sort of website content a person or corporation found objectionable. It become a ten-ton hammer in a world where a screwdriver was needed.

Thankfully, a few weeks ago large parts of the DMCA was rolled back in federal court. Fair Use once again reigns and you can do things like make back-ups of your own DVDs, root your own devices for complete control (othweise known as jailbreaking), and generally muck-about in devices and content YOU purchased. Yes, a few short weeks ago all that was illegal as defined and enforced by the DMCA. Scary, eh?

H. Res. 1593 – Bringing facts back to education
A bill was recently introduced into Congress in an effort to establish a baseline for education standards as developed by board of education committees. It’s sad this bill even has to exist, but given the actions of an especially ignorant group of Texas representatives, here we are.

HR 1593 says:

“Supporting academically based social studies curriculum standards for the Nation’s elementary and secondary education public school textbooks.”

OK. And its methods would be:

“Whereas the National Council for the Social Studies believes that State social studies standards should be developed by consulting scholars for their expertise, soliciting input from community members and educators, and having master social studies educators write standards to ensure that they are effective and grade appropriate.”

Sounds sane right? Contrast this to the current state of the Texas Board of Education who were re-writing what would be used in school textbooks (which by benefit of its size, what Texas wants everybody else gets). The board contained no experts, no scholars, and admittedly ignored advice and research on the topics they struck from the textbooks. And let us not forget the board’s leader, Don McLeroy’s now famous rant that, “We need to stand up to these experts…”. Just what we needed as a nation more dumbing-down of education.

I think HR 1593 is a powder keg. Should it pass it will blow open discussion of curriculum standards in education. The discussions of what passes as facts and standards alone will be epic, especially in the science arena. For now, though, it’s a sleeping giant. Let’s hope it’s not killed in committee.

And of course  Prop 8 was back in the news.

The whole affair reminds me of these Madison and Jefferson quotes.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority. – James Madison

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society. Thomas Jefferson

Founding Fathers rolling in their graves? Not quite.

Net Neutrality

Then there’s the Google-Verizon proposal – I’ll cover this colossal blunder in a separate post.

There’s been so much crap to write about lately. Whether it’s embarrassing apologies from representatives to BP (say what?) and his immediate backpedaling, companies coming together to form their own oversight committee on net neutrality in the hopes that the FCC won’t take it on themselves to screw things up, or the US being subjected to the worst ref in history and having a goal revoked – at least we have this – Portal 2 and a beautiful trailer.

Something exciting to look forward to amidst all the shit.

The FCC, having lost to Comcast in court, seemed on the verge of giving up. However, a new proposal is on the table of how net neutrality could be leveraged and put in place. This has struck anew the fires of pure inane comments, ridiculous talking points and pure and utter bollocks retching from the mouths of individuals who think a TCP/IP stack is a librul way to organize your books.

There are few things more frustrating than ignorant individuals spouting off talking points – grossly wrong talking points on a topic that is rooted strongly in fact and logic. Where there might be leeway in debating how governments might most efficiently run and serve its people, there’s no wiggle room in debating how the internet works unless you’re actually debating the engineering standards.

That’s clearly not what is going on in newspapers, blogs, and talk shows around the country. People aren’t debating what internet protocols might create the most efficient and robust delivery systems. They are vomiting forth scripted talking points like:

So much for laying down billions to build a network so freeloaders can abuse it. 80% of the network is used by 20% of the content…is that fair?

Why should comcast or anyoe else have to subsidize freeloaders?

Wow. The dictatorial, managerial, administrative state in the world of Obama! The EPA, FCC, 26 Czars, and an out-of-control Congress answer only to themselves.

Obama wants “absolute power.” There is nothing he won’t take control of if he gets a chance.

I don;t trust anything the current regime tries. There is always some hidden agenda that ends in “transforming Amerika” and “Spreading the wealth around”. These people want total control over our lives. These Marxist have to be stopped!

Should I let the Gub’mint regulate the internet so my neighbor can download porn 24/7 with no delay ?

the free market is doing what the FCC can only dream of doing, providing choice and service to customers. Of course the government via the FCC can screw up this free market like it’s done to countless other free markets

This “net neutrality” will be coupled with the so-called ‘fairness doctrine’ as an attempt by the statists to stifle free speech.

Where do these inane ideas comes from? Straight from the mouths of Rush, Beck, Hannity, and scores of talk shows with political agendas that know jack shit about how the internet works. Their goal is to smear their political opponents anyway they can. If that means completely brain-washing their audiences on a topic – well you can see they have no qualms. It’s quite sad, really.

First, Net Neutrality has nothing to do with pricing. It doesn’t want to dictate what prices or tiered pricing structures ISPs want to offer. It doesn’t care what bandwidth cap limits will, could, or would be imposed. It could care less about what information is being transmitted.

The long view is that Net Neutrality doesn’t want ISPs throttling packets based on where they come from or what content they contain – most especially if said ISP is both a content producer and transport provider.

That’s it.

Whether the FCC is the best arbitrator for this is still up for rational debate. They very well may not be the best for what needs to be done.

The problem lays in that there is no free market. There is no competition. ISPs have total control – and this is where the wharblegarbl falls apart. The spittle-flecked paranoia that a gubment power grab is underway stems from the ill-reasoned fact that these corporations, based in a competative free market, will regulate themselves.

This reality does not exist.

Looking at the comments posed against net neutrality I can only conclude that the individuals who crafted these responses do not live in our reality either.

Once you’ve built up a life and culture around the internet it’s about as hard to cut off as water or electricity. The internet is a tool, entertainment, and a career.

After years of looking for another house that would better suit the family needs, one has finally appeared. It hits all the tick marks. The only thing left to do was check out what kind of internet service was available.

Right out of the gate Comcast begged off. The street sits too far out of their existing network. The only other choice in Maryland after that was Verizon (Satellite and mobile just aren’t a reasonable solution given their high latency).

I started phoning Verizon Monday morning. Their customer service ‘voice activation menus’ (press 1 for this, say “no’ to that) was a wreck. I spent over two hours just trying to get through to someone. The nice lady who finally answered the phone confirmed that residential DSL was unavailable but I could get business DSL. Twice the speed at only a little more cost.

Awesome, I was in heaven.

For the hell of it during a lunch break I went to check for availability through verizon.com. No dice. The response was no service available except phone. I started getting nervous.

During the commute  home on Monday their customer service menuing system was in such a wreck I couldn’t get a hold of anyone. At this point I had burned another 180 cellphone minutes – almost half my plan at this point – and only three days into the month.

Tuesday brought the same. Their customer service menuing system was still a wreck and continued to hang up on me half way through the menu selections. When I would make it through, I’d magically get teleported from their Business customer service to Residential. They’d transfer me back to Business and I’d eventually get kicked from the network. 120 cell phone minutes later I was left with two more answers. One rep said neither Residential nor Business DSL was available. A third rep said only Business DSL was available but I would have to use a static IP (WTF?!).

My bullshit quota was reached. It was time to turn up the social pressure. To Twitter I went with my complaints, along with the scores of others that were venting about Verizon’s lack of customer service and inability to actually talk to a rep on the phone. A few hashtags and pithy comments later and I had customer service responding directly to me. Amazing what you can do through the internet. What a fantastic medium and communication device.

The end result was that Verizon does not service the location.

Therein lays the real story in all of this. I now have no broadband choices. For all the bluster and hype of the right-wing spin machine and the blow-hard ISP giants, broadband access in this country is piss poor.

It’s slow, coverage is spotty, and access is expensive. And because of that I’ll have to keep looking for another residence that hits all the tick marks. It only took five years of continuous searching to find this last one…

So, remember the next time some windbag spouts off about how net neutrality is a danger, that we have a multitude of choice and the free market is handling it fine, tell them to fuck off.

On April 6th, the Federal Court of Appeals handed down a 36-page ruling on one of the first test cases of net neutrality. They ruled in favor of Comcast who was fighting against an earlier ruling by the FCC that Comcast was not allowed to throttle Internet usage.

About the ruling Comcast said:

“We have always been focused on serving our customers and delivering the quality open-Internet experience consumers want,” the company said.

Anyone that has been a customer of Comcast knows that line is pure bullshit.

This ruling by the Federal Court of Appeals sets in motion a dangerous precedent whereby no consumer protections are now in place. So why does anyone think this is a good thing? Chalk it up to the nice propaganda campaign waged by the talking-heads of radio and television.

A recent editorial in the Las-Vegas Review Journal spells out the mentality of those against net neutrality. It’s almost a point for point delivery of the screed pumped out by Glen Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity.

The summary of the editorial is A) It’s a government power grab, B) ISPs have been improving customer service, options, and service on their own, C) 98% of the people in this country already have at least three wired options and six wireless options, D) net neutrality stifles innovation and investment.

It’s hard to get things 100% wrong, but this editorial wins.

Let’s take a look at the facts of net neutrality.

First, net neutrality is an attempt to keep anyone, including government, from assuming control of the internet for purposes of selectively throttling one company’s content over another’s.

Second, some ISPs have been improving speeds in some markets. Overall, there are very few markets with quality broadband – and nothing compared to what you find in many other countries. The US is one of the wost in broadband speed, access, and cost.

Third, I’d love to know where the AT&T rep that was quoted in the editorial came up with this magical 98% number. I disbelieve. Because of the exclusivity agreements most municipalities have signed with companies like Comcast, you are lucky to have one option for broadband internet access. Wireless options are still in their infancy, and only in huge metropolitan areas. I personally have one option, Verizon DSL. That’s it, nothing else. And that’s only at 3.1Mbps speed. Moreover, I’m one of the few in the neighborhood that can actually almost hit those speeds.

Fourth, the internet is the awesome, innovative, artistic, knowledge-filled, and ridiculous troll-tastic place that it is because companies have not been allowed to selectively throttle packets. The sheer amount of applications, protocols, services and innovations are in spite of the crappy, uncaring service the big ISPs provide.

What really takes the cake, however, is the fact that everyone already pays their share. The terrabytes of videos sent out over YouTube? Google pays for that on their end and you pay for it on yours. Online video games? The same. iTunes music downloads? The same. Each company has to purchase that bandwidth so you can reach their servers. You pay a monthly fee to get online as well.

Khan has nothing to do with this, but screaming his name loudly is cathartic.

What the opponents of net neutrality propose is that ISPs now force you to pay an additional fee on top of all of that based on their arbitrary terms decided on whether somebody else might be offering a competitive service to their own.

And this all wouldn’t be quite so maddening if the big ISPs hadn’t already been given billions of dollars by the government in the 1990′s to build out their infrastructure in the first place. You see, we’ve already paid for all this. Moreover, what we paid for – high quality, fast broadband connections – most don’t have and will never see.

It’s enough to make you scream.

And this is why we can’t have anything good. We’re surrounded by stupid people writing editorials about topics they know jack shit about, parroting talking points from slimy but clever talk show hosts.

And they believe every word they’re fed.