The role of technology and policy in transforming online culture – chronicled by David Ellis
David Ellis
David Ellis, PhD, is an educator, consultant, blogger and broadband evangelist.
Posts by David Ellis
Netizens united to stop Big Content & the SOPA insanity
19 days
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The anti-Internet bills in Congress are not just an American problem. Imagine a world in which the Domain Name System gets the Mickey Mouse treatment from Hollywood, Rupert Murdoch and the music industry. For some background, see my 2 previous posts.
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WordPress joins today’s Web-wide strike
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Wikipedia: learn more about why the US Congress is a threat to an open Internet – everywhere
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Read more from the Electronic Frontier Foundation… New York Times… Michael Geist… Pete Nowak… Techdirt… Ars Technica…
New digital divide: is there a SOPA in our Internet future?
38 days
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“The nightmarish SOPA hearings” (cont’d from previous post)
Petri’s main beef with the Smith Committee is they’re unembarrassed, even proud, of their appalling inability to grasp anything technically relevant to the task at hand:
If I had a dime for every time someone in the hearing markup used the phrase “I’m not a nerd” or “I’m no tech expert, but they tell me . . .,” I’d have a large number of dimes and still feel intensely worried about the future of the uncensored Internet. If this were surgery, the patient would have run out screaming a long time ago. But this is like a group of well-intentioned amateurs getting together to perform heart surgery on a patient incapable of moving. “We hear from the motion picture industry that heart surgery is what’s required,” they say cheerily. “We’re not going to cut the good valves, just the bad — neurons, or whatever you call those durn thingies.”
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“Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works”
A piece posted on Mother Board the next day (Dec 16, when Smith adjourned the markup) continued the attack in the same vein. Author Joshua Kopstein, who describes himself as an electronic musician and computer culture journalist, wrote a kind of open letter to Congress, putting them on notice we ain’t gonna put up with their dumb asses any more (my paraphrase: Kopstein calls them “a bunch of jack-asses”… and of course I don’t have actual representation in Congress myself).
Like Petri the Post blogger, Kopstein is really pissed about the cavalier attitude of many of the Committee members to the well-being of the Internet, given how much is at stake – as this is ”legislation that seeks to fundamentally change how the internet works.” The author points to a couple of especially troubling themes in the markup debates. One has to do with security:
“When the security issue was brought up, Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina seemed particularly comfortable about his own lack of understanding. Grinningly admitting “I’m not a nerd” before the committee, he nevertheless went on to dismiss without facts or justification the very evidence he didn’t understand and then downplay the need for a panel of experts. Rep. Maxine Waters of California followed up by saying that any discussion of security concerns is “wasting time” and that the bill should move forward without question, busted internets be damned.” (more…)
The new digital divide: SOPA-loving pols flaunt tech idiocy
41 days
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*“Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got… an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday. I got it Tuesday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.“
– Ted Stevens, Chair, Senate Commerce Committee (June 28, 2006)
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UPDATE: I just checked with the Judiciary Committee website (here) – and it seems the SOPA markup might not be continuing tomorrow (Dec 28) after all. At least it doesn’t appear on their sched. And the reddit SOPA page (here) says “SOPA markup postponed, new date will be posted here when it is announced.” OTOH, if it’s a go tomorrow (Dec 28), then you can watch the markup webcast from the Committee website. We’ll find out in a few hours. Meanwhile, please read on…______
Listen to the clip below, from 2006. Be amazed. Duration is 2:29 min (audio only), excerpted from the notorious 10-minute intervention delivered by Ted Stevens five years ago on what he thought was best for the Internet (i.e. best for the incumbent ISPs). As you listen, keep in mind that as then-chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Stevens was ex officio the chief Congressional lawmaker responsible for oversight of the Internet. (The Commerce Committee encompasses the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet.) Stevens’ diatribe was part of an attempt to block a net neutrality amendment to an omnibus telecomm bill – an amendment intended to prevent broadband providers from giving undue priority to any individual company’s content or services. Hey, where have we heard that one before?
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Did you catch the streaming video “problem”? It’s one of Stevens’ illustrations of the outrageous idea that a company should be allowed to tranmit content to customers online, when the outcome will be to jam up all those tubes; turn the Internet into a massively commercial operation; and prevent other end-users from getting their emails promptly. If you care to listen to the whole thing, I’ve uploaded the MP3 here (1.3 megs, ~10 minutes). The main target is his straw-man version of network neutrality (Stevens died at age 86 in the crash of a private plane in August 2010). (more…)
Open kimonos, closed minds: new risks for Canada’s Internet
58 days
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Artist’s rendering of Big Media opening their kimonos at secret CRTC meetings
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It’s very useful for the commission in our supervisory role to understand what they’re thinking and for them to open their kimonos. Some of them did offer new information, and we were grateful.
Denis Carmel, CRTC spokesman, Nov 25, in The Wire Report
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Fact-finding without the facts: must be OTT
As I’ve noted before (e.g. here and here), the CRTC’s handling of the over-the-top review is a travesty of
due process. It’s based on a fact-finding proceeding that wasn’t a proceeding, and more secret meetings to continue where they left off in March. Denis Carmel’s expression (above) of “gratitude” to the participants for dropping by to grind their own axes, without the bother of rebuttal or outside scrutiny, is a less than comforting way to honor the principle of ex parte meetings. FCC rules require that private meetings with 3rd parties be disclosed, and that the content of discussions be summarized in public minutes. As Free Press noted last July: “The ex parte process may seem obscure to most people, but these meetings have a significant impact on FCC decisionmaking.” (That article was a commentary on the FCC’s proposal to strengthen its ex parte rules.) (more…)
How ITMP-based data caps punish light instead of heavy users
65 days
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Artist’s rendering of a world without data caps
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Yesterday I noticed a pointer in Michael Geist’s blog to an intriguing post at Fiberevolution: Do data caps punish the wrong users? The post piles on the evidence that data caps are a lousy way to discipline what the author calls “disruptive users”…
“Data caps, therefore, are a very crude and unfair tool when it comes to targeting potentially disruptive users. The correlation between real-time bandwidth usage and data downloaded over time is weak and the net cast by data caps captures users that cannot possibly be responsible for congestion. Furthermore, many users who are “as guilty” as the ones who are over cap (again, if there is such a thing as a disruptive user) are not captured by that same net.”
Upside-down policy goals
Through most of 2011, we’ve heard lots of criticism about the use of data caps in Canada, concerning both their inherent unfairness to customers and their inadequacy as a way of managing congestion. (more…)
Sorry for UBBing, redux: Katz speech *did* upset ISPs
66 days
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Katz: Indie ISPs “must do more” about cybersecurity… oops, they already do!
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Update: I’ve just read Dwayne Winseck’s superb critique of the CRTC’s vertical integration and UBB decisions, posted on his blog last Thursday (Nov 29). This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand, as Dwayne puts it, not what the Commission has done in these proceedings, but what it has failed to do – and the opportunities it has thrown away as a result.
(I’ve also added an item at the end to illustrate why cybersecurity is a non-issue compared to obliging ISPs to explain their terms in plain English.)
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Checked against delivery
In my previous post I wrote a critique of the speech that Len Katz, CRTC vice-chair, gave to the ISP summit the day of the
wholesale pricing decision (Nov 15). I wasn’t in the room at the time. I’m therefore back on this issue briefly after hearing from some folks who were present for the unkind words and rubber chicken. (I’m coming at this kinda late after flu-related postponements.)
My sources confirm two things. First, Katz gave the speech pretty much according to the published speaking notes – so I wasn’t making it up. Second, I’m told many people in the room were very upset to hear Katz talk about the indie ISPs in such a disdainful way. (For example: “I sat through that dinner and listened to Katz and my blood was boiling listening to him.”) (more…)
Sorry for UBBing: the CRTC giveth, Katz taketh away?
75 days
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Funny how we’re all still talking about last week’s CRTC decision on wholesale pricing for Internet access. The one thing pundits and stakeholders have agreed upon is to disagree about the possible outcomes of the decision. Especially when it comes to the money.
Take Nick Kyonka’s piece in last week’s Wire Report, which begins thusly:
“Incumbent Internet service providers (ISPs) and the smaller players who lease access to their networks are scratching their heads over new billing rates for wholesale Internet access and what those rates mean for long-term competition in the Canadian Internet service market.”
There’s lots more. Michael Geist and Peter Nowak have each been mulling the decision three times in the last week, including posts from each of them yesterday designed to interpret the various interpretations we’ve heard so far: see The UBB Decision Aftermath: Is the Pricing a Killer? (Geist); and On UBB, the fat lady has not yet sung (Nowak).
I have information that may help clear up some of the confusion. Rather than provide you with a hard-headed analysis of network costing issues, however, I’m going to indulge in a little textual exegesis… (more…)
