Dan's New Blog

But I was gone for 9 months. Anyway I’ve begun blogging again for my employer. My first new post is about the Bitcoin epic fail. Check it out.

Today Google and Verizon provided some clarity wrt their views on net neutrality. Like I said earlier, it’s a quid pro quo. In exchange for net neutrality in the wired, non-mobile world:

“So, in addition to not blocking or degrading of Internet content and applications, wireline broadband providers also could not favor particular Internet traffic over other traffic.”

Google advocates letting Verizon manage its network bandwidth any way it wants:

“In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the wireline principles to wireless, except for the transparency requirement.”

I can live with this.

I’m trying to parse the Google-Verizon deal which, as Om Malik says, appears to be a knife in the back of net neutrality.  The NY Times started it all off by announcing that:

“Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege. The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google, for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users.”

This raises several questions. If Google is so concerned about traffic to YouTube being throttled back, why haven’t they also cut a deal with Comcast? (You may remember that back in April the DC Circuit Court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission didn’t have the authority to tell Comcast how to manage its bandwidth.) And why is YouTube traffic an issue now? Is YouTube a red herring — is this all really about bandwidth for, say, Google Music?

Very confusing.

Both Google and Verizon said uh-uh.  Here’s Google’s Public Policy Twitter feed:

“@NYTimes is wrong. We’ve not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet.”

And Verizon’s PolicyBlog:

“The NYT article  regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken.  It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose. As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an Internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation. To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect.”

(If someone could read between the lines in all that and explain the nuances to me, it would be much appreciated.) Anyway, now the other shoe has dropped. The Washington Post reports that the FCC-hosted talks on a national broadband policy have collapsed:

“Under criticism for its handing of closed-door discussions with certain companies on broadband policy, the Federal Communications Commission announced Thursday the meetings with Verizon, AT&T, Google and Skype were unsuccessful and that it would stop holding them. The announcement comes amid an apparent agreement between Verizon and Google on so-called net neutrality ground rules that would allow certain prioritization of Web sites on fixed wire networks and no rules on wireless networks. Sources familiar with the discussions at the FCC said reports Wednesday of a deal between Verizon and Google on net neutrality upset participants in the meeting, who were moving closer to agreement on stronger rules against blocking and slowing traffic on wireless and fixed-wire networks.”

So what gives? Has Google abandoned “Don’t Be Evil”? Again, I’m confused. But this story from Bloomberg makes a lot more sense to me:

“Verizon Communications Inc. and Google Inc. have struck their own accord on handling Internet traffic, as both participate in talks by U.S. officials on Web policy, two people briefed by the companies said. The compromise as described would restrict Verizon from selectively slowing Internet content that travels over its wires, but wouldn’t apply such limits to Internet use on mobile phones, according to the people, who spoke yesterday and asked not to be identified before an announcement. Verizon and Google have been adversaries over the issue, known as net neutrality. Verizon was among cable and phone companies saying they need leeway on the delivery of Web content to protect performance of their networks. Google led content providers and advocacy groups that say restrictions are required so communications companies don’t favor their own online offerings or those of partners that pay for higher speeds.”

See the difference? Verizon isn’t extorting money from Google. (“Nice little YouTube ya got here. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”) It’s actually a quid-pro-quo — Google preserves net neutrality while Verizon gets a free hand with its wireless traffic, which is much more lucrative.

At least that’s what it seems to me. I’m not naive, nor am I a Google fanboy. But who knows?

The UK’s infamous Digital Economy Bill — otherwise known as DEBill passed the House of Commons last night and appears to be on track for approval in the House of Lords. The bill, which was given the hurry-up treatment so that it would pass ahead of the May 6 general election in the UK, is supposed to combat media pirates. The plan is that content providers will use the nation’s ISPs to police BitTorrenters by “speed blocks, bandwidth shaping, account suspension or other limits.”

(Hmmm … I’ve read something about ISPs throttling-back their customers recently, haven’t I? Oh, yeah.)

Apparently the UK took a page out of Germany’s book and passed an unpopular, unwanted law:

“Heavily lobbied by digital liberties activists, some MPs admit they don’t understand the proposal and many suspect the measures — rather than reduce piracy — will instead punish downloaders’ parents or public WiFi operators, while abusers find workarounds.”

BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow provides us with an example of how much the MPs really don’t understand about all those pipes and wires and blinky lights:

“Here’s Mark Todd, Labour MP for South Derbyshire, explaining why you should have your Internet connection cut off without even a written notice: ‘Is my Hon. Friend sure that a postal delivery will suffice? Many people may have chosen to form a contract with an ISP at some stage before moving, and may not have seen any particular reason to notify the ISP of a change of address.’ Yes, the last time I moved, I simply had the movers run a private fiber loop from my old premises to the new place. It took most of the day and they had to dig up nearly all of central London, but it was lots easier, ultimately, than notifying my ISP of my change of address.”

Comcast won Round 2 of its battle with the Federal Communications Commission this morning when the DC Circuit Court ruled that the FCC “has failed to tie its assertion of ancillary authority over Comcast’s Internet service to any ‘statutorily mandated responsibility’”. Thus, the court granted Comcast’s 2008 appeal of the FCC’s order to stop throttling-back file sharing traffic.

So much for net neutrality.

I’m sure there’ll be Round 3 sometime soon. TechCrunch ponders the FCC’s possible next move. The WSJ Digits blog tells us which of the playahs — and it’s not just Comcast — in this case are smiling and lighting up victory cigars.

Web Domains

Today’s the 25th anniversary of the first .com registration. And no, the registrant wasn’t IBM (March 19, 1986), Apple (February 19, 1987) or even Microsoft (May 2, 1991). It was Boston-area AI firm Symbolics.

According to Wired, only 5 domains were registered in 1985. Once the Web was invented, domain registrations skyrocketed. And a mere 22 years later icanhascheezburger.com was born.

Fandango Mobile Tickets

Airlines have been testing cellphone-based paperless tickets for a couple of years now. Now Fandango’s testing mobile movie tickets in 8 U.S. markets — all of ‘em *not* Philly, btw. (What’s so special about Houston? They were the first city in which mobile airline boarding passes were tested. Now they’re in the first Fandango test group. Sheesh.)

Google vs. Apple

The NY Times gives us a good overview of the deteriorating relationship between Apple and Google. The following quote …

“It’s World War III. Amazing animosity is motivating two of the most powerful people in the industry. This is emotional. This is the biggest ego battle in history. It’s incendiary.”

… pretty much sums up the tone of the piece. (So does the URL for the story: 14brawl.html.) Anyway, it’s all about the mobile market.

Google vs. China

Not content with merely taking on a company that qualifies as a small country, the Big G has also decided to take on #3 on the world list. I refer to China. After calling them out on spying charges back in January, Google is real close to deciding to pull the plug on Google.cn. That means Chinese users who manage to circumvent the Great Firewall will get unfiltered content. And that makes the Chinese authorities real twitchy.

Topeka, Kansas Mayor Bill Bunten yesterday signed a proclamation temporarily changing the city’s name to “Google, Kansas – the capital city of fiber optics”. Residents will have to put up with that mouthful until the end of March as Topeka tries to get Google’s attention wrt their broadband experiment.

No word on whether residents will be required to name their offspring born in March after the Web search giant.

Link via TechCrunch.

After yesterday’s crazy guilty verdict for 3 Google execs in the Italian YouTube case, I decided to do a quick-and-dirty recap of the state of Internet censorship in the European countries with the highest rates of Internet access.

Germany

Last week German President Horst Kohler signed a law aimed at blocking access to child porn sites. That law was introduced by the previous coalition government. It was very unpopular and the new government doesn’t want to enforce it:

“The German government now finds itself in the embarrassing situation of having a law it no longer wants. Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said Wednesday that the government was unanimous that it would not apply the new law. ‘New regulations will quickly be introduced that correspond to the principle of deleting rather than blocking access,’ she said. The Interior Ministry also said in a statement that the government plans to introduce a new law reflecting the new approach. Until that law is passed, the government’s position is that offensive sites should be deleted, rather than access blocked, the statement said.”

UK

The Internet Watch Foundation is the choke point that “combat[s] online child sexual abuse content in partnership with police, government and the online industry”. The only problem, according to Frank Fisher of The Guardian, is:

“The IWF, a notionally independent charity, in fact acts as a quasi-governmental clearing house for every nutjob with a bee in his bonnet about other people’s surfing habits. Without any legal authority or legislative backing, this secretive group prepares a list of prohibited IP addresses, which it forwards to ISPs, and to the British government. We’re not privy to any information regarding the British government’s own additions to the list – they could add anything. No one outside a tiny department in the Home Office would know.”

France

A law making its way through the French parliament would, if approved, allow the government to block access to “criminal” Websites. Again, this is all under the guise of fighting child porn. Unlike the UK system, the French Interior Ministry would maintain the list of banned sites.

Did I mention that this is an election year?

“The French government’s hard line should not surprise anyone. In a few weeks’ time, regional elections will take place in France. In the 2004 regional elections, Sarkozy’s UMP party did particularly badly. By showing himself to be a tough leader, Sarkozy hopes to avoid history repeating itself and shore up support for his policies … He is hoping that fear of criminals will convince voters to come to the polling booths. In that respect, there is no more suitable issue than child pornography on the Internet and the hunt for pedophile criminals whose only desire is to seduce innocents via their home computers. According to that argument, it is necessary to impose controls on the digital world and introduce state surveillance, so that a pro-active Big Brother can fight the cyber world’s sexual deviants who are, in all likelihood, lurking on Facebook or Twitter.”

Italy

The NY Times reports today that the case may not have been about “protecting human dignity,” as the prosecutor said:

“In Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi owns most private media [including television stations - ed.] and indirectly controls public media, there is a strong push to regulate the Internet more assertively than it is controlled elsewhere in Europe. Several measures are pending in Parliament here that seek to impose various controls on the Internet. Critics of Mr. Berlusconi say the measures go beyond routine copyright questions and are a way to stave off competition from the Web to public television stations and his own private channels — and to keep a tighter grip on public debate.”

Google has announced plans to get into the broadband bidness in a small way:

“We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.”

Google will accept applications from communities until March 26, then make their choice. Sounds great, but with a caveat that, over and over, we’re putting all our eggs in Google’s basket.

CNET reports that the FBI wants Internet Service Providers to log the Websites you visit and keep the data for 2 years. Frankly, this does not surprise me, given the government’s predilection towards outsourcing surveillance to the owners of the pipes.

I’ve blogged in the past about how Tor can enable you to surf anonymously. But afaik Tor can’t help you evade your ISP’s prying eyes. You’d have to use a proxy that would encrypt traffic to and from your computer; I can’t see that working out for you very well.

As Sun Microsystems Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy said a few years back, “You have no privacy, get over it.”