Inimai M. Chettiar and J. Scott Holladay from the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU recycle their flawed analysis arguing for a ban on differentiated services from ISPs even if it provides a better value to content or application providers. That undercuts their core arguments that they are concerned about increasing costs to content providers.

The Economist recently wrote on the success of the iPad as a vehicle for delivering magazines in digital form. Among the nuggets of information: In advance, Sports Illustrated had created a “a futuristic-seeming video of a hypothetical issue filled with whizzy graphics and interactive ads,” which turned to be close to the actual iPad-delivered product; [...]

Andes and Castro believe that the mobile broadband network has finally reached a point at which “high-value applications” are becoming more of the norm. This is due not only the networks but also because of mobile devices becoming more powerful and fast enough to handle in depth applications. Because of these things the authors believe we are about to see a huge boon in services, business models, and applications.

Net neutrality advocates are spun up about two recent decisions that have little to do with net neutrality.  In the first instance, T-Mobile blocked a company called EZ Texting from sending messages for an outfit promoting medical marijuana dispensaries in California.  The second involves Facebook preventing users from displaying marijuana leaves in the images on [...]

The more I read the Blogosphere the more I realize that the web community seems to be the new entitlement state.  Seems that the latest craze on the web this week is the outrage that Intel is offering a $50 soft upgrade for their microprocessors [CPUs], and the web echo chamber (e.g., DailyTech) is picking [...]

Paul Kedrosky on Infectious Greed prints some data from a recent Goldman Sachs report, with a Header “Wireless Data Goes Full ‘Yee-Haw’ “: I have two comments – First, that is one hell of an extrapolation from the data points for 2008-2010 – sort of a Kurzeilian Singularity – but maybe the full report, which [...]

I had the pleasure of speaking with Barbara van Schewick the other day. She’s the Stanford law professor and author of “Internet Architecture and Innovation.” She’s both smart and charming and expresses a far more nuanced view of the Internet and Internet architecture than you may have been led to believe from the reviews and drum beat about her book.

A problem with the debate over Net Neutrality is its continuing focus on high level abstractions, not on specific practices and their consequences. The latest exhibit is the FCC’s Sept. 01, 2010, pronouncement, Further Inquiry into Two Under-Developed Issues in the Open Internet Proceeding. The notice tells interested parties that the FCC will adopt five [...]

Facebook recently slashed their video bitrate in half which means significant degradation in their online videos. Bitrate is a crucial to video quality and every bit as important as resolution. This alone won’t stop anyone from using Facebook but it does diminish the quality of the service and open the door to competitors.

Nine states have joined together to file a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court opposing the California ban on violent video games. The brief was submitted by Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch. Other states included on the brief were Arkansas, Georgia, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Washington, and also signing was Puerto Rico.