Back in January I wrote a post titled “‘Gamers For Lag’ Weighs In On Net Neutrality“. The post argued the pro-net neutrality position adopted by the Electronic Consumers Association (an organization of which I am a member) would actually be detrimental to gamers.

They didn’t reply directly to the post, but we wanted to be fair to ECA. We asked, nearly two months ago, if we could submit some questions on the topic and have them address our concerns over their network neutrality position. The questions were pretty straightforward, but get straight to the heart of our concerns.

Amtrak is actively blocking downloads and video streams – going so far as to prevent YouTube embeds in pages you load, and redirecting links to downloads.

A lot of people like to claim ISPs are only interested in network management as a pretense for preventing competition with their video offering. Yet here is a perfect example of a privately owned network choosing to manage congestion by limiting downloads and video – absent any competing video service.

When the FCC announced its “Future of Media” hearing, it was described in rather contradictory terms.  Steven Waldman, who is heading up the project, had this to say:
The starting point for this effort, of course, is the First Amendment.  A free press, independent of government control, is a foundational principle of our democracy. Any time the government even looks at the media, we have to be very careful. Keeping that principle in mind always, the experts here working on these issues will work first to …

Working Assets/Credo Mobile, a telecommunications company, freely lists the $45,520 they gave to Free Press in 2007. At the time, according to their 990 filing, Free Press’ campaign Director Tim Karr was making $80,000 per year. So the Working Assets contribution amounted to more than half of Tim’s salary.

Tim’s claim that neither he nor Free Press have taken business money is demonstrably false.

Updated on February 27, 2010 at 10:20 AM: Tim Karr has demanded a retraction with claims that he fact checked his piece.  Upon further review of his claims, and having offered Tim $1,000 for proof of my “deep ties” to Arts & Labs, I have decided to change the title of the post to indicate he was “98% Fact Free”. He did, after all, spell my name correctly.
Updated on February 26, 2010 at 6:46 PM: I had suspected this, but did not know it at the time of the original …

Free Press trivializes the very real plight of people who have to fear disappearing in the dead of night for criticizing a regime – all to make a political point in a policy fight.

However, there is a legitimate point to be explored in their over-the-top rhetoric. While Free Press would have you believe that your cable company bears some resemblance to totalitarian governments, the better comparison would be government-to-government.

I don’t know how many times the ridiculous argument that “charging for content won’t work” can be thrown out and still get traction. Let’s look at the history of “free” versus “pay” and see where it takes us.

By urging a move from non-discrimination to unreasonable discrimination, NARUC recognizes that “big dumb pipes” are a model for the Internet that was abandoned years ago. NARUC also realizes you cannot have a neutral internet if only one side of the content/access equation has to abide by those rules.

Following the announcement last week that Google is looking for community partners to develop a 1-gigabit test bed network, Om Malik asks, “Where Else In The World Can You Get 1 Gbps to the Home?”
He points to a couple of rural telephone companies here in the US that are supposedly offering such service.  I tried to verify them.  In the case of Rural of Kansas, their website boasts fiber connections, but only speeds “Up to 100 meg”.  Pineland doesn’t list any gigabit service in their Internet offerings, only DSL. Finally, …

Google accounts for 6% of all Internet traffic and has almost 86% of the search market. Google’s YouTube accounts for 10% of all mobile data and the company owns 3 of the top 10 websites on the Net, and 6 of the top 20. It would seem that a company with that much power getting into the ISP business should frighten the Free Press crowd. Not only would they control what you access online, and how you find it, but as an ISP they would control your very connection. Instead, they’re cheering the move.