David J. Farber and professor Gerald R. Faulhaber have articulated one of the most important points in the Net Neutrality debate by pointing out the dangers of the “Dead hand of regulation”. They note that “innovators are better at fighting it out in the market with better products rather than fighting it out in front of the FCC with high-priced lawyers”.

At Alley Insider, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings discusses why he thinks those who short his stock are making a mistake. It is an interesting discussion generally, for its insight into how a shrewd executive views the development of content delivery via the Internet, but for purposes of Digital Society’s focus on Net Neutrality, the most [...]

Now that the FCC is set to vote on Net Neutrality regulations this week, the “real” Net Neutrality hardliners are no longer hiding their true intentions. They want CDNs, app market, and devices to all be regulated under the Net Neutrality banner.

Espinosa, an Internet entrepreneur discusses a recent meeting with FCC Commissionaire Julius Genachowski and a number of other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to discuss the Net Neutrality debate. Espinosa discusses how he and others in the technology sector that support the open Internet but would like to see light touch regulation were pleased with the latest proposal from the FCC.

I sent a Letter to the Editor of the Seattle Times in response to their post “Web surfers beware of the fee tsunami”. While I’m thankful they posted the letter, I thought it was odd that they titled my letter “Beware of Internet tolls” since I provided a title “Broadband prices shouldn’t subsidize content distributors”. I would have at least titled it “There are no free tolls on the Internet”.

The Free Press recently took the lead in drafting a letter to the FCC expressing concern that whatever Net Neutrality rule the agency issues next week will not be enough, and laying out its demands for true openness: Paid prioritization must be outlawed; wireless included; definitions made “loophole-free”;  any specialized services segregated from the bulk [...]

Content Delivery Network (CDN) companies like Level 3 claim that they’re doing all the work delivering the video across the country and broadband providers are doing little work delivering video on the last mile. But it turns out that broadband networks have to do far more work to deliver thousands of replicated on-demand videos.

A colleague who sifts through a lot of political/historical/economic material on telecom and networks was impressed by a recent presentation by Columbia Professor Richard R. John at the New America Foundation. John wrote Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications, published last May and described by Amazon as “plac[ing] the history of telecommunications within the broader context [...]

Weinman has posted a two part series on pay-per-use broadband on GigaOm. He introduces the subject by looking at how providers began offering Internet service by the minute and moved on to flat rate plans. But these same companies are now looking at returning to a consumption based model, but based on bits rather than minutes spent online.

With less than 10% of the US population subscribing to Netflix DVD rental service, Netflix already pays more than $700 million a year to the US Postal service for the postage for the DVDs they send which is a staggering 28% of Netflix revenue. Should taxpayers pick up the tab?