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.

The FCC and the John S. and James. L. Knight Foundation today are hosting a “digital inclusion” summit in order to draw attention to America’s push for expanding high-speed Internet access. The summit is being held a week before the FCC’s scheduled release of a national broadband plan. Speakers will include: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski; Commissioners Meredith Attwell Baker, Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn; and members of Congress. Keep a browser open here for live updates.

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.

The Internet is fundamentally biased against long distance communications by giving them much lower speed limits in data transmissions than short distance communications. But this is a good design feature because it encourages more efficient short range file transfers and this is precisely what has happened with Content Delivery Networks.

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.

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.

With 16.5% of the nation “underemployed” and economists gloomily doubting next-generation job creation, Washington is considering a number of strategies, including the President’s “jobs bill.” “Jobs,” President Obama insisted in his state of the union address, “must be our number one focus in 2010.”
But as Washington concentrates on employment, it also is considering a possibly job-killing set of new regulations on the communications sector. Known as “Net Neutrality,” these proposed new rules could, in their extreme form, prohibit many technologies and business plans used today on the Internet, not to …

Telecom and tech bloggers were abuzz yesterday as Obama’s response to a question about net neutrality made it’s way through the ether. (video is embedded after the jump) The question, asked as part of the YouTube interview with the President, may have generated more controversy than intended.

ISPs shall make no policy respecting an establishment of order to network traffic, or prioritizing the VoIP, video or game traffic; or abridging the flow of P2P traffic, or the Hulu; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and illegally download copyrighted material.

It appears that McGraw Hill and Silicon Alley Insider have confirmed and leaked some information about Apple’s Tablet product being announced today at 10:00AM Pacific Standard Time.  The Apple Tablet will essentially be a jumbo sized 10 inch iPhone ARM based (rumored to be a PA Semi CPU acquired by Apple) slate device rumored to have Verizon 3G (presumably EV-DO Rev A or B) connectivity for mobile data.  Prices that have floated around are $1000 for the unsubsidized model and $800 for the Verizon subsidized model with 3G contract.
Now I’ve been …