Thanks!

Ed Whitacre, Former CEO of AT&T

Whitacre

To BusinessWeek: “Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?”

Neil Berkett, CEO of Virgin Media

Berkett

Berkett told Royal Television Society Magazine, “this net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks.” He claimed that any video content provider that refused to pay Virgin a premium for faster access would have to get stuck in “bus lanes,” having their content delivered to end users at much slower speeds than that of rich content providers. Virgin is the second biggest ISP in Britain.

Berkett’s arrogant comments are eerily similar to those of his long-lost twin in San Antonio. And they have already sparked a reaction among the netroots.

Check out OsoTrue’s musical response, in which he croons to Berkett:

“Stop infringing on my Net Neutrality; it’s the way our generation speaks internationally. Cancel my service and bid Virgin farewell, and please tell Mr. Neil Berkett that he can go to hell.”

This video response from usMembers takes a more galactic view of Berkett:

“We have heard the voices of many speaking out against your actions. You have opened the door to a domino effect that will destroy the very foundation of all we have created,” says a voice from outer space. “You have opened Pandora’s Box and must now face your demons.”

Funny. And sad.

On Sunday, Nate Anderson of Ars Technica skewers a recurring myth about the Internet’s inevitable demise. The story — as often told by telco-operatives — goes something like this:

The Internet will come crashing down around the year 2010. The reason: Dastardly Net users are taxing it to the limit – sharing videos and other rich media files at a skyrocketing pace. Net Neutrality will unleash this unruly mass of Web users upon the Internet grinding it to a halt.

The term used to describe this unholy Armageddon is the “exaflood” and if you’re to believe some we’re already teetering on the brink of network extinction — that is unless we allow network operators to have their way “shaping” Internet content.

“As traffic increases on the Internet, ISPs and content owners have shown increased interest in blocking, throttling, or limiting it for different reasons,” Anderson writes.

This issue of traffic increases has a direct bearing on Net Neutrality, he adds. It’s therefore important to consider questions about the supposed threat “with a solid factual basis.”

For answers Anderson turns to Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota’s Digital Technology Center. Odlyzko’s data show some interesting trends, which thoroughly debunks the scare tactics of the Net doomsayers.

According to Odlyzko, the rate of Internet traffic growth has been slowing down over the last five to six years — and not rising at an unmanageable rate as has been predicted by Net Neutrality opponents.

Odlyzko also notes that the growth rate of peer-to-peer file sharing is about 100 percent a year. Compare that to the dire predictions many industry apologists made before the FCC in Boston.

“We concluded that the fear-mongering imagery of a ‘flood’ was overblown and unhelpful to rational debate,” wrote Nate.

Odlyzko reports that traffic growth is more akin to a gale than a hurricane. “With a gale, you shorten your sails and you can still steer to some extent.”

While the Internet backbone has plenty of capacity, the problem exists at the last mile, where network operators are reluctant to expand their pipes to meet a steadily growing consumer demand.

In a marketplace controlled by the few, the free-market rule about building supply to satisfy demand seems no longer to apply.

As we increasingly turn our attention the the April 17 hearing at Stanford, we’ve gotten a few requests to produce some art for folks to display on their blogs, facebook profiles, etc. to get the word out.

Ask and you shall receive! We’ve overlaid information regarding the hearing on the “shouting man” (not be confused with Burning Man) graphic we’re using to identify hearings (see it at right).

Please take a minute to stick this code somewhere on your web presence to promote the hearing:

<a href=”http://www.savetheinternet.com/=stanford”><img src=”http://www.savetheinternet.com/graphics/sti_stanford.jpg” width=”150″ height=”200″ border=”0″ alt=”Stanford hearing” /></a>

We’re No. 4! We’re No. 4! USA! USA! USA!

Today’s New York Times touts a study that offers a new spin on America’s digital decline. While every other recent study shows the United States falling further behind the rest of the world, a new Global Information Technology Report claims “the Internet infrastructure of the United States is one of the world’s best and getting better.”

What good news — especially for the nation’s cable and phone companies – to hear that America has returned to its rightful place as a world Internet leader without changing a thing or, you know, having a national broadband policy. Take that, Chicken Little.

But before you pop the champagne, you might want to look at where this boost in the international broadband rankings came from. We didn’t want to read through the whole thing either. But fortunately Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner, a guy who lives for footnotes, has already sifted through the fine print.

Details, Details

Take Appendix A of the study — “Technical composition and computation of the Networked Readiness Index 2007–2008.” That’s a long way of saying “this is how we measured.” And it turns out that Insead, the Paris business school that did the study for the World Economic Forum, relied on 68 factors to gauge “national network readiness.”

However, Turner points out, only four of these factors have anything to do with residential use of broadband — high-speed monthly broadband subscriptions, lowest cost of broadband, broadband Internet subscribers, and Internet bandwidth. Unfortunately, as so many other studies have shown, these four areas are not our strong points.

But we kick butt in the other categories. Yes, there is a high availability of venture capital. Yes, there is freedom of the press. Yes, our patent laws are vigorous in their protection of intellectual property. Yes, there are a large number of research scientists and engineers working at well-funded academic institutions. Yes, we have a robust business sector that uses personal computers and mobile phones. Yes, many governmental agencies have an online presence.

These are the precise factors that make the United States such a global economic powerhouse — and these very factors are exactly why we expect to be doing so much better on measures of broadband deployment, adoption and quality. But we’re not.

We Are (Behind) the World

In fact, in this race we’re getting lapped by South Korea, France, Qatar and all the rest.

Consumers in these countries pay less for broadband connections that are much faster than we have here. That’s because they have policies that foster more choice and innovation. Meanwhile, our phone and cable companies spend their money lobbying to kill competition and Net Neutrality, instead of investing in new networks.

What we really need instead of more excuses and fuzzy math is some national leadership to tackle the digital divide and bring the benefits of an open Internet to all Americans. That’s something everyone could cheer.

For an excellent perspective on Net Neutrality, read Saturday’s New York Times op-ed by OK Go guitarist Damian Kulash.

Kulash, who recently spent time on the Hill with bandmate Andy Ross, explains the central conflict over an open or closed Internet.

“At root there’s a pretty simple question,” he writes. “How much control should network operators be allowed to have over the information on their lines?”

More than Censorship

Kulash points to recent events where operators have crossed the line into gatekeeping.

In addition to Comcast’s assault on file-sharing applications, Verizon has blocked text messages sent by NARAL Pro-Choice America to its members, and AT&T, which has censored Pearl Jam concert Webcasts, is now hatching plans to filter and inspect all Web traffic for perceived copyright infringements.

“When the network operators pull these stunts, there is generally widespread outrage,” Kulash writes. “But outright censorship and obstruction of access are only one part of the issue, and they represent the lesser threat, in the long run. What we should worry about more is not what’s kept from us today, but what will be built (or not built) in the years to come.”

To allow these companies to slowly build a system of gatekeepers into the network is the real and present threat, he writes.

“Exactly,” Internet guru David Isenberg said in response to Kulash’s comment. “Outright censorship is way too visible for them to get away with. Creeping proactive censorship built into a new infrastructure is a much harder story to tell. And a much bigger danger.”

Boiling the Frog

It’s analogous to “boiling the frog,” according to Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge.

The frog metaphor goes something like this: “If you throw a frog into boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put a frog in warm water, and gradually raise the temperature, it will become acclimated, until it becomes cooked.”

Through endless lobbying and their own meddling with the pipes, phone and cable companies have been slowly shifting the way the Internet operates, bringing it into line with their profit plans.

Over time, these incremental shifts in policy and perception amount to radical and harmful changes to an Internet that has fostered free speech, economic innovation and opened governments to public scrutiny.

The Heat is On

We have now arrived at the boiling point for the modern Internet. It’s time Americans became more involved with communications policy decisions being made in their name, but not necessarily with their consent.

Congress is considering a bill — the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act” — and the Federal Communications Commission weighing new rules on network gatekeeping at this very moment. Both of these processes are open to public input.

As Kulash put it today:

The telephone company doesn’t get to decide what we discuss over our phone lines. It would be absurd to let the handful of companies who connect us to the Internet determine what we can do online. Congress needs to establish basic ground rules for an open Internet, just as common carriage laws did for the phone system.

Exactly.

Get ready for Round Two in the Internet’s Battle Royale of 2008. At stake is whether we should allow a handful of giant corporations to close the Web for their own gain, or whether we should put in place baseline protections that will leave our Internet open to the millions of people who use it.

Round One occurred late February at a public event in Boston, where Comcast deployed paid seat-fillers to bar others from entering an official hearing of the Federal Communications Commission.

It’s a shame so many people missed the event. While Comcast seat-warmers snoozed, a collection of Harvard and MIT scholars, Internet advocates, industry leaders, engineers and policymakers nearly all agreed that Internet blocking has serious consequences for each and every one of us.

I say “nearly” because Comcast remains defiant. Despite recent overtures to certain file sharing companies, its executive vice president, David Cohen, continues to insist to the FCC and the world that “Comcast does not block any Web site, application or Web protocol including peer-to-peer services.”

The FCC in Silicon Valley

We’ll no doubt hear more industry spin during the second FCC hearing, scheduled to occur on the Stanford campus, April 17. Barring any new tricks from Comcast, the public should be able to attend. The venue hold’s more than 700 people. And we’ll be sure to be on guard for anyone who plans to bus in paid sleeper cells.

Stanford is the perfect place and time to take to the next level the public conversation about an Internet free of corporate gatekeepers. It’s the crossroads of Web innovation, research and investment. And the FCC has allowed at least two hours for public testimony. (The SavtheInternet.com Coalition is working with allies and partners on the ground to be sure everyone who wants to testify has a turn at the microphone.)

This is a important opportunity. It is rare for all five members of the Federal Communications Commission to leave Washington, D.C. together. It’s rarer still to have them together accepting public input in the Bay Area.

An Alarming Trend

And there’s no better time to hear from us. Comcast has been caught blocking BitTorrent, Verizon has been caught blocking text messages, AT&T wants to inspect and filter Web traffic.

In 2005 and 2006, the phone and cable companies told us they planned to block and discriminate. The top executives of major telecom companies have stated clearly in the pages of BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post that they would like to favor certain content over others.

In 2007, they showed us they meant business. In addition to Comcast’s assault on competing file-sharing applications, Verizon has blocked text messages sent by NARAL Pro-Choice America to its own members, and AT&T is hatching plans to filter and inspect all Web traffic for perceived copyright infringements.

With so much at stake at Stanford, it’s encouraging that the FCC’s first move is to quickly seek public feedback and expert counsel about the future of the Internet.

Show Up and Speak Out

That the Boston hearing was marred by Comcast’s efforts to stack the crowd in its favor — leaving concerned citizens out in the cold — demonstrates again why we can’t trust these types of companies with an Internet that is vital to our democracy and prosperity.

Those who should ultimately decide the Internet’s future are people like you and me — everyone who uses the Internet every day and in every way. That’s why every citizen needs to get involved right now.

Help Spread the Word

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Download More Information on Internet Freedom

1. Separate Fact From Fiction — Net Neutrality Myths and Realities.

2. Download Talking Points — 4 Things You Need to Know.

3. Why Internet Freedom is a Civil Rights Issue.

Last Friday, Comcast’s Executive Vice President David Cohen sent a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin filled, as usual, with lies and half-truths.

Cohen’s letter was in response to Chairman Martin’s statement on the recent Comcast and BitTorrent, Inc. agreement to end the cable company’s blocking of BitTorrent’s file-sharing applications. The agreement itself hasn’t been made public and its details are unclear.

Guest Post by Marvin Ammori, Free Press General Counsel

For months, Comcast had been deceptively blocking the popular Internet protocol — used to transfer large files including full-length videos — in part because it competed with the cable company’s video-on-demand and television offerings.

When word first emerged last year that Comcast was blocking, the company lied to the press and the public, saying it didn’t interfere with BitTorrent. But several independent tests confirmed the opposite to be true.

This revelation uncorked another round of lies from the cable giant, which called such blocking of user applications a “reasonable” way to “manage” online traffic. Never mind that millions of Americans use file-sharing applications for legal purposes.

On behalf of these Internet users, Free Press and other organizations filed a petition asking the FCC to look into this matter and protect a free flowing Internet. After six months under intense scrutiny from the press, the public, and the FCC, on last Thursday, Comcast blinked and made a deal with only one company using the BitTorrent protocol — a company called BitTorrent, actually — and then tried to claim that everyone else should forgive Comcast’s blatant and secret assaults on the Internet.

In a statement last Thursday, Chairman Martin said he was relieved to hear that Comcast had “agreed that it is not a reasonable network management practice to arbitrarily block certain applications on its network.”

Martin’s statement, in turn, unleashed yet another blast of hot air from Comcast executives. David Cohen’s Friday letter contained at least three major lies, continuing Comcast’s trend of filing documents with a lie-to-word ratio of almost one-to-one.

Cohen (1) told Martin that the BitTorrent, Inc. deal received “overwhelmingly positive feedback,” (2) accused the Chairman of repeating “erroneous characterizations of Comcast’s network management practices,” (3) and Comcast suggested that BitTorrent, Inc. was sympathetic with Comcast’s blocking actions. Let’s take this apart:

1. Not So-Positive Feedback

The “feedback” was not quite “overwhelmingly positive”—except from one FCC Commissioner who is always overwhelmingly positive about whatever Comcast does (see here on ownership limits, here on broadcast carriage, and article quoted here on blocking Internet protocols). Free Press and other consumer groups, which had mobilized tens of thousands of people to write the FCC protesting Comcast’s actions, issued statements calling for a continued investigation. Public Knowledge called the agreement “irrelevant” for the FCC. The mainstream press and technology press continued to call for Comcast’s blocking to be scrutinized.

Other companies using the BitTorrent protocol, including Vuze and Miro, also urged the FCC to adopt industry-wide Net Neutrality rules and to continue the inquiry into Comcast’s blocking. Vuze’s blog and Miro’s press statement made it clear: one private deal between one network provider and one BitTorrent application company is no substitute for enforceable, industry-wide Net Neutrality principles.

2. Comcast Makes It’s Own ‘Erroneous Characterizations’

In his Friday letter, Cohen accuses the Chairman of making “unsupported and inaccurate assertions” that Comcast “arbitrarily block[s] certain applications on its network.” Then Comcast repeats its own unsupported and inaccurate assertions — that its network “management” is limited and doesn’t involve blocking.

Comcast has never proved its own “unsupported” assertions; they’ve just said, “Trust us, though we repeatedly lie to you and the public.” On the other hand, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Robb Topolski, and the Associated Press all “supported” their characterizations with precise tests.

Comcast, not the Chairman, is making unsupported and inaccurate assertions. At the FCC’s Feb. 26 Harvard hearing (where the only people clapping for Comcast’s David Cohen were paid to do so), Professor Tim Wu translated David Cohen wordy, legalistic characterization of Comcast’s actions. Wu translated, “Comcast is blocking BitTorrent, end of story.” MIT Professor and Internet guru David Reed made the same point.

3. BitTorrent’s CTO thinks Comcast Broke the Law

Finally, David Cohen states that Comcast engaged in “reasonable network management” and quotes (for apparent support) BitTorrent’s CTO Eric Klinker. In the press release announcing the deal, Klinker said he “understand[s]” why Comcast engaged in its actions. But the statement is unclear. Most Americans “understand” why Comcast engaged in its deceptive hack against file sharing — Comcast wanted to block its competition and didn’t think it would get caught. Nothing hard to understand about that.

Indeed Klinker testified before the FCC and clearly said that Comcast was not engaging in reasonable management and that its tactics harmed consumers and future innovation. He said, Comcast’s actions “transcend any definition of ‘reasonable’ and should cease immediately.”

Klinker said Comcast’s was “blocking” a “class of applications” and could “stamp out in its infancy the most promising technology to deliver a world of near-infinite consumer choice in media … well beyond the thousand-channel universe we strive for today.”

BitTorrent’s CTO has been consistent. The day after the agreement, he said, “network management should not include using forged reset flags to break individual BitTorrent connections,” which is exactly what Comcast was doing, and he made it clear that “the FCC should continue to investigate Comcast’s treatment of BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer applications.”

Whether or not Comcast has “admitted” it was arbitrarily blocking BitTorrent, Comcast was. But it continues to lie to the FCC about it, by repeating its denials. Fortunately, the FCC will continue its investigation (see statements by Chairman Martin and Commissioners Copps and Adelstein) and hasn’t been fooled by Comcast’s most recent smoke and mirrors, though Comcast continues to blow smoke.