net neutrality
Privacy in Net Neutrality?
Aug 31st
Net neutrality seems to be one of the most widely discussed topics right now; with the main issues and arguments surrounding it changing daily. The reasoning – how do you start to put restrictions on something that has never had restrictions? Who do you delegate power to? Who do you hold responsible to enforce these? Who do you put in power to create/make these rules?
Two points surrounding this discussion, ACTA and ISPs monitoring customers, concern me greatly.
Currently the government wants to pass an international agreement that goes by the name of Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, or the ACTA. What does this name mean? In short, anything and everything you want it to. It is kind of like one of those pop drinks “swamp water” that you used to (or still do) make from fountain soda… the one where all the pop from every spout gets mixed together to make a super pop. No, seriously… the main goal of the ACTA is to combat international counterfeiting and piracy. As anyone who has visited street markets around the world knows, international piracy and counterfeiting is a huge problem. It hurts legitimate businesses and can contribute to organized crime and unsafe products. The problem is that the ACTA is vague which leaves a lot of opportunities to work in special components. For instance – the ACTA is trying to make ISPs responsible for what their home and business users are downloading. This is where problems start to form. The way things have worked in the past is that if illegal activity is suspected, then an official court-ordered subpoena, limited to the specific user and activity at issue, is provided to the user’s ISP. The ISP can then help the enforcement agency “get the bad guys” without compromising the integrity of their network or the security and privacy of the accounts for their other users. The legal subpoena process protects everyone’s privacy while allowing the enforcement agency access to the possible illegal files.
If ISPs become responsible for what their users are transmitting we can say goodbye to any and all user privacy including the very legitimate privacy needs of companies who now depend on the Internet for their day-to-day business activities.
The amount of information transmitted over the Internet daily is mind boggling. To do the types of things suggested as part of the ACTA will require substantial amounts of new gear, space, power, bandwidth and engineering time to monitor users.
Having ISPs monitor their users would be like cell phone companies actively monitoring all their customers calls for any hint of illegal activity. The moment the phone company detected anything remotely illegal, it would have to take action against the user just to avoid any possibility of being held legally responsible for what their customer said or did or planned.
It seems like as we try and make forward progress towards regulations like ACTA we are actually moving away from the potential the Internet has to connect us and be the invisible catalyst for bringing people together. We are also handicapping its use as an effective tool for businesses. Unless we stand up for our own freedoms online, we can rest assured that they will slowly become more restricted. We all in some way, shape or form interact with the Internet. We all in some way, shape or form should care about our privacy…
For further information on this topic check out these links:
Net Neutrality – An immediate response is needed.
Aug 20th
Thursday Evening I attended the public hearing held by Free Press at Minneapolis South High School.
Full of dignitaries and speeches, I was impressed by both Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and Senator Al Franken breadth of knowledge on what this highly charged but reasonably simple issue could mean to me, Minnesota and the nation.
Content really IS king.
May 4th
The official draft text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was recently released.
All I can say is wow.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation did some preliminary analysis of ACTA. What it comes down to is that ACTA is about to require that signatory countries impose liabilities on ISPs for their users’ behaviors. That means ISPs need to be enforcers/police/nannys for their users. And US ISPs will lose any protections they currently enjoy from the DMCA.
If you use the Internet to share copyrighted information, YOUR ISP could face penalties. Do you think ISPs will accept this? You might expect ISPs to be up in arms about ACTA, but instead they look like they might accept ACTA openly. By all counts ISPs were lucky the FCC lost the case against Comcast. Otherwise ISPs would have no way to be an enforcer! Just kidding.
The Brave New World?
Apr 8th
This week has been busy when it comes to all things Internet…
First off I found out that the FCC can’t protect consumers from big bad corporations. It’s no fault of their own. Big bad corporations spend LOTS of money making sure that the law is in their favor. It was expected that the court would rule (a PDF of the ruling is here) to allow Internet providers to restrict access in order to “manage” their networks.
From the Internet provider side, this makes some technical sense. We need to be able to throttle traffic in order to meet Service Level Agreements and maintain quality service. How we manage our network is part of what sets us apart from our competition.
But content providers are worried that their content will play second fiddle to the content owned by the provider. This seems logical to me too. If we have content that competes with the content provider, why should we give the content provider a free ride to our consumers?
Because that’s what net neutrality is.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that a consumer does not really care who owns the content, as long as access to the content is not restricted in any fashion by their access provider. And that’s exactly how ipHouse operates.
Way back in 1997 I posed this exact conundrum and worried about what happens when one access company / distributor owns the content I want to view? Will I be required to have a Time Warner connection in order to view Bugs Bunny? Will I need a Comcast connection to see MTV online? Today, no. But what about tomorrow? Big corporations without watchdogs will do whatever they want, just watch.
I waited a few days after the ruling to see what the feedback was going to be. This is such a fascinating problem that people have a hard time taking sides. You tell me, should consumers be upset by this ruling? It seems some people just can’t tell if they should be upset or not.
In other fascinating news, a local jeweler gets lambasted by social media and wonders if the publicity generated by the “failed” advertisement offsets the publicity generated by the response to the ad…
Really, you may not have known who R. F. Moeller was a few days ago, but you might know now. This is exactly what social media is all about, responding socially to what companies do in the marketplace. Consumers have a voice, and social media lets those voices be heard, loud and clear. Some might think that this is a win for R. F. Moeller. The amount of publicity they’re receiving might outweigh the scar. Only time will tell…
Then along comes a reminder that some crazy new treaty will put ISPs on the hook for our customers bad deeds. What are people thinking?
All these things make me ogle at the wonder that is the Internet. But it leaves me wondering, is it time to take a break from the Internet?
Nah.
Peace.
Bil
Request For Comments
Feb 4th
One of the many terms you’ll hear thrown around an internet service provider is Request For Comments, aka, RFC: “This isn’t per the RFC!” or “We follow the RFC!” or “Read the <expletive deleted> RFC!” So what is an RFC, and why do you want to know what it says.
RFCs are, in a nutshell, the description of how a program, or procedure should work. The history of RFC is long and boring, but basically, they’ve been around since the ARPANET Project began, as written or typed memo that were literally Requests for Comments, open ended questions that someone wanted to solicit answers to. As ARPANET grew, RFCs became the standard way to record procedure, and a way for people to implement the fundamental technologies that make up the Internet as it stands today. Today, RFCs are managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
