DigitalKoans

Since it was announced, the FCC's proposal for a free national wireless broadband service has been controversial.

Free speech advocates don't like this provision of the proposal:

That filters or blocks images and text that constitute obscenity or pornography and, in context, as measured by contemporary community standards and existing law, any images or text that otherwise would be harmful to teens and adolescents. For purposes of this rule, teens and adolescents are children 5 through 17 years of age;

CTIA-The Wireless Association and individual wireless companies have voiced opposition to the plan as well, citing business and technical concerns.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has introduced the Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act of 2008 (H.R. 5846) in the House, which is similar to the FCC proposal.

Read more about it at: "22 Public Interest Groups Roast FCC Smutless Broadband Plan"; "Congressional Dems Back Porn-Free Wireless Broadband Network"; "FCC Moves Ahead with Plan for Smut-Free Wireless Broadband"; "FCC Wants Free Broadband Service, Plus Content Filtering"; "FCC's Planned Free WiFi Is for Five Year Olds"; "GOP Pols Oppose Smut-Free Wireless Network Proposal"; and "Martin Defends Smut-Free, Wireless Network to Wary Congress."

Free Press has released Blocking or Metering: A False Choice.

Here's an excerpt:

The bottom line is this: Making consumers choose between having applications blocked and limitation pricing is what economists call a Morton’s Fork. Neither path is desirable because they both have the same outcome: reducing the innovative power of the Internet. Such an outcome would do great damage to the major driving force behind much of the social and economic change that has occurred over the past 20 years—not to mention all the benefits the Internet promises for the foreseeable future.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released Switzerland, an open source software tool for testing your ISP's net neutrality.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Part of EFF's "Test your ISP" project, Switzerland is an open source, command-line software tool designed to detect the modification or injection of packets of data by ISPs. Switzerland detects changes made by software tools believed to be in use by ISPs such as Sandvine and AudibleMagic, advertising systems like FairEagle, and various censorship systems. Although currently intended for use by technically sophisticated Internet users, development plans aim to make the tool increasingly easy to use.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin will try to get the FCC to approve an order to Comcast to stop throttling P2P downloads and to provide details about its current and planned network management practices.

Read more about it at: "Comcast Loses: FCC Head Slams Company's P2P Filtering," "Comcast Ordered to Stop BitTorrent Traffic Interference," "FCC: Comcast Broke Rules, But Will Not Face Fines," and "Internet Users Stop Comcast, Net Neutrality Win on the Horizon."

Spurred on by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to fight child pornography, Sprint, Time Warner Cable. and Verizon will block significant numbers of Usenet news groups.

Regarding the Verizon ban, Declan McCullagh points out that only 8 of 1,000 Usenet hierarchies are being kept, and "That means not carrying perfectly innocuous—and, in fact, very useful—newsgroups like symantec.customerservice.general, us.military, microsoft.public.excel, and fr.soc.economie."

Read more about it at: "alt.blocked: Verizon Blocks Access to Whole USENET Hierarchy" "ISPs: We're Limiting Our Own Usenet Groups, Not Blocking Others" "N.Y. Attorney General Forces ISPs to curb Usenet Access" "Verizon Offers Details of Usenet Deletion: alt.* groups, Others Gone"

Vuze has issued a report (First Results from Vuze Network Monitoring Tool) analyzing the network management tactics of ISPs.

Here's an excerpt from the report:

We believe that there is sufficient data to suggest that network management practices that "throttle" internet traffic are widespread. At a minimum, more investigation is required to determine whether these resets are happening in the ordinary course of business or whether they represent the kind of throttling practices which target specific applications and/or protocols, harming the consumer experience and stifling innovation.

Read more about it at "Study: All Major Broadband Providers Disrupt P2P," "U.S. Senate Committee Tackles Net Neutrality Today," and "Vuze Says Some ISPs Abuse TCP Resets; Data Not That Clearcut."

Comcast and Pando Networks have announced that they want to create a P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. The announcement was greeted with skepticism by some net neutrality advocates.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Comcast Corporation and Pando Networks, Inc. announced today they will lead an industry-wide effort to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" (BRR) for peer-to-peer (P2P) users and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The two companies plan to collaborate and engage with industry experts, other ISPs and P2P companies, content providers and others to set a framework for the BRR that can serve as a best practice. The purpose would be to clarify what choices and controls consumers should have when using P2P applications as well as what processes and practices ISPs should use to manage P2P applications running on their networks. For example, P2P users should have the right to control their computers’ resources when using P2P applications.

In addition, Comcast and Pando plan to conduct a test of Pando Network Aware™ P2P technology on Comcast’s fiber-optic network. The purpose of the test will be to capture and analyze the data flow associated with downloading a file using Pando’s P2P application. These tests, along with tests Pando will conduct on a variety of other ISP networks, including cable, DSL, fiber and wireless, will measure things like performance, speed, distance and geography as well as the bandwidth consumption impact to the ISP. Comcast, Pando and the P4P Working Group plan to publish the results of these tests so other ISPs can benefit from understanding how P2P applications might be optimized for traveling over different types of networks in different environments and geographies.

Today’s announcement builds on Comcast’s March 27th announcement to collaborate with BitTorrent and the broader Internet and ISP community to more effectively address issues associated with rich media content and network capacity management. It also builds on Pando’s recent announcements of its P4P test results which demonstrated Pando’s ability to reduce network congestion and speed content delivery by routing P2P traffic more effectively across cable, DSL, and fiber broadband networks.

The Pando test will provide additional data to help Comcast migrate to a protocol-agnostic network management technique by the end of this year. The arrangement is yet another example of how these technical issues can be worked out through private business discussions and without the need for government intervention.

Read more about it at "But Why Do We Need a P2P Bill Of Rights in the First Place?"; "Comcast Calls for 'P2P Bill of Rights'"; "Comcast Loves File Sharing, Honest!"; "Comcast to Spearhead Creation of P2P Bill of Rights"; "Comcast Wants to Be the Net's Judge, Jury, and Executioner"; and "Public Knowledge Calls Comcast-Pando Proposal 'Ludicrous'."

Canadian ISPs that rely on Bell Canada for data lines faced a new challenge starting on March 14th when Bell Canada began to implement a traffic shaping policy aimed at limiting P2P bandwidth utilization on their lines. The ISP's are up in arms about this policy, but Bell Canada says that:"Our agreements with wholesale ISP customers clearly include provisions regarding our rights to manage our networks appropriately to the benefit of all customers."

Read more about it at "Bell to Play Traffic Cop on Internet Bandwidth" and "Canadian ISPs Furious about Bell Canada's Traffic Throttling."