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The Durable Internet: Preserving Network Neutrality without Regulation | Timothy B. Lee | Cato Institute: Policy Analysis An important reason for the Internet’s remarkable growth over the last quarter century is the “end-to-end” principle that networks should confine themselves to transmitting generic packets without worrying about their contents. Not only has this made deployment of internet infrastructure cheap and efficient, but it has created fertile ground for entrepreneurship. On a network that respects the end-to-end principle, prior approval from network owners is not needed to launch new applications, services, or content. In recent years, self-styled “network neutrality” activists have pushed for legislation to prevent network owners from undermining the end-to end principle. New regulations inevitably come with unintended consequences.

nnsquad Homeland Security Wants Mozilla to Pull “Domain Seizure” Add-On Homeland Security's ICE unit is not happy with a Firefox add-on that allows the public to circumvent the domains seizures carried out during the past several months. In an attempt to correct this 'vulnerability' in their anti-piracy strategy, ICE have asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. Unfortunately for them Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet. Last month we were the first to draw attention to a nifty Firefox add-on called “MAFIAA Fire.” The add-on maintains a list of all the domains that ICE (hence the antidote, ‘fire’) has seized and redirects their users to an alternative domain if the sites in question have set one up. Homeland Security’s ICE unit got wind of the add-on and almost immediately took action to have it taken offline. However, where ICE might have expected a swift take down from Mozilla, the legal and business affairs department of the tech company was not planning to honor the request so easily.

Net Neutrality 101 When we log onto the Internet, we take lots of things for granted. We assume that we'll be able to access whatever Web site we want, whenever we want to go there. We assume that we can use any feature we like -- watching online video, listening to podcasts, searching, e-mailing and instant messaging -- anytime we choose. What makes all these assumptions possible is "Network Neutrality," the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet. The biggest cable and telephone companies would like to charge money for smooth access to Web sites, speed to run applications, and permission to plug in devices. The network owners say they want a "tiered" Internet. What's the Problem Here? Discrimination: The Internet was designed as an open medium. Double-dipping: Traditionally, network owners have built a business model by charging consumers for Internet access. The End of the Internet? Make no mistake: The free-flowing Internet as we know it could very well become history.

What the web COULD look like without Net Neutrality by Jess Sloss on October 28, 2009 Welcome bundled services, with money going into your local internet service providers pocket, instead of the developer, creator or service owner’s. Sure, it might not look like this. But I think we can all agree that the world is better off with a Neutral Internet More Q&A: The network neutrality debate 22 December 2010Last updated at 15:47 The Opte Project was an attempt to map out the internet and IP pathways A landmark decision by US regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has once again pushed principle of "net neutrality" to the fore. The concept was a founding principle of the way the internet delivers traffic - treating data as equally important no matter where it comes from - but it remains to be seen how long that can last. What is network neutrality? Network neutrality is based on the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) are to treat all web traffic equally, regardless of content type or origin - for whatever data is passing from content providers to end users. That extends to the idea that ISPs should not block any lawful content or control their infrastructure to preferentially deal with any kind of data. What is the problem? The rise in internet traffic is putting an ever growing burden on the infrastructure of the net. Who advocates net neutrality?

L’Internet européen, à la carte Collecte des IP, protection de la vie privée, inefficacité des dispositifs de filtrage, dernières nouvelles d’ACTA: voilà tous les thèmes dont vous n'entendrez pas ou peu parler lors de l'e-G8. OWNI vous les présente, dans une carte des Internets européens. Collecte des IP sous contrôle du juge, inefficacité des dispositifs de filtrage, “amis” du copyright, dernières nouvelles d’ACTA… Voilà, entre autres mets, tout ce à quoi vous ne goûterez pas lors de l’e-grand-messe qui se déroule en ce moment à Paris. Afin que le festin soit complet, OWNI propose d’enrichir le tableau du réseau dressé par Nicolas Sarkozy, Publicis et autres nababs du web présents à l’e-G8, avec une carte des Internets européens, qui replace l’utilisateur au centre de l’attention. Le rapport à Internet des 27 pays de l’Union Européenne, ainsi que de la Norvège, de l’Islande et de la Suisse, a été scruté à la loupe. La palette de critères, non exhaustive, est appelé à s’enrichir, notamment grâce à votre contribution.

Wikileaks, The Pirate Party, And The Future Of The Internet How to save Julian Assange's movement from itself. American diplomacy seems to have survived Wikileaks’s “attack on the international community,” as Hillary Clinton so dramatically characterized it, unscathed. Save for a few diplomatic reshuffles, Foggy Bottom doesn’t seem to be deeply affected by what happened. Certainly, the U.S. government at large has not been paralyzed by the leaks—contrary to what Julian Assange had envisioned in one of his cryptic-cum-visionary essays, penned in 2006. In a fit of technological romanticism, Assange may have underestimated the indispensability of American power to the international system, the amount of cynicism that already permeates much of Washington’s political establishment, and the glaring lack of interest in foreign policy particulars outside the Beltway. Indeed, it’s not in the realms of diplomacy or even government secrecy where Wikileaks could have its biggest impact.

Wikileaks ISP Anonymizes All Customer Traffic To Beat Spying In order to neutralize Sweden's incoming implementation of the European Data Retention Directive, Bahnhof, the Swedish ISP and host of Wikileaks, will run all customer traffic through an encrypted VPN service. Since not even Bahnhof will be able to see what its customers are doing, logging their activities will be impossible. With no logs available to complete their chain of investigation, anti-piracy companies will be very, very unhappy. In 2009, Sweden introduced the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED). The legislation gave rights holders the authority to request the personal details of alleged copyright infringers. This prompted Jon Karlung, CEO of ISP Bahnhof, to announce that he would take measures to protect the privacy of his customers. “In our case, we plan to let our traffic go through a VPN service, ” Bahnhof’s Jon Karlung told SR. Bahnhof Servers Since the service will encrypt user traffic, not even Bahnhof will know what their customers are doing online.

Vaizey's net neutrality knock-out The FT World Telecoms Conference is an annual gathering of top management from telecoms carriers throughout the world. It isn’t a high profile event for the general public, yet this is the platform where minister Ed Vaizey announced the future of the internet in the UK. Mr Vaizey praised the UK’s grossly inadequate current investment in internet infrastructure - however, the key point in his speech was about the abandonment of net neutrality in the UK. What does net neutrality actually mean? According to Wikipedia, the principle also states that if a given user pays for a certain level of internet access, and another user pays for the same level of access, then the two users should be able to connect to each other at the subscribed level of access. Do we have net neutrality today? In some ways we don’t. Imagine to all intents and purposes, not being able to read Left Foot Forward (or even Guido Fawkes), yet managing to read the Daily Mail? Paid-for access A lack of transparency

SXSW 2011: Al Franken warns of 'outright disaster' over net neutrality | Technology Democratic senator Al Franken has has issued a rallying cry to "innovators and entrepreneurs" at SXSW to fight back against Comcast and other companies lobbying to pave the way for a two-speed internet. The principle of net neutrality, under which all content is delivered equally to internet users' homes, is "in big trouble", Franken warned in a passionate rallying cry at the conference on Monday. Franken's address was always going to be a preach to the converted – SXSW is the spiritual home for small, independent media and technology firms – but he warned that unless the 200,000 attendees "use the internet to save the internet", then big telecoms firms will muscle through plans for a two-tier net. "The one thing that big corporations have that we don't is the ability to purchase favourable political outcomes," he said. "Big corporations like the telecoms firms have lots of lobbyists – and good ones too. He added: "Today SXSW is a hotbed of creative entrepreneurship and innovation.

Douglas Rushkoff The Next Net The moment the "net neutrality" debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network - its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation - is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them - that network loses its power to effect change. The mere fact that lawmakers and lobbyists now control the future of the net should be enough to turn us elsewhere. Of course the Internet was never truly free, bottom-up, decentralized, or chaotic. Yes, it may have been designed with many nodes and redundancies for it to withstand a nuclear attack, but it has always been absolutely controlled by central authorities. From its Domain Name Servers to its IP addresses, the Internet depends on highly centralized mechanisms to send our packets from one place to another. I'm not trying to be a downer here, or knock the possibilities for networking. That's right. It is not rocket science. So let's get on it. Related Posts: