4 posts tagged “internet”
The issue of who controls the Internet--whether it remains as it is with open access or can be controlled by private telecommunications companies--moved to the fore again this week when a San Francisco subscriber to Comcast launched a suit against the company. The suit alleges that the largest cable company in the U.S. misleads customers and uses unfair business practices by interfering with file sharing programs.
Naturally, lawyers for the plaintiff are looking to form a class action suit (now that's one way to recoup those inflated broadband access charges). So get in early and often by contacting the representing law firm.
Already, a collection of consumer and legal organizations have asked the FCC to prevent Comcast from interfering with legitimate file sharing. One proposal is that the FCC should fine Comcast $195,000 for every subscriber whose Internet access has been restricted.
For its part, Comcast says it does not block programs on the Internet---it just delays some traffic. Right.
To read more on this issue see "Comcast Hijacks the Internet" and "Verizon and AT&T: Web 2.0 Killers."
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For those who wonder what all the fuss about so-called net neutrality is about, witness what Comcast has done to subscribers of its "Internet" service.
Essentially, Comcast is secretly blocking certain Internet requests and Internet traffic in the same manner that hackers hijack computer systems with false messages. Comcast does not inform customers that it is blocking Internet traffic; indeed, it intentionally hides its hacking activity from users.
Comcast's behavior raises several issues: Is the company guilty of deceptive advertising by claiming it offers high-speed Internet access when in fact it only offers access to some parts of the Internet? Can it now be sued by users--including the possibility of a class action suit--for such practices? Is it trying to censor Internet traffic in the same way that government officials in China and Burma censor Internet access? Will the company begin censoring sites that differ from its corporate political views? (In fact, several analysts point out that there appears to be no specific law to prevent Comcast from blocking or hiding, say, republican or democratic sites from its customers.)
Now that Comcast has been caught deceiving its customers and ducking questions about its behavior--questions that were raised as long ago as last August--it may represent a turning point in the battle over net neutrality. Until now, companies such as Verizon and AT&T claimed that there was no reason to enact laws protecting Internet access as it exists because no one was blocking access to customers or planning to do so.
But now the telecom oligopoly has in fact started to hijack the Internet, which may finally spur people and the politicians that represent them into action.
For more on net neutrality, see: Verizon and AT&T: Web 2.0 Killers
For more on Comcast's actions, see: Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic
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I like WiMax, I think WiMax is an excellent solution for broadband Internet access. I've got nothing against WiMax. But I think WiMax has a major, perhaps fatal, problem.
WiMax, as the name suggests, is an extension of the popular wireless Wi-Fi standard--a big extension. Basically, rather than just covering an office or home with wireless access, WiMax would offer wireless Internet access to people up to 30 miles away. Of course, towers would need to be built and you would have to buy a new antenna (the first models are smaller than a DirecTV dish, but bigger than a bread box).
WiMax is a great idea because it can quickly enable high-speed Internet access without digging up streets or stringing cable. More important, it could offer access to places that cannot be reached by cable or DSL, specifically rural areas where stretching cable is impractical and making DSL work is next to impossible (you need to be within a couple of miles of the phone company's local central office for DSL to work properly).
There's also another reason to feel optimistic about WiMax: Intel has been throwing its support behind it in the form of chipsets and hundreds of millions of dollars invested in WiMax startups (to see some examples, check out WiMax: Intel Capital's big bet).
The problem: Most of the initial WiMax focus has been on cities, where WiMax isn't really needed. Most municipalities already have cable, DSL, and local shops offering free Wi-Fi. None of the early WiMax rollouts are in rural areas, but if WiMax is to catch on, that's precisely where it needs to be.
The argument for why WiMax isn't going into the netherlands is that there are simply not enough customers to support the service in those areas--which is precisely the reason cable and phone companies give for failing to develop a way to extend high-speed access to these areas. Cellular companies could fill the gap, but their monopolistic lethargy makes it unlikely they will do so.
So the fear is that WiMax will face too much competition in urban areas and fail before it ever reaches rural markets, which are better suited to accept the technology. Perhaps Intel should reconsider some of its investment strategies....
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Google, whose corporate creed includes the motto "You can make money without doing evil," has announced that it will retain personal data on individual Web surfers' searches for only 2 years. And in an another amazing example of TP (technological prevaricaton--see article below), some reporters actually bought the marketing spin that this would somehow help protect people's privacy.
Quick background: When you use Google to search for, say, "Clinton," "Clap Your Hands," or "Britney naked" (not that anyone I know would do that), the search engine pegs your search to your IP address--and then stores a record of it. Thus, if someone in the future wanted to know what subversive activities JQ had been up to, they wouldn't have to hack into my computers. All they would need to do is look through the Google records. Indeed, they could in theory go further, since Google not only tracks all of your searches, it also looks at cookies on your system, cookies which may tell them what you ordered online, what bank you use, your daughter's name,...well, you get the idea.
Does Google warn you with a pop-up box every time you enter a search term that you are being tracked. No. Does the company tell you that every search you conduct on its site could be used against you in a court of law? No. Does the company say, "This search could be used against you in your upcoming messy divorce/fraud/terrorist legal battle." Uh, no.
Is Google's retention of such information a standard practice in the industry? No. Try Microsoft or AOL searches and you'll find they toss out the data almost immediately.There are also several search engines that explicitly don't track your searches, including one called Scroogle that submits your query anonymously to (you guessed it) Google.
The only reason Google tracks and stores all this personal data is for money. Spying on you is just incidental to the process. However, if Google really cared about people, as it professes, then it would give each of us a cut of the profit it makes from harvesting our personal information--and quit trying to trick us about how it's protecting people's privacy.
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