Samanathon.com

I’m still for the Jap vids…

I love “Ask a Ninja”. The guy reminds me of Will Ferrell dressed up like a Ninja.

While entertaining, the ninja needs to do some more research on net neutrality. I work with the Hands Off the Internet coalition on this issue and if you’re interested wanted to point out a few things.

In your previous post, you noted,

“Net Neutrality is principle that preserves the free and open Internet - the First Amendment, and founding principle, of the Internet.”

This is false and a common misconception seen across the blogosphere. As Turk over at Kung Fu Quip points out,

“First of all, the ‘founding principle’ of the Internet is not Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is a big government intrusion into the net. The government had previously understood that regulation of this still nascent medium is a terrible idea. Yet now the Net Neut proponents want to freeze development in its tracks - ostensibly convinced that innovation can go no further.

The proponents will tell you that net neutrality has always been - based on a law that applied to 40% of the broadband connections carried by DSL lines. It never applied to cable - which accounts for about 60% of the broadband connections. So NN was never “the founding principle”. It was a hindrance to DSL, and the lack of it allowed cable to arrive on the scene and steal the market (well, that and the fact that cable had faster lines and a $100 billion network investment to make it better).”

http://www.kungfuquip.com/archives/569

My organization has always endorsed the four principles of net neutrality: Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice; Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement; Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers. Yet, “net neutrality”, take your pick of the many definitions out there, will cause many more problems than it seeks to prevent. Not to mention net neutrality seeks to solve hypothetical problems based on what “could” happen. Nobody has proved that the laws and regulations we have in the books today aren’t sufficient to address these hypothetical doomsday scenarios.

This Guardian article gives some interesting background on the debate and also highlights the arguments of many of the most senior network engineers, including Richard Bennett and Robert Kahn, the “father of the internet.”

“Save The Internet took full advantage of rational fears, argues veteran internet engineer Richard Bennett, but in doing so, it created “an Intelligent Design for the Left”.

“The gap between fear and reality is even more stark when the technical issues are examined. The Neutrality amendments rejected by Congress last year would have made many of today’s private contracts illegal, and outlawed the techniques such as “traffic shaping” that ISPs use to curb bandwidth hogs, says Bennett.

Dr Robert Kahn says that Neutrality legislation poses a fundamental threat to internet research because it misunderstands what the internet really is; it’s a network of networks, and experimentation on private networks must be encouraged.”The internet has never been neutral,” explains Crowcroft. “Without traffic shaping, we won’t get the convergence that allows the innovation on TV and online games that we’ve seen in data and telephony.”

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2049763,00.html

Thanks.

I want to see the hotdog on a stick girl!

PS.

Nice template change :)!

Oh, cool! I had forgotten all about this series Thanks for reminding me