I’m happy that there has been progress on the Network Neutrality issue since Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has placed a Hold on the telecommunications legislation recently approved in committee. It’s also very encouraging that folks with prominence in the senate, like Senator Kerry are now speaking out on the issue. Having said all that, I’m much less happy about the way this thing is shaping up on the Senate Floor. Among the American People the fight is bipartisan, with right wing and left wing amazingly coming together to fight for internet neutrality, but in the Senate it appears now to be a fight divided right down the party line, with only a few exceptions.

This may hurt the chances of Net Neutrality in the long run, though I have to admit to a certain joy at the thought of an old fashioned filibuster on this issue, which is what Wyden’s “Hold” signifies is coming when discussion of this issue is opened to the Senate floor. According to Lessig the Dems even have a slogan — “Republicans: They sold the environment to Exxon, and sold the war to Halliburton. Now they want to sell the Internet to at&t.” That may sound good (actually it sounds amazingly true) but the fact that this has become a political football being wrangled over between the two parties is worrying, since we all know how the great unwashed in The South support any damn thing the Republican Party supports, even if it’s bad for them, that whole “my party, right or wrong” mentality.

Well, at least the Democrats are sounding somewhat intelligent when they speak about technology. I absolutely shuddered when I read the text of Senator Steven’s statement in committee (Stevens is the author of the legislation and owes a great deal of his campaign funding to various Telecomms. No surprise there.) The depth of his ignorance is eclipsed only by the vast amount of his Telecomm campaign funding. This is probably no accident. I quote–

what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes. ( . . . )

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.

THIS is the man they put in charge of authoring legislation about complicated technology? Is it any wonder there’s confusion? At least when Kerry spoke, and when he blogged on the Save the Internet site he sounded like he’d done some homework, though he could have phrased a few things better, ie when he says “Free and open access to the internet is something all Americans should enjoy” which is quite wrong. Internet access is not free, nor should it be. It’s a utility. Usage should carry appropriate charges, which no one argues with. It’s the Neutrality of the utility that is in question.

A comment on the Kerry guest blog comments– when I say the issue is a bipartisan issue when it comes to the American People, you only have to read the comments to realize that is true. More than one Bush Republican (directorblue, Doug Ross @ Journal, jjspirko) spoke up in comments and admitted to siding with Kerry on this specific issue.

Meanwhile Google is buying up dark fiber and carefully denying they’re going to do anything with it other than be a local ISP in the cities they’re wiring, though the language is so open to interpretation it leaves their future use open to much interesting speculation. I have mixed feelings about Google, but if they buy up dark fiber and recreate some public peering points to “get around” all this nonsense, that’s a good start, and one I’ll applaud. There’s been a lot of buzz on Slashdot about alternative methods of internet access if Network Neutrality is defeated, so I imagine there’s hope that there will eventually be a way around the Telecomm’s mad monopoly. One possible alternative is “Fon”, a wifi network being subsidized by Google and Skype. And I’m researching states where muni wifi has been protected by law, since there’s nothing tying me to this area.

I really wish the infamous “last mile” belonged to the people– that HUGE mistake by our government in its dealings with the Telecomms is the one place where it’s all decided, and where the biggest initial “giveaway” of our internet freedom took place. Cringely argues on his blog that we should start building our own last mile, and though I agree with him in principle, I have also read the comments on Slashdot, many of which, by technologically savvy folks, say Cringely’s numbers are grossly in error and it would be roughly twice as expensive as he postulates.

I’m feeling like the US taxpayer is living that old Chinese curse, the one that goes, “May you live in interesting times.”

Technorati Tags: last mile, network neutrality, Cringely, Lessig, Senator Stevens, Senator Kerry, bipartisan, alternative internet structure, Telecommunications, AT&T, Google, dark fiber, Fon

This entry was posted on Monday, July 3rd, 2006 at 10:00 amunder Web News and . Comment RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.