Category: Digital Infrastructure & Platforms
-
I Tell the FCC to End In-Home Video Encryption
In my last post, I asked “Who Killed the Open Set-Top-Box?.” There were some great comments on that post, which inspired me to write up my thoughts and send them to the FCC. The FCC has long tried and failed to mandate that cable companies make their systems more interoperable with third-party consumer devices. Nevertheless,…
-
Who Killed the Open Set-Top-Box?
A few years ago, I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I subscribed to Comcast cable. With my trusty Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 I enjoyed the ability to watch TV on my desktop computer — even to record it for later viewing or to occasionally edit and re-upload it to YouTube (with critical commentary and within the bounds of…
-
Don't Regulate the Internet. No, Wait. Regulate the Internet.
When Congress considered net neutrality legislation in the form of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (H.R. 5353), representatives of corporate copyright owners weighed in to oppose government regulation of the Internet. They feared that such regulation might inhibit their private efforts to convince ISPs to help them enforce copyrights online through various forms…
-
The Next Step towards an Open Internet
Now that the FCC has finally acted to safeguard network neutrality, the time has come to take the next step toward creating a level playing field on the rest of the Information Superhighway. Network neutrality rules are designed to ensure that large telecommunications companies do not squelch free speech and online innovation. However, it is…
-
Trying to Make Sense of the Comcast / Level 3 Dispute
[Update: I gave a brief interview to Marketplace Tech Report] The last 48 hours has given rise to a fascinating dispute between Level 3 (a major internet backbone provider) and Comcast (a major internet service retailer). The dispute involves both technical principles and fuzzy facts, so I am writing this post more as an attempt…
-
A Major Internet Milestone: DNSSEC and SSL
On July 15th, a small but significant internet event occurred. On that day, years of planning culminated in the deployment of a cryptographic signature on the root DNS zone. To simplify greatly, this means that internet users will soon be able to have a much higher degree of trust in the hierarchical Domain Name System…
-
Broadband Politics and Closed-Door Negotiations at the FCC
The last seven days at the FCC have been drama-filled, and that’s not something you can often say about an administrative agency. As I noted in my last post, the FCC is considering reclassifying broadband as a “common carrier” service. This would subject the access portion of the service to some additional regulations which currently…
-
Regulating and Not Regulating the Internet
There is increasingly heated rhetoric in DC over whether or not the government should begin to “regulate the internet.” Such language is neither accurate nor new. This language implies that the government does not currently involve itself in governing the internet — an implication which is clearly untrue given a myriad of laws like CFAA,…
-
Search Neutrality ? Net Neutrality
Sunday’s New York Times featured a provocative op-ed arguing in addition to regulating “net neutrality” the FCC should also effectuate “search neutrality” – requiring search providers rank results without consideration of business entities. The author heaps particular scorn upon Google for promoting its own context-relevant services (i.e. maps and weather) at the fore of search…
-
Net Neutrality: When is Network Management "Reasonable"?
Last week the FCC released its much-awaited Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on network neutrality. As expected, the NPRM affirms past FCC neutrality principles, and adds two more. Here’s the key language: 1. Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not prevent any of its users from sending or…