The past few weeks have been filled with consternation for those of us involved in telecommunications and civil liberties issues. This week, two of the major issues came to a head: FISA reform and Telecom Immunity. Senator Reid (D) announced last week that he would violate Senate traditions, ignoring Senator Dodd’s hold, and bring the highly flawed Bush administration FISA bill, S.2248, to a vote. Aside from expanding warrantless, unsupervised, surveillance, the bill would grant retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies which may have broken the law repeatedly over the past six years. Senator Dodd vowed he would filibuster the bill.

While numerous Democrats claimed they opposed the bill and telecom immunity — including Sen. Reid– few actually stood to oppose it. Sens. Clinton, Biden and Obama found they could not leave the diners and palm pressing of Iowa to return to Washington to perform the job they were elected to do. My own Senator, Durbin (D), refused to answer my inquires or discuss his position on the bill. But Senator Dodd sped from the campaign trail to defend the principles of the fourth amendment and equality under the law. While I listened to the floor debate on Monday, I was both infuriated, by the obvious mendacity of those standing for the bill, and inspired by the integrity of Sen. Dodd and those few who stood with him. In the end, Senator Reid was forced to withdraw the bill until next year. For those of us involved in this issue, it was as close to a moment of true democracy that we have seen in ages. Nearly magical.

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The whole thing began about a month ago when the AP reported that Comcast was blocking traffic associated with BitTorrent, GNUtella, and other file-sharing applications. In a semantic parsing that would please even the most jaded pentagon technocrat, Comcast denied that they were blocking any traffic. In actuality, Comcast wasn’t really blocking traffic; they were simply imitating traffic in order to get the sharing computers to ignore the data sent between them. This approach is quite a bit sleazier then actually blocking the traffic, as it forces the hosts to keep establishing their connections to one another. Nonetheless, the die was cast, and consumer groups filed a complaint with the FCC and called for congress to impose Net Neutrality regulations. Meanwhile, hordes of libertarian network operators began complaining about how the government shouldn’t interfere with how they run their networks. Three days ago the story got bigger when a California resident filed suite against Comcast for breach of contract, arguing that Comcast does not deliver the promised Internet speeds it advertises, and actively interferes with the performance of certain applications.

The issues and problems surrounding this debacle are an outgrowth of the severely flawed telecommunications policies of the FCC and the federal government’s failure to deal with those bad policy choices. Comcast should to have the right to regulate traffic allocation on their own network. The nature of the HFC architecture employed by cable Internet providers means that limited bandwidth is shared within local distribution areas. This means that if your neighbor is using huge amounts of bandwidth to download an episode of Lost, there is less overall available bandwidth for you. Cable operators want to ensure that burst bandwidth is available to users, so they set the cable modem’s overall limiting quite high (usually between 4 Mb/s & 8 Mb/s); however, this leads to the problem of active users consuming large amounts of bandwidth for extended periods. In the case of peer-to-peer applications, Comcast was trying to ensure that there was excess burst bandwidth available to more casual users of common Internet applications. However, Comcast should have informed their customers that they were limiting specific traffic and applications. By not doing so, they operated in duplicitous and deceitful manner. This is a clear case of Comcast wanting to have it all: they want to pick up subscribers by touting high bandwidth numbers and then limit the users who actually use the bandwidth they’re paying for.

To allow the federal government, however, to dictate what is valid network traffic could lead to disastrous consequences. To be adaptable to the ever changing applications and protocols on the Internet any legislation would need to be written broadly. This could easily lead to situations in which it becomes technically illegal for service providers to mitigate spam, intervene in a virus outbreak, or prioritize voice or video traffic. For many years the Internet community of operators and developers have done an exceptional job of regulating and expanding the applications and data on the Internet. This was primarily due to the need of numerous network operators being forced to work together to exchange data and adhere to standards. Recently this has started to change; however, as the number of autonomous carriers has begun to shrink. This has placed business pressures on the remaining networks to try to keep more traffic and services on their networks and worry less about exchanging data with others.

The overall problem is that there is a lack of competition in the marketplace. If subscribers had multiple choices of broadband providers they could choose a provider based upon their application needs. Network Neutrality only becomes an issue because last mile monopolies have been encouraged by the FCC. With the loss of data line sharing requirements for copper, coax, and fiber, consumers are left with very few choices between Internet providers. Additionally, the deregulation of last mile data facilities means that no company can enter into the market to satisfy customer demands. For instance, a service provider who wishes to target peer-to-peer users cannot, economically, gain access to the copper or coax wire entering your home. This means that consumers will always be tied to one or two service providers and their policies. If competition was encouraged in this market, questions of Network Neutrality would not even arise. Consumers would simply change providers from those who do not satisfy their needs to those which do. The FCC, with their unique brand of logic, keeps insisting that fewer providers means more competition and better products for consumers. In any other market this logic would be dismissed as laughable: do we really believe we would have better automobiles if there were only two or three manufacturers? But in the world of telecommunications this ass-backwards logic seems to be accepted as gospel –proselytized with massive political contributions.

Without re-regulation of last mile facilities the only hope consumers have is Network Neutrality legislation. Network operators and admins should work with lawmakers to try to ensure that any regulations are adaptable enough to address their concerns. If operators, and the companies they work for, simply continue to oppose Neutrality regulation they will soon find themselves having to interpret poorly written regulation and hope that no one complains when they get it wrong. This is simply a case where consumers are not going to stand for biased monopolies, and the monopolies will have to get used to operating in a more neutral fashion.

As governments and corporations extend their power and influence, their need to limit access to ideas which contradict theirs will continue to grow. The ability to bypass Internet filters or hide one’s identity will become more and more essential. This guide offers a helpful start for everyone.

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.

The breadth of this statement is amazing. As AT&T partners with the Chinese government, would it now be a violation of an AT&T service agreement to criticize the Chinese government? Could one have their DSL connection terminated for publicly questioning their telephone bill?

The AT&T apologists and defenders immediately jumped on this change of the ToS, claiming, once again, that this is obviously an over-reaching mistake by some middle manager, and that, under common-carrier laws, the ToS is unenforceable and would be struck down in court. My response to these people, the same one’s who claimed the Pearl Jam incident was simply an over-reaction by a middle manager, is to ask: how many of these anti-consumer actions does it take constitute evidence of a subtle or general anti-consumer corporate policy? one?, three?, twelve?, twenty? Let me know an I will assemble the requisite documentation. As to the issue of common-carrier regulations, commentators are correct that under those regulations AT&T must remain neutral to general content. However, it is most likely that should push come to shove that AT&T will claim itself to be a Media Organization not held to common-carrier standards. After all, no one would expect Viacom to carry content which damaged their brands, why should AT&T?

There are a number of people whom I respect who disagree with me on the issue of Net Neutrality. Most of them believe that market forces will respond and correct any anti-consumer moves by Internet providers. I believe this would be true, if there existed diverse competition in the marketplace. The problem remains that a very few number of large carriers control last mile access to the Internet. Among these carriers there is little geographic competition, except in major urban centers. Opponents of neutrality site RF distribution as a way to alleviate this problem. However, given the FCC’s recent rulings on the spectrum auctions it seems most likely that the same large companies which control hardline distribution will end up in control of the RF spectrum as well. As congress has done very little to mitigate media and telecommunications consolidation, and will certainly not address this issue in the near future, the only solution left is to impose a Network Neutrality law upon Internet carriers. It is the only solution left for an industry which appearing more and more monopolistic every day is not afraid to flex it muscles on content control.

This is an example of the complete insanity which has come out of the copyright wars. Under Viacom’s logic, once they use someone else’s content they own it. But it is more likely that Viacom has just decided that if you are not a multi-national media company you have no copyright protection.

[t]he male and female cartoon officers, designed for the ministry by Sohu, will offer a text warning to surfers to abide by the law and tips on Internet security as they move across the screen in a virtual car, motorcycle or on foot.

The Internet in China is one of the most heavily monitored and censored in the world. Users are frequently banned from viewing material which is considered impolitic or immoral. The goal of this project is to further the specter of the all seeing and powerful government eye. But China’s Internet users have become adaptive and resourceful over the past few years, learning to circumvent and avoid their government’s controls. The AP noted that “[d]espite the controls, nudity, profanity, illegal gambling and pirated music, books and film have proliferated on Chinese Internet servers,” and a recent report on NPR highlighted the successes of Chinese online gamers in defeating government controls.

Governments, including our own, should know by now that censorship is pointless in an age where technology is plentiful. And that those citizens who are resourceful, curious, and adaptive enough to bypass government filters are the very citizens which have the necessary skills to lead their countries into the future. They should be lauded and not punished. If governments do not learn that lesson they will find themselves under siege by the best and brightest of their own citizens.

Recent copper thefts have caused major phone, Internet, and video outages for Time Warner, AT&T, Verizion, and other carriers. It has gotten so bad, that at the beginning of this month AT&T and Time Warner have started offering rewards for information regarding the thefts, and Pennsylvania and other states are working to pass new metallic theft laws.

Copper prices have been at their highest levels for the past couple of years and scrap copper has been hanging around $3.40/lbs. The high prices are primarily due to the construction boom in the US, and infrastructure modernization in China and throughout Asia. Yes, this is the global trading village where one can pillage copper phone lines from one country, re-mold it to new wire, and sell it to another.

There is something both frightening and sad about people ripping apart their own infrastructure for a few dollars a pound. This problem seems much more prevalent then one would imagine and I wonder if it is a sign of the times, or simple a new avenue of common thievery.

A few days ago, I wrote about how AT&T censored anti-administration lyrics from Pearl Jam’s webcast. The Chicago Sun Times is now reporting that this was not the first instance of AT&T’s squelching of music questioning the Bush administration:

AT&T’s Blue Room Webcast also had silenced comments during two performances at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee last June, cutting remarks by the John Butler Trio bemoaning the lack of federal response to Hurricane Katrina and comments about Bush and the war in Iraq by singer Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips.

“The sound did not cut out at any other time — only when someone was talking about George Bush or the government in a negative way…” AT&T did confirm that other, unspecified political comments have been cut from its Webcasts.

The Daily Swarm is also collecting anecdotes and evidence of further AT&T censorship. A number of the comments suggest that the practice is even wider spread then first thought.

As Jon Stokes pointed out, AT&T’s argument against Net Neutrality legislation has been simply “trust us.” AT&T’s actions have shown, many many times, that they cannot be trusted. It should concern all of us that AT&T — with the encouragement of the FCC — continues its unregulated, monopolistic, expansion. They have shown that they are more then willing to censor political content. Whether the censorship is done for either business or ideological reasons is still unclear, but AT&T has greatly benefited from the administration’s FCC board members. As I said previously, AT&T has completed most of the wall to censor content on the Internet, it is now simply beginning to filter at the gates now.