Tag Archives: Internet

Comcast is evil (updated)

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It is not news to anyone that Comcast is hardly a friend to consumers.  But they have now taken action that is a direct attack on the open Internet and the growing desire on the part of consumers to bypass cable TV by accessing media on the Internet.

A partner of Netflix, a company called Level 3, is one of the companies that Netflix uses to stream their content over the Internet. Level 3 provides the bandwidth.  However, Level 3 now claims that Comcast has demanded fees from Level 3 to deliver content to Comcast customers. Here is an excerpt from their full statement:

On November 19, 2010, Comcast informed Level 3 that, for the first time, it will demand a recurring fee from Level 3 to transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content. By taking this action, Comcast is effectively putting up a toll booth at the borders of its broadband Internet access network, enabling it to unilaterally decide how much to charge for content which competes with its own cable TV and Xfinity delivered content. This action by Comcast threatens the open Internet and is a clear abuse of the dominant control that Comcast exerts in broadband access markets as the nation’s largest cable provider.

On November 22, after being informed by Comcast that its demand for payment was ‘take it or leave it,’ Level 3 agreed to the terms, under protest, in order to ensure customers did not experience any disruptions.

Level 3 operates one of several broadband backbone networks, which are part of the Internet and which independent providers of online content use to transmit movies, sports, games and other entertainment to consumers. When a Comcast customer requests such content, for example an online movie or game, Level 3 transmits the content to Comcast for delivery to consumers.

Level 3 believes Comcast’s current position violates the spirit and letter of the FCC’s proposed Internet Policy principles and other regulations and statutes, as well as Comcast’s previous public statements about favoring an open Internet.

While the network neutrality debate in Washington has focused on what actions a broadband access provider might take to filter, prioritize or manage content requested by its subscribers, Comcast’s decision goes well beyond this. With this action, Comcast is preventing competing content from ever being delivered to Comcast’s subscribers at all, unless Comcast’s unilaterally-determined toll is paid – even though Comcast’s subscribers requested the content. With this action, Comcast demonstrates the risk of a ‘closed’ Internet, where a retail broadband Internet access provider decides whether and how their subscribers interact with content.

Think about that. Comcast customers already pay for Internet access. If Comcast then stands between the customers and the full Internet, then Comcast can decide whether a competitor (in this case Netflix) can offer services to Comcast customers. Netflix is a direct competitor to Comcast and this is an assault on competition for content delivery. This is truly outrageous and should be shut down immediately by the FCC.

In addition, Comcast currently is in the process of acquiring NBC Universal. Allowing a company that threatens to block open Internet information from its customers to acquire a broadcast network is a recipe for disaster. Imagine if the only way you could watch NBC-generated content was via Comcast cable? What if you wanted to cut your cable TV and watch NBC content on Hulu. Do you think Comcast would allow that without a fee?

Update: The Chair of the FCC has now asked for more information regarding this action.

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Negative comments grow a business (updaed)

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There is a fascinating article in the NYT. A shady (if not criminal) online vendor has a chorus of complaints about him online. And when he is contacted by another disgruntled customer, he encourages them to complain online publicly. Why?

Because it raises his business position on Google search results and thereby generates more customers.

It’s all part of a sales strategy, he said. Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales. He closed with a sardonic expression of gratitude: “I never had the amount of traffic I have now since my 1st complaint. I am in heaven.”

That would sound like schoolyard taunting but for this fact: The post is two years old. Between then and now, hundreds of additional tirades have been tacked to Get Satisfaction, ComplaintsBoard.com, ConsumerAffairs.com and sites like them.

Not only has this heap of grievances failed to deter DecorMyEyes, but as Ms. Rodriguez’s all-too-cursory Google search demonstrated, the company can show up in the most coveted place on the Internet’s most powerful site.

Which means the owner of DecorMyEyes might be more than just a combustible bully with a mean streak and a potty mouth. He might also be a pioneer of a new brand of anti-salesmanship — utterly noxious retail — that is facilitated by the quirks and shortcomings of Internet commerce and that tramples long-cherished traditions of customer service, like deference and charm.

Google surely needs to provide some sort of response in addition to their tepid and vague responses to the NYT reporter’s questions.

The full article is worth a read.

Update: And now the owner of the company has been arrested.

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A full body scan for the Internet

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In addition to the porno-scanners and groping “pat-downs” at the airports, there is yet another assault on our traditional right to privacy. The government was the ability, in effect, to fully body scan the Internet. They want to be able to wiretap everything on the Internet and they want to require technology and Internet companies to make such a scan possible.

Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, traveled to Silicon Valley on Tuesday to meet with top executives of several technology firms about a proposal to make it easier to wiretap Internet users.

Mr. Mueller and the F.B.I.’s general counsel, Valerie Caproni, were scheduled to meet with senior managers of several major companies, including Google and Facebook, according to several people familiar with the discussions. How Mr. Mueller’s proposal was received was not clear.

“I can confirm that F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller is visiting Facebook during his trip to Silicon Valley,” said Andrew Noyes, Facebook’s public policy manager. Michael Kortan, an F.B.I. spokesman, acknowledged the meetings but did not elaborate.

This is yet another attack on liberty in response to terrorism. And, if adopted, it will be yet another win for the terrorist who seem to be achieving their goal of spreading fear and reducing freedom in our country.

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Election results maps

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Take your pick of the best election results maps:

In addition the maps, you can watch streaming CBS News coverage beginning at 9 pm on YouTube here.  Also, the ABC News app for the iPad (free) promises some good live coverage. And last, but certainly not least, for analysis and trend identification, go to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, a great polling and analysis site.

Networks block Google TV (updated)

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The major networks have blocked Google TV from showing their TV shows. What is happening is that Google TV contains a web-browser. Using that browser, viewers could, say, navigate to Hulu and watch the TV shows available there on their big screen TV driven by Google TV. But now the networks have blocked that.

So how is this done? Well, Google TV’s browser, like most browsers, identifies itself to websites it connects to. So, when Hulu gets a request from a Google TV browser, it can treat it differently than, say, the Safari browser.

So a question naturally arises: what if Google TV changes its identification to be Internet Explorer or Chrome or Safari? Problem solved. And there is no law or regulation against this. Of course, it would be a declaration of war by Google to the networks.

I would love to see that.

Update: Do read this post from Lauren Weinstein. I agree fully with this statement:

… in my view, the purposely blocking of particular viewing platforms for other than legitimate technical reasons (e.g. genuine, serious display incompatibilities) is unacceptable — and should be illegal.

I know virtually nothing about antitrust law, but if this is not illegal, it should be. Think about it. This could be a VERY BIG DEAL.

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Another horrible idea

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Several politicians have announced a new proposed bill called the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA). It would create two blacklists of Internet domains: one created by the courts and a second created by government bureaucrats. Domains added to the lists would be blocked by US ISPs.

COICA creates two blacklists of Internet domain names. Courts could add sites to the first list; the Attorney General would have control over the second. Internet service providers and others (everyone from Comcast to PayPal to Google AdSense) would be required to block any domains on the first list. They would also receive immunity (and presumably the good favor of the government) if they block domains on the second list.

The lists are for sites “dedicated to infringing activity,” but that’s defined very broadly — any domain name where counterfeit goods or copyrighted material are “central to the activity of the Internet site” could be blocked.

This is Internet censorship, pure and simple. Welcome to China.

You can sign a petition in opposition to this governmental censorship here.

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William Gibson on Google

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Google is evil. I have said this many times. And I do mean it.

But for a more thoughtful analysis of Google and its operation and meaning, you can turn to William Gibson [link to his Twitter account], one of my favorite writers. He penned such novels cyberpunk novels as the classic Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Spook Country.

Here is his take on Google, and its disturbing characteristics.

We have yet to take Google’s measure. We’ve seen nothing like it before, and we already perceive much of our world through it. We would all very much like to be sagely and reliably advised by our own private genie; we would like the genie to make the world more transparent, more easily navigable. Google does that for us: it makes everything in the world accessible to everyone, and everyone accessible to the world. But we see everyone looking in, and blame Google.

Google is not ours. Which feels confusing, because we are its unpaid content-providers, in one way or another. We generate product for Google, our every search a minuscule contribution. Google is made of us, a sort of coral reef of human minds and their products. And still we balk at Mr. Schmidt’s claim that we want Google to tell us what to do next. Is he saying that when we search for dinner recommendations, Google might recommend a movie instead? If our genie recommended the movie, I imagine we’d go, intrigued. If Google did that, I imagine, we’d bridle, then begin our next search.

We never imagined that artificial intelligence would be like this. We imagined discrete entities. Genies. We also seldom imagined (in spite of ample evidence) that emergent technologies would leave legislation in the dust, yet they do. In a world characterized by technologically driven change, we necessarily legislate after the fact, perpetually scrambling to catch up, while the core architectures of the future, increasingly, are erected by entities like Google.

By the way, Gibson has a new novel coming out on September 7 called “Zero History.” Buy it, you can’t go wrong.

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The end for the printed OED?

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It appears that the current printed version of the Oxford English Dictionary may be the last.

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The assault on cable TV

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Finally. It appears that the stars are aligning in favor of a strong push for Internet TV (IPTV) over traditional cable television.  All the big companies in tech (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon) are launching or have launched major initiatives to deliver streaming video over the Internet.

Content creators would love this, because it cuts out a middleman (cable TV distribution), thereby allowing more money to flow to the creators directly from consumers. This process, called disintermediation, is exactly what the Internet does and has done in other areas. For example, consider the destruction of travel agents brought on by the Internet.

MG Siegler lays it out on TechCrunch, and he argues that the real battle begins now:

Just take a look at the big picture. Everyday there is a new story about how one of the aforementioned tech giants is on the verge of something new meant to control our time spent watching content — and much of it from the living room. Today’s story is about Google’s big pay-per-view movie plan for YouTube, a new service they’re hoping to debut later this year with full Hollywood studio support. If they land it, it could be huge. But that’s just today’s example.

On Wednesday, at an event in San Francisco, Apple is widely expected to debut their next iteration of the Apple TV — which will likely now be called the “iTV”. Alongside it, they’re expected to unveil a new layer of iTunes that will allow people to rent television shows for $0.99 a pop. Again, that too could be huge.

* * *

Cable is vulnerable because for far too long they’ve screwed us all with ridiculous prices for a crapload of content that we simply don’t want. Despite the ever-present promise of a-la-carte pricing, it has never come to fruition. And so our cable bills remain close to (or over) $100 a month. We’re paying for so much stuff we simply don’t want. But we have no choice.

Consistent with the seriousness of this attack on traditional cable TV are reports that Federal regulators are looking carefully at Comcast’s proposed acquisition of NBC Universal.  Apparently the regulators are concerned that the acquisition might harm the development of full IPTV access.

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Entertainment quote of the day

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The Internet has destroyed rock. Children no longer develop social graces. They don’t hang out anymore.  I’m financially stable. I’m okay. But what about the kids trying to make it in this business? If you’re not an established band, if you don’t have a hit single, they’re gonna drop you. There are a lot of people out there as talented as we were, but they can’t sustain being in a rock ‘n’ roll band for long without success. We were able to, but we’re going to die out.

– Stevie Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac, decrying the supposed impact of the Internet on the high culture of corporate rock.

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Old Google v. New Google

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Google has announced an “agreement” with Verizon which, if it became effective, would limit Internet neutrality to services existing on today’s Internet. Future services could be restricted. Does that seem consistent with this announcement produced by Google in 2006?

More available from the anti-Google/Verizon site Voogle Wireless and MG Siegler at TechCrunch.

Google and net neutrality

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A level playing field, according to which all traffic flows with equal priority to all points, and with no data sources being favored in exchange for money or other consideration, is critical to maintaining the openness of the Internet. This level playing field is called network neutrality (although more nuanced applications of the terms are sometimes used). It is this openness that allows initially small operations to be accessible to all users which leads to the success of new ideas, including ideas that weaken or destroy the then-curent successes.

A good example of the benefits of network neutrality is Google itself. Back in the early days of the Internet, the most popular search tool was AltaVista, which launched in 1995, and by 1997 AltaVista was running more than 80 million searches a day.  Then it all went bad. Why? One word: Google.

But consider what might have happened had AltaVista, owned by Digital Equipment Corporation, cut a deal with the then major internet backbone providers to either speed AltaVista search data or slow down its search competitors data. Google might not have a stood a chance.

Now there have been reports (here, here and here, for example) that Google and Verizon have been engaged in talks that could spell an attack on network neutrality. Each denies that agreements have been reach, but all the denials are weak and more in the nature of non-denial denials than reliable endorsements of net neutrality. From The Economist:

Let’s leave aside for a second the question of just how terrible of an idea [a Google/Verizon agreement] is, and just how likely it is to throttle innovation by small actors on the web as it prioritises the work of better-capitalised companies. Let’s focus instead on a more basic question: why does America have regulators?

If companies always agreed with regulators’ rules, there would be no need for regulators. The very point of a regulator is to do things that companies don’t like, out of concern for the welfare of the market or the consumer.

Unless and until the full details of any such agreement are released to the public, we should be wary of the motives of both Google and Verizon. We should also insist that regulators insist that the public utility of the Internet not be destroyed by huge corporations acting purely in their own self interest  Support a strong FCC