Author: john

Net Neutrality: A bit more depth

Salon has published an article with more depth on the technical and policy arguments behind the net neutrality debate (worth the few seconds to watch an E Trade ad).

Among all of the he-said/she-said coverage of each side’s arguments, what I see is the true heart of the issue is starting to emerge: who can control the physical infrastructure of the Internet?

At firms like AT&T and Verizon, both of which have roots in the monopolistic old AT&T, there’s now an effort afoot to reengineer parts of the Internet by introducing more intelligence to manage and control data.
(emphasis added)

In this case, the question might be more accurately phrased around controlling the speed of a particular web site/application, but this central issue remains. Personally, I would prefer that the control remain in the hands of those who use the Internet, as opposed to being “in the network” or the hands of those who own the wires.

State or Private Action: Protecting Free Speech

There have been a number of stories lately which really highlight the question of the responsibility of corporations to protect or even stand up for the rights of their users.

  1. A short video on C Net shows the pleas of a family member of a Chinese journalist who was arrested based on information provided by Yahoo.
  2. A recent Times article discusses AT&T’s role in giving government officials access to data traveling across their networks for “further analysis.”
  3. Finally, while Google resisted the US government’s efforts to gain access to their data, their relations with the Chinese government appear to be more friendly.

Our Constitution grants that “Congress [read as the government] shall make no law” abridging freedom of speech, but as private entities begin to have more power over our speech (and as they collect increasing amounts of personal data) the question of private speech abridgement is increasing in importance. Further, as these articles show, the problem may be exacerbated by our government acting together with companies (which aren’t bound by the Constitution to protect our speech) to effectively engage in speech-restrictive activity.

Is this problem legal or ethical? In cases where the impact may be indirect, is it really a problem at all? What makes the above cases so alarming is that the collaboration may actually result in people ending up in jail (or worse). Journalists have argued for a press privilege in part because there is a belief that they should not help law enforcement do their job (essentially, let police do their own investigating). While resisting government demands may put their business in jeopardy, perhaps fighting on behalf of their customers on similar grounds is a reasonable expectation. One would hope that American citizens would stand up for our Constitutional principles, and perhaps that our corporate citizens would do the same.

Storms

Hail

It’s a strange feeling to think that someone just threw a rock at your house, then a moment later someone throws another from the other side of the house, followed by a deluge of noisy bangs (and a whiny dog).

Last night’s hail storm was quite the surprise.

Fortunately, we weren’t hit as badly as our old home, Iowa City. Head over to the Press Citizen and check out the photos. We wish them well.

Libel on Web 2.0

Some kids at a suburban high school are unhappy with a teacher. Before the Internet, they might have pass rumors around the school (which might constitute slander), but now they have tools like MySpace to libel their teacher.

But the question remains of how well they are able to make the distinction that these are two greatly different acts under the law. If they (kids, or adults for that matter) don’t know enough of the law to make this distinction, how are we to protect individual reputations online? Public education about this and other media laws may be costly and ineffective. Technological limitations like filtering may be able to play an important role, but may impact online speech (through over-filtering).

Perhaps the larger question here is to what degree we can make our already evolved media laws like libel apply online to individual publishers. Could revision of the law for the online environment solve some of these problems?  As more and more conversation takes place online, these issues will require some sort of resolution.