The FOIA Blog points out that a number of Freedom of Information Act requests (by academics and industry watchdogs) to the FCC to gain access to a directory of U.S. broadband providers have been deined under the exemption for trade secrets/confidential business information.
There have been a few times in previous posts where I have claimed that a large number of Americans have limited choice when it comes to broadband service–these data would put that debate to rest.
As an academic, I’m also sure that this sort of data would be helpful to researchers studying the media effects of the Internet…at least by creating an easy metric by which one could tell how “wired” a particular community is.
For anyone interested, the case to watch here is:
Center for Public Integrity v. Federal Communications Commission (District of Columbia)
GigaOM » Forget Neutrality — Keep Packets Private
Here’s an article which I think clearly explains one of the important values in the Internet Neutrality debate–the need for privacy (or what others might call nondiscrimination) in the bits of information sent across the Internet. While I’m not sure that packet privacy would absolutely require “deep packet inspection,” which from what I understand becomes technically difficult and could possibly be accomplished by including more data in packet addressing information, but the author makes a great point that shouldn’t be lost:
Coping with billing disputes still means retaining data. Under what circumstances might a third party get access to the data derived from content routing? Content routing in one context enables content filtering in another.
This argument on the “need” to retain sensitive traffic information for billing purposes brings an interesting potential twist to the congressional debate over ISP data retention.
The insanely great songs Apple wont let you hear. - By Paul Collins - Slate Magazine
This article gets right at what I’ve said a few times before…there’s a lot of great music hiding on other country’s iTunes sites. The broadband era has made it easier than ever to become exposed to great international music (both legally and not). I’ve grown a real (expensive) taste for Japanese music in the last year and a half, partly with help finding good bands on iTunes, and it’s always frustrating to know that it’s just licensing agreements holding Apple back from opening up more artists internationally.
To be fair, there are a lot of international acts starting to show up on iTunes America–partly thanks to the efforts of a licensing company whose name escapes me at the moment. Still, I know of at least a few great (Sony) bands that will never make it on to iTunes, regardless of country. Perhaps Norway is on to something.
I’m finally back after a break between taking preliminary exams…and passing. Hopefully this will be a time to get back into insightful comments on the news of the day.
It’s also the first post with the new update to Wordpress 2.1 with the K2 theme Release Candidate. After re-tweaking, everything seems to be working well. Thanks to all the developers of this project!
