It's Official: Maine Rejects Net Neutrality!
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To: TECHNOLOGY EDITORS  Contact: Karen Norphon, +1-703-683-5004 x121, for Hands Off the Internet   WASHINGTON, June 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Gov.
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Wary of lobbyists calling signals from the sidelines, Maine is taking steps to ban text messages and e-mails to lawmakers in session as it becomes the latest state to address the ever-expanding use of electronic communications in statehouses.
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Comcast for months has denied blocking BitTorrent traffic, but new tests show that it takes aggressive filtering steps that AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Cablevision do not.
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Senate Commerce Committee Chairman  Ted Stevens has offered a compromise in the fierce fight over  legislation on Internet network neutrality, but stopped short  of demands sought by content companies like Google Inc.
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In a filing before the US Federal Communications Commission this morning, the Dept. of Justice's Antitrust Division argued that proponents of "net neutrality" would stifle the natural course of free market innovation in Internet technologies.
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StreamCast has formally asked the US Supreme Court to reject the request made by the Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Ass.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is taking the middle ground in the net neutrality debate.
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(InfoWorld) - Hundreds of groups and individual Internet users sounded off to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC)Â on net neutrality in comments filed Monday, the deadline for responding to the agency's inquiry into the proposed regulation. Individual Internet users, trade groups, and advocacy organizations filed about 670 comments about net neutrality rules with the FCC Monday. Individuals and organizations have submitted nearly 29,000 comments on net neutrality since the FCC opened its inquiry in late March. Net neutrality advocates want the FCC or the U.S. Congress to prohibit large broadband providers like AT&TÂ and Comcast from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors. Many of the comments Monday came from individual Internet users who asked the FCC to protect them against new fees that they fear broadband providers could charge Web content providers. "Keep the corporations off our rights," wrote Internet user Jack McFarley of Washington state in an e-mail that was part form letter. "Net neutrality is essential to free speech, equal opportunity, and economic innovation in America." Bonnie Bennett of California seemed to take a more individual approach in her e-mail to the FCC. "Free, unlimited access to the Internet is the modern-day version of how to educate the citizenry of a well-functioning democracy," she wrote. "Big companies and global corporations care a lot about profits and stockholders but not much about educating citizens." A technology director of a school in Mississippi said net neutrality rules would protect his students' ability to access the information they need. "The importance of the Internet is increasing each month," wrote David Scovic. "Many small innovative Web sites that are vital to our teaching would be affected by a no vote [on net neutrality rules]." Net neutrality advocates have argued that such rules are needed after decisions by the FCC and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 allowed broadband providers to stop sharing their networks with competing Internet service providers. The debate over net neutrality heated up after Ed Whitacre, former CEO at AT&T, complained in BusinessWeek in late 2005 about potential competition from Internet companies, saying he wasn't going to let them "use my pipes free." In March, the FCC launched an inquiry to examine net neutrality proposals, looking at whether broadband providers charge different prices for different speeds and how consumers are affected by the ways broadband providers manage their networks. Hands Off the Internet, an advocacy group representing AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, the American Conservative Union and other organizations, said in its filing that net neutrality advocates haven't shown the need for new regulations. Broadband providers aren't blocking competing content, the group said. "There is no current or anticipated content discrimination or service degradation justifying new regulations by the commission," wrote Christopher Wolf, cochairman of Hands Off the Internet. "Moreover, regulation could well thwart Internet growth and make consumer access unfairly expensive." The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a trade group representing Microsoft, Google, and other tech vendors, said a net neutrality rule is needed because there's little competition among broadband providers. Broadband providers "insult the commission's expertise by summarily proclaiming the broadband access market competitive without any specific evidence of competition," the group said.
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After tossing WiFi start-up bids for exclusive control of fallow spectrum, federal regulators want public input on how to proceed. Will a new fight over "open access" rules emerge?
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It's a Swedish smackdown: To protest Perspektiv Broadband's AllOfMP3 morality play, the Pirate Bay bans the ISP's users. In Monkey Bites.
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The latest victory for people's paralysis The government has responded to more than 9,000 people who signed a petition against misleading "unlimited" broadband advertising by bouncing them back to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which has already repeatedly refused to act.â¦
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Sources say FCC on Tuesday will further exempt Internet calls from state rules and taxes. But is cable a fly in the ointment?
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By Koprowski, Gene  The concept of "net neutrality" sounds quite reasonable in theory, but the policy proposals coming from federal legislators and bureaucrats may in reality be quite discriminatory.
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California passes Wi-Fi user protection bill; AT&T eyes municipal deals. Plus: The mobile Internet--are we there yet?
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Chairman Kevin Martin supports open spectrum access. The catch is that the spectrum auction rules being floated make it unlikely an open network could ever actually be built.
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Both opponents and proponents of Net neutrality legislation claimed a win from an FTC report, issued Wednesday, that declared the commission's essential neutrality on the debate.
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Congress passed a measure Friday putting a three-year ban on state and local governments&#39; taxation of the monthly fees that Internet providers charge their customers.