Internet Statistics by Alex Goldman

In February, professor Eben Moglen inspired the creation of the Diaspora open source social networking project when in his speech to the Internet Society at NYU, he said:

Facebook is the Web with “I keep all the logs, how do you feel about that?” It’s a terrarium for what it feels like to live in a panopticon built out of web parts.

And it shouldn’t be allowed. It comes to that. It shouldn’t be allowed. That’s a very poor way to deliver those services. They are grossly overpriced at “spying all the time”. They are not technically innovative. They depend upon an architecture subject to misuse and the business model that supports them is misuse. There isn’t any other business model for them. This is bad.

I’m not suggesting it should be illegal. It should be obsolete. We’re technologists, we should fix it.

Last night, it was the turn of Rob Spectre, community evangelist for Boxee, who dropped by the NYLUG in order to grow the community.

Spectre pointed out that while open source technology is widely deployed throughout the internet from the largest core data centers to the newest cell phones, it is absent from the living. This is due largely to the monolith in the living room, as in, “my god, it’s full of patent lawyers!”

Continue reading ‘Boxee at NYLUG’ »

Bruce Kushnick believes that FCC reform is a charade and that the FCC plans to give cash handouts to phone and cable companies by taxing all broadband connections.

This FCC policy would be wrong, especially since an FCC study just concluded that the FCC should be spending money on fixed wireless.

Seen many stories about this. The latest is from the New York Times, covering food trucks in New Jersey.

Bruce Kushnick recently pointed out to me that the FCC is using data from a period between 1997 and 2002.

The key difference between then and now is that through 2002, the ISPs still had control of the market, but today, the phone and cable companies rule.

Continue reading ‘The ISP Market Has Changed Since 2002 — Does the FCC Recognize This?’ »

The Washington, D.C. district court handed down its decision (.pdf) in the Comcast vs. FCC case on April 6, 2010.

The decision throws into focus the muddle that is current internet law in the United States.

“America needs competition among its high-speed internet providers. Open access has proved to be an effective way to do this elsewhere. Barring that, the FCC’s now-voided rules on net neutrality would have been a poor, but adequate substitute,” wrote The Economist, which is not a radical lefty ragsheet, in its response to the decision. The magazine recommended that Congress clarify the distinction between the internet and telecommunications.

All of this is necessary only because of a mistake the FCC made in 2002.

Continue reading ‘The Consequences of the Comcast vs. FCC Ruling’ »

When I last wrote about MagicJack, I was very upset with the service. It was not working.

Imagine my surprise — and pleasure — when MagicJack called me to discuss the problem. After some back and forth, the MagicJack representative recommend that I purchase a powered USB hub. Continue reading ‘MagicJack Keeps Improving’ »

I edited this screed by Bruce Kushnick: The History, Financial Commitments and Outcomes of Fiber Optic Broadband Deployment in America: 1990-2004. In it, Kushnick details all of the promises the phone companies made to state and federal governments and regulators — and then broke.

David Isenberg has convened those concerned with infrastructure at meetings called Freedom To Connect for many years. This year, he’s Senior Advisor to the FCC’s National Broadband Taskforce and instead of Freedom to Connect, he convened a group of eminent speakers for a panel called Workshop: Future Fiber Architectures and Local Deployment Choices.

While much FCC policy has been inward looking, refusing to treat the world as a laboratory in which alternate polcies are tested, some failing and some succeeding. Both failures and successes provide useful lessons.

Two representatives of successes were present, Herman Wagter of citynet.nl in Amsterdam and Johan Henæs Norwegian equipment maker INS Communications.

Continue reading ‘David Isenberg’s FCC Fiber Panel’ »

Congratulations David Isenberg — and congratulations FCC for making an excellent choice!

Here’s his blog post on the matter:

http://isen.com/blog/2009/11/i-joined-fcc-national-broadband-plan.html

More here from the FCC’s broadband blog.

The first white spaces network will be deployed in Virginia with an experimental license. To the extent that this gives ISPs additional options, it is very good news.