John Oram of IT Examiner does a fair write-up on the Innovation ’08 panel in IT Examiner:

Richard Bennett said he is opposed to Net Neutrality regulations because they shut down engineering options that are going to be needed for the Internet to become the one, true, general-purpose network. Today on his blog, Richard adds “Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in server farms to put its content, chiefly YouTube, in an Internet fast lane, and it fought for the first incarnation in order to protect its high-priority access to your ISP.”

Richard continued: “Now that we’re in a second phase that’s all about empowering P2P, Google has been much less vocal, because it can only lose in this fight. Good P2P takes Google out of the video game, as there’s no way for them to insert advertising into P2P streams. So this is why they want P2P to suck. The new tools will simply try to convince consumers to stick with Google and leave that raunchy old P2P to the pirates.”

It’s much more balanced and diligent coverage than the article in The Register.

Cade Metz reminds us that Google is the most virtuous collection of people on Earth in this love-letter in The Register

“This side of the argument said: We were pretty well known on the internet. We were pretty popular. We had some funds available. We could essentially buy prioritization that would ensure we would be the search engine used by everybody. We would come out fine – a non-neutral world would be a good world for us.”

But then that Google idealism kicked in.

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Here are my opening remarks from Media Access Project’s Innovation ’08 in Santa Clara this morning. A DVD will be available shortly. This was a lively discussion, with Google and Vuze on the case.

The remarks are cross-posted to CircleID and were Slash-dotted. One Slashdot reader said: Thank you, I finally read a post from someone who gets it. I didn’t think that would ever happen. That’s not a bad response.

Good morning and welcome. My name is Richard Bennett and I’m a network engineer. I’ve built networking products for 30 years and contributed to a dozen networking standards, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi. I was one of the witnesses at the FCC hearing at Harvard, and I wrote one of the dueling Op-Ed’s on net neutrality that ran in the Mercury News the day of the Stanford hearing.

I’m opposed to net neutrality regulations because they foreclose some engineering options that we’re going to need for the Internet to become the one true general-purpose network that links all of us to each other, connects all our devices to all our information, and makes the world a better place. Let me explain.
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Why Tiered Broadband is a Wonderful Thing and ASIVS – Blog Maverick

There is a new and exciting development. Its called an Application Specific Integrated Video Service (ASIVS) . What is an ASIVS ? Its a computer dedicated specifically to downloading and playing both standard definition and high definition video. You connect it to a network that is dedicated to delivering GIGABITS PER SECOND of high quality video with ZERO buffering. Its amazing, it always works and connects right to your standard def or High Definition TV, easily. Most of the systems I have seen have a pretty good programming guide and scheduling system and they will let you download AS MUCH VIDEO AS YOU WANT, limited only by the size of its hard drive!!

If you haven’t heard of the ASIVS, its because most people call it a DVR.

If downloading TV shows is so important to you, add a DVR to your cable or satellite service for 5 bucks a month and download all you want. If you want to watch those shows on your laptop, connect the composite video out in your DVR to the composite in on your laptop. Same with movies.

Read the whole thing, it’s a classic.

Technorati Tags: net+neutrality

Here’s an update on the MAP/AT&T tech policy event next week:

Where: de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University
500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053

When: Thursday, June 12

10:15 AM Panel 1: What Does Net Neutrality Mean Now?
Comcast’s interruption of P2P transmissions has generated debate about the need and wisdom of deploying advanced net management technologies. Can and will the private sector address this problem without government mandates? Historically, the debate about Net Neutrality has focused on who can access information distribution channels, and under what circumstances. Comcast’s recent interruption brings up new questions, explored here by some of the leading experts in the field.

Panelists:
George Ou, Technology for Mortals
Richard Bennett, Network Architect, Broadband Politics
Ronald B. Yokubaitis, Chairman and CEO, Data Foundry
Richard Whitt, Senior Policy Counsel, Google
Jay Monahan, General Counsel, Vuze, Inc.
Parul Desai (Moderator)

They had me down as “Musician” which is pretty funny for anyone who ever heard me sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

Another panel will discuss the 700 MHz auction after lunch:

12:30 PM Panel 2: Spectrum Policy After the 700 MHz Auction
The FCC’s recently concluded 700 MHz auction has been praised, criticized, and puzzled over. Auction veterans will discuss what happened, why it happened, and what will happen next.

Panelists:
Coleman Bazelon, Principal, The Brattle Group
Gregory Rose, Economist, Gregory Rose & Associates
Carolyn Brandon, CTIA
Marc Berejka, Senior Director of Public Policy, Microsoft Corporation
Joanne Hovis, President, Columbia Telecommunications Corp.
Harold Feld (Moderator)

UPDATE: the Times BITS Blog has totally re-written its story, removing most of the incendiary language, so this post is now officially academic. A similar piece in The Register has also been re-written. It would be a lot easier for everyone if our blogger/journalists would get things right the first time, but better late than not even.

Comcast’s “protocol agnostic” network management system has been generally praised by all parties in the network neutrality debate as a sane and sensible approach to congestion management. As the system enters trials today in two locations, the praise has been tempered by some irrational criticism. Saul Hansell, a New York Times blogger, sees the new system as something quite nefarious, a “blacklist:”

It will test new devices that will keep track of Comcast users and assemble a blacklist of heavy users. Those on the blacklist will find that all of their online activities may slow down at peak times: from downloading movies to checking e-mail.

This account is extremely bizarre, but not unprecedented. Saul Hansell, meet your progenitor.