Broadband Politics

Posted by Richard Bennett

From House Energy and Commerce:

Posted by Richard Bennett

One of the mind-boggling facts about the Google book deal is the number of so-called “orphan works” there are. According to Brewster Kahle, most books published since our current copyright regime was adopted in 1923 are orphan works: But the settlement would also create a class that includes millions of people who will never come [...]

Posted by Richard Bennett

The New York Times reports that regulators have an interest in the structure of the Apple and Google boards of directors: The Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry into whether the close ties between the boards of two of technology’s most prominent companies, Apple and Google, amount to a violation of antitrust laws, according [...]

Posted by Richard Bennett

There’s an interesting article in CNET News today on Google’s servers and data center design. While the servers are stacked inside shipping containers, it’s not an April Fool’s Day joke. Highlights: dual CPUs (either Intel or AMD) and hard drives, tons of memory, custom power supplies, and a battery for each motherboard. FacebookTwitterDiggItTechnoratiDel.icio.us

Posted by Richard Bennett

My talk at the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group went very well. It was a huge room, seating probably 500 or so, and over half-full. I talked about how some of the crazier ideas about net neutrality are potentially becoming mainstream thanks to the politics in the nation’s capitol and some of the personnel choices made [...]

Posted by Richard Bennett

The New York Times has a front page story today on the broadband stimulus bill which features an extensive quote from Brett: Critics like Mr. Glass say the legislation being developed in Congress is flawed in various ways that could mean much of the money is wasted, or potentially not spent at all — arguably [...]

Posted by Richard Bennett

I did a podcast with the folks at The Technology Liberation Front on Google’s edge-caching system: This week we saw a new kerfuffle of sorts develop over the revelation in a Monday front-page Wall Street Journal story that Google had approached major cable and phone companies and supposedly proposed to create a fast lane for [...]

Posted by Richard Bennett

Thanks to the miracle of trans-Atlantic collaborative journalism, here’s my quick take on Google’s caching scheme: Network Neutrality, the public policy unicorn that’s been the rallying cry for so many many on the American left for the last three years, took a body blow on Sunday with the Wall Street Journal’s disclosure that the movement’s [...]

Posted by Richard Bennett

I’m shocked. Google has been caught red-handed negotiating deals with ISPs to host servers inside the building, just like Akamai does. The semi-technical press thinks this is some sort of a game-changing event: The celebrated openness of the Internet — network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic — is quietly [...]

Posted by Richard Bennett

After suffering with the Google phone for 4 weeks, I took it back to T-Mobile yesterday (the contract says you only have 14 days, but I live in California where the time limit on an upgrade return is 30 days.) Jeff Turner describes the G1 appropriately: Like Windows 2.0, it’s good enough that you can [...]