Tag: NET NEUTRALITY

The House of Representatives has approved the procedures for a joint resolution that would overturn the FCC's controversial Net neutrality rules. The resolution (PDF) is scheduled for a vote on Thursday in the GOP-controlled House. If it passes, it would then move on to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where its chances of survival are less certain. Even if it passes the Senate, though, the ...

The man who invented the Internet seems pretty worried about the future of net neutrality. During a roundtable discussion in London yesterday, Tim Berners-Lee warned that a two-tiered Internet would threaten the openness upon which the Web has thrived. "Best practices should also include the neutrality of the net," he told a group of representatives from various content companies, including ...

House Republicans are moving forward with their plan to repeal the FCC's new net neutrality regulations. Yesterday, the GOP-controlled House Commerce Committee voted to overturn the rules by a 30-23 vote that split along party lines. The vote comes less than a week after a House Subcommittee approved the measure by a similarly partisan vote. The FCC is also facing legal challenges from Verizon and ...

Yesterday, the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology voted to repeal the FCC's net neutrality rules, just a few weeks after House Republicans passed a resolution to defund the commission's controversial initiative. The Republican-controlled panel voted to overturn the FCC's regulations by a 15-8 vote, split along party lines. The FCC passed the rules in December, when the ...

The House of Representatives has voted to overturn a controversial FCC ruling on net neutrality, though it's not clear whether or not the resolution will advance much further. In December, the FCC voted to prohibit Internet service providers from blocking legal content on their networks, while allowing them to restrict access according to bandwidth use. The 3-2 ruling elicited uproars from free ...

Is it just us, or did 2010 seem like an abnormally long year? Of course, it was no longer than any other year in history. But, from a tech perspective, at least, this year saw more seismic changes and game-altering developments than any other in recent memory. From Android to Zuckerberg, 'FarmVille' to Foursquare, iPad to iPhone 4, 2010 certainly wasn't short on memorable moments. Here are 15 ...

Yesterday, the FCC voted to pass new Net neutrality regulations. Understandably, everyone has an opinion on the outcome (and almost no one is happy). Now Steve Wozniak, one of the most high-profile voices in the tech world, has weighed in with an open letter, published in The Atlantic. The mildly scatter-brained missive calls on the FCC to take action to enshrine Net neutrality as law, and to ...

What is Net neutrality? Net neutrality is a principle for managing the Internet, or more specifically, not managing it. At its logical extreme, the ideology would forbid any restriction or regulation of the content, devices or protocols used on the Web. In practice, it suggests that users paying for a particular level of service should be guaranteed the same quality of access to all content, ...

Today Google and Verizon unveiled their joint statement of principles regarding the governance and regulation of the Web. The policy proposal makes a number of suggestions regarding the application of Net neutrality ideology, and the ultimate goal, Google says, is to protect consumer choice, and to encourage investment and innovation in broadband infrastructure. The proposal, which Verizon and ...

For over a year, France has been considering plans to ban illegal downloaders from the Web. In the U.S., the FCC may actually begin regulating the Web by forcing providers to charge various fees. But neither of those disturbing developments compare at all to the rumors gathering momentum in England. Various outlets are reporting that the U.K. Secretary of State Peter Mandelson, referred to ...

The war over Net neutrality may finally be coming to an end. After years of back and forth between ISPs, consumer advocacy groups, Web-based companies like Google, and government officials, formal rules concerning broadband data pipelines are finally being proposed by Federal Communication Commission (FCC) chairman Julius Genachowski. The proposed policy would prevent service providers of any ...

It's hard to believe that just 40 years ago, the Internet was but a glimmer in the eye of researchers at UCLA. On September 2nd, 1969, Len Kleinrock and his team successfully passed test data between two giant computers via a 15-foot cable. This small victory was just the beginning of what would eventually become Arpanet, the government project that eventually led to the creation of the Internet. ...

An American think-tank, Nemertes Research, is warning that the Internet could be seriously lacking in capacity within a year, and that it could be little more than an "unreliable toy" by 2012, reports the Times Online. Over the last several years, demand for bandwidth has increased at a dramatic rate -- roughly 60-percent per year. Visitors to YouTube alone generate as much data traffic in a ...

Google makes much of its corporate mantra, "Do no evil," but has been repeatedly accused of violating this motto over the past few years. Revelations of its dealings with ISPs, however, are the clearest violation of its stated values we've seen yet. Despite having publicly fought for the principle of network neutrality, it appears that behind closed doors, opinions at Google have shifted. ...

Google Vice President and so called "father of the Internet," Vint Cerf, has thrown his two cents in on this year's election. Cerf has come out forcefully in favor of Obama, based primarily on his support for 'Net neutrality, which John McCain does not support. Net neutrality is a complex issue that we can't possibly cover in a single brief blog post, but we're willing to risk some slight ...