Friday article links

Yesterday was a busy day in the broadband Internet space. I spotted a couple of blogs that responded to Broadband Reports' over-the-top recounting of my trip to Washington D.C. to talk about network management practices with FCC officials. Over at CableTechTalk, the NCTA's blog, Paul Rodriguez says in response to BBR's post and another on Ars Technica:

Both of these posts claim that we are crying “Armageddon!” for nefarious reasons. But should nothing be done at all? We want to give our customers the best Internet experience possible, now and in the future, and we need network management to accomplish that goal.

And over at Broadband Politics, Richard Bennett quotes Larry Roberts, designer of ARPANET - the forerunner to the Internet, in response to BBR's "expert" Robb Topolski.

…P2P expands to fill any capacity. In fact, as I have been testing and modeling P2P I find it taking up even higher fractions of the capacity as the total capacity expands. This is because each P2P app. can get more capacity and it is designed to take all it can. In the Universities we have measured, the P2P grows to between 95-98% of their Internet usage. It does this by reducing the rate per flow lower and lower, which by virtue of the current network design where all flows get equal capacity, drives the average rate per flow for average users down to their rate. They then win by virtue of having more flows, up to 1000 per user.

The point is, responsible network management allows all users, including P2P file sharers, to experience fast, reliable broadband Internet.

Hysterical Perspectives [Broadband Politics]

“Consideration like an angel came…” [CableTechTalk]

Cable operators forge agreement with National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

A number of cable operators, including Insight, announced yesterday that we have agreed to fight the proliferation of online child pornography in cooperation with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The agreement, a first for an entire sector of broadband providers, means that Insight and other cable operators will be ensuring that child pornography will not be hosted on any server that we own or control. We will also working with NCMEC to strengthen our reporting of these illegal materials to the appropriate authorities.

I'm pleased that Insight is part of this effort to improve online safety for children.

Historic Agreement Will Strengthen the Fight Against Child Pornography [NCTA]

Cable Operators to Join Fight vs. Online Child Porn [Broadcasting and Cable]

NCTA Members Take Stand Against Child Porn [Multichannel News]

Congressional committee holds hearing on behavior based online advertising

Over on Capitol Hill, the House's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held hearings today on behavior based online advertising systems. While one particular vendor of these systems appeared to be the focus of the ire of several of the subcommittee members, one witness at the hearing was asking the committee why there wasn't more attention focused on "J. Edgar Google" and its invasive information gathering on Internet users.

Scott Cleland, chairman of NetCompetiton.org had this to say about the Internet's biggest behavior tracker.

By turning a blind eye to what Google, the worst privacy offender on the Internet, is doing to systematically invade and abuse Americans’ expectation of privacy, Congress is perversely encouraging copycat behavior by “deep packet inspection” advertising entrepreneurs who see that there is a huge privacy double standard to arbitrage. Companies like NebuAd are essentially just following the privacy-arbitrage leader - Google.

Cleland's testimony is a must read. Let's hope these policy makers will be looking at this issue holistically, rather than simply aiming their attention at ISPs and their vendors, who by the way, have tried to experiment with this technology with an opt-out option for customers.  That's an option I don't recall getting from Google.

My House Testimony on Internet privacy -- Before Chairman Markey's Internet Subcommittee [The Precursor Blog - Scott Cleland]

Lawmakers Probe Web Tracking [Washington Post]

NebuAd grilled over hot coals in Congress on privacy [CNET News]

Markey to NebuAd: "When did you stop beating the consumer?" [Ars Technica]

Comments

[David Crowell]

I really have to take issue with the "fight the proliferation of online child pornography" part. I assume you're just checking web space of users, and killing off part of Usenet? (at least for Insight servers)

The Usenet choice will get rid of some child pornography, but there are hundreds (thousands?) of other Usenet servers to choose from.

I also doubt that home users are uploading this material to personal web space. If they are, at least you've got good logs of who did it.

It will have little impact on the availability of child pornography, but is a nice little PR boost for the industry.

[Moose Head]

USENET is the equivalent of the Internet's red light district for child porn. Blocking users from accessing it (or at least alt.* groups) is going to stop a large percentage of child porn trafficking on Insight's network.

This is something worth announcing, and it's a lot more than just a PR stunt.