Month: April 2010

A US Appeals court forbade the FCC from interfering with Comcast’s decision to throttle BitTorrent traffic.

You know, this net neutrality debate will end up resembling the one over health care. We’ll reach a stage where the FCC’s powers to prevent ISPs from ‘tiering’ service quality will be significantly curbed, leaving customers worse off – they’ll have (more) choice but won’t necessarily like any of their options. Then perhaps there’ll even be calls for a net-neutral public option.

Of course, this will probably also make Google even more attractive as an ISP. (Perhaps eliciting more dramatic stunts than this.)

Anand Giridharadas in the NYT:

Not for the first time, America and much of the world are moving in different ways. America’s innovators, building for an ever-expanding bandwidth network, are spiraling toward fancier, costlier, more network-hungry and status-giving devices; meanwhile, their counterparts in developing nations are innovating to find ever more uses for cheap, basic cellphones.

Like gargantuan automobiles, like giant-size helpings, like suburban sprawl, like retail packaging. It’s the same story again. Innovation without efficiency. Comfort without conscience.

Another generation, the same folks, same finger-pointing.  You developed by being wasteful, why shouldn’t we? Either over water (for manufacturing) or minerals (for batteries) or e-waste disposal or suchlike.