Sounds great right? I have two problems with this:

1. I always reject the federal government intruding on private companies unless and until I am convinced that the companies are doing something terribly wrong. In this case I don’t believe they are by limiting the load high bandwidth hogs from third parties have on their networks and paying customers. Already in several major cities customers are complaining about network degradation due to heavy iPhone usage.
2. By opening the floodgates the speed of the internet itself is in jeopardy. Especially in the event cyber-attackers target our high bandwidth providers and deliberately grind the internet to a halt.

Cloaked as “Network Neutrality” I content that this regulation has nothing to do with making the internet neutral and everything with moving the internet closer to becoming a government regulated entity with long term disastrous effects on our freedoms.

The cartoon below surely made the artist who created feel good about making the greedy fat white man in a suit appear to be cutting someone else’s cable, but it, like so many people, miss an important point: The cable these businesses are delivering bandwidth through were bought and paid for by their customers. Why should their customers be forced to suffer serious issues with bandwidth degradation by allowing anyone to stream data across their networks?

Before you answer that in a knee-jerk fashion consider this:

Recently a cable about 4 inches around was laid near our house alongside a state highway. Inside this cable are billions of strands of fiber that will digitally connect Washington D.C. with a city about an hours drive away. The federal government owns a portion of this massive swath of fiber along with several of the companies people love to use as punching bags.

This cable being laid is costing a small fortune and these companies wouldn’t be laying it if they didn’t think they could recoup their investment through profits over many years. I should add that the cable owned by the U.S. government won’t be shared with anyone but the federal government. Not even state or local governments.

How would eliminating the profits of AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and the others help us? Why would they continue to invest bringing broadband service to every square inch of our country? If this occurs who will step in to “help”? That’s right, the U.S. Government. They would step in to save-the-day by building out the network with tax dollars and with that comes ownership. Do you want the government controlling, in effect owning, the internet?

I don’t. They need to butt out and let the free market work.

Even if you disagree with my stance on this please think it through and ask where this will lead in the decades ahead. Is handing control of the internet to the federal government wise? Do you think we’d have come this far if AT&T hadn’t be DEREGULATED? Which worked better in that case… the free market or government control?

For more on this topic:
WSJ: U.S. as Traffic Cop in Web Fight
BusinessWeek: Strict Internet Regulation Would Discourage Broadband Investment
Washington Post: House Leaders Lodge Complaint

Still behind the long running leaders, but gaining ground, and attention.

Source: Mashable

(Rated PG-13 3:29)

Click here to view the embedded video.

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In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, Culture Secretary Burnham says he believes that new standards of decency need to be applied to the web. He plans to negotiate with Barack Obama’s administration to draw up new international rules for English language websites.

Establishing film-style ratings to websites is one of the options being considered, he confirmed. When asked whether age ratings might be introduced, Mr Burnham replies: “Yes, that would be an option. This is an area that is really now coming into full focus.”

Now I know a lot of folks will scream about this type of government involvement, but I do agree something needs to be done to push what I’ll call “Mature” (“M”) content off of the mainstream internet. My solution would involve allowing “M” on dot xxx domains only. This provides these site owners with their free speech rights while preventing people from arriving at sites with mature content when performing innocent searches online.

Source: Daily Telegraph

Anurag Dikshit

Dikshit’s company, Partygaming, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, has been ordered to pay the U.S. government $300 million in fines as part of a plea which let’s him off the hook less a few hundred mil.

The charges were as far as our Justice Department has gone to enforce our gambling laws. More than likely they were embarassed about Dikshit making millions right in front of their eyes without even having to pay U.S. taxes. The running jokes around the Justice Department water cooler probably revolved around Dikshit and the bull***t he was getting away with and it became more then they could bare.

If they were using Mr. Dikshit to send a strong message to online poker companies operating overseas I would have suggested they throw him in prison for a few years. Hardened criminals would enjoy having Dikshit join their club. On the other hand going through life with a surname like Dikshit may have been punishment enough!

For more info on Dikshit: Dikshit article in Financial Times

Google CEO, Eric E. Schmidt, is such a political animal that he is more interested in joining the Obama team then in working to grow Google. Most likely the political leanings of the Google staff as a whole is more like that of it’s CEO then that of a random slice taken from the general population. To think that this bias doesn’t play a role in the split second decisions that human editors at Google are faced with all day every day is to be naive.

A recent article in The Register out of the UK, Google cranks up the Consensus Engine,  included this commentary “Make no mistake, Google is moving into new territory: not only making arbitrary, editorial choices – really no different to Fox News, say, or any other media organization. It’s now in the business of validating and manufacturing consent: not only reporting what people say, but how you should think.” As the article states this is no small thing. A Google that filters the internet with bias of any kind is a Google that has no business being used for search.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Using Google’s powerful mapping engine combined with input from local law enforcement agencies Crime Reports gives residents nearly real-time reports of all crimes reported in any geographic area selected in their neighborhood (or a relatives for that matter). If you’ve ever used Mapquest or Google Maps then you can use this with ease.

Did I mention it’s FREE?

Here’s why the Utah based company put together this great tool for us and law enforcement:

“CrimeReports.com was created to help law enforcement agencies put crime data in the hands of those who care about it most—citizens. While crime statistics in a specific city may be available, they may not be accessible. CrimeReports.com standardizes the way law enforcement agencies communicate crime data to the public, down to the specific neighborhood or block they live on.”

Crime Reports

The short video below covers some of the buzz that’s making it’s rounds across the net and in Silicon Valley and is worth the few minutes to watch.

Our initial impression is not very favorable as the search results included a lot of “clutter” and instances where the same site consumed high percentages of search results. Having said that, we understand that a lot can change over time and they’ve only been turned on for one day!

Now, when you use the Google Keyword Tool to search for your relevant keywords, you’ll be able to see the approximate number of search queries performed on Google and their search network for these keywords. This gives advertisers a better idea of where they’ll get more mileage for their money and will help in budgeting.