I titled this, “Network Neutrality or Network Brutality”. It was written via the form at Save The Internet (check out that site if you haven’t already).

Network Neutrality or Network Brutality

The current state of the Internet in the U.S. is abysmal and it will get much, much worse if we do not guarantee the neutrality of the network. As so much speech exists in the form of bits and bytes it is essential that we guarantee freedom from discrimination on the network it traverses.

Big ISPs do not like the idea of network neutrality precisely because they plan to reserve the majority of their pipes for their own channels of communication. Their vision of the Internet has them as both the carriers of information as well as its source. They want to divide everyone’s connection into two unequal parts: An incredibly fast connection reserved for their own purposes and a slow connection for everyone else.

I ask you, if we allow ISPs to have their own exclusive dedicated connections into everyone’s homes how can any business or individual compete with that kind of access? The answer is that they won’t and they can’t. All it would take for an ISP to crush a business is to start offering the same services over their extremely fast, exclusive connections. Every business that exists on the Internet today will either have to pay the ISP extra for access to their upper-tier channel or will suffer with slow speed into people’s homes.

But it is the citizens who will suffer the most. They will have high-speed access to content chosen for them by their ISP and slow, unreliable access to everything else. Even worse, the voices of our own citizens will be relegated to the lowest class of service. ISPs have absolutely no intention of allowing home users to compete with their own services and will remove perfectly legitimate speech that becomes too popular—just as they do today with unspecified bandwidth caps and unjustified disconnections of service.

We must stop the ISPs before they enshrine these abusive systems into the networks. Before it is extremely expensive to replace them. Before businesses are destroyed. Before citizen voices are choked into irrelevance. NOW is the time to protect America from this threat.

It would be extremely unwise and naive to allow the market to be afflicted by this destructive force before anything is done about it. The FCC must embrace Network Neutrality and enforce it as quickly as possible before the networks are all built and any damage is done. The longer it takes, the more we’ll end up paying.

I know I still haven’t fixed my website yet but I just had to post about this movie:

It was amazing

If all my economic arguments for a single payer healthcare system haven’t convinced you yet, you need to see this movie. It shows the other side of the argument. It shows precisely how and where private healthcare fails. Michael Moore has done an amazing job.

You owe it to yourself to see how health insurance companies intentionally bankrupt people to save money (they hire private investigators to invent undisclosed pre-existing conditions), how hospitals abandon patients that don’t have insurance (they drop them off at Skid Row, literally!), and how DOCTORS ARE PAID TO DENY TREATMENT to people so companies like Humana, Blue Cross, and Kaiser Permanente can save a few bucks… At the expense of people’s lives. They are literally killing people with their business practices.

Sicko also made passing mention of the drug companies but that could probably be its own movie (any takers?). There were so many details in this movie that you might miss… A drug that costs $120 in the U.S. costs $0.05 in Cuba. Why? Is it simply because the Cubans subsidize it through their taxes? Actually, no: it is because Cuba negotiates prices on behalf of all Cubans (and doesn’t allow bullshit patent extensions). If Cuba can get that drug for $0.05 imagine what the U.S. could get negotiating on behalf of all Americans.

Private healthcare is failing America. It is time we ended it.

I watched the Democratic debate tonight and I’m severely disappointed. Not by the candidates, no, but by CNN. The amount of microphone time that was given to Senators Clinton, Obama, and Edwards was absolutely unconscionable. I’m not sure if it is because these three candidates represent CNN’s ideals more than the other candidates or if some other other candidates’ positions might conflict with CNN’s (Time Warner’s) interests.

An example of a candidate that CNN would not appreciate being elected: Dennis Kucinich. Why? his health care reforms would do away with private insurance (advertisers on all of Time Warner’s media outlets) and force drug companies (the biggest advertisers of all) to lower prices (by way of negotiation on behalf of all Americans). Not only that, but I believe he’s also against big media conglomerates owning such a large percentage of the market (hah!).

Once the debate was over CNN had Anderson Cooper talk with a bunch of pundits. All of whom seemed to be singing a chorus of “Clinton!” Odd, I thought… I didn’t think Clinton said anything terribly interesting at all. Not only that, but her one crowd-pleasing moment was when she made fun of the vice president. I can’t even remember anything regarding “what she’d do as president”—that’s how notable she was.

Here’s what caught my eye during the debate:

• Obama’s plan for universal health care sounded like a naive, “As President I’ll shape the health care market” plan. In other words, it wasn’t much of a plan at all. His big plan is to somehow force health insurance companies to cut costs without so much as a hint as to how he’d do it. It sounded like a 20th century left-wing play for votes among the ignorant… “I’m going to force the big mean corporation to make their products cheaper!” Sure you are. As if the problem was simply a matter of cost cutting.
• When Clinton was given the opportunity to talk about health care she totally avoided the question—surprising when you consider that a decade ago she was pushing it like her life depended on it.
• I loved it when Edwards pointed the finger at Clinton and Obama saying something to the tune of, “Real leaders don’t act the way they did.” (regarding the recent war funding bill votes). Way to go Edwards!
• Mike Gravel kicks ass. Wow! Before tonight I never even gave him a passing thought but he really hit it home when he said that the other candidates will never do anything to fix earmarks, pork, the overbearing power of special interest, or the budget since they’re currently thriving on the system the way it is. It was the truth and it was powerful.
• Senator Dodd surprised me when he practically demanded publicly funded elections. Of course, everything he said sounded like a demand but on this particular issue he was spot on. I could be wrong but it sounded like the crowd was cheering him and then was suddenly muffled. Did CNN censor them?!?
• Bill Richardson totally blew it when he insinuated that if he were President he would “grow the economy 1.6%”. As if the President is the “man behind the curtain”. What a load of pandering bullshit. The President’s primary duty is to frame the budget, sure, but most of the budget is fixed costs (by law) which means that the amount up or down it can go is primarily dependent on action from Congress.
• I thought Kucinich’s answer on the question of whether or not he would assassinate Osama Bin Laden showed serious leadership—and chutzpah. He took the ethical high ground when most of America is down with, “Kill em’ all!”

• Regarding the same question, I thought Obama’s answer was unbelievably stupid. “He declared war on us.” A single person does not a war make. He may represent the worst side of humanity but he’s still just one guy. Just be honest Obama: You’d kill him and anyone else around him because it is what you and the people want… Even though it isn’t a very moral thing to do.

For those of you unfamiliar with Network Neutrality (NN) it is the idea that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should not be allowed to discriminate packets based on their origin. What does that mean? Here’s an example of how an ISP would violate NN:

Let’s say that you’re google. You compete with services from Yahoo, MSN, and others. Today you pay for Internet access in a typical fashion, “X dollars/month for a connection of Y speed.” You pay for enough bandwidth that you’ll never have to worry about “running out”. No matter who uses google.com they can view the site as fast as their connection allows.

Now some ISP comes to you and says, “If you pay us extra money we’ll give you priority access to our network. That way google.com will always load faster than yahoo.com on our network.” Sounds good in theory, right? Why NOT pay for priority access? Quite simply: To prioritize one site, you must downgrade everything else. Yes, everything. Essentially it is no different than a protection racket (racketeering)… “Pay us or who knows how long your packets will take to reach your customers.”

That isn’t the only problem with it. It also severely discriminates against smaller businesses and provides the means for existing monopolies to prevent new competitors from entering their markets. Imagine if YouTube—being the biggest online video site—started paying for access like this. All other video services would have to compete, auction-style, for enough “priority” to get a quality of service as good as YouTube.

The Content/ISP Conflict of Interest

Now that I’ve explained the basics I want to point out a violation of Network Neutrality that I’m positive most people don’t know about: ISPs that also sell TV services (i.e. content). Consider combined cable TV and Internet services. Both services come into your home by way of a coaxial cable. That coaxial cable has a total amount of bandwidth of about 160 megabits download/120 megabits upload using the latest DOCSIS technology (3.0).

DOCSIS 3.0 uses a technique called, “channel bonding” whereby your cable modem will use more than one channel to obtain that increased bandwidth. What does that mean? Well, a cable TV channel uses up ~6MHz of spectrum on the coaxial cable. That 6MHz constitutes a “channel”. The plan is for each cable modem to use up to four channels simultaneously to send and receive Internet traffic. The current pre-3.0 (it isn’t certified yet) DOCSIS equipment can use a maximum of 96 channels so that means you can have 24 customers using all available channels simultaneously.

The technology allows those 96 channels to be dynamically allocated on-the-fly as customers use up the available bandwidth. The reason for this is so cable companies can over-sell their Internet packages (i.e. more than 24 customers on a local node). That way when 48 people are using the Internet simultaneously they’ll just get half the bandwidth. Since most people aren’t uploading/downloading 24 hours a day, 7 days a week they should be able to over-sell a significant amount before anyone notices (unless something comes along that makes more people use up more bandwidth).

That’s all well and good but there’s another problem: What about Cable TV? In order for a company like Comcast to continue selling traditional “digital cable” TV service customer cable TV boxes will have to be “switched” just like a cable modem. That means that as each customer changes the channel, that channel will be “tuned” on the node as opposed to the existing setup whereby your cable box always has all channels coming into it simultaneously. This way, no matter what the selection of TV channels the cable company offers the customer’s cable box will always use up only one channel at a time. This is a violation of Network Neutrality.

How is a violation of Network Neutrality? Because it provides the cable company with exclusive, priority access to your bandwidth for the express purpose of providing TV service. That is discriminating on packets based on their origin. Under this setup it would be impossible for an IPTV company on the Internet to provide “as good” service as what you’d get from Comcast’s own IPTV service (because that’s really what it is—even though it would be delivered differently).

What I’m saying is that cable companies should not be allowed to cut into your Internet bandwidth to exclusively provide their TV service. It would be one thing if you could subscribe to any IPTV company you wanted by way of this mechanism but you can’t. The people who operate the network (the cable company) will never allow some 3rd party provider access to their data centers to hook up their video service that competes directly with their own.

We need new laws that will prevent this kind of abuse and we need them before cable companies start selling these services. No one wants their Internet bandwidth being taken over by someone else’s TV viewing but that is precisely how the cable companies want it.

Telcos Are Doing It Too

The cable companies aren’t the only ones building out their networks for their own exclusive access. The only difference is in the technology. Verizon has already rolled out fiber-optic service (FIOS) whereby they split the fiber coming into people’s homes into two channels with 80% of the bandwidth reserved for their IPTV service

Verizon thinks this is justified because without that exclusive bandwidth they would not be able to compete with companies like Comcast who will be providing a similar service. So in other words, because the cable companies can get away with it Verizon should be able to as well.

I don’t buy it and neither should you. If their argument is, “It isn’t fair” then they’re right: The cable company arrangement is unfair to IPTV operators of all kinds. However, the solution isn’t to allow companies like Verizon to be equally as reprehensible. It is to make sure everyone competes on a level playing field.

What, Precisely Is Needed

Codifying Network Neutrality into law isn’t easy. ISPs already discriminate packets based on the kind of packets they transmit and this is actually quite a good thing. If a virus is working its way around the Internet it would be pertinent for an ISP to block that traffic. The same goes for prioritizing voice-over-IP (i.e. real-time) traffic over bulk peer-to-peer traffic (i.e. not so real-time).

The law must differentiate between good discrimination and bad discrimination. It must also create a level playing field for all manner of services provided over the Internet; whether they be web sites or IPTV services. Here’s a start:

• No Internet Service Provider (ISP) may degrade, slow, or otherwise purposefully interfere with Internet traffic based on that traffic’s origin or destination.
• No Content Provider may offer their service(s) exclusively to any ISP or group of ISPs.
• No Content Provider may prioritize or optimize their services for a single ISP or group of ISPs.
• No ISP may offer content or content services in an exclusive or prioritized arrangement to their own customers.

• Content providers must utilize open-access networks (e.g. the Internet) to provide their service. Exceptions will not be provided for broadcast TV and radio (they should have to offer their content on the Internet along with their traditional methods).

  Note: I tried to write this in such a way that a cable company couldn’t claim its content service was not IP-based and therefore could be exclusive.

Let’s say you’re a big U.S. corporation that employs skilled IT people. Lately, the human resources department has been giving you a headache because…

1. When you post a new job for a position that requires many technical skills you’re getting a lot less candidates than you used to and the ones you do get don’t have the all the specific skills that you need.

1. Because of this glut, you’re having to pay more & more for this kind of worker because of their increasing scarcity. Even worse, you might even have to pay to relocate some people.

   Not only that, but you’re hearing in the news that fewer and fewer students are graduating with technical degrees and even less are entering the fields you need them to. Things are not looking good for your payroll numbers so for the past several years you’ve been doing everything you possibly could to keep salaries as low as possible while you wait for this “glut” to disappear. Here’s some strategies you’ve tried:

2. Layoffs and re-hires: Get rid of as many people as possible. Then, if necessary, re-hire the few you do need at a lesser rate or as contractors to save on things like health insurance. This strategy used to work great back when there wasn’t a glut of IT workers.
3. Make your existing staff do more, and more varied work. Application specialists (say, Weblogic) are expensive so you tasked your systems administrator(s) to cover it along with their other duties. You made your Oracle database administrators cover the Microsoft SQL boxes and perform basic administrative functions on their respective servers (since the other admins were not getting things done fast enough). You tasked your developers with being systems administrators for some systems. You even expected your existing IT workforce to handle and implement all your security needs.

1. Hire H1B visa holders: There’s hundreds of thousands of foreign workers with the skills you want who will work for less than the natives. Not only that, but you can probably get away with not paying for their benefits and since they’re not citizens you don’t have to pay for things like unemployment insurance.

   All of these techniques at your disposal have finally dried up. Because there really is a glut in the number of skilled IT people you can’t do the layoff thing anymore. Also, your existing staff has reached levels of productivity beyond your wildest dreams—but now all the skills you forced them to develop makes them more expensive to retain (oops, didn’t see that one coming). Then there’s that H1B thing: The cap on the number of H1Bs has been reached. If only there were a way to get more H1Bs…

   As part of a successfully lobbying campaign on the part of TechNet (lobbying group of Microsoft, Oracle, HP, Intel, etc big corp IT), Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) has introduced Senate Bill 1092 to triple the number of H1B visas granted each year. If the bill passes, that means that instead of 65,000 U.S. jobs being filled by foreign workers it will be 195,000.

   That’s right: 195,000 jobs will be given to foreign workers instead of U.S. citizens. But wait: How can billion-dollar U.S. corporations stay competitive if they can’t find workers? Easy:

2. Spend some of those billions on training. You may not be able to find a developer with experience in C++, Java, .NET, and perl but you can most assuredly find one with at least two or three of those. As long as training is being neglected there will always be workers that are a few skills short. The current situation is unsustainable.
3. The market will correct itself. Sure, it will cost these big companies some money in the short term but how long do you think there will be a shortage of IT workers if the pay and benefits just keep going up? How many people left the IT industry altogether because of the piss-poor work hours, pay, and benefits during the dotcom bust? They can come back you know…
4. Be flexible on skills and be patient. You probably don’t need to train an employee on half of the “required skills” in your job listing. Administering a Solaris server isn’t all that different from administering a Linux box. There will be a few weeks or months of low efficiency but you’ll make up for it with a much more flexible employee.

1. Hire more helpers. If you’ve got your systems administrators taking care of not only your servers, but your network, your firewalls, and your databases all at the same time you would do well to hire a helper. Helpers can be fresh college graduates that are A) Cheaper than an experienced employee and B) by hiring these “beginners” you’re helping solve the worker shortage problem. Even better: If you treat them well and pay them according to their experience they just might stick around and turn out to be great employees. Who would have thought?

   In closing, I’d like to point out that there really isn’t a shortage of U.S. IT workers. There’s plenty of IT workers, they’re just working non-IT jobs right now because companies aren’t paying enough, aren’t providing good enough benefits, are being too picky about skills and certifications, and there’s almost no job security (off-shoring, potential of H1B cap increases, etc).

I created a new T-shirt for my store today to protest the AACS group’s rampant censorship campaign. The image is a direct link to the store.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Last night, the Internet community proved once again that Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the worst idea in technology since the glow-in-the-dark combat uniform. Before I rundown what happened, here’s a brief glossary to get you up to speed:

• DRM: It stands for “Digital Rights Management” and it is what prevents you from doing what you damned well please with digital content (movies, music, etc) that you bought and paid for. Its sole purpose is to prevent consumers (note: not pirates) from copying things. Sounds fine in theory except for the fact that it also prevents you from doing perfectly legal and reasonable things with your own stuff. Examples: 1) Moving your legally-purchased music from one computer to another. 2) Changing the format of a movie so it will play on a portable device. 3) Playing a DVD on an unsupported platform (say, Linux).
• DMCA: It stands for the, “Digital Millennium Copyright Act”. This U.S. law makes it illegal to make, distribute, or even tell someone how to make, a device or tool that can circumvent “copy protection mechanisms” (i.e. DRM). So if you were to say, publish a program such as DeCSS (or even link to where you can download it) you are in violation of the law.
• DVD-CSS: The DVD Content Scrambling Standard. It is the encryption mechanism that is used on all DVDs. It is a form of DRM.
• DVD-CCA: The DVD Copy Control Association. It is a group made up of the various big movie studios and DVD-technology companies that invented/controls/licenses the DVD-CSS.
• AACS: Advanced Access Content System, another kind of DRM. It is the new and improved replacement for the DVD-CSS that was invented, at an enormous expense (hundreds of millions of dollars?), for the new Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movie discs. It was cracked a few months ago, mere days after its debut.

  So here’s what happened: Someone cracked AACS a few months ago and just recently people began posting (one of?) the keys necessary to circumvent it on various websites. Presumably, if you have the key in question (09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0) you can use it to break the DRM on HD-DVDs and, say, play them in Linux (or upload them to the Internet).

  A few days ago a popular blogger posted that number to one of his websites which prompted the AACS group to send him a DMCA cease-and-desist takedown notice instructing him to remove the number. So he responded by letting everyone know what had happened and the community responded by discretely posting that number all over the Internet. Not a big deal, really. Wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

  Then the AACS group did the most mind-numbingly-stupid thing you could possibly do in such a situation: They sent more letters. Not hundreds, not thousands, but quite possibly hundreds of thousands of “censor this or else” letters to various blogs, websites, and even search engines all over the Internet. Every time they sent a new letter, the number would pop up in more and more places. Were they really expecting the global Internet to bow down before a draconian U.S. law? An Internet that was designed by researchers (at the request of the U.S. military) to “find damage and route around it”?

  So not only did the movie studios not learn from their mistakes with DRM in the past (that it can never work, that it isn’t good for them or consumers, and everyone hates it), they also didn’t learn from their mistakes with censorship. If you know a movie studio executive you might want to pass the following message along, “The Internet treats censorship like damage.”

  Oh, and by the way: This whole post is illegal according to the DMCA. Apparently freedom of speech doesn’t apply if you cut into the profits of organizations with enormous lobbying power.

  Update: Two days ago if you did a google search for the hex key in question you would see that google indexed about 10,000 pages that contained the number. I just did that search today and was delighted to find that it is up to “557,000 English pages”.

I just received a letter from Senator Mel Martinez that states that global warming is the result of changes in land use! …and that it is perfectly natural! How out of touch with reality is this guy? I mean, next he’ll be telling me that the earth was created in six days and that humans walked with dinosaurs!

Here’s the full text of the letter:

Thank you for contacting me regarding our nation’s initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, the recent warming trend of the Earth’s surface temperature can be attributed to the effect of natural occurring and human-generated gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Yet, long term temperature data maintained by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) suggests that changes in temperature might be more closely related to changes in land uses.

In addition, researchers have found that environmental awareness and initiatives are stronger when people enjoy a higher standard of living, which is in turn a result of steady economic growth.

When addressing the complex questions surrounding this issue, we need to make decisions grounded on sound science to ensure our nation’s continuous economic growth and the welfare of the most vulnerable in our communities is not put at risk. Developing a comprehensive climate change policy must include strategies to deal with the growing emissions and energy consumption of large industrial nations such as, India and China; where energy consumption is growing at more than four times the global rate.

25 years ago, China was largely energy self-sufficient. According to the International Energy Agency, demand for oil in China and India will double by 2030. We must continue to engage developing nations to ensure that scarce energy supplies are being used efficiently and that we support new technologies that promote cleaner-burning fuels.

On February 2002, President Bush unveiled a comprehensive strategy to reduce greenhouse gas intensity in our nation by 18 percent within a decade, thus preventing the release of 500 million metric tons of carbon-equivalent emissions to the atmosphere. The President’s budget for fiscal year 2006 includes nearly $3 billion for the development of environmentally sound technologies, and $200 million for climate-change-related international assistance programs.

On June 21, 2005, I joined a strong majority of my Senate colleagues in approving an amendment (S. Amdt. 817) to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (H.R. 6) introduced by Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE). This amendment promotes the adoption of new technologies that reduce greenhouse gas intensity and the transfer of these technologies to developing countries. The amendment also offers credit-based financial assistance and investment protection for projects employing advanced climate technologies in our nation.

Recently, I was pleased to learn about the President’s initiative to achieve pollution reductions, energy security, and responding to climate change concerns by joining the New Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development. Another five countries have joined this initiative including Australia, Japan, South Korea, as well as developing nations such as China and India, in an effort to enhance cooperation to accelerate the development and deployment of cleaner, more efficient energy technologies.

Rest assured that I will keep your thoughts in mind should the full Senate address our nation’s environmental laws. As always, I appreciate hearing from you. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any additional comments or questions. In addition, for more information about issues and activities important to Florida, please sign up for my weekly newsletter.

Sincerely,

Mel Martinez
United States Senator
Next time he’s up for election (in four years?) I’m going to campaign like hell to get him out of office. It isn’t just that he’s stupid, it’s that he is actually harmful. To spread bullshit like this is absurd. He also fully supports the war in Iraq (and sending more troops/having it go on forever), lied about his campaign contributions to the tune of $500,000 dollars (corruption), is responsible for the Schiavo Memo, is against gay marriage (and appears rather homophobic in general), is against comprehensive sexual education, supports the No Child Left Behind program, wants to turn federal parks into hunting sports attractions, is against a single-payer system for healthcare, and is a general all-around trickle-down economics conservative Republican.

One of my favorite things to do is to reveal truth. Some would say that this is merely a passion for saying, “I told you so” and they would be right. In fact, they’d be saying “I told you so” themselves! Who doesn’t like to be right? It is the delivery of the message that differentiates the statesman from the ass.

So the key would be to make sure that the message of truth is delivered in a non-derogatory manner. So I will state simply that government regulations can be a good thing

A person can be taught to do right;
By showing them the light.
A businesses only changes its beat;
When it starts to feel the heat.