Archive for May, 2012

FCC Announces Open Internet Advisory Committee Members

by The Internet Distinction on May.29, 2012, under Uncategorized

(Original at Azi Ronen’s Broadband Traffic Management blog)

Sunday, May 27, 2012

While Comcast challenges the Net Neutrality rules (“We do not prioritize our video .. we just provision separate, additional bandwidth for it” – here), OTT providers protest (Sony, Netflix) and the FCC chairman says that “Business model innovation is very important” (here) it seems that the US needs to re-examine its Open Internet laws (see “FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules Made Official; Start on Nov. 20” – here).

The FCC announced the “composition of the Open Internet Advisory Committee (OIAC). The OIAC’s members include representatives from community organizations, equipment manufacturers, content and application providers, venture capital firms, startups, Internet service providers, and Internet governance organizations, as well as professors in law, computer science, and economics“.

“Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and CoFounder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, will serve as Chair of the OIAC“

Among the members are Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer, Netflix; Kevin McElearney, Senior Vice President for Network Engineering, Comcast ; Chip Sharp, Director, Technology Policy and Internet Governance, Cisco Systems; Marcus Weldon, Chief Technology Officer, Alcatel-Lucent and Charles Kalmanek, Vice President of Research, AT&T.

[. . .]

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Eben Moglen at F2C: Innovation Under Austerity

by The Internet Distinction on May.23, 2012, under Uncategorized

Eben Moglen describes at Freedom 2 Connect exactly how innovation proceeds on the basis of the whole assemblage of components that enable us to “[let] the kids play and [get] out of the way” (including, of course, the general purpose Internet platform):

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Freedom to Connect 2012

by The Internet Distinction on May.21, 2012, under Uncategorized

Today and tomorrow, May 21-22, at AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland.

(See http://freedom-to-connect.net/ and http://freedom-to-connect.net/agenda-2/)

About F2C: Freedom to Connect

F2C: Freedom to Connect is a conference devoted to preserving and celebrating the essential properties of the Internet. The Internet is a success today because it is stupid, abundant and simple. In other words, its neutrality, its openness to rapidly developing technologies and its layered architecture are the reasons it has succeeded where others (e.g., ISDN, Interactive TV) failed.

The Internet’s issues are under-represented in Washington DC policy circles. F2C: Freedom to Connect is designed to advocate for innovation, for creativity, for expression, for little-d democracy. The Freedom to Connect is about an Internet that supports human freedoms and personal security. These values, held by many of us whose consciousness has been shaped by the Internet, are not common on K Street or Capitol Hill or at the FCC.

F2C: Freedom to Connect is about having access to the Internet as infrastructure. Infratructures belong to — and enrich — the whole society in which they exist. They gain value — in a wide variety of ways, some of which are difficult to anticipate — when more members of society have access to them. F2C: Freedom to Connect especially honors those who build communications infrastructure for the Internet in their own communities, often overcoming resistance from incumbent cable and telephone companies to do so.

The phrase Freedom to Connect is now official US foreign policy, thanks to Secretary of State Clinton’s Remarks on Internet Freedom in 2010. She said that Freedom to Connect is, “the idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to the internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly, only in cyberspace.” Her speech presaged the Internet-fueled assemblies from Alexandria, Egypt to Zuccotti Park.

The Agenda is now quite stable.

Confirmed keynote speakers include Vint Cerf, Michael Copps, Susan Crawford, Cory Doctorow (via telecon), Benoît Felten, Lawrence Lessig, Barry C. Lynn, Rebecca MacKinnon, Eben Moglen, Mike Marcus and Aaron Swartz.

Panels include:

Big Enough to Succeed
BTOP, Gig-U and other big pipe experiments
Freedom & Connectivity from Alexandria, Egypt to Zuccotti Park
Internet Freedom is Local
The Fight for Community Broadband

F2C: Freedom to Connect Agenda 0.99.9.1

Monday 5/21

8:00 to 9:00 AM Registration, Continental Breakfast

9:00 to 10:30 AM
Vint Cerf keynote (45 min)
Rebecca MacKinnon keynote (Ian Schuler, US State Dept., discussant) (45 min)

11:00 to 12:30
Big Enough to Succeed: small carriers at the leading edge — entrepreneurial (non-Municipal) carriers show a fourth way (after Telco, Cable and Muni) to the future of connectivity. (60 min)

John Brown, CityLink Telecommunications
Gary Evans, Hiawatha Broadband Communications
Ken Johnson, Conneaut Telephone Company
Pat Kennedy, Lit San Leandro
Levi Maaia, Full Channel
Leslie Nulty, ValleyNet

Susan Crawford keynote (30 min)

12:30 to 1:30 Lunch

1:30 to 3:00

BTOP, Gig-U, and other big pipe experiments (60 min)

Blair Levin (brief intro)
Lev Gonick, CIO, Case Western University, founder, Case Connection Zone
Pankaj Shah, Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet)
Michael Smeltzer, UIUCNet, U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Mike Marcus keynote (30 min) Dewayne Hendricks (brief intro)

3:30 to 5:00
Benoit Felten, keynote (30 minutes)
Aaron Swartz, “How we stopped SOPA” keynote (30 min)
Michael Copps keynote (30 min)
– Jim Baller introduces Commissioner Copps

RECEPTION, location tbd.