On Tuesday, I reported on overblown concerns that the rate of increase in broadband subscribers is not the same as it used to be, when fewer people already had broadband. Today, there’s more broadband fear-mongering, this time about speed. A new report makes similar claims to ones already released by a DC law firm and the OECD.
The new report uses data from a speed testing website run by “the Communications Workers of America, a group that would see its membership benefit greatly from any large-scale improvements to the nation’s broadband infrastructure.” On the other hand, SpeedTest, a more general speed testing service, shows not nearly as large of a gap.
All of the hubbub over international speed rankings ignores that it is, in fact, possible to have too much bandwidth. Laying tons of wirelines all over risks cementing old technology. It may not be worth the billions of dollars involved to ensure that everyone gets 50mbps instead of just 5mbps. This is especially true in the US, which has much lower population density than the countries who top the speed rankings. Laying fiber to every farm in Kansas and village in New Mexico will not be nearly as cheap or valuable as linking Osaka and Tokyo.
If you want the US’s broadband speeds to catch up to other countries, there are a few steps we can take. As I said in the conclusion to an earlier post:
If broadband Chicken Littles are truly concerned about the US’s internet future, they should focus on solutions like allowing services such as next-gen mobile broadband and satellite ISPs to become a reality (both through deregulation and spectrum liberalization) and, most importantly, eliminating franchising.
It’s Friday again, and also my last day as an intern at CEI. So, I’m posting another Toothpastefordinner comic. Any complaints? No? Good. This one, released yesterday, takes a look at the typical overzealous advocate of online privacy laws. It’s hardly a parody.
Another update on Congress’s continuing investigation into online targeted advertising. Google responded by stating that the company does not engage in Deep Packet Inspection, unlike ISPs that use NebuAd or Phorm. Yahoo, however, soundly defended targeted ads with a laundry list of positives. The company concluded its exposition on the generally-ignored benefits of behavioral advertising with a wonderful summary:
Given the wide range of benefits to society to customers, bloggers, small businesses, and even advertisers who can more efficiently find the right audience for their messages and offers, it is important to give due weight to these benefits when exploring the appropriate framework for discussions of online advertising issues.
AT&T's view of Google, apparently
Today, quite a few responses from other companies went up on the FTC’s site. Verizon and Comcast just stated that they did not engage in DPI, without chastising their competitors. AT&T took a very different approach. Though bloggers have gotten up in arms over other portions of AT&T’s letter to Congress, I want to focus on the company’s overall approach.
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"If these trends continue" is a dangerous way to begin a sentence in the new economy
Ars reports that Google has expanded its domination of search, with it winning more market share against competitors over the last 18 months. But don’t go blaring the monopoly warning horns just yet. As PFF’s Adam Thierer has argued, no tech company can maintain dominance for too long. As I showed earlier, people used to worry that Yahoo was the dominant website and that it would stay in its top spot forever.
And does anyone remember Altavista, AskJeeves, or Lycos? These companies seemed to be all that and a bag of chips in the late 90s, but where are they now? A couple of new guys with a bright idea came out of nowhere and beat the old firms (who were not that old). I will go on record here and now as saying: It is inevitable that the same thing will happen to Google. Though Google seems like an excellent place to work and I would love to be on their counsel team, in ten years (after I’ve graduated law school and gotten the necessary experience) Google will not exist – at least not as the dominant internet giant we know it today.
That is simply the nature of the new economy. Startup costs are too low, there’s too much money to be had, and too many brilliant minds are floating around for any firm to dominate forever. I cannot now predict what will beat Google – another search engine like Cuil, or some totally new internet model. After all, in the late 90s, who was talking about the whole internet revolving around search? And just five years ago, who was thinking of social networking services like Facebook and Twitter?
No one can say now exactly what the internet’s future holds, but we can be certain of one thing: the big players today will not be the big players tomorrow.
Ars reports on a strange move by British ISP Virgin Media. Facing pressure from the government to cut down on P2P downloading (I guess we can forget net neutrality), Virgin has apparently agreed to use Deep Packet Inspection to monitor its users’ downloading activity and to pay record labels for those downloads.
As I just reported, the UK (and the rest of Europe) does not have the same level of safe harbor protections as the US. But ISPs just provide the pipes. Turnpikes shouldn’t be liable for their drivers’ behavior, and nor should FedEx be held responsible for what its customers send in their packages. Safe harbor provisions should expand, not contract.
Following on the heels of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, the state of California is considering passing a law harshly punishing “cyberbullies” with expulsion, up to 90 days in jail, and a $500 fine. As Larry Magid of CBS News argues, California needs to be careful not to encroach on free speech protections. The right to speak anonymously is one important aspect of free speech. And even insensitive anonymous speech deserves protection. Instead of punishing students for what they say, perhaps parents and schools should just focus on instilling good manners.
I just posted on several states’ new taxes on internet downloads. Over at TLF, tech liberator Braden Cox just published an interesting piece on the green benefits of downloading. Apparently, downloading uses less than half the resources of brick-and-mortar purchases. And states want to tax it into oblivion.
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