Electronic Frontier Foundation is advocating a bill in
Congress to provide universal high-speed Internet, link here.
Details forthcoming. But the bill would seem to
address issues of clogging of Internet if there is a spike in usage if schools
have to stay online in the fall.
Joanna Nelius has an important article in Gizmodo, “What
did we say about ATT being allowed to own Guzmodo?”
ATT apparently won’t count use of HBO Max toward data
caps, which certainly sounds like a breach of “good faith” that Ajit Pai
thought he would get.
Niley Patel has a longer article in The Verge.
Furthernore, HBO Max supposedly will temporarily pull “Gone
with the Wind” from its offerings because somehow the classic film is “offensive”.
(CNET)
Ars Technica, in a story, June 8, by Joe Brodkin, reports that Cox Communications has apparently lowered upload speeds (to 10mgps) on entire neighborboods in a few cases, as the pressure on networks increases because of video conferencing and “work from home”. The specific incident apparently occurred in northern Florida.
Cox has warned a few users these neighborhoods that there services may be terminated if they don’t lower their usage (especially, apparently, very large uploads). In one case, a user said he was apparently was on an unlimited plan, and yet his late night use was considered unreasonable and a possible violation of an AUP.
Ernesto Falcon of Electronic Frontier Foundation tweeted a comment and mentioned the FCC.
However Cox’s actions might have been technically legal even under Obama’s rules.
This sort of thing would seem to invite a debate over “essential” v. non-essential use, just as in the regular world of social distancing. We may see more problems like this, unless re-opening of conventional work spaces (and of venues like theaters) makes more progress,
The policy might affect YouTube channel owners who upload multiple large videos. I generally upload only smaller videos.
The video shown above dates back to June 2017.
When I had Comcast in a house, generally people said that only very extreme binge watching of uploading would strain the system. But that was before Covid.
Picture: Tampa, FL, my trip, July 2015
I have been critical of the practice of many activist organizations to focus on just one issue, that turns out to be very narrow when other surrounding threats become more serious in practice.
One such organizations is FFTF, or Fight for the Future,
which was very aggressive in trying to raise money to increase political
pressure to restore Obama-era network neutrality, as it had been set up in
telecommunications law then.
More recently the group has taken up banning facial recognition
misuse, and banning abuses of privacy with respect to COVID-19, as well as honoring
the public health balance to be struck. I will look more seriously into this
soon.
But I wanted to note another aspect of the way I have looked
at all this since the Trump administration decided to let the FCC gut network
neutrality. Indeed, I have heard Cato
briefings by Ajit Pai noting that private telecom companies have not blocked or
throttled legal content (there were some unusual issues with emergency
responders). At one time, however, some
activists feared that ordinary users or small businesses could have to pay telecom
companies to be hooked to them, and be driven out of business. Ordinary people
might not be able to have websites any longer, or that was the fear. I do remember the protests at the end of 2017.
However, over time, a number of issues have become much more
problematic in the challenges they could present for the “future” of user
generated content. These include FOSTA
in 2018 (which has affected people of color and some trans people adversely),
the EU Copyright Directive (and pressure from media companies to more or less
copy it in the US), other threats to Section 230 (such as EARN IT), and the
trend among tech companies to ban content that they believe promotes radicalization
of the intellectually vulnerable (since Charlottesville). There are also issues like COPPA, crackdowns
on persistent identifiers, questions about patronage, and a belief among many
that gratuitous speech (that does not pay for itself) should be discouraged to
prevent the well-off from having political advantage and make it easier for minorities
to organize and command support from everyone (as we see from the recent issue
with the police and race, which exploded in sometimes violent street protests).
So I’ve taken the position that one must understand every
one of these issues separately, and get a big picture.
I will, however, cite one previously unrecognized possible
benefit from the original focus just on network neutrality. I can recall, for example,
when Blogtyrant (when Ramsay Taplan ran it) perceived loss of network
neutrality as the only real political threat to blogging (later YouTube
channels). I challenged him on
this. But it is true that if you could
have restored network neutrality quickly (as some states are doing) you are
making a political commitment to protecting user generated content, from all
kinds of other threats that may then occur.
I probably overlooked this way of looking at it. Network neutrality was
a kind of “cellular immune system” for the web, rather than simply an antibody
(each subsequent issue threat must be met with its own “antibody”, but the
concept of UGC needs more systematic protection, that is, “T helper cells”).
In fact, FFTF now has a video opposing the EARN IT act, so
it seems like it may be about to take up protecting Section 230 as its next
emphasis. In a way, it is creating a paradox for itself.
In April 2019, CBS News reported a cluster of four childhood
cancers in an elementary school in California, where Sprint had a cell tower on
campus. It was reported if was 5G. It is
apparently near Sacramento.
Two investigations found the tower well within federal limits,
although one study reported higher radio frequency than others. Soil and water
are also being tested. Sprint agreed to move the tower.
Picture: downtown Sacramento, mine, Sept. 2018
