Technology Talk

ATT’s Censorship is a Reminder We Need Net Neutrality

Pearl Jam has always been outspoken politically, so it’s no surprise that they were critical of George Bush during a Lollapalooza broadcast. When AT&T censored the lyrics “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush find yourself another home”, Pearl Jam posted to their website in protest. Here’s the YouTube video: Read the rest

For everyone keeping up with Net Neutrality, on June 8, the House defeated the Network Neutrality Act of 2006. A similar bill, Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006, isn’t having much luck in the Senate.

There are all kinds of issues at play here. Proponents for net neutrality think safeguards need to be put in place to ensure the Internet never becomes a tiered service - namely that bigwigs like Google and Amazon would have to pay more to telecoms for using more bandwidth. Read the rest

Since I blogged about net neutrality back in March, it has become a hot issue, with lots of supporters - including even Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web - opposing the telecom industry.

Net neutrality means that you can surf the internet without internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast requiring sites to pay a fee to make their sites download quickly. Read the rest

If, like me, you haven’t been keeping up with the net neutrality debate and assumed that since you pay for broadband, you’re entitled to access all internet sites without provider bias, perhaps it’s time to take a deeper look.

Clickz.com has an interesting article summing up the issues. Read the rest