Tag: BitTorrent

For those of us who believe that the Internet should remain an open, democratic and non-discriminatory platform, with few exceptions, the last two years have brought a steady stream of bad news from Down Under. First, there were rumblings that Australia was seeking to implement a "three strikes" policy toward those accused of online filesharing. Next, New Zealand came close to instituting its own three strikes mandate, though thanks to the efforts of activists, that deeply-flawed law was struck down at the last minute. Finally, after a number of previous, failed attempts, the Australian government announced that it plans to mandate the use of real-time filtering technologies on public ISPs sometime during the next year.

Just when it seemed like no one in the Australian and New Zealand governments appreciated the damaging effects of such policies, an Australian federal court judge has ruled that the ISP iiNet is not responsible for the actions of its subscribers. In the landmark ruling (full text here), which will likely have ramifications in the U.S. and elsewhere, the judge rebuffs Hollywood's attempt to require iiNet to act as a copyright cop, dealing a blow to three strikes in the process. Let's take a closer look.

On the eve of the FCC’s upcoming Network Neutrality rulemaking, Canada has now settled its definition of “reasonable network management” and set rules for traffic throttling. Amazingly, the rules the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) settled on for “reasonable network management” look a lot like the standard our own FCC settled on in the Comcast/BitTorrent Order, but even stronger on the notice and transparency side. Hopefully, the FCC is paying attention here as it considers its own rulemaking on the definition of “reasonable network management.”

You can read the CRTC press release here and the detailed order here.

Sometimes, the Network Neutrality debate makes me feel like a grumpy old policy wonk. Well, I suppose I am a grumpy old policy wonk, but its rather unfair of the folks in the NN debate to make me feel that way — especially when they know better.

The most recent reminder of my age and wisdom/oncoming decrepitude is the rather silly argument that we are somehow “rushing” into network neutrality — because nearly ten years of study and debate cannot possibly be enough to justify this being the first major policy initiative for the Genachowski FCC.

Yes, it was 9 years ago last month when the FCC launched its first inquiry asking how to classify “high speed access to the Internet over cable and other facilities.

Time Warner and Comcast have announced a new pilot program for their TV Anywhere initiative. The 5,000 customers in the pilot will get access to cable programming content not otherwise available online — as long as they prove they subscribe to a subscription video service — or “MVPD” — like cable or FIOS. (MVPD stands for “multichannel video programming distributor” and means anything that sells you a whole bunch of cable channels.