Gizmodo

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Net Neutrality

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america's next top president

John McCain Blamed for Sucky Broadband in US

Our friend (and Wired editor) Nick Thompson wrote a piece in the Washington Monthly accusing John McCain for the sorry state of America's broadband. It seems the email-avoiding presidential candidate, as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, supported too much consolidation and too little oversight. The end result? "Since 2000, the United States has gone from fifth in the world to twenty-second in broadband penetration." More »

10:30 PM on Wed Oct 1 2008
By Wilson Rothman
8,518 views, 227 comments

Latest by johnnyabnormal: @FrankReality: Excuses, excuses... more »

wimax

Sprint's Xohm WiMax Will Neuter Heavy Downloaders

For all the talk that Sprint's freshly launched Xohm WiMax would be the openest internets ever and can totally replace your ISP, when it comes to bandwidth-sucking apps, that's not the case. It'll neuter file-sharing applications, or anything else—like VoIP—that uses a lot of bandwidth.
To ensure a high-quality experience for its entire subscriber base, XOHM may use various tools and techniques designed to limit the bandwidth available for certain bandwidth intensive applications or protocols, such as file sharing.
More »

3:00 PM on Mon Sep 29 2008
By matt buchanan
2,633 views, 18 comments

Latest by macserv: @Jules Winfield: You're completely missing the point of WiMax. Bandwidth issues can (and will, because of much bitching) be more »

copyright protection

Hollywood Teams with AT&T and Others In Possible Packet-Filtering Coalition

Some of you P2P fans may want to know about a new coalition called Arts + Labs. It may sound like some kind of open-source hippie think tank, but it's actually a powerful alignment of film and music copyright owners (NBC Universal, Viacom and the Songwriters Guild of America) and tech firms and ISPs (Microsoft, Cisco Systems and AT&T). It's a group that could put together a pretty serious anti-piracy system without much trouble. Saul Hansell at the NY Times says the group claims that "network operators must have the flexibility to manage and expand their networks to defend against net pollution and illegal file trafficking which threatens to congest and delay the network for all consumers.” Hansell interprets this as a call to filter packets, and put the kibosh on any dubious transfers. More »

10:00 PM on Thu Sep 25 2008
By Wilson Rothman
5,945 views, 49 comments

Latest by The Monarch: Your block quote has an extra paragraph of, presumably, self-authored content. more »

at&t

AT&T Changes Terms of Service, Fastest U-Verse Subscribers Will See Slowdowns

AT&T's just updated its terms of service for broadband customers, and starting next month, if you're a heavy downloader, get ready to have your connection squeezed to a trickle. While they haven't implemented usage caps a la Comcast (yet) they are using a similar traffic management technique starting on Oct. 18 you will see throughput get slower if you're "using other U-verse services in a manner that requires high bandwidth." Update: AT&T just hit us with some clarifications on the confusingly worded ToS—Rebel downloaders won't be punished specifically for using gobs of bandwidth, but what they've told us actually sounds worse for the average Joe U-Verse subscriber. More »

3:42 PM on Wed Sep 10 2008
By matt buchanan
22,499 views, 68 comments

Latest by AtomicPlayboy: When I first saw this, I thought "oh, shit, maybe I shouldn't have switched to Uverse last week". But more »

comcast

Comcast Sues FCC to Get P2P Slowdown Ban Reversed

Comcast has sued the FCC to overturn its order to stop slowing down P2P traffic, as was widely predicted. Even though they're fighting to have the FCC's ruling reversed, it's actually not so they can go back to mucking your P2P funtime—no, they're already way down the road of slowing down heavy users' entire connection to DSL speed for up to 20 minutes, with data caps beginning in October. More »

11:00 AM on Fri Sep 5 2008
By matt buchanan
5,503 views, 57 comments

Latest by Wolf_in_command: It's just so we can reach the cap faster more »

net neutrality

VP Candidate Biden Is No Friend to File Sharing, Net Neutrality Protection or Online Privacy

CNet's Declan McCullagh wrote up an informative history of Joe Biden's tech-related voting record—if Biden's name rings a bell, it's because he's the guy Barack Obama picked to be his vice president last Friday night. Maybe you don't care about the doings in Washington, but you may want to know that Biden considers a lot of what you do care about criminal activity. Here's what I'm talking about: More »

4:30 PM on Sun Aug 24 2008
By Wilson Rothman
85,887 views, 216 comments

Latest by rimplestultskin needs an aluminum macbook: fuck all of 'em. i'm split down the middle on the issues, and every single candidate irritates (perhaps "irk" would better more »

comcast

Comcast's New Network Management Will Slow Down Heavy Users for Up to 20 Minutes

While Comcast's new network management scheme—to slow down heavy bandwidth users' entire connection—started back in June, we're just getting some of the grislier details. People hitting their pipe hard—whether it's watching a boatload of streaming video or FTP or whatever—will see their top speeds cut for 10 to 20 minutes at a time. More »

8:57 PM on Wed Aug 20 2008
By matt buchanan
13,603 views, 64 comments

Latest by videoCWK: Yet another reason Comcast fails. They seriously need to stop trying to budget cut and focus more on actual performance. more »

comcast

Has Comcast Lowered Their Monthly Usage Limits?

We known for a while that Comcast's "unlimited" broadband is actually not so. The monthly usage limit seemed to be near 300GB before, but reader Ace says that he got a nasty phone call warning him that his usage is in the top one percent of residential plans, and it's pissing on everyone else's internet funtime (unless he gets the more expensive business plan, natch)—yet he says his usage is only about 150-200GB a month. More »

1:20 PM on Mon Aug 11 2008
By matt buchanan
9,063 views, 63 comments

Latest by GertrudeFeardaddy: I say, why stop there? If I’ve flushed my toilet too many times this month (or during peak flushing times), cut more »

giz explains

Giz Explains: How Broadband Usage Caps Will Kill Internet Video

NBC's scheduled coverage of the 2008 Olympics is absolutely breathtaking in its scope: It's broadcasting over 3,600 hours of the world's greatest athletes performing feats that reveal how shapeless and amoebic the rest of humanity is—that's 1,000 more hours than the last 12 Summer Olympics combined. The internet is a huge component of their nearly omniscient coverage. You can even download and watch full-length events. But NBC has a fat red warning on the page: If you've got metered or capped broadband, you might want to think twice before downloading. It's the first shot by major media in the next great battle for the internet's future. Here's why you—and most media companies—should be worried about the new wave of internet pricing. More »

Feature

3:00 PM on Wed Aug 6 2008
By matt buchanan
22,866 views, 144 comments

Latest by shugo: @undefined: Right! BUT, when you try to raid on dial up don't even try the 40 man raids. (I know more »

the verdict is in

FCC Orders Comcast to Stop P2P Blocking

It comes as no surprise, but the FCC has officially ruled on the issue of Comcast P2P blocking and determined in a 3-2 vote that the company must stop blocking web access and fully disclose its traffic management practices to subscribers—but it will not be fined for its actions. It is only a small victory though—as we have already stated, this ruling does not prevent data caps from being implemented by ISPs and there is no guarantee that the ruling will hold up in court. Chances are the FCC does not legally have the authority to regulate ISPs in the first place. [Bloomberg]

1:28 PM on Fri Aug 1 2008
By Sean Fallon
4,023 views, 24 comments

Latest by DJJS: @monkeyrotica: LMAO! more »