Google has been very vocal on its stance for net neutrality. Now, Richard Whitt–Senior Policy Director for Google–announces that Google will take an even more active role in the debate by arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs:
“We’re trying to develop tools, software tools…that allow people to detect what’s happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they’re not happy with what they’re getting — that they think certain services are being tampered with,” Google senior policy director Richard Whitt said this morning during a panel discussion at Santa Clara University, an hour south of San Francisco.
In an article written by Cade Metz, a reporter for The Register, Metz explains that when the net neutrally debate first popped up at Google, Google actually considered playing along with the network-throttling ISPs:
“We were pretty well known on the internet. We were pretty popular. We had some funds available. We could essentially buy prioritization that would ensure we would be the search engine used by everybody. We would come out fine – a non-neutral world would be a good world for us.”
But more idealist minds prevailed at Google, and the company has advocated network neutrality ever since–”or as Whitt likes to call it ‘broadband neutrality’.” Whitt didn’t mention when the network analysis tools would become available.
Other participants of the panel discussion had very different opinions on network neutrality, such as “George Ou and Richard Bennett, two networking-obsessed pals who have vehemently defended Comcast’s right to throttle peer-to-peer traffic.” The one thing that everyone on the panel appeared to agree on, however, was that ISPs need to be transparent with how they manage their network traffic. Google’s stance is that if the ISPs won’t disclose that information to the public, then consumers should have the tools at hand to determine for themselves what their ISPs are doing.
Fuente: hothardware
Excess consumption is practically an American religion. But as anyone with a filled-to-the-gills closet knows, the things we accumulate can become oppressive. With all this stuff piling up and never quite getting put away, we’re no longer huddled masses yearning to breathe free; we’re huddled masses yearning to free up space on a countertop. Which is why people are so intrigued by the 100 Thing Challenge, a grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items.
Una convocatoria orquestada por una dupla de arquitectos apuesta a dar visibilidad a diseños no seriados siguiendo la lógica del copyleft. Esto es, compartiendo y permitiendo la copia para uso personal.
The State of Oregon is sending out cease and desist letters to sites like Justia and Public.Resource.Org that have been posting copies of Oregon laws, known as the Oregon Revised Statutes.
We’ve sent Oregon back two letters. The first reviews the law and explains to the Legislative Counsel why their assertion of copyright over the state statutes is particularly weak, from both a common law perspective and from their own enabling legislation.
The position of the Legislative Counsel is that their public access obligations have been fulfilled by their web site. However, their web site has over 500,000 HTML errors, does not meet Section 508 accessibility requirements, has no metadata, as our second letter points out.
Particularly galling is the fact that Thomson West has also made a copy of these statutes and has done so without a commercial license, but the Legislative Counsel explicitly told Tim Stanley of Justia that they weren’t going to send cease and desist letters to West. Evidently, it is much easier to pick on the little guys.
Oregon is not unique in asserting copyright over state law, but they are definitely one of the more aggressive in this kind of FUD campaign. Justia and Public.Resource.Org have decided this is an important issue to resolve and we’re going to hold firm on this. Anybody else who is making a mirror of the Oregon law should drop me a line and let me know.
Fuente: boingboing
