Those corporate tentacles never stop reaching...
Cox Communications, the nation’s third-largest cable company, on Tuesday unveiled a plan to monitor and slow Internet content it deems unimportant.
With this news, Cox joins the ranks of other Internet providers willing to tempt legal fate by getting between customers and their access to the free-flowing Web...
Cox has decided that certain Web traffic is "less time-sensitive," and will be blocked in favor of other "more timely" content during periods of high congestion. They plan to test this system on their lucky customers in Kansas and Arkansas before rolling it out nationwide.
Some commentary from MediaPost Publications--
...whether the plan is actually unlawful appears open to debate. Clearly Cox intends to discriminate against certain types of protocols. The company said Tuesday that it will manage congestion by speeding some traffic -- visits to Web sites, email and chat, for instance -- while slowing down others, including peer-to-peer protocols and FTP transfers.
Discriminating between protocols might in and of itself violate a 2005 Federal Communications Commission policy stating that consumers should be able to access any legal content. At least, when the FCC sanctioned Comcast for impeding peer-to-peer traffic, the agency said that Comcast's arbitrary and secret blocking of traffic had the effect of violating the 2005 policy...
...Meanwhile, the House just passed a stimulus program that includes net neutrality provisions. The bill says that companies receiving grant money to build new broadband networks must adhere to open Internet requirements. But given the recent controversies surrounding Cox and Comcast, it's clear that net neutrality means different things to different people. Until there's a clear governmental definition of neutrality, ISPs like Cox and Comcast will continue to take matters into their own hands, throttling traffic based on their own ideas about what's acceptable.
In related news, Google is rolling out a large scale internet speed test called Measurement Lab.
"Researchers are already developing tools that allow users to, among other things, measure the speed of their connection, run diagnostics and attempt to discern if their (Internet service provider) is blocking or throttling particular applications," wrote Vint Cerf, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, in a company blog post...
Google says tests at M-Lab, a joint project with the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium and academic researchers, will be more effective than traditional speed tests, because the scale of its projects is much larger...
Cerf said one of the main goals in the project is to measure the true speed of the Internet, and to share the information with others. "At Google, we care deeply about sustaining the Internet as an open platform for consumer choice and innovation," he wrote. "Transparency has always been crucial to the success of the Internet, and by advancing network research in this area, M-Lab aims to help sustain a healthy, innovative Internet."
Savetheinternet.com has more information and action tools regarding these issues...