shouting loudly

As two recent stories point out, our actual telescreens cost hundreds of dollars and have designer labels.

Over at Public Knowledge, Robb Topolski has written an inspirational post, ISPs Behaving Badly, which criticizes Time Warner’s trial runs at tiered pricing.
I’m not opposed to tiered pricing in principle, though TW appears to have handled it rather badly, and it still fails to solve the root problem of weak competition in the wireline ISP [...]

Here’s a great article by the Times exposing how text messages are incredibly overpriced and discussing one Senator’s investigation into the subject.
Text messages may cost you and me $.20 per, but they cost the carriers almost nothing to send, says Srinivasan Keshav, a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario. Here’s a chunk [...]

In a(nother) huge election day win, yesterday the FCC deregulated the “white spaces” between TV stations, allowing technology firms and enthusiasts the right to play around in these unused channels of high-quality spectrum.
In a 5-0 decision, the Commission issued a ruling allowing anybody to transmit messages in white spaces, within fairly limits on the generation [...]

I cannot recommend against Globat.com strongly enough. After the break, you’ll find a complete and total telling-off of a company with some of the worst customer service practices imaginable.
Even if you don’t read it, avoid them at all costs. Will update w/ their reply.

I’m stoked by Damian Kulash’s New York Times opinion calling for mandated network neutrality. It’s a far more accessible, engaging piece than almost anything written on the subject, and he makes a compelling case. Kudos to him.
P.S. On a personal note, it’s been a metric year since I blogged, and for good reason. Life is [...]

In light of Verizon’s decision to block text messages from NARAL for no reason other than their content, Public Knowledge has created an online form for submitting comments to the FCC.
This is an important telecom policy issue, and it would still be a problem if Verizon were blocking any messages due to their political content. [...]

At yesterday’s FCC hearing into Comcast’s practice of blocking BitTorrent traffic in Cambridge, Comcast hired several dozen seat warmers to reduce the number of critics who could get into the hearing.
The hearing was held at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. When Catherine Bracy, the Center’s administrative manager, opened the door to the hearing [...]

In a filing with the FCC (pdf), Comcast claims that, thanks to market competition and blogging watchdogs, there is no need for regulatory intervention to protect net neutrality.
The company’s recent discrimination against peer-to-peer traffic is the cause of the hearing. Last August, Comcast denied the charges (which were first documented on… drumroll please… a blog), [...]

Today, Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chip Pickering (R-MS) introduced HR 5353, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act (pdf).
For more, see SaveTheInternet.com or CNet.