Into Tech

For years, we’ve been hearing telco execs, telco lobbyists and politicians screaming over the coming death of the internet due to an “exaflood” of bandwidth, as things like internet video and bittorrent totally overwhelmed the internet infrastructure. There was little proof that this was actually an issue, and plenty of evidence suggesting that ordinary infrastructure upgrades would more than handle all expected growth. And, in the last few months we’ve been seeing more and more public reports supporting this position. In August alone we saw two separate reports noting that internet growth was actually slowing rather than increasing at an alarming rate.

And now there’s a third such report, looking at internet backbone traffic and noting that there’s little to worry about:

For the second consecutive year, the rate of underlying international Internet capacity deployment outpaced global Internet traffic growth, leading to lower utilization levels on many Internet backbones. Between 2007 and 2008, average traffic utilization levels decreased from 31 percent to 29 percent while peak utilization fell from 44 percent to 43 percent.

Yet, if you listen to telco lobbyists, execs and politicians, they’d have you believe that over the past couple of years, the growth of BitTorrent and internet video was flooding the networks. Hopefully, with so many reports pointing out the opposite, politicians will finally start pushing back the next time a lobbyist or exec starts claiming that the internet is at risk of running out of bandwidth.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

This question, or…this statement deserves time in answering. The question is always posed…”how do I effectively promote my website on the internet?”
Answer: One must travel outside the normal realm of thinking. When marketing a website on the net, one must never assume that they know all the answers, because the simple fact of the matter [...]

There’s a famous saying by John Gilmore, that “the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” However, that saying may apply equally to other “damage” beyond censorship — and that includes spying, slow connections and many other things. In fact, with it being considered somewhat common knowledge that US intelligence agencies frequently tap into internet traffic coming through the US from elsewhere, more and more countries are working hard to make sure their internet traffic need not travel through the US at all. It’s not just about the spying — though, that is a part of it.

It’s also about a basic competitive advantage. Since the internet has become such an important infrastructure concern, relying on a separate country to make sure that infrastructure remains solvent (especially when that country has actively promoted policies that seem to hinder investment in that infrastructure) doesn’t make much sense. So, while the US gov’t argues over side issues like net neutrality, other countries are making sure that whatever the US does with its internet policy doesn’t impact their ability to make use of a global information network. One of these days, US politicians are going to wake up and realize that while they were arguing over net neutrality and policies concerning telcos and cable companies, other countries built out much stronger internet infrastructure that will allow their economies to profit, while we start playing catchup.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The US’s odd decision to effectively ban online poker as part of a national security law has never made much sense, other than as yet another paternalistic move by the government deciding what is and is not okay for you to do in the privacy of your own home. Some claim that the online poker ban is due to lobbyists from the offline casino industry, who don’t like the competition — but there’s little evidence to support that. First of all, the offline casinos have talked about how they’d like to get into the online game themselves, but cannot due to this ban — and it’s quite likely that making games like poker more popular via online competitions would increase foot traffic to offline casinos as people who believe they’ve become experts online venture out to real world casinos.

Either way, it seems that the folks in favor of legalizing online poker are getting increasingly sophisticated in their lobbying efforts. Last year, they sent representatives to lobby in DC, and this year they’re setting up actual poker games at both major party political conventions, trying to drive home the point that playing poker shouldn’t be a crime. The article also notes that the lobbyists have started their own Political Action Committee as well, called PokerPAC, which has already raised some cash. Apparently, the poker players are getting serious about calling Congress’ bluff on online poker.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

We’ve been talking about the variety of new and different business models springing up around investigative reporting, and here’s another interesting take on the matter. Wikileaks, the site that’s become rather infamous for publishing all sorts of leaked documents is experimenting with auctioning off the latest set of documents its received (in this case, emails from the Venezuelan government). Wikileaks will publish the emails itself eventually, but wants to offer a news organization a chance at the exclusive rights to publish the initial stories on the documents, seeing that as a way to raise money to keep Wikileaks going.

As the folks at Wikileaks point out, it’s not all that different than various tabloids paying millions of dollars for “exclusive” photos of some celebrity’s new baby. However, with newspapers struggling with their own business models, it’s unclear who’s really going to cough cash up to get exclusive access to these documents. Also, this model runs all sorts of risks: what if the emails don’t really reveal that much of interest? Then you’re going to have a pissed off buyer. Plus, the whole obsession with “exclusive” news stories is pretty silly. You can’t own the news, and while being first on a story may gain some initial traffic, other news sources will pick up the story pretty quickly themselves.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The Associated Press has been having a hard time keeping up with the times. While there was the highly publicized situation where it threatened some bloggers with its own, highly questionable definition of fair use, a much bigger deal is that it’s increasingly competing with its own member newspapers by doing things like cutting deals with Google that take traffic away from those member papers’ own sites. Apparently, some of those newspapers are paying attention. Romenesko points us to the news that the Star Tribune in Minnesota has alerted the AP that its canceling its membership. It will be worth watching to see if other newspapers start joining in as well. The AP has had many years to learn how to adapt and change in the internet era, and so far it’s failed repeatedly. Seeing its member newspapers leaving is just the inevitable result of its botched strategy.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Earlier this year, we wrote about how NY state had passed a highly questionable law designed to force e-commerce retailers to collect sales tax in the state. As you hopefully know, retailers are only supposed to collect sales tax in states where they have a physical presence. The reasoning for this is pretty straightforward. The taxes are designed to help provide core infrastructure services for those retailers (roads, water, etc.). Without a physical presence in the state, the retailers aren’t making use of those services, so it doesn’t seem right to tax them for it. The NY state law was sneaky in that it changed the definition needed to establish a “physical presence” to include anyone who acted as an affiliate of the retailer. Most e-commerce sites have affiliate programs that allow others to get a kickback on sales for driving those sales. Affiliates are effectively advertisers, driving traffic to an e-commerce site. It’s quite a stretch to suggest they represent a physical presence for the company. But, NY politicians did it because they wanted to get more cash out of Amazon.

Different online retailers have reacted in different ways. Both Amazon and Overstock sued over the law — and Overstock even banned NY affiliates while this law is in place. Online tech retailer NewEgg started collecting the tax, but has changed its mind. It sent a letter to customers saying that it’s decided not to collect the tax. There isn’t much more of an explanation, but it sounds like it’s asking New York to sue it if it wants to get the tax at all:

As a result of recent changes in New York State tax law requiring certain out-of-state retailers to collect and remit sales taxes to the State of New York, we began collecting applicable sales tax for all orders shipped to New York addresses starting June 1, 2008.

After careful review and consideration, we are pleased to inform you that we have stopped collecting New York sales tax, effective August 21, 2008. This decision was driven by your direct and candid feedback and our continued commitment to you as our valued customers.

Your move, New York.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Comcast agreed last year to change the way it was dealing with supposedly “heavy” users, after it came out (following many denials from Comcast) that the company was using a rather heavy-handed manner to block certain services from working, without bothering to tell anyone. Now the company has said that it will be implementing a plan whereby heavy bandwidth users will be sent to a sort of “time out” room where all of their traffic will be slowed down for a period of 10 to 20 minutes. Consider it the flipside to Comcast’s Powerboost offering, which was supposedly designed for the exact opposite purpose: to help heavy downloaders get more bandwidth when they needed it. Now, apparently that gets you punished.

Meanwhile, over at the PFF conference, execs from Comcast (and Verizon) were apparently complaining that lobbyists were shaping the net neutrality debate, leaving out the part where it was their own lobbyists who really kicked that process off. Update: Oh, and as was widely expected, despite the FCC voting against Comcast, the company will not be fined or anything.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

We’ve already talked about how Italy’s plan to have ISPs block all access to The Pirate Bay has failed by getting more people to visit the site. However, TorrentFreak points out another oddity in this whole ordeal. For the sites that did redirect The Pirate Bay, they pointed people to an IFPI-owned website. That seems highly questionable. Why should ISPs direct traffic intended for one private site to another private site — allowing that second private organization to collect IP address info from folks intending to go to The Pirate Bay? If they really had to block the site, why not point them to a gov’t explanation or, at the very least, a neutral site. Handing The Pirate Bay’s traffic over to music industry lobbyists makes very little sense.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Earlier this week, when we wrote about attempts by Italian officials to have ISPs block The Pirate Bay, we noted that just about every similar attempt had resulted in giving a lot of free publicity to The Pirate Bay, leading to traffic growth. So, it should come as no surprise that the Pirate Bay has seen a nice boost in traffic coming from Italy this week.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story