American Censorship Day

11/16/11 is American Censorship Day. The day is sponsored by organizations and web companies that support free speech and open Internet that opposes two new bills in the US congress. These organizations include Electronic Freedom Foundation, Demand Progress, Fight For the Future, Participatory Politics Foundation, and Creative Commons. On the corporate side Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and Twiter also oppose theses proposed bills.

Two misleadingly named bills -- Protect IP Act (PIPA - S.968) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA – H.R.3261) have been currently introduced into Congress. If passed, the bills will do permanent damage to the Internet, commerce, and free speech in the US. If you don’t want to read these long bills, watch the four minute video that provides a quick summary of there impact.

The bills would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to deny access to users trying to access websites host copyrighted material -- movies, TV shows, software etc.  Most of the sites are internationally based, like the Swedish site ThePirateBay.org. So the bill would force the ISP to black hole a website from being accessed by users in the US.

The bill gives government the power to go to court and obtain an injunction against any foreign website on the grounds that they are hosting copyrighted material. The websites have a maximum of 5 days to “prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site.”, before the government cuts-off the website in the US.

The bill goes farther, by enabling the government the right to go after anyone who builds a tool that "circumvention or bypassing" the Internet block. In the government's ongoing campaign to seize Internet domain names -- taking over the web addresses of sites they believe contain infringing content; when they asked Web browser makers like Mozilla to remove access to these sorts of tools Mozilla refused. The new bill will ban such tools completely.

Search engines, don't escape the consequences either, they will have the duty to prevent the web sites in question “from being served as a direct hypertext link.” This means the website won't show up in a Google, Yahoo, or Bing search engines. Payment processors and ad networks would also be legally obligated to cut off the website.

To top it all off ISPs and payment processors -- PayPal and Visa, can simply block access to sites they think could be in volition with no notification to the site owners. As long as they believe the website is “dedicated to the theft of US property,” they can't be sued.

Here is a quote from James Allworth -- Harvard Business School, on what the bill will do for America.

"It contains provisions that will chill innovation. It contains provisions that will tinker with the fundamental fabric of the internet. It gives private corporations the power to censor. And best of all, it bypasses due legal process to do much of it."

You may think those who back such a broad law with the potential to abuse it  –Hollywood– Time Warner, Viacom, and Disney, among other media companies. Nobody unaffiliated with media companies stands to benefit from these bills; they don't extend their new powers to stop spam, virus, adware, or internet crimes. The bills were created for one reason alone: to protect the film, music and TV industries, I guess that’s what $91 million per year on lobbying gets you.

If you feel like I do please contact your representative, especially the ones co-sponsoring the bills and tell them to not pass these bills. Here is a list:

Howard L. Berman (D-CA)

Karen Bass (D-CA)

Lamar Smith (R-TX)

John Conyers (D-MI)

Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)

Adam B. Schiff (D-CA)

Tim Griffin (R-AR)

Elton Gallegly (R-CA)

Theodore E. Deutch (D-FL)

Steve Chabot (R-OH)

Dennis Ross (R-FL)

Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

Mary Bono Mack (R-CA)

Lee Terry (R-NE)

Mel Watt (D-NC)

John Carter (R-TX)

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

Peter King (R-NY)

Mark E. Amodei (R-NV)

Tom Marino (R-PA)

Alan Nunnelee (R-MS)

John Barrow (D-GA)

Steve Scalise (R-LA)

Ben Ray Luján (D-NM)

William L. Owens (D-NY)

http://americancensorship.org/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/sopa-hollywood-finally-gets-chance-break-internet
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/house-takes-senates-bad-internet-censorship-bill-makes-it-worse.ars

Free Speech vs. Freedom to Communicate

Do you have the right to communicate? The constitution clearly states that Americans have the right to free speech and the right to assemble. Does that mean you have the right to use the internet and phone during a protest?  After reading several articles on the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring and other protests around the world, I start to see a disturbing double standard.


The US and many European countries are debating if they should have the power to cut phone and internet services, what opponents would consider "criminal behavior". While they support protesting and revolts in other countries--Libya, Egypt, and Syria, but not at home.

Almost all Western countries raised protest when the Egyptian government cut phone and internet service in the country, in a attempt to slow protests against the government. Shareholders of Vadophone even joined NGOs in shaming Vadophone-- the largest cellphone company in Europe, for shutting down during the Egyptian revolution. This shutdown was viewed as an assault on freedom of speech by protestors seeking more freedom.

Protestors in Eygpt used Twitter and other social networking sites to organize the protest.  This was considered so important that the US has set up the Senior State Department Officials on Internet Freedom Programs to promote access to the internet in oppressive countries. They even built an "internet in a box" app-- an app that encrypts the data sent by protestors and can wipe a phone clean of all data afterwards, to ensure that protestors could connect freely.

Fast forward to the London riots. Youth throughout London rioted after a series of disputed police shootings of a teen, after several large scale protests over university fees. Again protestors used Twitter, Google maps and Blackberry messenger to communicate.

Rioters used Blackberry messenger-- BBM servers to send messages to linkup and give updates on police attempts to stop them. Riots even setup Google maps with police movements and riot sites.  BBM was popular because all messages were encrypted and hard for police to track.

Many protestors gave their phones to friends or simply threw them away before they were arrested. This was an attempt to stop the police from reading messages and to protect other rioters -- in England even posting a message proposing that people set up a riot is a crime even if nothing happens.

The governments response to the use of technology was much different than in Egypt. The UK's Prime Minister and the police blamed social networking sites for helping the protestors and rioters organize. They called for a review of these services used during "violent riots", they even went so far as to state they should have the power to turn off these services during further riots. They stated this was necessary due to the need for law and order.

Here in the US, Bart shutdown cell phone and internet usage during protests over shootings by bart police over the past year. One of the reasons given by bart officals was that the public had a "constitutional right to safety" -- however there is no such right in the bill of rights. After a large amount of public pressure the BART Board of Directors promised a review of their cell phone service policy.

Although I believe the government should have the power and tools to ensure the safety of the general public, people have the right to communicate.  The government should not narrowly limit freedom of speech.

Unknow AT&T History Part 1

In light of the present AT&T and T-mobile merger I wanted to review some of the lesser known products of "Old Mama Bell."

When you think about a video phone most people think of the iPhone face time, Skype or  iChat. What most people don't know is the concept for the video phone has been around since before World War 2. 

The first video phone was built in Germany in the 1930's. The service had video telephone lines linked from Berlin to Nuremberg, Munich, and Hamburg. Terminals were integrated within public telephone booths and transmitted at the same resolution as the first German TV sets. The person on the other side of the call would go to a special post office video telephone booth in their respective cities. The service end at the beginning of World War 2.

In 1964, AT&T unveiled their "PicturePhone" at the New York Worlds Fair . Two years later they had a Telephone Pavilion in the Montreal World Fair. It was offered commercially in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.  PicturePhone booths were set up in New York's Grand Central Station and elsewhere and in select progressive companies.

The user would have to make a reservation at time slots for the cost of $16 per three minute call.  The high price for a call made from public booths greatly limited the appeal to the point that they were discontinued by 1968.

In less than 5 years the video phone was died. Bell labs-- AT&T research branch, spent a reported 500 million developing the tech behind it. What hurt the video phone was the cost of the device, each unit cost 1,500 --you can imagine how ludicrous of a price this was given that it was the mid 60's. This points to a wider flaw in AT&T, They have always been great visionary, but not the best in rolling out new tech to the general public. 


AT&T and Radio

 AT&T wanted to completely dominate the nation's system of broadcasting. The Telco's plan would make it almost impossible for broadcast license holders not affiliated with the carrier to operate.  The scheme was hatched in 1922 and abandoned by 1926.

On August 28, 1922, WEAF in New York City aired a  a ten-minute talk by a representative of a real estate company--this was the first radio commercial. The station charged $50 for it, and another in the evening for $100.

AT&T had other big ideas—a network of almost 40 radio stations strung together via the Telco's long distance lines. They would broadcast to local areas wirelessly and share content via AT&T's long routes. The company intended WEAF as the beginning of that experiment.

They tired unsuccessfully to push out competitors by first denying non-Bell System radio stations access to its long distance lines for shared projects, forcing other networks to experiment with inferior telegraph rather than telephone connections for their experiments. Then AT&T became more aggressive by suing a nearby competitor of WEAF, claiming that its broadcast operation infringed on the carrier's patents.

After government pressure and increased competition AT&T got out of the Radio business.

4G: What's in a name

If you've seen all of the new cellphone company ads you heard the term "4G" but what does it mean? It's a unit higher than 3G, but does that mean it's better? Why are all the carriers in the US over night claiming their networks to be 4G compatible? Is all 4G the same? To answer those questions requires a little walk through some wireless technology terms like WiMax, HSDPA+ .

As one would expect, the 4 in 4G stands for the fourth generation of mobile wireless technology. It encompasses a range of VoIP and mobile broadband technologies used by smartphones, wireless modems, and other broadband device . According to the International Telecommunications Union, the standards group that came up with the term,  defines 4G as a network that offers mobile speeds of 100Mbps up to 1Gbps -- a 500-fold improvement over current 3G speeds.

There has been lots of discussion as to whether the current wave of mobile technologies marketed as 4G are truly deserving of the name. As it is now, all of the 4G technologies currently in use, are technically considered to be 4G predecessor systems. In almost all the cases the "4G" is used as a markinting tearm . None of the cell companies have even come close to the 100Mbps speed requirement and the ITU has not approved any of them as 4G.



T-Mobile and AT&T market their HSPA+ service with the 4G label, but HSPA+ is widely considered to be an advanced 3G standard -- 3.5G tops. T-Mobile's  HSPA+ network tops out at 21Mbps. The aple for using these technology is it's upgread cost to the cell comapiny. Both T-Mobile and AT&T used older HSPA technology to provide 3G servers, therefore they can upgrade their equipment.  This is also why you can buy 4G phones for less then $50 now --the cost of manufacturing the chips are much lower then other 4G technologies.

WiMax has been deployed by Sprint, the oldest of the 4G standard, it's been around since 2001.  The hope was that WiMax could become a replacement for both 3G and WIFI. That it could provide theoretical download speeds of up to 100Mbps. In the real-world speeds were far below that level more like  3-6Mbps. Sprint has recently debated jumping ship and going to LTE in the near future.  Even though WiMax will still be supported for the next couple of years, WiMax was on foot in the grave

The new kid on the block is LTE -- Long Term Evolution.  It is generally accepted to succeed both CDMA2000 (Version and Sprint)  and GSM (T-mobile and AT&T). It lacks a dedicated voice network -- 100 percent of the bandwidth  is used for data services, which means that voice calls would be treated as VoIP (not unlike Skype). speeds are about  5-8Mbps but the standard could evolve to 100 Mbps some day in the future. All of the big 4 cell phone compies are working on developing LTE, as of right now LTE is the clear front runner for the race to 4G speeds.

Currently, we are seeing the very beginning of 4G. Most of the cell companies know that it's going to be a while before we hit the 100Mbps goal but that doesn't stop them from using slogans like "America's fastest most advanced 4G network"

AT&T –T-mobile Merger

Last week the Department of justice filed a lawsuit against theAT&T and T-mobile merger.  The government’sposition is that if this merger goes through, it will be terrible for consumers, worse for competition and will eventually lead to a duopoly –when two companies dominate a single industry.   Incontradiction, AT&T argues the polar opposite.  In their regard, T-mobile is not a legitimatecompetitor; therefore gobbling up the financially burdened company wholesale can’t hurt competition or consumer choice. The merger will make AT&T stronger as a company and revolutionize the wireless industry of the United States. Their slogan for this ambitious campaign is 1+1=3—somehow magically reducing nationwide wireless companies will make everything better.


AT&T representatives claim that the T-mobile merger must go through because the wireless industry is going to face a “bandwidth tsunami”.  They say the only way for AT&T to developnext generation 4G network would be to combine, T-mobiles wireless spectrumtogether with theirs.  They claim thiswould give them huge improvement in coverage and give them 97% of America.  The go so far as saying that without thisvaluable spectrum, they will not be able to accomplish this greatchallenge.  The problem with this argumentis AT&T’s own documents, which they accidently submitted to thegovernment.  These papers show thatAT&T has plans to roll out a new 4G network without the T-mobile spectrum,and even hints to the fact that the T-mobile merger will not give bettercoverage to AT&T customers. 

In all of AT&T’s presentations, they do gloss over howmuch it will cost AT&T if th $39 billion merge does not go through.  Both companies have a multi-year roamingagreement, which will conclude next year and will cost AT&T $3 billion to  sign a new one. 
One of the biggest critics of the plan is Sprint.  Their problem with the merger is access.  Sprint and T-mobile are the only two nationalwireless carriers that do not operate physical wired network.  This means they must purchase fiber opticbackhauls from their two biggest competitors Verizon and AT&T.  Sprint’s fear is without T-mobile, AT&Tand Verizon can essentially jack up the price for these lines, putting them ata huge disadvantage.  This combined withthe fact that Sprint will be the smallest of the national carrier’s means thatthey can be easily muscled out of the market.

I hope that the merger is stopped at all costs.  Over the years I have been a customer at onepoint to: AT&T, T-mobile, Sprint and Verizon.  The worst cell phone company by far has been AT&T.  They have the worst coverage, atrociouscustomer service—that makes dealing with the DMV seem pleasant and relaxing,and the most confusing billing process I have ever seen.  I pray that the government does not allow AT&T to consolidate their power.  Keep in mindthis is the company that thought that the internet would never work, fax wasuseless and tried to sue to stop the car phone.