Robb Topolski
23 May 2008 @ 10:19 pm
Former Prosecutor: ISP Content Filtering Might be a 'Five Year Felony'  
Former Prosecutor: ISP Content Filtering Might be a 'Five Year Felony'
University of Colorado law professor Paul Ohm, a former federal computer crimes prosecutor, argues that ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T and Charter Communications that are or are contemplating ways to throttle bandwidth, police for copyright violations and serve targeted ads by examining their customers' internet packets are putting themselves in criminal and civil jeopardy. (blog.wired.com)
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Robb Topolski
23 May 2008 @ 03:16 pm
Sandvine attacks small Blog P2PNET  
p2pnet news -- Blog Archive -- Sandvine menaces p2pnet
“The use of Sandvine’s logo on the page noted above is an infringement of our trademark and copyright,” she said, incorrectly, going on, "I have referred this matter to our legal counsel and demand that you immediately take down the logo and not use it in any manner. We expect it to be down within 30 minutes from now."

Lest there be any confusion, this story is about  the
maker of Internet hardware that violates Internet Standards  used by Comcast
to attack their own customers in , and not  
which is a Cynanchum laeve plant innocently bearing the same name.

Robb Topolski Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:46 pm

Hey Sandvine,

This is to let you know, Sandvine, that use of Sandvine’s corporate identity in a news story about Sandvine’s products is a completely fair use under U.S. law and, most likely, Canada and the U.K. (points of Sandvine’s presence).

The very reason Sandvine would select a particular Sandvine font and Sandvine color is to help non-Sandvine people associate Sandvine’s name in context with Sandvine’s marketplace. While Sandvine is the owner of Sandvine’s marks and names, Sandvine’s name and products are both is in the news and industry buzz.

You’ve developed this Sandvine branding for the public to use to identify Sandvine, and now you dare complain when Sandvine’s name, and the fonts and colors chosen by Sandvine to represent Sandvine are somehow chosen by a reporter issuing news about Sandvine? Why not also take him to task for mentioning your name, Sandvine, which is no more and no less part of Sandvine’s corporate identity (e.g. — they all mean the same thing — Sandvine).

If this Sandvine news report instead carried a picture of “Mayor McCheese” in front of the “Golden Arches,” would Sandvine be more or less pleased about the impact of Sandvine’s “Brand and ID” efforts?

Hey Sandvine? So go pound Sand(vine)!

–Robb Topolski

PS: Get out of the business of selling Sandvine products to customers who want to keep Sandvine’s business relationship with them a secret. Didn’t Sandvine learn anything the first time, or does Sandvine need to lose another 80% in market equity?


17 USC 107
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Robb Topolski
20 May 2008 @ 02:56 pm
MY RANT on the evil done by Cable Companies in this Comcast/Cox/Sandvine deal...  

Re: Put the DPI makers out of business? - dslreports.com
I'm not cool with is the Cable industry vilifying P2P and vilifying users who are legally using the service within the bandwidth sold (their tier). I'm also not cool about employing secret technology that effectively takes back the bandwidth that was sold to the customer. I'm not cool with lying to direct questions about it, or hiding facts at an FCC hearing. I'm not cool with selling something called "Internet" and then using methods that break Internet Standard protocols.

That behavior is bait-and-switch and fraud and borders on criminal. (( I'm yelling here, but not at you. )) It reminds me of the rolling-blackout energy crises that Enron created to support higher energy costs. It reminds me of the situation that brought about Sarbanes-Oxley laws.

(click the link above to get the whole message)
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Robb Topolski
19 May 2008 @ 06:29 pm
Why Flash-Based P2P Could Change Everything  
Really Big News -- This has the potential to change the landscape:
 
Please read http://gigaom.com/2008/05/15/flash-p2p-now-thats-disruptive/ ... this provides a lot of useful food for thought. 
 
BitTorrent is the huge P2P leader, and many person-years and hundreds of millions of dollars have chased that trend -- some to support it, some to exploit it, and some to fight it.  One of the reasons it is foolish to take long terms steps in response to a protocol is because trends change on a dime.  Client-server leapfrogged peer-to-peer architecture.  HTTP leapfrogged Gopher.  Instant Messaging leapfrogged IRC.  3G has leapfrogged POTS.  Ironically, we might all be witnessing a peer-to-peer comeback over client-server!
 
Fighting higher-level protocols is a waste of time. I don't just mean Sandvine or Arbor or Ellecoya.  I also mean time-wasters like the BitTorrent-Comcast alliances, Bills of Rights, and all of the other non-technical tactics as well.
 
When Flash 10 is released, every web browser will suddenly be P2P enabled.  That fact alone will change the future.  Before you know it, there will be generations of file-sharing technologies based on this, and interdicting them (for any reason) will  be very difficult because nodes can be as temporal as the time it takes to check out the content on a web page! 
 
Switching from a client-server to a peer-to-peer model will quickly become frictionless.  Someday, everyone becomes everyone else's nearby cache for static content.  A server copy will only need to be fetched if nobody else has it or if some predetermined time has expired (similar to the way DNS caching or anti-caching directives work on frequently updated sites).
 
P2P also moves from a background use to a streaming video use -- perhaps even to a Video-enabled VOIP use.  As a surfer, you won't know whether the video you are watching is coming from a distant server, a nearby Akamai server, or 10-15 other web surfers -- or a mix of these.  And if you're on a site that uses a Flash-based P2P technology, you probably will be sharing pieces of the page or stream that you're viewing with others.  (Who knows?  The applications that will decide this haven't been built yet.)
 
This is why providers and operators should not try to "manage congestion" using their own secretly-invented non-standard schemes. Developers must be able to depend upon an Internet that follows the Standards.   Special treatment is only useful if the payload is used accordingly -- and the network in the middle can only guess at that.  This is why that role was given to the end points. 
 
Deep Packet Inspection and packet forgery have no full-time role on the open Internet -- but these tools aren't evil.  Buying them or selling them for non-Standard uses is evil.  Deploying them secretly is evil.  These are useful tools for debugging and troubleshooting, for CALEA, and for security uses on private corporate networks that merely connect up to the Internet. 

Network operators should be in the business of shipping the freight.  One useful way to look at it is that the operators view of the Internet pretty much stops at the IP packet header.  This is a black-box approach.  Everything within the payload is part of some higher-level protocol that an operator does not need to understand in order to do its job.   

Now that the WWW itself is becoming more P2P based, ISPs need to get out of the way of innovation and back into the business of meeting their customers' needs.  They've wasted a lot of time fighting a protocol instead of accepting change.

--Robb Topolski
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Robb Topolski
16 May 2008 @ 04:47 pm
Worth a Click: "Ballad of the TCP Reset Packet"  
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Current Location: Hillsboro, Oregon
Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: Ballad of the TCP Reset Packet
 
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Robb Topolski
02 May 2008 @ 01:43 pm
Conservatives should EMBRACE Network Neutrality!  
The Constitution is not reviled by Conservatives, and it is the regulation that defines the very structure and limits (regulates) the power of government over a people.

There is nothing more conservative than the notion that "I should be left alone."  Don't unfairly tax me, don't over regulate me, don't spy on me, just leave me alone.

Conservatives, ask yourselves:  What is it that the American people -- the millions of us law-abiding folk that log on every day -- are asking for when we ask for network neutrality?

They say:
 - Don't give me less service than I pay for,
 - Don't regulate my choices of activies,
 - Don't spy on my activities,
 - Just leave me alone.

Why is that asking too much?  How does that stifle innovation?  It doesn't.  It's the CONSERVATIVE position that has made our Constitution the document that protects the weaker from the stronger, and it's made our country both diverse and great. 

The principle of Network Neutrality has made the Internet great because it does the same thing.  It limits how those with unlimited power can affect the network.  Net Neutrality was there from its design.  It -is already- the expressed U.S. Policy.  It's time to give it the power of law.

Robb Topolski
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Robb Topolski
01 May 2008 @ 08:41 pm
Probing Question: What is Net neutrality?  
Probing Question: What is Net neutrality? from PhysOrg.com

"Internet Freedom, under attack. What do we do? Stand up, talk back," shouted a group calling themselves the Raging Grannies, outside the Dinkelspiel Auditorium at Stanford University. Inside, the Federal Communications Commission prepared to hold a public hearing on broadband network management practices, a topic most people might not expect to draw protesters.

...(read more)...
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Robb Topolski
28 April 2008 @ 12:15 pm
OUCH! George Ou calls my testimony, "Inaccurate." Offers nothing of stubstance, yet claims victory!  
Actually, I'm glad that George Ou posted a rebuttal to the testimony to the FCC, because I do owe him an apology. I misunderstood something and argued back that he was pointing out clearly allowed behavior. After replying the testimony, I see that I misunderstood what he said. In the end, the exchange added nothing to the debate. It's about 75% through this video. Nobody likes to be told that they're wrong when they're not wrong. Now that I've seen the video, I owe him the apology that I gave, regardless of the fact that we both were off track.

Dear George,

I noticed that you consulted with Brett Glass and Richard Bennett before posting your article. You certainly have my permission to consult with me, too. Why should we be on completely opposing sides of this debate? You know how to find my phone number.

FIRST, AN APOLOGY: At the Stanford hearing, you reported that some smart gateway/router devices know when a host behind it has gone offline, and will issue RSTs in lieu of forwarding to the known-offline host. At the hearing, I misunderstood what you were saying and I countered that you were describing behavior covered in the standards. While I don't know of any particular smart devices that do this, if they do (and it makes sense to me that they do so), then I was incorrect to counter you without acknowledging that gateway devices might do this exactly as you described. For that, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY APOLOGIZE. Had I understood your statement (which is clear enough in the video --- the fault of misunderstanding is all mine), the behavior you described is probably not in the standards (AFAIK). However, the device sending the RST is acting as the end point and was instructed to do so by some administrator. It was not a secret. It was not DPI changing the behavior of the Internet. As far as the Internet peers were concerned, the SYN-RST exchange was completely expected. The entire discussion ended appropriately when Professor Peha, countering both of us, made the entire discussion moot when he pointed out that these are not examples of using RST for congestion control. You weren't wrong in what you said. I WAS WRONG to dismiss it as errant and I apologize for doing so.

SECOND: "P2P download typically used 10 to 30 TCP streams at the same time." This is essentially correct, but moot. Also the statement is true only for DOWNLOADING WITH BITTORRENT specifically. It is not true for eMule or Gnutella. It is not true while BitTorrent is only uploading. While partly true, the statement is completely unimportant. The important direction is the upload direction -- because the transmitting host handles congestion control on the Internet, because the last-mile congestion is the congestion we are discussing (this is the uploader's first mile), and because P2P uploads is what Comcast is tearing down. With BitTorrent, only 3-4 streams are allowed to upload simultaneously. This is a major flaw in YOUR testimony to the FCC and other bodies (I'm referring to your article and graphic showing a single connection comparison to 11 connections). Limiting the uploading connections to 3-4 is a specific feature of the BitTorrent protocol designed to prevent congestion by quickly responding to changing network conditions. See http://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification#Choking_and_Optimistic_Unchoking to understand how this feature is designed to prevent congestion.

THIRD: ... (see the the linked post for the rest)...
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Current Location: Hillsboro, Oregon
 
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Robb Topolski
28 April 2008 @ 08:52 am
How to Handle the Comcast Case without Heavy Regulation?  
Respected blogger in an email to me:
As for network management, I agree – and have written previously – that Comcast needs to do a better job of informing users of their policies. But beyond that, I’m less concerned about, say, blocking online video competitors. Comcast is reviled as it is, and large-scale blocking of competing services won’t do it any good in either the court of public opinion or in government offices; more blocking would only result in more pressure and more scrutiny. It’s probably not worth it for them to block in most instances. (And, I should note, if they do, they should obviously inform customers properly.)

But even if they did, that just creates an even bigger incentive for other ISPs to swoop in and steal their customers. Yes, the market isn’t as competitive as everyone would like in some places – but poor service from Comcast will give other companies even greater reason to enter a market, and where local regulations make that difficult, might put pressure on local authorities to open up video and data services to greater competition.



My reply:
There is no "swooping in" because there is no competition.

I live in Hillsboro, Oregon -- we're called the Silicon Forest here because technology has replaced logging as a local industry. We're second only to the Silicon Valley as to the concentration of tech workers -- all of us pretty broadband hungry (it rains a lot here). Edit: My point is that if there was going to be an incentive to invest by additional wireline carriers, it would probably be happening right here!

  • I own a home where my two choices are DSL at 768/128 (no longer considered Broadband) and Comcast up to 8 Mbps/768 Kbps.
  • I also rent an apartment here (my adult daughter is using my house to raise her kids) where I have about 3 Mbps/256 as my DSL and the same Comcast choices.
Beyond that, there are no broadband choices without prohibitive consumption caps (wireless).

Competition is a pipedream or a nightmare. Let's say 12 competitors somehow are interested in serving my city. The city isn't going to allow 12 possible wireline competitors to individually tear up the streets and lay down cable or fiber next to Comcast's or Verizon's cable or fiber. The several junction boxes in each front yard would be a crazy site, too. Not to mention the constant stream of litigation resulting from claims of who damaged whose existing lines. Thank goodness it was just a dream -- it's never happened anywhere because people with capital weigh these risks as too likely and too expensive.

I've read your blog and you're quite intelligent and you and I are more alike than different. I'm actually in a position of influence in this debate. I'm asking for:

  1. Promoting the FCC policy statement to the status of FCC Rule or US Law. I want it kept in its current (broadly worded) form so that both people and ISPs are free to approach "reasonableness" without having a politician try to define it ahead of time. As a policy statement, it was originally designed to be unenforceable (Martin said so when it was issued). Even though Martin has changed his opinion on the enforceability, it clearly has insufficient weight with some.
  2. I also want recognition that the FCC supports the established governing Internet bodies that set, maintain, and change the Internet Standards, and that anyone who wishes to change how the Internet works needs to approach and participate with these bodies. 
In summary: obey the policy statement, follow the Internet Standards, and the government stays out of it. Violate these and both complainant and ISP can make their cases and the FCC simply adjudicates and enforces.

This is not volumes of regulation -- it's a one pager.

I don't want complete "Net Neutrality." Nobody thinks that their own P2P downloads should have equal footing with a neighbor's 9-1-1 "my house is on fire" VOIP call. The Internet has RFC 2474 (et. al.) which does discriminate based on the settings by the endpoint applications and the presence of congestion. VOIP is sent "top priority and reliability", P2P "background transfers" are sent like 4th class mail and everything else is handled as 1st class mail. The only reasons that ISPs don't use it is (1) they didn't invent it, so they don't trust it; (2) obscure-sounding free Internet Standard solutions don't arrive in 3-piece suits offering demos and lunches to non-technical executives; (3) they are told that RFC 2474 can be abused (always true with any technology) but that another solution is foolproof (always false with any technology). RFC 2474 allows prioritization without the ISP having to inspect packets and make arbitrary value decisions about what should go and what should be blocked.

So, one like mind to another, how would you handle this if you were me?

Comments?
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Robb Topolski
26 April 2008 @ 02:45 pm
Why "Scarcity" in Bandwidth Deserves Scrutiny  
Here is a blog entry from someone who attended the FCC hearing at Stanford...he makes a great comparison that helps the layperson understand one of the key arguments...

Paragraph 6 from:

Come and Spin the World Wide Web

I keep hearing bandwidth referred to as a "scarce commodity". It's been argued that the market will find efficient ways of using this scarce commodity without regulation impeding their technology. Well, let's look again at another thing referred to as a scarce commodity: oil. Did the market find ways of maximizing the efficiency of our vehicles? The answer is no. The average mileage has barely changed since the 1985. The technology is finally starting to come, but let's not make the same mistake again. The technology was always there around the periphery, being held at arm's length by our industries, who wanted to use the older systems despite their inefficiency. That's where the money is.

Nice comparison!
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Robb Topolski
26 April 2008 @ 12:26 pm
Evidence that Bezeqint (Israel) may be forging RSTs to block P2P  
This is in reply to your blog post (Hebrew, which I do not read) which I found referred to in English on another mailing list.

Benhamo, Sir

Please excuse the English post on your blog.  I am digging into some of the Vuze data.  It does appear that Bezeqint addresses do have an interference source.  

I will be posting my Wireshark capture on my website in case you would like to examine it.  The file being shared is Ubuntu Hardy Haron.  Of particular note in this capture is that the IP TTL from the real peer is 114 and the forged, injected RSTs is 48.  This fact proves that the RSTs do not come from the peer itself.

I hope this helps all freedom-loving Bezeqint users fight this unwarranted man-in-the-middle attack.

Note: without comparison of logs on both sides of the peer connection, this evidence is not completely conclusive.  I collected this information on my Verizon DSL account, which I believe to be free of this type of interference. 

Sincerely,

Robb Topolski
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Current Location: Hillsboro, Oregon USA
 
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Robb Topolski
15 April 2008 @ 01:48 pm
Response to: Comcast and Pando to create "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users, ISP  
Today, Comcast Corporation and Pando Networks announced that they will lead the industry to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users and ISPs.  With an FCC hearing on Comcast's anti-peer-to-peer practices scheduled for later this week, this is hardly a surprise. Once again, Comcast makes another sweetheart-sounding deal, but at the wrong time, and with the wrong sweetheart. 

It takes a special kind of arrogance for a company that sells Internet Access to team up with another company that sells Content Delivery and together decide what rights and responsibilities that the world's Internet users should have. 

As in its earlier "deal" with BitTorrent, Inc., Comcast's announcement today doesn't change any of the facts it faces: in 2006, it assured Congress that network neutrality laws were not necessary, saying it would not "deny, delay, or degrade" its customers in order to deal with traffic congestion.  Within a year it was caught secretly doing exactly that!  Even after a long string of deceptive and deflective statements and tactics, Comcast continues to degrade their traffic today.

As was the case in the BitTorrent "deal," neither Comcast Corporation nor Pando Networks represents the millions of customers and other members of the Internet community who were impacted when Comcast secretly launched its anti-P2P attack. 

Today's announcement comes less than 48 hours from the US Federal Communication Committee's public hearing at Stanford University.  There, the FCC is scheduled to hear from two panels of experts followed by two hours of public testimony on the Comcast incident specifically as well as similar industry practices in general. 

No doubt we will soon see Comcast and Pando Networking executives start to explain why today's "deal" signals that Network Neutrality regulation is not needed in the Broadband Marketplace. 

Robert M. "Robb" Topolski
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Robb Topolski
30 March 2008 @ 09:52 am
Vuze Response: BitTorrent Inc. Does not Represent Us  
From the Vuze Blog, Jay Monahan, General Counsel for Vuze, explains that BitTorrent, Inc. does not represent Vuze nor its industry; nor do side (non-)agreements made by Comcast control the behavior of other Cable Internet companies. (Agreements made by Comcast hardly control the behavior of Comcast! [see pg 10])

Key excerpts from Vuze...

For years, Comcast engaged in definitional gymnastics by denying that it was blocking “particular companies or applications,” but all the while it was engaging in “man-in-the-middle” attacks intended to interfere with seeding activities of all bit-torrent protocol based applications, like Vuze.

BitTorrent Inc. itself represents only a fraction of the bit-torrent-based applications being used today, and has no control over the many millions of bit-torrent based applications on desktop computers around the world. I have little doubt that Comcast wanted its announcement to be perceived as a sort of universal resolution of its differences with the bit-torrent world, but nothing could be further from the truth.

When we filed our petition for rulemaking with the FCC in November, 2007, we stated that both regulation and meaningful industry cooperation are necessary to protect consumer rights and foster innovation. We still believe that. Whether you believe that Comcast’s cozying up to BitTorrent, Inc. arises out of genuine enlightenment or is just a publicity stunt, in my view it changes nothing in terms of our original Petition.

--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
FCC Public Hearing on the Future of the Internet - Thursday, April 17th - Stanford Univ., Calif.
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Robb Topolski
30 March 2008 @ 08:37 am
BitTorrent Inc. + Comcast = Love, Peace, Harmony -- Not!  
When Robb Topolski made the initial discovery that Comcast was interfering with BitTorrent traffic, he couldn't have imagined that it would lead to an FCC hearing or, more importantly, to apparent reconciliation this week between Comcast and the rest of the world. Thing is, Robb doesn't believe a word of it. (Please Forward and Digg)

read more | digg story
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Robb Topolski
21 March 2008 @ 09:38 pm
I Believe in Yesterday ... the ramblings of a cyber-hippie  
I Believe in Yesterday ... the ramblings of a cyber-hippie

Yesterday
We made friendships here and far away,
Greed and power brought our judgment day,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
There weren't half the sites there used to be,
Deep Inspection hanging over me.
Oh, yesterday came suddenly!

Why'd they cut my flow?
Now it's slow. But they just say,
"You'll do something wrong!"
How I long for yesterday!

Yesterday,
We built networks for both work and play!
Then the bullies took it all away.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

When they dimmed the dawn,
Progress gone! So now they say,
"Tune in, See what's on!"
How I long for yesterday!

Yesterday
Iron walls could not keep friends away,
World-wide networks gave each man a say,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.



by Robb Topolski, a cyber-hippie. Inspired by and dedicated to Karl at DSLReports. Parody of McCarney lyrics to the Beatles hit Yesterday, which has several paradoxical links: including reflection, the 1960s, breaking-up, best (songs/inventions) of 20th century, etc.


http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20198505-Yesterday
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Robb Topolski
07 December 2007 @ 08:33 pm
Moderate? Comcast Stifling Isn't  
"The problem with Comcast stifling BitTorrent by faking reset packets from a participant is not that Comcast is trying to manage its network: it's that Comcast used a technique that if it came from anyone other than an ISP would be considered malicious denial of service, that Comcast still hasn't admitted doing it, and that Comcast bypassed numerous other methods of legitimate network management..."

Read more at Peerflow Blog
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Robb Topolski
29 November 2007 @ 02:43 pm
Is FCC destroying the open Internet?  

Is FCC destroying the open Internet?
by ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn

Neither the debate over net neutrality nor efforts by cable operators to ban Internet protocols like BitTorrent  and phone companies to re-direct search requests would exist if competition allowed users to “vote with their feet.”

When carriers are given an exclusive right to provide service on lines they "own," the public network-of-networks becomes merely a private network.

(click HERE)

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Current Location: Witch Hazel, Oregon, USA
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Robb Topolski
23 November 2007 @ 12:14 pm
How Would You Manage Overwhelming Peer-to-Peer Traffic if You Owned Comcast?  
This question was put to an anonymous poster on Broadband Reports, and I thought his answer was excellent!

How Would You Manage Overwhelming Peer-to-Peer Traffic if You Owned Comcast?

The anonymous poster responded:
I would communicate exactly what I am doing with my customers.
If there is a usage cap I would state it.
If I block specific types of traffic I would state it.

I would allow users to use the advertised bandwidth for any purpose they see fit within the confines of the TOS. I would then apply boost or other speed enhancements to selected traffic. I would advertise this as speed boost "Enhanced web browsing speed. Get 6/1.5mb with up to 20/2mb Enhanced web speed"

or

If it just does not work from an economical perspective. I would change the TOS to specifically exclude the use of P2P software. I would then block it (I would not do this using RST packets as I believe this to be illegal) I would only allow specific ports. I would also offer an enhanced tier or make the top tier P2P friendly. The lower tier would probably be a marketing nightmare. But they are trying to offer a limited service while selling an unlimited service. So they should come clean.

Comcasts service really is not an internet service when they start blocking certain protocols in any way including forged packets. The internet is based on (RFCs) like the TCP/IP protocol and numerous routing standards. When you start forging packets you are no longer RFC compliant. It then becomes web access and any other services they endorse. But calling it internet service is no longer accurate.

The internet is based on TCP/IP and the routing standards defined in RFC documents like RFC1058, etc.... This includes multiple types of communications based on packets like TCP, UDP, ICPM, etc... Adhering to the specifications based on RFCs has been since inception in the 1970s how one gets on the internet and becomes a part of it. The definition of the internet has been based for decades on RFC compliance and must continue to be based on compliance.

I will not say that comcast can not do what they want with their network. They can do what they want. However they have to do it while complying legally with all of the laws and regulations. Right now they are not. Hence all of the investigations. The FTC should have quite an interest in their misleading advertising. The FCC should be interested in their intentional blocking of communications. The FBI should be interested in their interstate impersonation and forgery of electronic communication. I believe there are fairly strong laws against impersonating a party across electronic communications. This makes it illegal to call someone and claim to be from their bank etc. But I believe it is applicable in this case.
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Robb Topolski
14 November 2007 @ 11:08 pm
Comcast Sued Over BitTorrent Blocking  
A California man filed suit in state court Tuesday against internet service provider Comcast, arguing that the company's secret use of technology to limit peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent violates federal computer fraud laws, their user contracts and anti-fraudulent advertising statutes.

read more | digg story
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Robb Topolski
12 November 2007 @ 08:35 pm
Tim Berners-Lee (M.I.T.), father of the World Wide Web speaking on Net Neutrality  
Today is the 30th Anniversary of Internetworking: A bread truck, a hilltop, DARPANET, 2 seconds and 88,000 miles.

Although the web came much later, this is a fitting time has come to protect that investment. Please see the following video from Tim Berners-Lee:


"When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission."
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