Six Republican senators have introduced an amendment that would block the Federal Communications Commission from implementing its recently announced Net neutrality policy.

Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison introduced the amendment to an appropriations bill. It would prevent the FCC from getting funding for any initiative to uphold Net neutrality. According to The Hill, the co-sponsors are Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA).

The move appears to be an attempt to pre-empt the FCC’s expected new policy to ensure that Internet service providers don’t discriminate between different types of information on their networks.

On Monday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gave a speech in which he outlined the FCC’s plan to enforce Net neutrality, a position President Barack Obama held during his campaign for president.

In recent years, concern has grown that some Internet service providers are slowing down “access to high speed Internet for things like Internet-based voice calls, video streaming, and legal file sharing (that carriers might wish to block or at least charge extra for),” writes Ian Paul at PCWorld magazine.

While Net neutrality is supported by Internet-reliant companies such as Google and Microsoft, it is opposed by major Internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. Those three have come out against Genachowski’s plan, ChannelWeb reports.

The part of Genachowski’s plan that ISPs are most opposed to, according to PCWorld’s Paul, is that it would apply to mobile carriers as well — cellphones, Blackberries and the like. Bandwidth for wireless is not infinite, and some carriers have argued that they need to shape some traffic on their networks in order to make sure there is space available for everyone.

But, as the experience of other countries has shown, that is not necessarily the way “traffic shaping” is used. In Canada, throttling some types of traffic on the Internet — not on wireless — hasbecome commonplace. It is used to slow down peer-to-peer file sharing networks.

“Broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications,” Genachowski said in his speech. “Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed.”

“I am deeply concerned by the direction the FCC appears to be heading,” Sen. Hutchison said in a statement. “Even during a severe downturn, America has experienced robust investment and innovation in network performance and online content and applications. For that innovation to continue, we must tread lightly when it comes to new regulations.”

A Net neutrality bill is expected to be introduced in the House of Representatives this fall.

– Daniel Tencer

Ever since Iran’s presidential election a few days ago, there have been massive protests in the country’s urban centers. While the government has been successful in shutting down most communications coming out of the country, they have thusfar been unable to quash the thousands of tweets coming from the protestors.

Helping the twitterers out by setting up over 9,000 proxy servers and launching DDoS attacks on Iranian government websites, the guys with plenty of time on their hands at 4chan.org seem to be this country’s major cyber warriors – all those jokes about the 101st fighting keyboard brigade must have struck a nerve. Even the Pirate bay is getting in on the action by seeding torrents of videos taken down by youtube for their graphic content.

The information coming out has included pictures of injured and dead protestors, video of the Basij thugs shooting into crowds, and communications to other protestors about which places in Tehran and elsewhere are safe to gather.

From all the information coming out, this appears to be the beginning of a big revolution in Iran. Let’s hope they can change their country for the better. Here are their demands:

Demands from the protesters  

1. Dismissal of Khamenei for not being a fair leader
2. Dismissal of Ahmadinejad for his illegal acts
3. Temporary appointment of Ayatollah Montazeri as the Supreme Leader
4. Recognition of Mousavi as the President
5. Forming the Cabinet by Mousavi to prepare for revising the Constitution
6. unconditional and immediate release of all political prisoners
7. Dissolution of all organs of repression, public or secret.

I’ll be back to update this with links when I can.

I just have two questions after readng the announcement in the Argus.

1. Where will college kids go to force their shitty taste in music on the masses?

2. Will Jango the Frog move his show to another station where no one will listen to it?

Have a fond memory of the KAUR studio? Do share.

Even with the economy in the shitter, alcohol sales are up. I felt compelled to share one of my favorite sites on the internets  Modern Drunkard Magazine out of Denver. It was THIS POST about how to infiltrate the “drys” that made me chuckle.  So here’s to all you teetotalers out there making our lives easier by following through and picking up our slack. I tip my glass to you.. or more specifically… away from you.. and down my throat.

Kelo ran a story this morning titled “Dude to Dad”.

Maybe our esteemed governor and state representatives should do something like this . . . wait, the only Republican in the state that understands internet technology is Pat Powers (And he’s really a closet Democrat). Nevermind.

Now, in the 21st century, President Obama has found his own fireside equivalent, launching an online town hall meeting Thursday where he will answer citizens’ questions about the troubled economy and his efforts to fix it.

“We’re going to try something a little different. We are going to take advantage of the Internet to bring all of you to the White House to talk about the economy,” he says in an introductory video on the site.

Bush was internetiotic – to say the least

Meghan McSnotty wrote an interesting article about something the rest of us have known for a very, long, long, time;

The Republican party isn’t exactly Internet savvy. That’s no secret. This has been a source of personal frustration for me for a very long time. Unless the GOP evolves as the party that can successfully utilize the Web, we’ll continue to lose influence. I think nothing confirms this fact to be more true than this recent election. I don’t claim to be an expert on mobilizing voters, but a significant number of the readers on mccainblogette.com, my blog, were between the ages of 18 and 30, a key demographic that either party would want. Many of the established Republican strategists told me that young people would not visit my web site. I used to categorize many of the advisors in my father’s campaign into one of two groups: those that “respected” the Internet and those who didn’t. It was a running line between me and my friends who worked on my site.

Better call up Pity Pat Powers, he’ll show you how it’s done (but don’t bother with his contributor friend Troy unless you have unlimited server space, he’s KINDA wordy.

I forgot about this story coming out yesterday, just caught it today, I talk about my internets footprints and such;

“I don’t mind my internet footprint – besides, I like the traffic it brings to my Web site, southdacola.com,” said Scott L. Ehrisman, 36, Sioux Falls cartoonist, artist, graphic designer and rabid blogger.

 

“I Google my name about once a month just to see what is up and have never seen anything glaring,” Ehrisman said. “I’m a big free-speech person, so it does not bother me to have stuff out there on the Internet.”

Googles me, apparently I own a hog farm in Pennsylvania

2012 is going to be a great year!

I hope it happens while I am in Belize.

“I’m not going to make it to work for the rest of the year, the Sun Gods are angry.”

Image from modernhumorist.com

It has been a long time coming, but the RIAA has finally realized they are fighting a losing battle. Now, instead of suing dead people and minors, they’ll just tattle on you to your ISP to tell them that you are sharing music back out to the Internet and maybe they’ll do something about it. Pfft! Whatever.

The moral of the story is this, download using a bittorrent client or whatever other method you prefer, but just don’t share it back out to the Internet. DUH!

P.S. If any of you are a member at DEMONOID.COM, I would gladly give up a kidney for an invite.