Malcolm Harbour Doesn't Get Net Neutrality

It seems that one of the main architects of the disgrace that is the Telecoms Package is the UK MEP Malcolm Harbour. Here's an indication that he doesn't know what he is talking about:

According to rumours in cyberpsace the proposed new rules will impose conditional access to internet, providers will be able to limit the number of site you're visiting and Skype could be blocked. Is Internet freedom really at risk?

That's pure fantasy. The Telecoms package has never been about anything to do with restrictions on the internet. I am astonished to see this remarkable text from Black-out Europe. There is absolutely nothing in this proposal that says anything about that.

The questioner is wrong to frame this in terms of blocking *sites*: it's about blocking *services*, particularly ones based on new protocols piggy-backing on TCP/IP. The Telecoms Package gives telecoms companies the possibility of blocking anything it doesn't like at this level - killing net neutrality - provided they tell people what they are doing.

So Mr Harbour is absolutely incorrect to say "The Telecoms package has never been about anything to do with restrictions on the internet." He obviously doesn't understand what Blackout Europe is saying, as the latter's own post on the topic points out.

Open Source Microblogging and the Enterprise

One of the easy predictions for 2009 is that it will be the year that Twitter breaks through into the mainstream (for some suitable definition of mainstream.) The good news is that Twitter uses lots of open source and plans to use even more....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Net Neutrality Explained for Old Technologists

Neat:

the argument over net neutrality is essentially a rehash of the argument between whether a network is more efficient if it uses circuit switching or packet switching. To recap, circuit switching is where a network holds open a dedicated network channel between two endpoints, whereas packet switching is when the data transferred between the endpoints is split up into packets, which may traverse the network by different routes, and even arrive out of order (and are re-sequenced at the receiving end).

POTS telephony traditionally ran on circuit switching, but tcp/ip networking introduced the packet switching paradigm, which happens to be much more efficient. It appears that opponents of network neutrality want, in effect, to scrap packet switching and make parts of the net run on a less efficient paradigm.

Thus fighting net neutrality emerges as a nostalgia for the days when men were men, and a circuit was a circuit.