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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN), the group in charge of setting Internet addressing guidelines, shot down a proposal to give adult websites their own “.xxx” domain. Apparently, certain groups from both the adult-entertainment industry and various religions (first time working together?) weren’t in favor.

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Comcast is busy negotiating with Microsoft so as to find a potential replacement for Google search on the Comcast.net portal. Comcast is the largest cable operator in the United States with over 24 million cable subscribers and is the second-largest high-speed Internet provider (second only to
AT&T). Comcast.net receives around 15 million visitors per month and is one of the biggest
non-Google sources of search queries handled by Google. Comcast is currently under contract with Google through the end of this year but appears to be less than satisfied for the following reasons:

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A top engineering school in India, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai, has pulled the plug on Internet usage between 11 p.m. and 12:30 p.m. at its 13 hostels, claiming that "addiction to surfing, gaming and blogging was affecting students’ performance, making them reclusive and even suicidal."

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I came across two pieces of information today, and the juxtaposition was too much to not share. First piece: a new study out by AXA has found that retired people in 11 countries
are now spending more time using the Internet over traditional pastimes
of gardening, hiking, traveling, etc. Apparently, the term for this new
demographic is "silver surfers."

Second piece: Near North Korea’s northern border, Chinese cell phones and prepaid phone cards are a hot black-market item, regardless of the government trying to ban them. The reason: the new phones have free access to the Chinese Internet, which, even if censored, is a portal to the outside world not available to North Koreans through their regular Intranet.

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Google today released figures showing fourth-quarter profits that nearly tripled, mostly from advertising revenue. The company continues to pull away from rivals Yahoo and Microsoft in terms of profits from advertising. Interestingly enough, analysts and investors wanted more than the expected impressive results, citing the company’s new business ventures that may hurt profitability down the road. With no surprises and boring quotes from CEO Eric Schmidt ("What is the key to our success? I think it’s search."), Google’s shares fell following the earnings report.

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The big news, obviously, is the introduction of the Snowe-Dorgan net neutrality bill. See our coverage here and here.

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The recent AT&T merger and Senate net neutrality bill (see our takes here and here) have understandably given rise to a flood of commentary. Although Internet types seem to come out nearly unanimously in favor of net neutrality, the battle has been and is likely to continue to be controversial.

With everything being said on the subject, the controversy really comes down to one primary issue: is there enough competition in the market for broadband service to prevent harmful monopolistic practices by telecommunications companies?

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On Tuesday a Senate net neutrality bill was introduced by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Byron Dorgan. It’s mostly the same as the one they introduced last year, but with Democrats in control of Congress it has a better chance of being passed.

It seems to be good bill as far as it goes. According to Harold Feld’s excellent analysis (via Susan Crawford), the bill allows for some degree of network management and prioritization (e.g., all VOIP packets can be treated a certain way, but VOIP packets from a particular source can’t be singled out) and for broadband providers to charge customers–but not third parties–for certain extra options. One particularly interesting update from last year’s bill is a change that would prevent companies from claiming the privileges of being both a cable service and a broadband service simultaneously. In other words, it would not have allowed the terms of the recent AT&T merger under which certain services were exempt from the agreed-upon net neutrality provisions (see Prof. Crawford’s take on the problem with that merger). (For more details, Feld’s article is highly recommended.)

But where the story gets interesting is in the politics.

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