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Net neutrality has been in the news. The must-read article of the week is by Lawrence Lessig in Wired about the regulation of technology. He says that in hindsight, Microsoft may not have needed so much government intervention–competition (e.g., Linux) proved more capable at tempering the monopoly than regulation was. How does this relate to net neutrality? Well, that’s different, he says. We do need regulation there, because there’s nothing even close to breaking the monopoly power on Internet access. (I’ll have to think about that one.)

The recent FCC approval of the AT&T merger
has also spurred a lot of net neutrality commentary. The requirement for AT&T to
observe net neutrality principles for at least two years is called a "limited but
important victory" in a NY Times editorial. Susan Crawford,
on the other hand, thinks the deal "missed a major battleground": the
verbosely-titled AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet U-verse Enabled is exempt from that promise.

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The FCC approved AT&T’s $85.8 billion takeover of BellSouth. Not surprisingly, the deal is the largest ever in U.S. telecommunications history. The newly formed company now has a market capitalization of over $220 billion which makes it more than double in size compared to its biggest competitor Verizon.

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ICANN met in Sao Paolo this week. Topics included Internationalized Domain Names (IDN),  signing the .ASIA Registry Agreement, and, reportedly, "kiting." See ICANN Board member and law professor Susan Crawford’s blog posts: Day 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

The Digital Hollywood Europe discussed several topics relating to DRM. One topic was forensic watermarking, a sort of "DRM lite," which allows content to be traced to its last legal owner and provides much greater interoperability. Also discussed was whether government regulation (as in France) or voluntary industry standards are the best way to ensure interoperability.

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Spam. The bane of existence on the information superhighway. Even considering how ridiculously cheap and easy it is to send, sometimes it’s still surprising that it’s profitable at all, because everybody hates it. This year has seen great strides in the increasing effectiveness of spam filters: Google went from mislabeling 44.1% of opt-in mail messages in the first quarter of this year to 3.3% in the third. Unfortunately, this year has also seen advances in spammers’ effectiveness as well. A New York Times article discusses new spamming techniques and reports that "spam volumes have doubled from last year." (Sadly, I can confirm this trend in my own emailing; not every email account I have is with Gmail.)

So what does net neutrality have to do with any of this?

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Microsoft announced that it is partnering with MetroFi to
implement a free wireless Internet service for Portland Oregon. The new
service will  launch by the end of the year at the popular downtown
Pioneer Courthouse Square. The service will expand into the rest of the
city
within two years.

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The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports that Time Warner’s (parent company of AOL) "third-quarter profit nearly tripled, helped by gains from asset sales
and strong results in cable services. The company also reaffirmed its
2006 full-year business outlook."

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AT&T has announced that over the weekend "unauthorized persons"
illegally accessed credit card information and other personal data from
"fewer than 19,000" customers who purchased Internet equipment through
the company’s online store.

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According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), cable companies are luring away hundreds of thousands of phone company customers each quarter through offering telephone service. Thus, AT&T must set itself apart. It’s answer: "Homezone," video on demand over high-speed Internet paired with satellite TV from dish network, plus more. Internet on TV that "will feel much more like a TV than an Internet experience." Will it work? Maybe.

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