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The poor don’t care about broadband? Of course they do
By now most Ars readers have been saturated with statistical data about broadband adoption in the United States: who has access, who doesn’t, where, why, and how we compare with the rest of the world. One of the conundrums with which all these surveys grapple is that allegedly stubborn portion of the population—mostly poor, rural, and older—who don’t use the Internet at all, because they supposedly don’t care to do so. But a new study suggests that this community of broadband outsiders is rapidly disappearing from the landscape, particularly among low income Americans.
Continue reading »World, get ready for the DMCA: ACTA’s Internet chapter leaks
The oddest thing about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) secrecy is that, whenever we see leaked drafts of the text, there’s nothing particularly “secret” about them. That was also the case with this weekend’s leak of the “Internet enforcement” section of the ACTA draft; as we’ve noted in the past, ACTA appears to be a measure to extend the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to the rest of the world , and that’s exactly what the Internet section tries to do. IDG News saw the draft text of the Internet section last week , but the actual document has now leaked (PDF).
Continue reading »Week in tech: Google could be your new ISP
Google made the biggest splash during the past week, announcing that it is planning a 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home trial . The first phase will serve 50,000 to 500,000 people and will be run as an open access network. Responses to Google’s plan have mostly been enthusiastic .
Continue reading »Adding up the explanations for ACTA’s "shameful secret"
Why is an intellectual property treaty being negotiated in the name of the US public kept quiet as a matter of national security and treated as “some shameful secret”? Solid information on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been hard to come by, but Google on Monday hosted a panel discussion on ACTA at its DC offices . Much of the discussion focused on transparency, and why there’s so little of it on ACTA, even from an administration that has made transparency one of its key goals.
Continue reading »Why the Kankakee County Farm Bureau hates net neutrality
The Kankakee County Farm Bureau wants to stop net neutrality. So does the Erie Neighborhood House, along with Downtown Springfield Inc, Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Will and Grundy Counties, and the mayor of North Chicago. The organizations all share several things: they are located in Illinois, they want the FCC to focus on broadband adoption rather than net neutrality, and…
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