Net neutrality debate heating up after Supreme Court ruling

When the Supreme Court ruled early last week that Comcast was within its legal rights when it banned BitTorrent from its network, proponents of net neutrality claimed that internet service providers would exploit the ruling to block any website they wanted from their network.

The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial last week that it does not expect ISPs to block websites for any reason other speed limitation - the reason Comcast banned BitTorrent. Federal Communications Chairman Julies Genachowski disagrees and believes that the FFC has the right to enforce its policy of net neutrality.

GiGi Sohn, co-founder of net neutrality advocate organization Public Knowledge, recently told PBS that the decision is worrisome because it allows ISPs to ban any website from its network under the guise of excessive bandwidth occupation.

"Peer-to-peer BitTorrent is a high-bandwidth application, without a doubt, but there are others bandwidth applications that Comcast chose not to block," Sohn told PBS.

IDG News recently reported that the European Union will meet to discuss similar policies. The leader of the group researching net neutrality, Neelie Kroes, reports that the body will only apply any new regulations when it is "justified by the need to tackle specific problems."

GoDaddy, Network Solutions following Google from China

Tightening domain name registration rules appear to be behind the exit from China of registrars GoDaddy and Network Solutions, according to the Washington Post.

The Post says that "the decisions come amid a showdown between China and Google, which recently announced it will no longer censor search results on its site in the country. Analysts and human rights advocates have warned that China's insistence on censorship and control over information is becoming a serious barrier to trade."

However, although the timing of the moves suggests otherwise, neither GoDaddy nor Network Solutions has directly cited the Google controversy as a reason for their pullouts from the Chinese marketplace.

U.S. Representative Christopher Smith told the Post that "GoDaddy and Google deserve more than praise for doing the right thing in China - they deserve our government's support."

Analysts say that the recent incidents involving U.S. companies and the Chinese government could be the catalysts for the wide-ranging debate over internet regulation, privacy, and censorship that has been brewing for some time. The issue is already more in the public eye than ever before.

Municipalities up the ante for Google fiber project as clock ticks down

Search giant Google announced today that more than 600 cities across America have applied to be test sites for the company's fiber-optic high-speed internet plan, and the deadline for such applications is rapidly approaching.

Search giant Google announced today that more than 600 cities across America have applied to be test sites for the company's fiber-optic high-speed internet plan, and the deadline for such applications is rapidly approaching.

Product manager James Kelly wrote in a post on the company blog that "we're thrilled to see this kind of excitement, and we want to humbly thank each and every community and individual for taking the time to participate. This enthusiasm is much bigger than Google and our experimental network. If one message has come through loud and clear, it's this: (P)eople across the country are hungry for better and faster internet access."

Experts say that the type of fiber-optic connection that Google's test will provide is orders of magnitude faster than standard commercial broadband connection, and this PC performance improvement should make a number of new internet uses possible.

Hospitals, for example, could use the increased bandwidth to remotely transmit real-time scan data from MRIs and CAT scans, enabling distant doctors to diagnose patients in far-flung areas.