August 2007 Archives

Wired magazine is claiming that U.S. botnets played a key role in the takedown of Estonian government and industry websites last month, a response to the removal of a Russian statue commemorating World War II just days before the annual military parade in Red Square that was so famous here in the U.S. during the Cold War.

The article, Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe, describes in detail how the attack was launched with calls to action on hacker message boards in Russia, and the small elite team of ISP insiders that shut the attack down.

A member of our ISP-Lists had this happen to him at 3 AM this morning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5CZu_XBf70

Since the Abramoff scandal, Congress has instituted rules prohibiting lobbyists from paying for the meals of members of Congress. Even though the rules have many loopholes, they are a good start.

Today, USA Today (a paper moving upmarket with good journalism at a time when others are cutting costs and gutting quality) has an article detailing how lobbyists and companies are allowed to do favors for regulators. The article, Trips paid by firms officials regulate, raises an important point that will be familiar to anyone concerned about the state of telecommunications in the U.S.

ISPs have long aspired to be common carriers, exempt from the requirement to inspect the content on their networks in exchange for promising to treat all customers equally.

But as ISPs are driven from the consumer market by predatory pricing and cross subsidies, those serving only corporate clients are being tempted to provide content filtering, LAN management, and other services that force them to monitor customers' networks.

Implementing policy could simply be a logical next step, but it could be very messy. It's clear that companies and even government agencies are not using the internet with knowledge and skill, and some are getting in trouble.

Friday's Robert Cringely column (cited today on Broadband Reports) is called: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen.

It's the truth, and it's loud.

It's the story of how regulators approved rate increases for services that were never delivered . . . rate increases worth $200 billion, services worth zero.

Much of this is stuff that you'll have heard before from ISP-Planet or Bruce Kushnick's TeleTruth.

It's nice to see the news of the regulatory ripoff reach a mainstream outlet. It's especially nice to see Cringely credit Kushnick for some of the material. If you have time, read the 406 page book [.pdf]. We liked the book but thought it was too long (though we did read it). See: e-Book Review: $200 Billion Broadband Scandal.

AT&T should know better. The company, which continues to rip off customers without suffering any pushback, recently censored a Pearl Jam webcast that criticized George Bush (h/t GigaOM).

The two lines were:

• "George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung); and
• "George Bush find yourself another home."

ISPs are now required to help the U.S. government spy on U.S. citizens abroad.

BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin, acting in this case more or less as an arm of the EFF, points to an entry on Wired's Threat Level blog, Analysis: New Law Gives Government Six Months to Turn Internet and Phone Systems into Permanent Spying Architecture - UPDATED, says "A new law passed in haste by Congress over the weekend and signed into law by President Bush on Sunday expands the government’s ability to spy on the phone calls and e-mails of US citizens -- no warrants required."

We've said it for years: a small, local or regional ISP can compete with the monopolies by being honest about the services offered and providing real customer service.

Broadband Reports has found one, in Canada.

What happens when a massive number of customers flee an underpriced and bankrupt VoIP provider? Chaos at the competition, it seems.

Broadband Reports has the astonishingly honest admission of the CEO of ViaTalk, a company that has had to hire a significant number of tech support people to support the new customers.