February 5th, 2008
Miro going nowhere without net neutrality
Miro, the open source video player, is on a roll.
The company is planning a European tour (hope it goes better than the Spice Girls’ tour) following a co-branding announcement which drew immediate support, including Germany’s public broadcaster.
The new version of the software has improved BitTorrent support based on libtorrent.
I would love to offer a full review but I can’t. I get my broadband from Comcast, which has decided to throttle the protocol to protect its own monopoly on video.
Could I switch ISPs? Yeah, to AT&T. No thanks. How long will it be before they do the same thing?
Therein hangs the problem. Many countries, using a regulatory model based on our 1996 Telecommunications Act, have separated the delivery and transport of Internet services.
The present Administration has reversed this, creating a duopoly in which many consumers just have two choices for broadband, and others have just one.
It is in the interests of this CorporateNet to rigidly control what you do online, and probably in the interests of police agencies to control you as well.
But it’s not in the interests of technology. It’s not in the interests of users. And it’s not in the nation’s best interest, since the speed of your commerce is increasingly determined by the speed of your network, and your ability to use it.
Today is a Primary Day around most of the country. We the people have the power to change this policy. That’s not considered a high-profile political issue. But it should be.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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