Engineering Radio

Internet Neutrality has become a big topic among some groups.  The fear is that some ISPs will filter internet users content, arbitrarily excluding whatever items they want without explanation or disclosure.   The temptation is too great for some ISPs (Verizon, Comcast, ATT, et. al.) not to block certain IP addresses, say for example, that of a competitor.

This amounts to corporate censorship.  If I have a Verizon account and I want to research other telephone companies, will I get accurate results?  What about some potential regulation change that the company didn’t want to have congress pass?  How about adverse rulings about Verizon from the state public service commission?

In light of the NBC/Universal – Comcast deal announced last week, those concerns appear to carry even more weight.  If the internet is going to replace radio, TV, and newspapers as some suggest, access must be unfettered.  Any member of the public should be able to search through any ISPs infrastructure and find all relevant data.

There have been FCC hearings on the matter, there is a NPRM,  a web site has been set up, there is a wikipedia entry.  Recently, senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have come out against the idea of Net Neutrality, although I cannot imagine why.

I decided to do a little experiment myself.  At my official job, we have to ISPs, each on a separate T-1 line.  The first ISP is a local company, Best Web.  The other ISP is Verizon.  On the Best Web circuit, I did a Google search for some innocuous term, with safe search turned off.  I then used the same search terms on the Verizon circuit.  I was surprised to see different results for each search.  I did specific searches for items based on a geographical location, e.g. “widgets, Washington DC.”  In each case, the Verizon search results were missing some of the pages that the Best Web search results had.  This is going through Google.  I have Verizon at home also, and noted the same differences there.

By this relatively brief research, it would seem that Verizon is filtering out some pages they don’t like.  It is difficult to say why, and if I didn’t go through the trouble of changing ISPs and repeating the search, I would have never known about it.  Clearly most people don’t understand:

This is already happening!

This is one of the key problems with the “internet” future.  Access to data can be very easily controlled by programming fire walls and gateways at the IPS’s data center.  Users searching for items will never know what they are missing.  Having a diverse broadcasting industry has fostered freedom of the press and advanced our democracy.  Loosing that will put us on a slipper road to Corporatocracy, if we are not already there.

Technically speaking, no.  Here is how radio is defined in the dictionary:

ra⋅di⋅o

[rey-dee-oh]
-noun
1. wireless telegraphy or telephony: speeches broadcast by radio.
2. an apparatus for receiving or transmitting radio broadcasts.
3. a message transmitted by radio.

Therefore, the internet, something relying on wired connections for the transmission of data for the most part, is not radio.  A radio station that is streaming audio, is a different matter.

Aside from that technicality, there is something else that is important to note.  Internet broadcasters (AKA webcaster) lack some other key components that make a radio station a radio station;  A specific set of rules that govern their behavior.  Things like profanity, copyright infringement, slander, payola, plugola, syndication rights, advertising rules (things tobacco, alcohol) emergency information, public issues and so on.

A radio station license is granted in the public interest.  Time was that radio station were required to do a certain amount of public service broadcasting, things like the news, religious programs, community interest programs.  Many station still do this.  An internet broadcaster is under so such constraints.   Some would say that is better and it just might be.  However, when Tim Westergren says “don’t call it internet radio, just call it radio,” sir, you are wrong.