Verge, The

[Commentary] The Internet is screwed, and the US government is making it worse. Political cowardice caused the Federal Communications Commission to lose its first battle for net neutrality regulation: the rules that keep the Internet as you know it free and open.

The idea of net neutrality is that all traffic is created equal -- whether you’re a movie streaming from Netflix, or a WhatsApp message, or a Tweet, or a bulletin board message. But according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, instead of trying to correct the errors it made in open Internet rules the first time around, the FCC will consider enacting new rules that directly destroy the principles of net neutrality.

The proposal would allow profit hungry behemoths like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon to become gatekeepers that give preferential treatment to companies that pay the most for special access to customers. If cowardice caused the FCC to lose its first major net neutrality battle, complicity with the ISP industry is leading to its second major failure.

The proposed rules would mark a complete capitulation to the monied Internet interests, harming consumers in the short and long-term. The ISPs that control the "last mile" of the Internet -- the pipes that connect to your home -- would love nothing more than to extract tolls from companies. Netflix’s surrender to Comcast sits in the murky waters of "peering," where major ISPs connect to one another, but the new rules could mean that similar deals are made in the last mile of the Internet where net neutrality thrives.

The government is too afraid to say it, but the Internet is a utility. The data that flows to your home is just like water and electricity: it’s not a luxury or an option in 2014. The FCC’s original Open Internet rules failed precisely because it was too timid to say that out loud, and instead erected rules on a sketchy legal sinkhole that was destined to fail.

Illiteracy isn't a major issue for much of the Western world, but it remains endemic in many developing countries, where incomes are low and books are scarce.

That may be changing, though, thanks to the spread of mobile technologies that have made books more accessible than ever before -- something that UNESCO, in a new report, describes as a veritable "reading revolution." The report examines the reading habits of nearly 5,000 mobile-phone users in seven countries -- Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe -- where the average illiteracy rate among children is 20 percent, and 34 percent among adults. (The US, by comparison, has an adult illiteracy rate of around three percent.)

UNESCO describes the survey as the largest ever undertaken on mobile reading in the developing world, and its results are encouraging: people are reading more, they're reading to their children, and they're hungry for more content.

The study was based on questionnaires and telephone interviews with people who use an app from Worldreader -- a San Francisco-based nonprofit that distributes e-books in low-income countries. The organization delivers Kindles to under-equipped classrooms, while its app allows users to choose from over 6,000 (mostly free) e-books on low-end feature phones. Today, the app has more than 300,000 monthly active users in developing countries, and Worldreader says it's delivered nearly 1.7 million e-books since its launch in 2010.

There is evidence to suggest that mobile technology can improve literacy test scores, though UNESCO's study focuses on the behaviors and demographics of users in developing countries, in the hopes of better understanding how and why they read. More than 62 percent of those surveyed said they enjoy reading more after they started reading on mobile devices, and one-third said they use their phones to read to their children (an additional third said they would do so if more child-friendly books were available).

The survey also shed light on important gender-based differences. Although the vast majority of mobile readers are male (77 percent), women actually devote far more time to reading: 277 minutes per month, on average, compared to just 33 minutes for men.

[Commentary] Comcast wants to own the Internet -- or, at least, the cables that carry it to most Americans’ homes. There is absolutely no way that Comcast can argue it would have meaningful competition in wired broadband or cable after the merger.

A merger would turn Comcast’s already long lead into overwhelming dominance. And Comcast knows this. So how can it convince the FCC that this isn’t a problem? By comparing itself to pretty much any company that offers Internet or video service in any form. Leaving aside its link to NBCUniversal, Comcast has three major offerings: wired broadband, cable TV, and video on demand. If a company has moved into any of those spaces, Comcast says it’s a competitor.

Taken individually, each of these companies do compete in some sense with parts of Comcast, but the comparison falls apart when you look at how many of these services run on its broadband network. Comcast offers carefully constructed revenue and market cap charts that place it and TWC at the very bottom of the scale -- except that it’s comparing itself to the entirety of multinational giants like Apple, AT&T, and Microsoft, as well as bizarre additions like Facebook.

Comcast can only claim new services compete with existing wired broadband if it vastly oversells their potential. Google announced tentative plans to bring Fiber to more cities in February, and Comcast has spun this into a pending flurry of expansions, ignoring the fact that Google has until the end of 2014 to announce its decision and currently operates in only two small markets. There’s no doubt it can spur competition, but certainly not on the scale that Comcast implies.

In-flight Internet service provider Gogo just revealed a new technology that is expected to deliver peak speeds of over 70Mbps.

The new technology is called 2Ku, named for its two Ku-band satellite antennas. The 70Mbps peak speeds are a considerable improvement compared to the 9.8Mbps speeds available today and the 3.1Mbps speeds Gogo was offering to commercial aircraft passengers five years ago.

US Agency for International Development (USAID) has denied Associated Press allegations that it created a Cuban alternative to Twitter in order to foment political unrest.

USAID has disputed several of the Associated Press' claims, saying that the program was neither covert nor intended as anything but a platform for free speech. "The article contained significant inaccuracies and false conclusions about ZunZuneo," writes spokesperson Matt Herrick, calling it "part of a broader effort that began in 2009 to facilitate 'Twitter-like' communication among Cubans so they could connect with each other on topics of their choice."

Rather than covert, Herrick calls the program "discreet." According to him, it was kept quiet in order to protect its staff and partners, but it was explicitly legalized with a budget line asking USAID to break the "information blockade" in Cuba with methods that included new media. "All funds for this project were congressionally appropriated for democracy programs in Cuba, and that information is publicly available," he writes.

20 years ago, the Internet changed forever. Mosaic Communications Corporation was founded, the company that would later change its name to Netscape.

Founders Jim Clark and Marc Andreesen heralded the dot-com boom as we know it, creating the first popular web browsers, Mosaic and later Netscape Navigator, and helping build new standards like SSL and JavaScript that still define the web today.

@ThinkAgain_DOS doesn't have many followers (just 1,552 at press time), but it's not designed for people to actually follow it.

It's a disruptor, replying to accounts that don't follow it and breaking up hashtags like #ISIS or #BokoHaram, the names of designated terrorist groups in Iraq and Nigeria. As a former State Department adviser described it to Mother Jones, "it's targeted at blunting the recruitment pitches." That means busting up the conversation.

There’s some evidence that the government is trying to head off future IT disasters by calling in the crack team first.

In October, General Services Administration (GSA) administrator Dan M. Tangherlini recruited 11 Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) graduates to start 18F, a 15-person digital services agency within the GSA that just launched.

The rhetoric is lofty: the agency plans to prove that rapid prototyping, live testing, and other elements of the speedy "lean startup" methodology will work for the government, delivering better products to taxpayers and saving money.

"This is about building real IT services," says Greg Godbout, one of 18F’s cofounders. "It wouldn't be fair of me to say that we would build Healthcare.gov in the future, but it might be done differently."

18F is still oblique about exactly what it will be doing, but Godbout says it is already booked to build projects for four government agencies that will be announced this summer. Eventually, 18F also wants to encourage agencies to use open-source software and work with contractors outside the Beltway.

The Federal Communications Commission made clear that it won't heed Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' call to expand the scope of network neutrality to regulate the way companies connect across the physical infrastructure of the Internet.

This system, which includes Internet companies like Netflix, middlemen like Cogent, and Internet service providers like Comcast, is the backbone that moves data across the country from Netflix servers into consumers' homes.

"Peering and interconnection are not under consideration in the Open Internet proceeding, but we are monitoring the issues involved to see if any action is needed in any other context," an FCC spokesperson said. Confusingly, at the same time, the agency also said that it was considering new rules to regulate the paid arrangements between companies like Comcast and Netflix.

[Commentary] Why did Netflix agree to pay Comcast and violate Netflix’s own stated principles? According to CEO Reed Hastings, "Netflix believes strong net neutrality is critical, but in the near term we will in cases pay the toll to the powerful ISPs to protect our consumer experience."

That is certainly part of the truth. Given Comcast’s massive size, Netflix could no longer afford to have so many customers suffering poor service. But informed speculation would suggest there is also a more opportunistic strategy at play here. Netflix had been negotiating with the major American ISPs for two years over these fees.

What if the deal happened now because Comcast, under intense regulatory scrutiny over its proposed merger with Time Warner, finally came to the table with terms Netflix could agree to? Is it possible Hastings saw the chance to strike a deal with the devil, abandoning his own stated principles to capture a bargain at a moment of maximum leverage?