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Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is planning to introduce a net neutrality bill in January, according to Reuters. President-elect Barack Obama has said he supports net neutrality, though it is not yet clear whether he backs Dorgan’s bill.

The bill would prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from blocking web content. Net neutrality supporters say some ISPs have blocked content because of concerns over the amount of bandwidth used by customers. Others have slowed downloading activities for the same reason.

Internet service provider AT&T told Reuters it would be crazy to block content because the customers would just jump ship to an ISP that doesn’t. Blocking content would be akin to shooting themselves in the foot.

Indeed, the bill would pit ISPs such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless and cable companies against content providers such as Google and Microsoft.

Yes, in Washington, enemies make the strangest bedfellows.

Related Reading:
Uncle Sam Says: Thumbs Down on Net Neutrality
Without Neutrality, What Happens to Search?

Now this seems to be a story that would get attention if it weren’t for the fact President Bush is a lame duck and soon out of office. The government funded health search engine Popline run by John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was not returning results when searching for the term abortion Thursday, Wired reported.

Interestingly, I was getting results in Amsterdam that listed the reports mentioned by Wired. So they either changed back to avoid controversy or they are using geoIP recognition and just blocking US traffic.

Either way… bad move George W. and shame on you John Hopkins…. did you sell out to the Republicans when Bloomberg got on board?

Google AdWords placement-targeted campaigns on the content network can be a useful tool, if you can find the sites that support it. In today’s Content Advertising column, “Google AdWords Targeting: Expect More, Pay Less,” David Szetela discusses AdSense publishers’ options for showing or blocking placement-targeted ads.

Police in Kyoto have arrested three men, who were involved in a plot to infect users of the P2P file-sharing network Winny with a Trojan horse that displayed images of anime characters while erasing music and movie files.
The malware called Harada is thought to be connected to the Pirlames Trojan horse which anti-spam firm Sophos [...]

Free Press, the organization behind SaveTheInternet.com, responded to the Federal Communications Commission’s expressed intent to investigate Comcast and Verizon Wireless over alleged content blocking. The group urged the FCC to respond quickly in order to protect the free flow of information on all networks.
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Australian government denies mandatory censorship of pornography and violence equates what China does in terms of blocking web content.
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Two aspects of Mozilla’s close ties with Google over development of the Firefox browser have Chris Soghoian concerned about a conflict of interest in play.People who adopt Firefox as a replacement for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer think they are turning aside a monopolist in favor of a more secure and open browsing alternative. It may not [...]

The Google Custom Search blog just announced a new feature, the Custom Search Results Overlay. What it does is provide a way to have the results of a user’s search overlay itself on top of the screen containing the search box. You can see an example of this here.
It’s an interesting idea. [...]

Some of the uproar last week was regarding Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent traffic, a move that, by itself raised concerns about the power over content and packets the cable company was usurping. Over the weekend it came to light that Comcast not only blocked BitTorrent, but also Gnutella and Lotus Notes. Back in September, CNet [...]

A high level meeting of China’s Communist government took place this week, during which time Reporters Without Borders said China redirected certain Internet traffic to Baidu.Attempts to reach Google Blog Search and YouTube from China have been unsuccessful since October 17, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) charged today.
The organization, which supports press freedom worldwide, said attempts [...]