A report released today by Public Knowledge points out that their recent analysis indicates filtering Internet content, as advocated by media companies, will not be effective and in fact harmful to the Internet. An accompanying 60-page whitepaper contains the full report including a number of reasons why the user of copyright filters should not be allowed, encouraged or mandated on U.S. Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks. more
Mark Zuckerberg shocked a lot of people by promising a new focus on privacy for Facebook. There are many skeptics; Zuckerberg himself noted that the company doesn't "currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services." And there are issues that his blog post doesn't address; Zeynep Tufekci discusses many of them While I share many of her concerns, I think there are some other issues - and risks. more
Google launched today a new effort to track the progress of encryption efforts - both at Google and on other popular websites. Google hopes the project will hold the company and others accountable to encrypt so as to enhance web safety and security. more
Google, OpenDNS, content delivery networks and other operators have announced a joint effort called "The Global Internet Speedup," to "make the Internet faster". According to the group, this collaboration will be executed via an open IETF proposed standard called "edns-client-subnet" in order to help better direct content to users thereby decreasing latency, decreasing congestion, increasing transfer speeds and helping the Internet to scale faster and further. more
Are you concerned about the recent reports about government surveillance programs? Are you concerned about security and privacy online? If so, you may want to attend (in person or remotely) the INET Washington DC event happening on Wednesday, July 24, from 2:00 - 6:00 pm US Eastern time at George Washington University. Sponsored by the Internet Society and GWU's Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute, the event is free and open to the public and will also be streamed live on the Internet for those who cannot attend in person. more
We all know that the Internet is one of the most important tools of our time, but we can't afford to take the Internet -- or its future -- for granted. There are uncertainties facing the Internet's future and how they evolve will have a profound impact on society and our ability to solve some of the world's biggest challenges... To help answer these and other questions, the Internet Society is embarking on a collaborative initiative to envision scenarios for the evolution of the Internet. more
In the early days of Online Brand Protection (OBP), before it was commonly understood how damaging to revenue infringements could be, this was an extremely popular topic. I remember delivering webinars on the subject then and even running a couple of half-day in-person workshops for brand owners at major conferences. more
Last week during the ICANN meeting in Barcelona I attended a short presentation from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Their mission is pretty simple: ...eliminate child sexual abuse imagery online. Fortunately, the presentation I was at did not include any of the actual material (which would have been illegal anyway) but even without seeing any of it the topic is one that I think most people find deeply disturbing. more
We are building the Internet Archive of Canada because, to quote our friends at LOCKSS, "lots of copies keep stuff safe," writes founder Brewster Kahle in a blog post on Tuesday. more
The Energy Internet is based on the same principles as that of the classic Internet except that energy rather data packets are routed between sources and destinations. It sometimes also referred to as mico-grids or nano-grids, but generally these terms are a misnomer as they really refer to a smaller version of the traditional electrical grid. Traditional power systems are passive, hierarchical and for the most part have no intelligence or management. more
For the longest time, it was an insurmountable challenge for those in the developing world to be able to afford to legally consume multimedia products. Prices originally set in Dollars, Euros or Yen often received insufficient adjustments to compensate for lower incomes, something that was compounded by local import or manufacture taxes that did little to alleviate matters. more
As mentioned in previous analyses, the way that the Government has approached its battle with the digital giants has been flawed from the beginning. True, its tough stand had made Google pay media companies well above what these companies would have been able to negotiate individually with Google, but the fundamentals of why these battles are taking place are still unchanged. more
Out in the wilderness of cyberspace is a boundary, marking the limits of Sec. 230 immunity. On the one side roams interactive services hosting third party content immune from liability for that third party content. On the other sides is the frontier, where interactive content hosts and creators meet, merge, and become one. Here host and author blend, collaborating to give rise to new creations. more
There are some who see the regulation of social media platforms as an attack on the open internet and free speech and argue that the way to protect that is to let those platforms continue to self-regulate. While it is true that the open internet is the product of the same freedom to innovate that the platforms have sprung from, it is equally the product of the cooperative, multi-stakeholder organisations where common policy and norms are agreed. more
Ten years ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman lamented the "Business Community's Suicidal Impulse:" the persistent propensity to persecute one's competitors through regulation or the threat thereof. Friedman asked: "Is it really in the self-interest of Silicon Valley to set the government on Microsoft?" After yesterday's FCC vote's to open a formal "Net Neutrality" rule-making, we must ask whether the high-tech industry -- or consumers -- will benefit from inviting government regulation of the Internet under the mantra of "neutrality." more
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