US Law and ratio legis. Net neutrality is finally real, or at least will be in a few months. The new rules for Internet companies will be put into place on November 20 – unless they get derailed by lawsuits. The guidelines, written by the US Federal Communications Commission, say essentially this: Internet providers can’t deliberately block or slow speeds for “heavy” Internet users, such as people who stream movies or play online games, nor throttle traffic from a certain source, such as from competitors or peer-to-peer downloads. Skip to next paragraph Recent posts Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition The rules might get delayed or prevented, though, by lawsuits that Internet providers have brought against the FCC.
The net neutrality rules set to take effect in November strike a balance between these two arguments. How does this affect you? Well, the rules are slightly different for fixed and mobile networks. Cisco helping China abuse human rights! ISPs violating net neutrality rule? « Marvin Ammori & Blocage à l'anglaise. C'est la règle à Hollywood : tout se finit toujours bien. Mais pas forcément pour tout le monde. Hier, c'est l'Internet sans blocage qui en a fait les frais. Dans un arrêté , la justice britannique a ordonné à l'opérateur de télécoms BT Group - premier fournisseur d'accès en Grande Bretagne avec plus de cinq millions d'abonnés - de bloquer l'accès au site Newzbin2, après une requête de la Motion Picture Association (MPA). Le groupe qui défend les intérêts des studios de cinéma d'Hollywood: Fox, Universal, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount et Walt Disney, vient ainsi de gagner le deuxième round de son combat contre ce site faisant office de moteur de recherche censé faciliter le téléchargement d'oeuvres, et en particulier de films, protégées par les droits d'auteur.
Autrefois basé en Grande-Bretagne, Newsbin a été interdit en mars 2010, à la suite d'une plainte de la MPA. Lire les réactions à cet article. Virginie MALBOS. Hollywood Forces BT to Block File Sharing Website. US film studios this week won a landmark victory in the UK high court which forced BT, the UK’s largest internet service provider, to stop access to Newzbin2 a popular and illegal file-sharing website. The victory by the Motion Picture Association, a body which is made up of Paramount, Disney, Fox and Warner Bros, will be seen by the movie industry as setting a precedent for future broad scale blocking of all file-sharing sites that are illegal and which they believe costs their industry billions of dollars every year.
In his ruling Justice Arnold noted that BT was aware of people on this site using their internet service to defy copyright and was aware that its users were breaking the law on a massive scale in the transferring of television and film files. “actually helpful and we welcome it because it clarifies a complex area of law and shows that rights holders can use the copyright laws in this country. Anti-NN PICTURE. YouTube Tax request to EC. Canadian NN provision. Two of the leading issues before the CRTC - over-the-top video and usage based billing - have come together as Shaw has announced plans to launch a new online movie service designed to compete with Netflix. Subscribers to the service, which will cost $12 per month, will be able to watch on their TV and computer. Most notably, Shaw says that the service will not count against subscriber data caps.
Given the problems users of over-the-top video services have encountered with the caps, the Shaw approach places the spotlight on the CRTC net neutrality guidelines and undue preference rules. [Update: Shaw now says that watching movies via the Internet will count against user caps] Last week I examined the failure to effectively enforce the guidelines, however, this case raises the question of whether Shaw is violating the rules by offering an over-the-top video service that does not count against a user cap while traffic from competitors such as Netflix does. India uses PRC softw for mobile monitoring.
The Indian government is teaming up with Chinese tech giant Huawei to search imported smartphones and communications devices for signs of malware and spyware. However, some Indians are nervous because of Huawei's close ties to the People's Liberation Army and fear that the firm could be complicit in cyberattacks. One journalist, Joji Thomas Philip of India's Economic Times, calls it “rather like letting the fox in to guard the henhouse.” Huawei recently opened a research lab at Bangalore's Indian Institute of Science that will be expanded shortly. But opening a joint Indian-Chinese cybersecurity lab also presents problems for Huawei. The mobile-phone provider, which was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies of 2010, will be operating in an environment where it will be easy for Indians to observe Huawei's techniques and corporate goings-on.
India lacks any homegrown mobile provider with the abilities necessary to screen all tech imported into the country. Hypocritic hole in China's Firewall. Dutch Net Neutrality Law. Big news out of the Netherlands this week, where a government minister announced plans to guarantee network neutrality by law. If Parliament approves the amendment to Dutch telecommunications law, and it's expected to do so, it would become one of the first countries in the world to legislate against Internet providers who want to charge more for using particular applications or services. What led to the change? A classic case of overreaching. It has been an open secret in Europe for some time that mobile operators like to block or discriminate against Internet services which compete with their legacy offerings.
Skype and similar voice services are the most obvious targets, but newer tools like WhatsApp (which offers text-messaging style communications over the Internet) have also been targets. Mark my words: if measures to enhance competition are not enough to bring Internet providers to offer real consumer choice, I am ready to prohibit the blocking of lawful services or applications. Alarm over EU 'Great Firewall' proposal. The closed meeting was held in February, but the minutes have only gained attention this week after being published online. Malcolm Hutty, head of public affairs at LINX, a cooperative of British ISPs, said the plan appeared “ill thought-out” and “confused”. “We take the view that network level filtering of the type proposed has been proven ineffective,” he said. Broadband providers say that illegal content should be removed at the source by cooperation between police and web hosting firms because network blocking can easily be circumvented.
Glyn Moody, a prominent advocate of openness online, said: “They only have to look at how porous the Great Firewall of China is - something that has been created and honed by experts with huge resources. “They seem completely oblivious of the implications of their daft plan: the imposition of Europe-wide censorship.” The Pirate Bay: “The Battle of Internets is About to Begin” Talks on implementing a Europe-wide firewall to censor and block 'illicit' websites has caused concern among many Internet users in recent weeks, and today one of the targeted sites has joined the discussion. Quoting one of Churchill’s most famous speeches, The Pirate Bay team is rallying the public to defend the free Internet and end the threat posed by the entertainment industries' copyright lobby.
In February, a secret meeting of the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work Party (LEWP) resulted in a worrying proposal. To deal with illicit sites on the Internet, the group suggested the adoption of a China-like firewall to block websites deemed ‘inappropriate’. The controversial proposal immediately met resistance from various sides, including ISPs who would be tasked with maintaining the blocklist. The copyright lobby on the other hand welcomes the initiative which they’ve been suggesting for years. One of the sites that has a fair share of experience with being blocked is The Pirate Bay. FAI – La stratégie du pourrissement. La plupart des internautes français le constatent : Youtube rame complètement. Impossible depuis plusieurs semaines de lire correctement une vidéo en 360p et je ne vous parle même pas de la HD.
J'ai constaté ce problème sur ma connexion perso (free), puis après avoir fait un petit sondage sur Twitter en demandant aux gens de me faire une capture écran de cette page, je sais quels sont les FAI qui rencontrent un souci avec Youtube : Free - Touché très fortementSFR - TouchéOrange -TouchéBouygue - Pas de problèmeNuméricable - Pas de problèmeRenater et autres machins un peu exotiques - Pas de problème Pas besoin donc de rebooter ma Freebox en invoquant l'esprit magique de Xavier Niel (l'équivalent de eywa chez les na'vi).
Numéricable Renater Bouygues Orange Free Le problème ici est un problème de tuyau et d'argent. Le résultat est là : une majorité d'abonnés ADSL français sont dans l'incapacité de lire une vidéo Youtube sans la laisser pré-charger pendant 1/4 d'heure. Bof bof... Malin non ? Broadcast Yourself. Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project | Razor Fast. Image via Wikipedia Yesterday morning I woke up much earlier than I wanted. Instead of lying in bed, wishing I was asleep, I decided to get up and check out Hacker News. Better to waste my time reading industry news than lying around. One headline in particular caught my attention: “Dropship — successor to torrents? “. The name was an obvious reference to Dropbox and the suggestion it could replace torrents was enticing.
The HN post linked to a blog post about an open source project called Dropship that allows users to exploit Dropbox’s file hashing scheme to copy files into their account without actually having them. Dropbox’s CTO and cofounder, Arash Ferdowsi, did not like Dropship. At 1:46PM ET I received the following email from Dropbox support (emphasized text is mine): This was something new to me. The material in question, a file stored on Dropbox under the filename and path of /Public/laanwj-dropship-464e1c4.tar.gz, is not infringing the DMCA. Dropship Mirror #1Dropship Mirror #2.