What the new FCC open Internet rules could mean for net neutrality The Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules for regulating Internet access at a hearing today in Washington. After FCC commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn said yesterday they will not stand in the way of Chairman Julius Genachowski’s modified order, it paved the way for a 3-2 vote to approve new rules of the road for the Internet. The tech policy reporters at Politico made the following assessment of the rules in their excellent Morning Tech newsletter this morning and got it about right. 1) Transparency for both wireline and wireless services, requiring disclosure to consumers, content and device providers, 2) Wireline providers are prohibited from blocking any lawful content, apps, services or devices; wireless providers, from blocking websites and competing telephony services, 3) Wireline providers are prohibited from unreasonably discriminating against any traffic (but no such rule for wireless). “To be sure, there is more to be done,” Harris said.
Douglas Rushkoff The Next Net The moment the "net neutrality" debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network - its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation - is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them - that network loses its power to effect change. The mere fact that lawmakers and lobbyists now control the future of the net should be enough to turn us elsewhere. Of course the Internet was never truly free, bottom-up, decentralized, or chaotic. Yes, it may have been designed with many nodes and redundancies for it to withstand a nuclear attack, but it has always been absolutely controlled by central authorities. From its Domain Name Servers to its IP addresses, the Internet depends on highly centralized mechanisms to send our packets from one place to another. I'm not trying to be a downer here, or knock the possibilities for networking. That's right. It is not rocket science. So let's get on it. Related Posts:
SXSW 2011: Al Franken warns of 'outright disaster' over net neutrality | Technology Democratic senator Al Franken has has issued a rallying cry to "innovators and entrepreneurs" at SXSW to fight back against Comcast and other companies lobbying to pave the way for a two-speed internet. The principle of net neutrality, under which all content is delivered equally to internet users' homes, is "in big trouble", Franken warned in a passionate rallying cry at the conference on Monday. Franken's address was always going to be a preach to the converted – SXSW is the spiritual home for small, independent media and technology firms – but he warned that unless the 200,000 attendees "use the internet to save the internet", then big telecoms firms will muscle through plans for a two-tier net. "The one thing that big corporations have that we don't is the ability to purchase favourable political outcomes," he said. "Big corporations like the telecoms firms have lots of lobbyists – and good ones too. He added: "Today SXSW is a hotbed of creative entrepreneurship and innovation.
Vaizey's net neutrality knock-out The FT World Telecoms Conference is an annual gathering of top management from telecoms carriers throughout the world. It isn’t a high profile event for the general public, yet this is the platform where minister Ed Vaizey announced the future of the internet in the UK. Mr Vaizey praised the UK’s grossly inadequate current investment in internet infrastructure - however, the key point in his speech was about the abandonment of net neutrality in the UK. What does net neutrality actually mean? According to Wikipedia, the principle also states that if a given user pays for a certain level of internet access, and another user pays for the same level of access, then the two users should be able to connect to each other at the subscribed level of access. Do we have net neutrality today? In some ways we don’t. Imagine to all intents and purposes, not being able to read Left Foot Forward (or even Guido Fawkes), yet managing to read the Daily Mail? Paid-for access A lack of transparency
Wikileaks ISP Anonymizes All Customer Traffic To Beat Spying In order to neutralize Sweden's incoming implementation of the European Data Retention Directive, Bahnhof, the Swedish ISP and host of Wikileaks, will run all customer traffic through an encrypted VPN service. Since not even Bahnhof will be able to see what its customers are doing, logging their activities will be impossible. With no logs available to complete their chain of investigation, anti-piracy companies will be very, very unhappy. In 2009, Sweden introduced the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED). The legislation gave rights holders the authority to request the personal details of alleged copyright infringers. This prompted Jon Karlung, CEO of ISP Bahnhof, to announce that he would take measures to protect the privacy of his customers. “In our case, we plan to let our traffic go through a VPN service, ” Bahnhof’s Jon Karlung told SR. Bahnhof Servers Since the service will encrypt user traffic, not even Bahnhof will know what their customers are doing online.
Wikileaks, The Pirate Party, And The Future Of The Internet How to save Julian Assange's movement from itself. American diplomacy seems to have survived Wikileaks’s “attack on the international community,” as Hillary Clinton so dramatically characterized it, unscathed. Save for a few diplomatic reshuffles, Foggy Bottom doesn’t seem to be deeply affected by what happened. Certainly, the U.S. government at large has not been paralyzed by the leaks—contrary to what Julian Assange had envisioned in one of his cryptic-cum-visionary essays, penned in 2006. In a fit of technological romanticism, Assange may have underestimated the indispensability of American power to the international system, the amount of cynicism that already permeates much of Washington’s political establishment, and the glaring lack of interest in foreign policy particulars outside the Beltway. Indeed, it’s not in the realms of diplomacy or even government secrecy where Wikileaks could have its biggest impact.
The future of the internet: A virtual counter-revolution This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Review our cookies information for more details A virtual counter-revolution THE first internet boom, a decade and a half ago, resembled a religious movement. You have reached your article limit Register to continue reading or subscribe for unlimited access Registration is free, and takes only a moment Once you've registered, you can read six articles from The Economist print edition for free each week. Log in to continue reading
La neutralité du net vit ses dernières heures, reste à sauver l’essentiel En 20 ans, internet a profondément bouleversé l’économie et la société d’une grande partie du monde. Les communications interpersonnelles et les transactions commerciales sont aujourd’hui largement supportées par ce réseau mondial. De nouvelles industries et de nouveaux géants économiques sont apparus, les secteurs de l’informatique et de l’électronique ont explosé et certaines branches, comme le divertissement et la presse, ont vu leurs modèles d’affaires remis en question. Pourquoi parle-t-on aujourd’hui de neutralité du net ? Le principal motif des discussions actuelles autour de la neutralité du net est l’antagonisme croissant entre les fournisseurs d’accès et les fournisseurs de contenus. Réguler ou ne pas réguler? Les autorités régulatrices cherchent en effet à empêcher les conséquences néfastes qu’une discrimination active des trafics par les opérateurs pourrait causer aux internautes et aux acteurs du web. Déboires de la FCC aux États-Unis Un débat public nécessaire
L’Internet européen, à la carte Collecte des IP, protection de la vie privée, inefficacité des dispositifs de filtrage, dernières nouvelles d’ACTA: voilà tous les thèmes dont vous n'entendrez pas ou peu parler lors de l'e-G8. OWNI vous les présente, dans une carte des Internets européens. Collecte des IP sous contrôle du juge, inefficacité des dispositifs de filtrage, “amis” du copyright, dernières nouvelles d’ACTA… Voilà, entre autres mets, tout ce à quoi vous ne goûterez pas lors de l’e-grand-messe qui se déroule en ce moment à Paris. Afin que le festin soit complet, OWNI propose d’enrichir le tableau du réseau dressé par Nicolas Sarkozy, Publicis et autres nababs du web présents à l’e-G8, avec une carte des Internets européens, qui replace l’utilisateur au centre de l’attention. Le rapport à Internet des 27 pays de l’Union Européenne, ainsi que de la Norvège, de l’Islande et de la Suisse, a été scruté à la loupe. La palette de critères, non exhaustive, est appelé à s’enrichir, notamment grâce à votre contribution.
Le co-créateur du Web appelle les FAI à respecter la neutralité du Net - Collectif pour un internet libre et non régulé Sir Tim Berners-Lee, le co-créateur du World Wide Web, a lancé mercredi un appel aux fournisseurs d’accès à Internet (FAI) pour leur demander de respecter la neutralité du Net, ce principe qui veut que tous les contenus circulent de la même manière sur le Réseau, quel que soit leur format, leur origine ou leur destination. M. Berners-Lee participait à une table ronde entre les principaux FAI britanniques, des entreprises comem la BBC ou Facebook, et des représentants des consommateurs. Au Royaume-Uni comme dans la plupart des pays, les FAI souhaitent pouvoir apporter des entraves à ce principe non écrit, afin de mieux pouvoir gérer le traffic sur leurs réseaux, par exemple en réduisant la priorité de certains types de contenus gourmands en bande passante, comme les vidéos en ligne, aux heures de pointe. En France, le gouvernement prévoit de légiférer sur le sujet, et penche pour autoriser des entorses encadrées au principe de neutralité, limitées à la gestion du Réseau.