Cerf: Governments shouldn?t have a monopoly on Internet governance The beauty of the Internet is that it’s not controlled by any one group. Its governance is bottoms-up—with academics, non-profits, companies and governments all working to improve this technological wonder of the modern world. This model has not only made the Internet very open—a testbed for innovation by anyone, anywhere—it's also prevented vested interests from taking control. But last week the UN Committee on Science and Technology announced that only governments would be able to sit on a working group set up to examine improvements to the IGF—one of the Internet’s most important discussion forums.
Bulgaria Bill of Rights in Cyberspace, amended « BuzzMachine I’m still refining my thoughts on a Bill of Rights in Cyberspace — the latest version in preparation for tomorrow’s PDF symposium on WIkileaks and transparency. The idea is to have principles we can point to when dealing with such events as Wikileaks, Google/Verizon, Google/China, and so on. Try this on for size: I. Earlier versions are here and here. At the PDF event, I want to talk about the need to discuss principles we can point to when we see violations of these rights. I will also talk about the idea that we are passing from a world organized around power-to-power transactions to one based on peer-to-peer engagement. Thoughts? : LATER: Some have pointed out that I don’t have a privacy clause.
Català Net neutrality is hypocrisy Net neutrality is a concept that the tech industry rallies around, but it is hypocrisy. The idea is that the transport layer, operated by telephone companies and cable companies, must transport all bits across their lines at the same rate and cost. Nice idea, but it's hypocritical to demand that of their vendors when they don't provide it to their users. For some reason they are never called on this hypocrisy by the tech press. At the PDFleaks conference in NYC last Saturday I said that after Amazon booted WikiLeaks from EC2 that signaled very clearly that there is no such thing as net neutrality. Something like this happened to UserLand in Aprill 2000. Out of the blue, without any explanation, they terminated our service. But that's reality. Read your user-agreements carefully.
Poland Neutrality Or Bust Editor’s note: Guest author John Borthwick is the CEO and founder of betaworks and in a previous life was a senior strategist for Time Warner and a witness in the Microsoft antitrust case. Access to fast, affordable and open broadband, for users and developers alike is, I believe, the single most important driver of innovation in our business. The FCC will likely vote next week on a framework for net neutrality—we got aspects of this wrong ten years ago, we can’t afford to be wrong again. For the reasons I outline below, we are at an important juncture in the evolution of how we connect to the Internet and how services are delivered on top of the platform. Brad Burnham stopped by our office earlier this week to talk about his proposal for the future of net neutrality. 1. Network providers are making significant capital commitments that will shape access to networks in coming years. 2. Innovators aim to solve problems—they start in one place and then they iterate. 3. So what to do?
Català Is a UN Internet takeover looming? Not quite Perhaps you saw or heard the headlines last Friday or over the weekend: the United Nations could take over the Internet! (Or, as the Drudge Report put it, "UN PLANS INTERNET REGULATION.") This, you may not be surprised to learn, isn't quite accurate. Back in 2006, the UN endorsed a call from the World Summit on the Information Society to create a multi-stakeholder forum for dialogue about Internet governance issues. IGF does plenty of jawing, which can be quite useful, but it doesn't actually have any power. IGF meetings gather delegates from government, industry, and civil society for a big annual shindig. In May 2010, the UN's Commission on Science and Technology (CSTD) decided that the IGF could be improved after its initial five-year run. No problem there, really, but when CSTD actually assembled the working group in early December, only governments were on the list. Indeed, there was such a proposal law week, though it came out of a separate process. Cutting through the cant