From the article: "On the anniversary of John Perry Barlow's issuing 'A Declaration
of the Independence of Cyberspace,' a response and alternate call to action. Seventeen
years ago today, on February 8, 1996, John Perry Barlow sent out his manifesto
"A Declaration of the Independenceof Cyberspace," a statement of the core belief of many
cyber-libertarians that governments should have no authority on the Internet.
That belief may seem quaint to many of us today, when the separation between
the real and the virtual is growing ever fuzzier. And yet the Declaration
remains a fairly accurate representation of the views of many of the
anti-government voices on the Internet." Read more
Showing posts with label internet governance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet governance. Show all posts
Monday, February 11, 2013
EU to Order Banks, Energy Firms to Report Cyber Attacks
Almost 15,000 transport companies, 8,000 banks, 4,000 energy firms, and 15,000 hospitals will have to report cyber attacks if the proposals are approved by EU governments and the European Parliament." Read more
Thursday, February 7, 2013
FCC to Congress: U.N.'s ITU Internet Plans 'Must Be Stopped'
The FCC Commissioner ominously warned Congress that what happened at WCIT-12 "ended the era of an international consensus to keep inter-governmental hands off of the Internet in dramatic fashion." Read more
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Power and the Internet
From the article: "All disruptive technologies upset traditional power
balances, and the Internet is no exception. The standard story is that it
empowers the powerless, but that's only half the story. The Internet empowers
everyone. Powerful institutions might be slow to make use of that new power,
but since they are powerful, they can use it more effectively. Governments and
corporations have woken up to the fact that not only can they use the Internet,
they can control it for their interests. Unless we start deliberately debating
the future we want to live in, and information technology in enabling that
world, we will end up with an Internet that benefits existing power structures
and not society in general." Read more
EU Data Supervisor Wants Greater Powers
From the article: "The European
Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Peter Hustinx, has unveiled a two-year
strategy aiming to promote a “data protection culture,” increase oversight of
EU institutions, and cut red tape.
Speaking at an
event in Brussels alongside EU justice commissioner Vivianne Reding and EU home
affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, Hustinx on Tuesday (22 January) said
the strategy is designed to make the EDPS more efficient and effective." Read more
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
China Aims to Create Electronics Giants
From the article: "China's industry
ministry on Tuesday set an aggressive goal of forging global giants in the
electronics sector within the next two years through mergers and alliances, and
reiterated a longstanding push for Chinese companies to explore overseas
acquisitions.
China is pushing
to consolidate its electronics industry in a bid to create the next tech giant.
The WSJ's Paul Mozur tells us how far the country still has to go to compete
with the likes of Apple and Samsung.
The target for
the electronics sector is part of a wider plan to consolidate China's
fragmented major industries, including steel, shipping, automobiles, cement and
aluminum. Overcapacity in heavy industries has been blamed for amplifying a
sharp slowdown in growth in the past two years." Read more
State of the Web: Why can’t Washington craft better Internet laws?
From the article: "The tragic suicide of programmer and activist Aaron Swartz,
who was charged with multiple computer crime felonies prior to his death, has
reignited calls for Washington to craft better Internet-related legislation.
Many laws on the books are seen as outdated, misaligned with reality, and just
plain crazy. There has to be a better way, or so the theory goes. But what if
there isn’t? What if the lawmaking process, by its very nature, cannot handle
the fast-paced world of the Internet and the cultural shifts that go along with
it? What then?" Read more
China’s Information Challenge
From the article: "To maintain monopoly control of political power in a country
with a hard-charging economy, fast-growing middle class and the rising
expectations they create, party officials will do all they can to monitor and
manage the flow of information within the country and across its borders. This
is especially important for a new generation of leaders now assuming their
posts, officials who know that public expectations for good governance have
never been higher. But with more than half a billion Chinese citizens now
online, more than 300 million active on Weibo (China’s Twitter) and an
increasingly ineffective “great firewall,” assertions of control over words and
ideas reflect little more than wishful thinking." Read more
Thursday, January 17, 2013
UN Plans Internet Governance Amid Outcry to Defund ITU
From the article: "A petition to de-fund the U.N.'s telecom arm emerges just as the ITU readies
to hammer out internet governance plans at the World Telecommunication Information andCommunication Technology Policy Forum meetings
in February and May 2013.
The website De-fund the ITU
surfaced on the January NANOG (North American NetworkOperators' Group) email list.
…Five days ago ITU's Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré released the fourth and final ITU/WTPF-13 report outlining groundwork for internet governance (and internet regulatory topics) at upcoming meetings on February 6-8 and May 14-16." Read more
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Why the UN’s Push to Control the Internet Isn’t Over
From the article: "That was seen as a success for the US and its allies, but anyone celebrating
the outcome might be doing so too soon.
In fact, several of the companies that sided with the US only ended up in
that position because of an overreach on the part of Iran, according to one
speaker at a Thursday CES panel. Ambassador David Gross, who was the US
representative to the ITU for several years, said that Iran decided to
"meddle in a well-cooked document," adding an unusual "human
rights" proposal that suggested a human right to access telecommunications
networks.
The twist is that this was a situation in which the "human rights" were granted to a government, not to actual humans. The real goal was to strike a blow against sanctions." Read more
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Architecting the Future of Social Media
Wood, Lindsay Taylor. "Architecting the Future of Social Media." Social Media Week, January 2, 2013.
From the article: "An information war has erupted around the world. The battle
lines are drawn between those governments that regard the free flow of
information, and the ability to access it, as a matter of fundamental human
rights, and those that regard official control of information as a fundamental
sovereign prerogative. The contest is being waged institutionally in
organizations like the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and daily
in countries like Syria." Read more
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Did the U.N. Internet Governance Summit Actually Accomplish Anything?
From the article: "The latest battle over the Internet ended in an éclat. On
the final day of the World Conference on InternationalTelecommunications in Dubai, representatives from the United
States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and several other countries walked out in
protest of an attempt by countries such as Russia and Iran to extend
governmental control over the Internet. Rather than reaching an accord, the
world remains as divided on
Internet governance as it was when the summit opened." Read more
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
UN Telecom Treaty Approved Amid U.S. Web-Censorship Concerns
From the article: "An agreement to update 24-year-old United Nations telecommunications rules
was approved against the opposition of countries including the U.S. and the
U.K., whose officials walked out on the talks on concerns about Internet
regulation and censorship.
The new pact includes measures that would give countries a right to access
international telecommunications services and the ability to block spam, which
delegations declining to sign the amended text argued would pave the way for
government censorship and control over the Web." Read more
Code of EU Online Rights
From the article: "As
part of the Digital Agenda for Europe actions, the Code of EU online rights
compiles the basic set of rights existing in EU legislation and related to the
digital environment. The objective of the Code is to find simple explanations
of their legal rights and obligations, set out in a transparent and
understandable way.
As foreseen in
the Digital Agenda for Europe, this list of online rights and principles will
be an important tool for inspiring trust and confidence among consumers and
contribute to promote greater use of online services." Read more
Digital "To-Do" List: New Digital Priorities for 2013-2014
From the article: "The European Commission has today adopted seven
new priorities for the digital economy and society. The digital economy is
growing at seven times the rate of the rest of the economy, but this potential
is currently held back by a patchy pan-European policy framework. Today's
priorities follow a comprehensive policy review and place new emphasis on the
most transformative elements of the original 2010 DigitalAgenda for Europe.
European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes
said: "2013 will be the busiest year yet for the Digital
Agenda. My top priorities are to increase broadband investment and to maximise
the digital sector's contribution to Europe's recovery."
Full implementation of this updated Digital Agenda
would increase European GDP by 5%, or 1500€ per person, over the next eight
years, by increasing investment in ICT, improving eSkills levels in the labour
force, enabling public sector innovation, and reforming the framework
conditions for the internet economy. In terms of jobs, up to one million
digital jobs risk going unfilled by 2015 without pan-European action while 1.2
million jobs could be created through infrastructure construction. This would
rise to 3.8 million new jobs throughout the economy in the long term." Read more
Web of Failure: How China’s Internet Policies Have Doomed Chinese Soft Power
From the article: "When it comes to the web, China has continually struggled to
choose between its impulse to control things as tightly as possible and its
recognition of web platforms as a powerful way to broadcast its propaganda both
at home and abroad. In the past few years, its apparent strategy has been to
attempt to have its cake and eat it too: to broadcast its own message using all
the Western web channels at its disposal while blocking those channels for
domestic web users. Unfortunately for the government, having your cake and
eating it is impossible, and this policy — if it is continued — will prove to
be an utter failure." Read more
Can Trade Policy Set Information Free?
From the report: "This
policy brief examines how the US, the EU and Canada use trade policies to
govern the Internet
at home and across borders. The three trade giants use trade agreements to
encourage e-commerce, reduce online barriers to trade, and to develop shared
policies in a world where technology is rapidly changing and where governments
compete to disseminate their regulatory approaches. Policymakers use export
controls, trade bans or targeted sanctions to protect Internet
users in other countries or to prevent officials of other countries from using Internet
related technologies in ways that undermine the rights of individuals abroad.
Finally, policymakers may use trade agreements to challenge other governments’
online rules and policies as trade barriers. We discuss how these policies,
agreements, bans and strategies could affect Internet
openness, Internet
governance, and Internet freedom. We do not address
telecommunications or e-commerce definitional issues." Read more
Monday, December 17, 2012
The U.N. Isn’t Regulating the Internet–but Governments Still Exert Control
Talbot, David. "The U.N. Isn’t Regulating the Internet–but Governments Still Exert Control." MIT Technology Review, December 14, 2012.
From the article: "Is the U.N. now somehow regulating the Internet now that its International Telecommunications Union—after a two week meeting in Dubai that centered largely on whether it should include the Internet in its telephone-centric regulations—has today declared the existence of a new global telecom treaty?
No. First, the United States, Canada, and many European nations declined to sign the new International Telecommunications Regulations. Some 89 countries were in favor and 55 opposed or abstained. If you go to the actual new wording of the regulations–which haven’t been changed since 1988–and search for “Internet” you find it mentioned in fairly bland language within a one-page nonbinding resolution." Read more
From the article: "Is the U.N. now somehow regulating the Internet now that its International Telecommunications Union—after a two week meeting in Dubai that centered largely on whether it should include the Internet in its telephone-centric regulations—has today declared the existence of a new global telecom treaty?
No. First, the United States, Canada, and many European nations declined to sign the new International Telecommunications Regulations. Some 89 countries were in favor and 55 opposed or abstained. If you go to the actual new wording of the regulations–which haven’t been changed since 1988–and search for “Internet” you find it mentioned in fairly bland language within a one-page nonbinding resolution." Read more
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
U.S. Government Will Launch a Dynamic Airwave-Sharing Scheme
From the article: "Aiming to boost wireless bandwidth and innovation, the U.S.
Federal Communications Commission is poised to recommend the biggest regulatory
change in decades: one that allows a newly available chunk of wireless spectrum
to be leased by different companies at different times and places, rather than
being auctioned off to one high bidder…. Cisco Systems estimates that mobile
data traffic will grow by a factor of 18 by 2016, and Bell Labs predicts it
will increase by a factor of 25. Many more airwaves could eventually be shared
with the help of cognitive radios, which sense available frequencies and shift
between them." Read more
Monday, December 10, 2012
Cyber Early Warning Deal Collapses After Russia Balks
The 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe failed to reach the unanimous consensus needed to adopt the resolution. It was aimed at building trust and open communication to avoid cyberwar." Read more