This is Part 4 of a series of articles published (here in CircleID) on the UDHR and human rights in the cyberspaces of the Internet Ecosystem. Here we discuss Articles 13-15 and touch on other topics such as the role of cyber governance, empowered digital citizenship, and whistleblowers. At this point in this series of articles on the UDHR in the digital age, it is useful to pause and remind ourselves of the purpose of this analysis. more
My involvement in the ICT industry over the last 40 years has always been to look at the strategic advantages that new technologies have to offer. I entered the industry through a proto-internet development called videotext. I looked at this technology, at what organisations could do with it, and assisted, for example, in the 1980s when the Commonwealth Bank introduced the world's first national online banking service called Telebank. more
A new study conducted by British researchers has unveiled a potentially concerning form of cyber threat where hackers can extract personal data just by listening to someone type. more
One of the central goals of a brand protection program is detecting infringing third-party activity that falls outside the firewall - that is, external to a brand owner's portfolio of official core and tactical domains. Brand threats occur across a range of internet channels, but domain name abuse is one of the most significant areas for concern, both in terms of the visibility and potential for confusion of branded domain names by potential customers, and the enforcement options available. For this reason, domain monitoring is considered a core component of a brand protection service. 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
More than 1,000 experts in the artificial intelligence community have called for an immediate pause on the development of "giant" AI systems like GPT-4 for at least six months. more
In response to ongoing controversies over the use of copyrighted content in training artificial intelligence, U.S. Representative Adam Schiff has introduced the Generative AI Disclosure Act more
Artificial intelligence has important uses in the domain name industry. With the use of AI, domain name registration, management, and valuation have been made more efficient and accurate. Here are some specific ways AI is affecting domain names... AI-powered domain name generators can suggest relevant and available domain names based on specific keywords, making the search process easier and faster. more
This post I've been pondering on for a long time, but never found the right angle and perhaps I still haven't. Basically I have these observations, thoughts, ideas and a truckload of questions. Where to start? With the future prospects of us all. Thomas Picketty showed us the rise of inequality. He was recently joined by Robert J. Gordon who not only joins Picketty, but adds that we live in a period of stagnation, for decades already. "All great inventions lie over 40 years and more behind us", he points out. more
One of the most common questions I've been asked lately is what I think the impact AI will have on the broadband industry. All of the big ISPs in the industry have actively been pursuing the use of AI. For example, AT&T Labs says it is investigating the use of AI to optimize the customer experience and auto-heal the network. Comcast says that it is using AI to help process petabytes of data every day. more
Too often, people consider themselves passive consumers of the Internet. The apps and websites we visit are made by people with technical expertise using languages we don't understand. It's hard to know how to plug in, even if you have a great idea to contribute. One solution for this problem is the hackathon. For the uninitiated, a hackathon is a place of hyper-productivity. A group of people converge for a set period of time, generally a weekend to build solutions to specific problems. more
The race for digital authoritarianism between China and the US is now exceedingly stark. It is a race with enormous implications for the management of humankind, (yes I said it) and the respected doctrines of our human rights and freedoms. Everything we care about today as freedom-loving citizens will be transformed by AI, from access to healthcare to economic status and, more importantly, your ability to serve. more
DeepMind AI reduces energy used for cooling Google data centers by 40%, was announced today in a blog post by Google's Rich Evans, Research Engineer, DeepMind and Jim Gao, Data Center Engineer. more
I recently attended a workshop on Lessons Learned from 40 Years of the Internet, and the topic of the Internet as a Public Utility in the context of national regulatory frameworks came up. For me, 40 years is just enough time to try and phrase an answer to the big policy question: Has the Internet been a success in the experiment of using market forces to act as an efficient distributor of a public good? Or has it raised more issues than it has addressed? more
Do human rights come into the picture when technology and policy work are involved? If so, where? This is a question that has come up multiple times during the last dozen years, and occasionally even before, in Internet Governance discussions. These discussions have included debates on whether human rights were specifically applicable to protocol design or to the organizations developing protocol standards. more