Policy & Regulation

Net Neutrality Undermining Spreads to Developing Countries

After the USA set the bad example of allowing telcos to start charging different rates for content delivery services, other incumbent telcos elsewhere are only too happy to jump on the bandwagon and use the American example as a reason and an excuse to end net neutrality (NN) in their countries also. As did their American counterparts they too see this as another way to grab some extra monopolistic income. more

A Visualized gTLd Sequencing Proposal

As a follow-up to our previous CircleID article "Strong Support for IDNs, GEOs and/or Communities to Go First" we have developed a flow chart which visualizes how the applications may be processed in a fair and transparent manner. The chart also shows that at the end of the day only about 1,200 new gTLDs may go online, that means that we will likely see about 730 drop outs. more

Cyber Security: A Duty to Care?

Yesterday, in my post on three new threats in one day, I posed the question whether it was necessary to develop regulations that would set a minimum standard on cyber security for devices that connect to the Internet. I'm having second thoughts here, which I'll explain in this post, but also try to look at a way forward and ask you to engage. more

Can Plural and Singular New gTLDs Both Be Successful?

Now that ICANN has stuck to its guns and only placed 4 new gTLD's strings that look confusingly similar into contention sets, rather than those that sound identical, such as .inc and .ink or those that have the same meaning like .Law and .Lawyer or those that are singular and plurals of the same word, like .deal and .deals, we now that many new gTLD's are going to have a very a tough marketing road and face a lot of consumer confusion. more

White Spaces News… Interesting First Step

When the U.S. Digital Television Transition (DTV) transition happens in Feb. 2009, channels 2 through 51 will remain allocated for television transmission. Few of the nation's television markets actually use 49 channels. Indeed, most use less than half of that number... Today, with Congress in recess, leaving less room for last-minute-Lucy-with-the-football lobbying gambits, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) appears to be poised to release a report saying the white spaces can be used without necessarily causing interference to existing broadcasts. There are still many questions to be answered... more

AT&T CEO Publishes Open Letter Calling on Congress to Establish an “Internet Bill of Rights”

Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman and CEO, published an open letter today urging Congress to "end the debate once and for all, by writing new laws that govern the internet and protect consumers." more

Privacy Becoming Very Public Matter

At the round tables on privacy held by the Federal Trade Commission, Indiana University law school professor and member of the board of the Privacy Projects, Fred Cate said out loud what long has been silently known about consumer protections based on the notices web sites post to describe their data protection practices and the consumers' choice to click on or away. Cate said: "Choice is an illusion." There is more than a bit of substance behind the bumper sticker... more

Is More Protection of Intellectual Property Rights Necessary on the Internet?

I firmly believe that we need to protect any form of intellectual properties (IP) built by one through hard and honest work. At the same time, I also believe that several of the current methods of protecting IP, such the as the copyright laws, patent systems and legislations, are not evolving fast enough in order to protect IP and avoid hindering the path of creativity and innovation. more

Youth Aren’t Just the Internet’s Future, Youth Shape the Internet’s Future

For the past 27 years, or at least as long as I can remember, I have heard one phrase on an endless loop: "youth are the future." It is a statement that always caused me to feel mild confusion. I thought, "How can I, for instance, be the future if I'm here now?" As I "grew up" and the term "youth" seem to expand in both meaning and breadth of inclusion, I quickly realized that when this statement is used by many it is platitudinous at best and disingenuous rhetoric at worst. What should actually be clarified is that, as no one is immune from the natural progression of the life course (at least not yet anyway), youth will one day constitute the key decision-makers in political, economic and social institutions. more

About That Second, Third and Fourth Wireless “Attachment”

There is some good news about the decision by Verizon Wireless to offer shared monthly data plans. But there could be a lot more if the FCC applied its Carterfone policy. That policy gave consumers the power to decide what and how many devices to attach to a network connection. If Carterfone applied, consumers could use multiple devices to access a network subscription, albeit perhaps not at the same time. more

More Provocative Reasons for a Mandatory National Breach Disclosure

I read, with some small amount of discomfort, an article by Bill Brenner on CSO Online, wherein he interviewed several other CSOs and other "Security Execs" on their opinions on the firing of Pennsylvania CISO Robert Maley. For those who haven't heard about this, Mr. Maley was fired for talking about a security incident during the recent RSA conference without approval from his bosses. more

Want a New gTLD? Some Items to Consider

Over three years ago ICANN boldly announced that the top level of the domain name system would be opened up to new registry operators. As we now approach a likely spring 2011 launch, a number of key issues remain unresolved including how trademarks will be protected. more

Privacy Rules to Change in the EU, But What If ...?

In a presentation EU Commissioner Viviane Reding gave a preview of the new Privacy regulation her DG is preparing. As she states, privacy rules need to be brought up to date and harmonized. With all 27 member states having the same rules and tools to enforce, a company only will deal with one privacy commissioner... So, what if we, for the sake of this blog, take this initiative towards spam and cyber crime. What would this do to spam enforcement? more

Open Networks Delivering the Goods for All

The City of Amsterdam announcement to now move to the next stage of their FttH (fibre to the home) project -- with another roll out covering 100,000 connections -- is a clear indication that the concept of open access FttH networks is a valid one. This will have large scale implications for countries around the world who are looking at using open network based telecoms infrastructure projects to stimulate their economies. more

Connecting Clouds

History is littered with manifestos, the public statements of principles and intentions that announce policies, revolutions or ambitious visions in politics and the arts... And now we have a new manifesto for the modern age of distributed computing. The ‘open computing manifesto’ was launched this week with the support of some very large computer companies including Cisco, AT&T, Sun Microsystems and Telefonica as well as over fifty other players in this growing market, all under the leadership of IBM. more