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Around the world governments, regulators and the industry are struggling with the old regulatory legacy systems. These have become a major stumbling block in the transition to a new environment. Increasingly countries are beginning to understand the social and economic benefits a national broadband infrastructure can offer, but it is impossible to bring that about while the systems are based on the present regulatory regimes. To take these broader benefits into account we will need to develop government policies to facilitate the digital economy... more
These days in Washington, even the most absurd proposals become the new normal. The announcement yesterday of a new U.S. State Department Cyberspace Bureau is yet another example of setting the nation up as an isolated, belligerent actor on the world stage. In some ways, the reorganization almost seems like a companion to last week's proposal to take over the nation's 5G infrastructure. Most disturbingly, it transforms U.S. diplomacy assets from multilateral cooperation to becoming the world's bilateral cyber-bully nation. more
Garth Bruen writes: A report in LegitScript takes a look at Russian rogue Internet pharmacy hacking US government website. "As rogue Internet pharmacy networks become more sophisticated, even US government websites are at risk. Today, we're taking a look at how a rogue Internet pharmacy linked to a criminal network operating out of Russia and Eastern Europe has hacked into a US government website. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US foreign aid agency, utilizes a ".gov" top-level domain, which is assigned to the control of the US government. Domain names ending in .gov are typically administered by the General Services Administration." more
Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani has signed into law a cybercrime bill this week targeting online crime and militancy by groups such as the Taliban and Islamic State despite concerns it could limit free speech. more
The Internet Society (ISOC) has addressed human rights issues related to Internet access stating "[t]he increasing pressure to limit access to the Internet has escalated the sense of urgency in addressing this situation." ISOC, in the announcement, reaffirmed its policy area and its work to bring attention to the impact of Internet freedom on other aspects of human rights. more
The nation's leading organization of government, corporate and academic privacy executives -- the International Association of Privacy Professionals -- recently did what good groups do, it issued a report that validated the pursuit of the career it supports... the IAPP reminded all what has long been understood -- privacy is an important and growing risk management activity under the watchful eye (mostly) of general counsels. With $2.4 billions being spent this year and $3 billion next, it is a growth industry. more
AT&T got critics' keyboards activated by announcing plans for a Sponsored Data service, enabling websites to pay for their end-users data consumption. The service has been characterized as a type of toll-free or "1-800? style service for mobile data. Does this contravene network neutrality principles? AT&T says the traffic from the sponsoring sites will be treated the same as other traffic on the network. A US public interest group, Public Knowledge, claims this is precisely what a net neutrality violation looks like. more
The Council Working Group on international Internet-related public policy issues (CWG-Internet) was established as a result of resolutions at the 2010 ITU Plenipotentiary to discuss a wide range of Internet issues that had public policy implications... These are all issues that concern all stakeholder groups in the Internet ecosystem. And, indeed, these are all issues being discussed in varying levels of detail by all stakeholder groups. The difference with the CWG-Internet, however, is that both its documents and meetings are closed to all non-Member State representatives. more
Having been a member of the Committee for this past year, I'm pleased to share that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) "Open Internet Advisory Committee" has published its first annual report... The report is weighty - 98pp if you kill trees to print it. The OIAC was established as part of the US FCC Open Internet activity and Open Internet Report and Order from 2010. The FCC appointed expert committee members from a broad range of commercial, academic, and not-for-profit organizations. more
The UK's Online Safety Bill has received Royal Assent and is now officially the Online Safety Act. This law mandates tech companies to incorporate new standards for the design, operation, and moderation of their platforms. more
My day job, which includes finishing a book, updating a broadband law treatise, and trying to engage undergraduate students in the challenges of telecommunication and Internet policy, prevents me from weighing in each time I see yet another outrageous claim on such issues as network neutrality, broadband market penetration, and the competitiveness of U.S. telecoms markets. But I have to make time for this one. more
The Federal Trade Commission intends to monitor the information that telecom and cable companies provide about high-speed Internet service in the service plans they offer to customers, according to a report issued last week by the agency. The FTC asserts in the report, released on June 27, that since it has jurisdiction over matters involving consumer protection, it "will continue to enforce the consumer protection laws in the area of broadband access."... The consumer protection sections of the FTC report raise this question: are broadband providers engaging in a deceptive practice when they advertise a connection speed of, for example, "up to" 768 kilobits per second (kbps) - and yet actual speeds are considerably lower? more
Europe's electronic communications sector is currently governed by directives adopted in 2002. These stipulated that the directives and regulatory framework should be reviewed, a processed initialised in November 2007. Both the European Council and the European Parliament need to adopt the proposed changes, and none of the initial consultations conducted by the EC indicated that a major overhaul was on the cards, or even required. Yet this is what has transpired. more
The EU's privacy regulator is predicting that the first round of enforcement actions under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be exercised in the coming months. more
The Librarian of Congress and US Copyright Office has updated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act extending some essential exemptions ensuring that computer security researchers won't be treated like nefarious criminals for their contributions to society. more
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