The ever-entertaining Fifth Circuit has recently upheld a strange Texas law that forbids most kinds of social media moderation. (Techdirt explains many of the reasons the court is wrong, so I won't try.) This brings us to the trendy question of whether Facebook, Twitter, et al. should be treated as common carriers. You can make a good argument to separate the point-to-point data transport from the ISP and make the former common carriage. more
At his farewell speech in August outgoing, Telstra CEO Andy Penn mentioned that the cyber threat has never been as serious as the present. He mentioned the deteriorating geopolitical situation and the big shift in how criminals operate in the cyber domain. One thing is for sure is that in order to enjoy all the positives resulting from the digital economy, we need to be far more vigilant about the barrage of information that we are receiving and/or have access to. more
Recently, an article I wrote for Bitcoin Magazine talked about how we can use DNS underscore scoping to better abstract Lightning addresses and even create a de facto specification that could work on any resource (like a wallet or a smart contract) across all blockchains. more
Let's take a second to look back some 50 years to the world of 1972 and the technology and telecommunications environment at that time. The world of 1972 was one populated by a relatively small collection of massive (and eye-wateringly expensive) mainframe computers that were tended by a set of computer operators working around the clock and directed by specialized programmers, trained in the obscure symbol set used by the job control systems on these computers. more
In the early days of Online Brand Protection (OBP), before it was commonly understood how damaging to revenue infringements could be, this was an extremely popular topic. I remember delivering webinars on the subject then and even running a couple of half-day in-person workshops for brand owners at major conferences. more
There was a common catch cry in the early 1990s that "the Internet must be free!" Some thought this was a policy stance relating to the rejection of imposed control over content. Others took this proposition more literally as "free, like free beer!" It might sound naive today, but there was a widespread view at the time that the Internet was able to cast aside conventional economics and operate the Internet infrastructure without charging end-users at all! more
Geotargeting is a well-established online technique for delivering tailored web content based on a user's geographic location. From an internet technology point of view, this is usually based on the user's IP address, which is converted to a physical location through a standard look-up process performed by network infrastructure. Geotargeting is commonly used by websites for several legitimate reasons, including providing users with relevant advertising and other content... more
Universal Acceptance (UA) is a fundamental requirement for a truly multilingual and digitally inclusive Internet. UA is important because it ensures that all domain names, including new long top-level domains (TLDs) and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), and email addresses are treated equally and can be used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. more
I'm not sure that most people understand the extent to which our online experience has moved to the cloud -- and this movement to the cloud means we're using a lot more bandwidth than in the recent past. A huge number of online functions now reside in the cloud, when only a few years ago, a lot of processing was done on our computers. Take the example of Twitter, where I keep an account to upload a copy of my blog every day. more
Elon Musk is a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" which leads some to worry that Twitter will be open to the sort of thing one finds at gab.com if his purchase of the company is completed. I have no idea what Musk plans to do with Twitter but let me offer some optimistic speculation. For a start, I don't believe Musk will use Twitter to advance right-wing candidates or policy. more
Do you know someone who has made outstanding contributions in service to the Internet community? Someone who has made the Internet better in some way who deserves more recognition? Maybe someone who has helped extend Internet access to a large region? Or wrote widely-used programs that make the Internet more secure? Or served in some capacity behind the scenes in Internet services? more
For companies with global aspirations, Russian has long been considered a "must support" language. These days, that is no longer the case. But even before Putin decided to invade Ukraine, the Russian language had been slipping, ever so slightly, in global website support. While support for Ukrainian has been steadily rising. I’ve been tracking the languages supported by the leading global brands for nearly 20 years and... more
In a previous article, I reported on the problems that Facebook (Meta) is facing – currently betting the house on its Meta service, based on a software platform that will create a virtual reality (VR) networked environment. I mentioned that I was critical about this business model and that I don’t see, at least for the foreseeable future, a platform (based on VR) that would turn the internet or mobile networks into VR environments. I also mention that I do see interesting markets for VR in certain sectors. more
Marketers far and wide have piled onto the non-fungible token (NFT) craze. To some great success and fanfare, NFTs are being used to promote and monetize media, goods, and services in almost every segment. Media, Fashion, Entertainment, Sports, Gaming, Art, Beverage, Consumer Goods, Financial, and even Enterprise Software companies are getting into the mix. This brief review examines why, how, and where marketers are using NFTs, how NFTs are being abused and gives high-level advice to marketers and brand protection professionals. more
We do live in turbulent times. There is such a lot happening, with many people feeling overwhelmed and lost. One of the reasons given why we do have these problems is technology. I would argue against that. In all reality, technology is a tool that we can use, and yes, we all know that we can use it for the wrong reasons (cars kill people, atom bombs, killer robots, chemical and biological warfare and so on). However, we have learned to live with it, and in general, the outcome from science, innovation and technology has been positive. more
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