March 2010

Google asks White House for help in fight over censorship with China

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has asked the White House for help in Google's fight with China.

Brin on Wednesday called on the White House to take action in the dispute between the search engine company and China over Beijing's strict Web censorship rules. Ultimately, Brin described that standoff on Wednesday as a "human rights issue." He implored the Obama administration in an interview with The Guardian to make the dispute a "high priority," much as "trade issues ... are high priority right now." However, the Obama administration signaled this week it plans to steer mostly clear of Google and China's recent row.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters on March 23 that Google's move is strictly a "business decision." And while Crowley later implored China to "seriously consider the implications" of Google's policy shift, he nonetheless suggested the State Department did not plan to press China on the matter. His tone seemed to contrast with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's guarantee last year that global Internet freedoms would be a top department priority in 2010.

GoDaddy to stop offering Web addresses in China

US-based GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name service, announced Wednesday it will no longer register new Web sites in China. The move arrives in response to China's new website ownership rules, which require holders of .cn domains to provide their personal information -- including photographs of themselves -- to the Chinese government, according to the company.

For those about to submit...

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Rural Utilities Service are offering tips to organizations planning to submit applications for the second round of broadband stimulus funding.

1) Allow enough time to submit well BEFORE the application deadline. 2) Check CCR (Organization Information and Authorization) as soon as possible, and at least TWO DAYS PRIOR to submission. 3) Make sure uploaded documents are not password protected. 4) If you do lose connection on your computer, immediately close your Internet browser (all browser windows) and log back in to Easygrants to get a brand new session. 5) Set worksheet to Normal View. 6) For applicant's to NTIA's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), be sure to read the instructions for excel spreadsheets and using Macintosh Computers. 7) Mind your spacing and document size. 8) Know your Easygrants ID. 9) Avoid the crowds...submit during non-peak hours.

How 1Gbps fiber came to Cleveland's poorest, free of charge

In the middle of one of America's poorer cities, residents are about to get an unexpected gift: one gigabit per second Internet access over fiber optic cables courtesy of Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University.

According to the school's vice president for Information Technology Services, Lev Gonick, 72 percent of the homes around campus have no Internet access of any kind; 60 percent are on food stamps. "On a national scale, neighbors of the University have as much Internet access as Panamanians or Vietnamese," he wrote last year in a blog entry announcing the school's new project. That's slowly changing as the university embarks on an ambitious research project to roll out 1Gbps Internet access to the immediate neighborhood, possibly extending this testbed network to 25,000 total Cleveland residents in total. While most of the US has to live without any fiber at all, residents near University Circle are getting two strands apiece. How much will it cost the residents? Nothing. The project is a research-driven attempt to find out if broadband can deliver more than e-mail and Web browsing. Can it provide what the community truly needs -- public safety, more educational opportunities, and better medicine? Case Western Reserve doesn't yet know, but within a year, it plans to find out.

Which is more "doomed": cable TV or Internet video?

Which economic model works better for consumers: cable or Internet TV? A recent Atlantic Monthly article has spawned a debate over how long cable television is going to last. The answer to that question involves looking at markets and consumer preferences, but it also has a lot to do with government.

Senate Commerce Committee Approves Cybersecurity Act, FCC Technical Assistance Bill

The Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday voted to approve the Cybersecurity Act (S. 773), which would take steps to modernize and coordinate public/private efforts to protect networks and information in a broadband world filled with online threats at home and abroad. The Committee also passed the FCC Commissioners' Technical Resource Enhancement Act (S. 2881) which would allow each Federal Communications Commission commissioner to appoint an electrical engineer or computer scientist to provide the commissioner technical consultation.

The cybersecurity bill, co-sponsored by Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would "significantly raise the priority of cybersecurity throughout the federal government and streamline cybersecurity-related government functions, authorities and laws; Protect civil liberties, intellectual property and business proprietary information; promote cybersecurity public awareness, education, and research and development; and foster market-driven cybersecurity innovation and creativity to develop long-term technology solutions and train the next generation of cybersecurity professionals," according to the committee. Among the bill's specific provisions are a government-industry effort to identify what systems need to be classified as "critical infrastructure." "Unlike physical critical infrastructure such as chemical plants and airports," says the committee outline of the bill, "it is not obvious where the "critical" aspects of IT systems begin and end." For its part, the FCC as part of the broadband plan said that within six months of the March 16 release of the plan, the FCC and the administration should have teamed on a "cybersecurity roadmap" identifying the top five cybersecurity threats and establishing a two-year time frame for yet another broadband plan for the FCC, this one a cybersecurity plan with performance milestones. The bill would also provide security clearances for key private industry players so they could have access to classified information on threats to their networks.

Shooting the Messenger

[Commentary] In the last few years a troubling development has emerged in U.S. telecom and Internet policy. Network policy didn't used to be highly partisan; emblematic of this is the fact that the 1996 Telecommunications Act was passed along bipartisan lines. Increasingly, however, the dialogue over networking policy has become shrill, partisan and divorced from reality.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the network neutrality debate. To listen to the advocates of strong net neutrality regulation, the incumbent ISPs can't wait to block "objectionable" content, impose mandatory charges on all web sites to reach ISP customers, and manage their networks to favor their own video and voice services over services like Netflix and Skype. The fact that there has only been one case of this sort of abusive behavior in the United States. If we want both wireline and wireless broadband networks to function effectively, particularly in an environment with more diverse kinds of applications than the Internet has seen in the past, ISPs will need to continue to engage in reasonable network management. Engineers and serious policy analysts know this, but that doesn't deter net neutrality advocates from calling for "dumb pipes" that have never existed in the Internet and never will.

Do wireless networks merit different network neutrality than wired networks?

A paper on whether differences between wired and wireless network technology merit different treatment with respect to network neutrality. The paper found wireless networks differ substantially from wired networks at the network layer and below, and that wireless networks often require different traffic management practices at these lower layers. However, since the differences are confined to these lower layers, the author argued net neutrality in both wired and wireless networks can be effectively accomplished by requiring an open interface between network and transport layers.

Prof Jordan also sent two other papers on the definitions of "managed services" or "reasonable network management."

FTC seeks to update online privacy protection laws for children

The Federal Trade Commission is seeking comment on whether a decade-old online privacy protection law should be updated to include new forms of digital marketing, such as wireless communications, social networks and interactive TV or gaming.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) went into effect in 2000 and requires Web site operators or online service providers aimed at children under 13 years of age to get parental permission before collecting or using personal information from children. The rule is reviewed every five years; it went unchanged in 2005. But the FTC now believes that changes to the online environment since then, including children's increasing use of mobile technology to access to the Internet, warrant reexamination of the law. A few of the questions posed by the FTC: Should online operators be able to contact specific individuals using information collected from children online? Should parents have the right to review or delete personal information collected from their children? Can mobile geo-location data be collected from children?

Groups Ask Targeted Enforcement for Intellectual Property

The US government should restrict its actions enforcing intellectual-property (IP) law to those "violations that cause the greatest harm in clearly settled areas of law," six public interest organizations said.

In comments with the new Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, the groups said in addition that in addition to enforcement policies, the government "should also be open to novel and creative solutions that work within the existing system of balance," such as considering "whether facilitating legal access to content through mechanical licensing at reasonable rates would prove a better way to discourage infringement and benefit the industry as a whole than the blunter solutions often recommended by the entertainment industry."

Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Association of Law Libraries, Medical Library Association, Special Libraries Association, and U.S. PIRG filed the comments.

Victoria Espinel, the enforcement coordinator, asked for public comment on what policies for intellectual property enforcement she should recommend to Congress.

Benton

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