stories filed under: "internet"
When WSJ Flunks Internet History, Blogs Step In To Educate
from the but-we-need-to-support-newspapers dept
We hear over and over again from traditional reporters how we need to "protect" newspapers and how, as newspapers fail, no one can step in and replace them -- especially not "new media" like blogs. In fact, we're told how newspapers are "trustworthy," but blogs are "amateurish" and prone to hyperbole and errors. It's a common story told over and over again -- especially by those supporting the idea of paywalls and the like. In fact, we wrote about yet another such example just recently. And yet... it seems that we just as frequently hear about newspapers making big mistakes, and blogs stepping in to correct them.Today's example involves the supposedly venerable Wall Street Journal, who posted a column by former publisher L. Gordon Crovitz, trying to claim that the internet was really invented by private companies, without much government support. Except, of course, that's false. Ridiculously false. Thankfully, we had blogs to step in and debunk many of the factual errors made by Crovitz. Quickly into the breach stepped Steve Wildstrom at Tecpinions, who pointed out that Crovitz's version of history was way off and then Tim Lee at Ars Technica, who went even deeper in showing how Crovitz mangled the history.
Among the many, many errors in Crovitz's piece were the claims that Tim Berners-Lee (no relation to Tim Lee above) "invented hyperlinks." He did no such thing. He invented the web, which came long after hypertext and hyperlinks were well known and well-established. He also tries to downplay Arpanet, and worst of all pretends that because Vint Cerf (with Bob Kahn) invented TCP/IP, that it shows it was done without the government's help. He, of course, leaves out that both were employed... by the government. It also plays up the importance of ethernet, invented at Xerox PARC. This was a big deal (and I even have a photo of the first ethernet connection that I recently took on a tour of PARC), but that was for local networks and not "the internet."
To be fair, this is the opinion pages, not the reporting pages, but the WSJ is supposed to have a pretty high bar for getting facts right, isn't it? And I would assume that applies to the opinion pages as well. Of course, what's interesting is that Crovitz has a history of this kind of thing. A couple years ago, we wrote about another piece by him which misattributed a quote of mine to someone else's and then took three days or so to post a correction. This Crovitz piece has added one correction at the time of my writing this, but only for (another) misattributed quote (Crovitz apparently didn't realize that he was quoting a blog post by Tyler Cowen quoting someone else and attributed it to Cowen). Everything else is still in there.
Of course, even more ironic in all of this is that Crovitz helped found Journalism Online -- one of the leading companies pushing newspapers to set up paywalls, arguing that newspapers need people to pay, or all good reporting will go away. Everyone makes mistakes. It's not limited to either newspapers or blogs. I don't mean to pick on Crovitz or the WSJ in particular here (even though the mistakes in his piece were both plentiful and easily cross checked). It's just that the idea that newspapers have some sort of "lock" on factual, objective reporting -- whereas newfangled "blogs" are chock full of misinformation -- is an inaccurate position. Yes, there's plenty of misinformation spread on various sites, but the same thing shows up in "traditional" media too. The point is that the wider ecosystem seems to be pretty damn good at highlighting those mistakes (even if the WSJ is then very slow to correct them).
Filed Under: blogs, history, internet, journalism, l gordon crovitz, reporting
The Internet Wins Again! Writer Gets Rapper Pitbull 'Exiled' To Alaskan Walmart
from the because-what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept
Ah, the internet. Also: ah, social media. Powerful tools, which in the right hands, can turn unknowns into legends and overstepping entities into Wikipedia entries. However, in the fumbling hands of mega-corporations, these same tools become about as unwieldy as a screwdriver being used to hammer in nails. By a bear.
When these tools are put to "use" in amateurish ways, there's always the chance that they will be re-purposed for the amusement of internet natives, who know exactly how to turn these primitive tools into weapons of mass destruction/hilarity. Anyone remember Time Magazines' ill-fated effort to crowdsource the Most Influential in the World? Long story short: thanks to a combination of Time Mag's incompetence and No One's Personal Army suddenly cohering into one man's personal army, 4chan's moot ended up topping the list of names.
David Thorpe, writer for the Boston Phoenix and... wait for it... SomethingAwful, saw an opportunity too big to pass up when Wal-Mart announced (in conjunction with something called "Sheets Energy Strips") its plan to have Miami rapper Pitbull make a personal appearance at whichever Wal-Mart store could hoover up the most "Likes." Thorpe immediately mobilized his troops, (possibly with the help of Pitbull's Energy Strips) including other SomethingAwful contributors, in order to send the man of the hour to the most remote Walmart location in the US.'
Enter Boston Phoenix writer David Thorpe, a man so put off by celebrity marketing stunts that he rallied Web troops to"Help us help Wal-Mart exile Pitbull to Alaska."To his credit, Pitbull has taken this all in stride, including tweeting about purchasing bear repellent and putting together a video explaining how he would "go anywhere for his fans." To top it all off, he invited Thorpe along for the promotional visit.
"As of now, the Kodiak Walmart has over 22,000 new 'likes' on Facebook, putting it far ahead of any other Walmart in the nation - far ahead of Kodiak's actual population, in fact," Thorpe wrote.
By Pitbull's deadline, more than 70,000 users had liked the store, located on a southern isle of the Frontier State with a population of about 6,200.
At this point, it looks as if Thorpe will have to pay his own way, but he intends on making the trip.
In an email to The Associated Press, Thorpe said it's "very likely" he'll be in Kodiak. Thorpe said he had to "raise the funds to get to Kodiak on my own, since Pitbull's invitation doesn't include actually getting me there."Thorpe's only regret seems to be that Walmart will somehow spin his prank into a social media "win" for the company, something he deems to be "gross." And in a way, it is a win for Wal-Mart, albeit one it scored without lifting a finger. Thousands saw its Facebook pages and thousands more are watching Pitbull's promo spot. And now both Pitbull and Thorpe are off to a destination best known for being way the hell away from anything else... and being home to Walmart store #2711.
Thorpe said he doesn't really have anything against Pitbull, and instead saw this as a way "to disrupt a corporate social media campaign, since they really set themselves up for it."
Filed Under: alaska, david thorpe, internet, kodiak, pitbull, social media
Companies: walmart
Obama Talks Toxic Clouds And Runaway Trains, But The Real Cybersecurity Solution Is Still Simple And Obvious
from the and-what's-blocking-that-now? dept
Even as we're encouraged by the direction of the latest cybersecurity bill (with significant caveats), lots of folks have been asking from the beginning for two things: an end to "Hollywood-style" FUD claims of planes falling from the skies, and a clear statement on what existing laws make the kind of information sharing the government desires impossible today. President Barack Obama took to the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed pages today to explain why we need cybersecurity legislation... and unfortunately he failed on both accounts. The opening part is positively cinematic:Last month I convened an emergency meeting of my cabinet and top homeland security, intelligence and defense officials. Across the country trains had derailed, including one carrying industrial chemicals that exploded into a toxic cloud. Water treatment plants in several states had shut down, contaminating drinking water and causing Americans to fall ill.He goes on to point out that some of the things mentioned have "already happened," except that's not quite true. It is true that some hackers accessed systems they shouldn't have had access to, but it's not clear if they were ever able to actually do any damage. Here's Obama's summary of the details:
Our nation, it appeared, was under cyber attack. Unknown hackers, perhaps a world away, had inserted malicious software into the computer networks of private-sector companies that operate most of our transportation, water and other critical infrastructure systems.
Last year, a water plant in Texas disconnected its control system from the Internet after a hacker posted pictures of the facility's internal controls. More recently, hackers penetrated the networks of companies that operate our natural-gas pipelinesWhat's amusing is that the story in Texas came about because a hacker was trying to show that the feds were ignoring and downplaying threats to critical infrastructure. From the details, it looks like the system was vulnerable because of poor password choices, and the stupid decision to connect the system to the internet. So the fact is that "disconnect its control system from the Internet" is the solution. Not more laws. Meanwhile, the story about targeting natural-gas pipelines involved some basic social engineering (spear phishing) rather than any technical hackery. In both cases, the issue appears to be the same: critical infrastructure like that which controls the functioning of water treatment plants and gas pipelines shouldn't be connected to the internet.
But do we need a 211-page law to share information just to recognize that?
The bigger problem is that while the President's Op-Ed highlights how we want to avoid the cinematic story he tells at the beginning, where it fails is that it never explains why the kind of information sharing he's talking about is blocked today. Which rules and regulations are blocking that from happening? No one seems to want to say. Instead, we get legislation that just assumes there must be regulations blocking information sharing and wipes them all away.
We appreciate that Obama says that he'll veto any bill that doesn't include strong privacy and civil liberties protections, but we should never be passing legislation based on made up scary stories.
Filed Under: cybersecurity, internet, obama, privacy, regulations, risks, threats
US Now Supporting Ridiculous Broadcast Treaty; Suggests It Could Cover The Internet Too
from the more-ridiculousness dept
Every few years, news of a ridiculous "broadcast treaty" pops up. This is a treaty that would effectively create a brand new copyright-like right for broadcasters. So, for example, if NBC broadcast some public domain content, it could then lock that up because of its "broadcasting rights" over it, even though the content is in the public domain. Yeah. This isn't needed in any way, shape, or form. It's just a handout to the broadcasters at the expense of the public. There is no actual reason to support it. Usually these talks go nowhere. Last year, the idea popped up again, but basically everyone who wasn't a broadcaster came out against it, and it went nowhere. The US government has gone back and forth on this issue, but was generally seen as not being supportive of it... until now.Jamie Love has been reporting from the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meeting that the US has surprised some by shifting its policy to now support a broadcast treaty. Even more ridiculous? Shira Perlmutter, the USPTO's Administrator for Policy and External Affairs (and a known IP maximalist and former entertainment industry lobbyist) is suggesting that it should apply to the internet too. This makes absolutely no sense, no matter how you look at it. Copyright already exists for nearly all content being broadcast. Those copyright laws apply on the internet as well. Granting an additional new copyright-like right for broadcasters also is only going to make things even messier with even more content being locked up for no reason whatsoever. It'll also make it that much more difficult to actually do something (legally) with content, because you're now adding the number of permission slips you need to get signed (and the number of players you have to pay off). Why anyone would support it is beyond me.
You would hope that after SOPA and ACTA, that the US government would hold back on overreaches in IP expansionism, but apparently that's too much to ask for.
Filed Under: broadcast treaty, copyright, culture, internet, locking up, public domain, us
Meet The Internet Defense League (And Join It, Too)
from the defend-the-internet dept
A bunch of the folks who were instrumental in the SOPA/PIPA fight have been working together over the last few months to build The Internet Defense League, which is launching today. Techdirt is a founding member, along with a number of other organizations and sites, including Reddit, Mozilla, Cheezburger, EFF, Fark, Imgur and more. The process is being driven by the awesome folks at Fight for the Future, who were the ones behind the American Censorship Day effort during the SOPA fight. The launch is today, in part because today is also the day that the new Batman movie opens -- and part of the IDL's concept is that when the internet is at risk, it can shine a "cat signal" to alert the internet to jump in and do something:
Taking a page from Kickstarter, the IDL has set up various tiers to which you can donate to get your own personal mini-cat signal or a t-shirt or some other fun offerings.
Earlier this year, I wrote about the Hacking Society gathering, put on by Union Square Ventures. During that discussion, Clay Shirky brought up the idea of an "Internet Volunteer Fire Department" and Tiffiniy Cheng, from Fight for the Future, explained the IDL and how they were already working on it. You can watch that discussion to get a sense of the thinking behind this effort:
Filed Under: defense, free speech, internet, openness
Companies: cheezburger, eff, fark, imgur, internet defense league, mozilla, reddit
Announcing The Declaration Of Internet Freedom
from the join-the-discussion dept
A whole bunch of organizations and individuals are getting together today to launch the beginning of a process, the creation of an Internet Declaration of Freedom. We've seen how the internet has been under attack from various directions, and we recognize that it's time to make that stop. The internet is an incredible platform that we want to grow and to thrive, and thus, a very large coalition got together to produce the following document as a starting point, hoping to kick off a much larger discussion which we hope you'll join in.We've set up our own Step2 discussion page where you can vote on the principles, discuss them, add your own ideas... whatever you'd like. You can, of course, also discuss them below in the comments. There are a number of other organizations setting up pages as well. The folks at Free Press have put up a Declaration of Internet Freedom site that lists out many of the organizations and individuals who were involved in putting this together and who are supporting the effort. There's also a subreddit and a Cheezburger page. Lots of other groups have set up action pages where you can take part as well, including EFF, Access and Free Press.
We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. But to keep the Internet free and open, we must promote these principles in every country, every industry and every community. And we believe that these freedoms will bring about more creativity, more innovation and a better society.
We are joining an international movement to defend our freedoms because we believe that they are worth fighting for.
Let’s discuss these principles — agree or disagree with them, debate them, translate them, make them your own and broaden the discussion with your community — as only the Internet can make possible.
Join us in keeping the Internet free and open.
Embed This:
<a href="https://www.techdirt.com/netdeclaration"><img src="http://cdn.techdirt.com/i/net-declaration.png" title="Declaration of Internet Freedom" /></a>
In case you can't read the graphic, here's the text version:
Declaration of Internet Freedom We stand for a free and open Internet.
We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles:
Expression: Don't censor the Internet.
Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.
Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.
Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users' actions.
Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.
Filed Under: access, declaration, free speech, freedom, innovation, internet, internet declaration of freedom, openness, privacy
Help To Save The World: Go Online
from the easy-when-you-know-how dept
Too often we read that the Internet is making us stupid or fat, or destroying the "fabric of society." Indeed, judging by the all the digital jeremiads it's a wonder that anybody dares to use it at all, since it's clearly irredeemably bad in every way. So it's refreshing to come across an upbeat piece from Lauren Weinstein with the inspiring title "How the Internet Can Save the World." His basic point is this:
When people have the easy and inexpensive means to communicate directly, especially in informal settings and about the everyday aspects of life, they usually discover that they have much more in common than they perhaps expected. This seems true whether we're using written communications, or audio and video links like Skype or Google+ Hangouts -- working our way ever closer toward a full "virtual presence" that makes our common humanity impossible to ignore.
In other words, far from always isolating us, or bringing out the worst, the Internet also has the power to unite us and bring out the best. That's another reason why we need to worry when governments or interest groups try to control the Internet, and dictate what we can and cannot say and do on it: it's not just an assault on our freedoms, it's also an obstacle to greater understanding between people and nations.
Weinstein concludes:
I spend much of my time considering the ways in which the wonders of the Internet could be wrecked, or blocked, or subverted. But it's also important that we consider the vast potential the Net holds for improving the world in the most relevant and important of ways.
It's a post that makes you glad you use the Internet, not guilty, as the pundits of pessimism would have us feel. Read the whole thing -- and then to go back to what you were doing before: helping to save the world by communicating with others online.
Not just in terms of science and research, though those are great. Not just in regard to commerce and the global economy, though these are crucial.
But also in terms of the basic fact of fundamental human communications, of being able to as freely and openly as possible discuss with other mere mortals around the planet the nature of our lives, hopes and dreams, our loves, and yes, our fears as well.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Filed Under: internet, lauren weinstein
Dear Ari Emanuel: We're All Meeting On The Internet, Come Join Us
from the and-living-and-working-here-too dept
We recently posted about Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel's ridiculous demands that Google somehow find the magic "stop piracy" button. That story is turning into something much more interesting. The next day, at the same conference, a Google exec, Susan Wojcicki, pointed out the obvious: that Emanuel doesn't know what he's talking about (she used a more diplomatic phrase, noting that he was "misinformed").Emanuel has since shot back that he's not at all misinformed about the need for the geeks in Northern California to solve his problems:
I am misinformed about a lot — just ask my wife — but I’m not misinformed about this: One of our last remaining dominant American exports is our creativity, no matter how you define it, either as a story or as an algorithm. There is equal genius behind companies like Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google as there is behind artists who create stories that resonate around the world. We need to protect America’s intellectual property and Hollywood can’t do it on its own. I understand that the onus is not entirely Google’s, but let’s stop talking at each other and get in a room with all parties to figure this out. To be clear, I don’t want to rehash SOPA as we can all agree that was a reflection of Southern California’s arrogance, and let’s also not pretend that we’re working together on this issue because we have Youtube channels together. This is a larger conversation. It’s time for Hollywood, our government and Silicon Valley to step up and collectively resolve this problem. Let me know where and when and I’ll be there.The problem, of course, is that his very premise is wrong. He's taking the position that we need to "protect" first, rather than just fix our business models. This is a very mercantilist viewpoint: where protectionism beats innovation. But we've got centuries of economic proof that that's not how you evolve and it's not how you innovate and compete. What you do is you figure out ways to add value and to embrace new business models. Any effort that starts from the default position that what we need is more "protection" rather than greater innovation is doomed to fail -- because that innovation is an unstoppable train, and the "protection" aspect doesn't work. So if you don't focus on the innovation, then someone else will, and you'll have wasted all your time, effort and money on a "solution" that simply drives your business somewhere else. To the place that has focused on innovation.
Ari
But, even worse, is his arrogance in thinking that this is a problem that requires "Hollywood, our government and Silicon Valley to step up and collectively resolve this problem." This is the same thing we've been hearing for months out of Chris Dodd and the Hollywood crew: it's time to get back into the backroom and craft "a deal." That's how they think, but it completely misses the point. This isn't about crafting a backroom deal, it's about recognizing the power of the internet, and the importance of the internet to people.
Every time a Chris Dodd or an Ari Emaneuel suggests a backroom deal between Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the government, he leaves out the people who actually matter: all of us, out here, on the internet.
And, to that point, if he wants to know "where" this larger conversation is happening: it's right here. On the internet. It's on news sites and social media sites. It's on Reddit and Twitter and Facebook. It's here on Techdirt and lots of other blogs. We live on the internet and this conversation has been happening for a decade. Ari and his buddies have always been welcome to join, so it's a bit disingenuous for him to suggest that he'll "be there" when we tell him where "the meeting" is. It's here. It's going on all around you and you've always been welcome to join. But you don't. And, no, I won't even get into the irony of him demanding a "meeting" when Hollywood did absolutely everything to keep the rest of the world out of the backroom meetings that led to SOPA.
Joshua Topolsky, the editor in chief of The Verge -- who challenged Emanuel, and was rudely told to "go sit down" and had Emanuel ask "where do you work?" -- has written his own response, in which he tells Emanuel he works on the internet:
What Ari seems to forget, and what maybe politicians and the film and TV industry seem to forget is the last time piracy was a flashpoint between the entertainment and tech industries, the problem was not solved by sledgehammer legislation. Or takedowns. Or yelling. It was solved by the music industry accepting that their old model was broken, and technologists figuring out a new way to do business. And that gets to the core of this problem for Ari. We didn't go back to the way things were after the RIAA sued college students — the industry changed.I'd argue it goes even further than that. We don't just work on the internet. We live and breathe the internet. It is our identity. Emanuel looks at the internet, and he doesn't get it. To him, it's just a version of television that doesn't pay as well, so that's not interesting. In his talk, he repeatedly demanded a business model that pays as well as TV. That's not how this works. Disruptive innovation doesn't wait until you go back and provide the legacy players with a business model that pays just as well as the old business model. That's not disruption. Disruption works because the legacy players are too shortsighted to see the trend lines, and so infatuated with their fat profits that they don't recognize the potential of the new mediums, and only seek to regulate against them becoming too pesky. The train companies pushed for legislation requiring all automobiles be preceded by a person walking on the road waving red flags.
He doesn't want to change his business model, and he will do anything he can to protect it — including altering the basic functionality of the internet. Pirating and Apple's resulting rise in the music business changed that business forever... and diminished its financial footprint. Entrenched companies that owned every part of the food chain suddenly discovered they were just another cog in a big wheel.
Ari doesn't want that anymore than the music industry wanted it, or traditional media wanted it. Ned Ludd and his machine wreckers didn't like change either.
But there is one simple truth that I really believe in, in life or in business: adapt or die.
You want to know where I work Ari? I work on the internet. Welcome aboard.
Emanuel is asking for everyone to come up with the next version of red flag laws for the internet. That's not how this works.
If he wanted a real conversation, it wouldn't be focused on the parameters of how do we set up protectionist, mercantilist barriers. It would be on how do we create more value and then monetize that value. And those conversations are happening all the time, all over the internet. He's welcome to join. He's always been welcome to join. But it requires doing a little actual working and living on the internet.
Filed Under: ari emanuel, copyright, innovation, internet, piracy, protection
Companies: google, william morris
Tell The UN To Keep Its Hands Off The People's Internet
from the the-internet-belongs-to-us dept
Back in February, we wrote up a warning to "the internet as we know it" as the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) was looking to take over control of the internet, mainly at the behest of countries like Russia and China who were seeking a "more controlled" internet, rather than the very open internet we have today. The major concern was that almost no one in the US seemed to care about this or be paying much attention to it. The February call to action may not have done much, but the situation has certainly changed in the last couple of weeks.Last week, the father of the internet, Vint Cerf, once again raised the alarm in both a NY Times op-ed and in a keynote speech at the Freedom to Connect (F2C) conference:
Last June, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated the goal of Russia and its allies as “establishing international control over the Internet” through the I.T.U. And in September 2011, China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan submitted a proposal for an “International Code of Conduct for Information Security” to the U.N. General Assembly, with the goal of establishing government-led “international norms and rules standardizing the behavior of countries concerning information and cyberspace.”Since then, the story has been getting much more attention in a variety of arenas, with plenty of other mainstream publications warning people about how bad this could be. Congress got into the act too (in a good way), holding hearings on the matter this week, with a near unanimous position that a UN/ITU takeover of the internet would be a very, very bad thing.
Word of a few other proposals from inside the I.T.U. have surfaced. Several authoritarian regimes reportedly would ban anonymity from the Web, which would make it easier to find and arrest dissidents. Others have suggested moving the privately run system that manages domain names and Internet addresses to the United Nations.
Such proposals raise the prospect of policies that enable government controls but greatly diminish the “permissionless innovation” that underlies extraordinary Internet-based economic growth to say nothing of trampling human rights.
It would guarantee moving the internet towards a model of top-down control, rather than bottom up innovation. It would give governments much more say in controlling the internet, unlike the hands-off system we have now, where no government truly has full regulatory control over the internet. It would almost certainly lead to more global restriction on the internet, including serious potential impact on aspects of free expression and anonymous speech. It might also make the internet much more expensive, as the whole ITU setup is about protecting old national telco monopolies, and many would see this as an opportunity to try to put tollbooths on internet data.
The ITU is holding a meeting in December in Dubai about all of this, and it appears that US officials are finally waking up to why this is a true threat to the open internet.
But it needs to go beyond that. The positioning of this discussion from ITU supporters is that the US government has "too much control" over the internet today. And one could argue that's true at the margins, though it's an exaggeration. For the most part the US government does not have much ability to control the internet directly. Now, I think plenty of people agree that the setup of ICANN and IETF are hardly ideal. In fact, they've got significant problems. But moving from that setup to one where the ITU is in charge would be a massive step backwards.
And, certainly, there is significant irony in the fact that Congress is suddenly acting so concerned about fundamental attacks on an open internet -- when many of the same officials were more than happy to toss out key principles of an open and free internet in the past few months with SOPA/PIPA/CISPA/etc. But, in this case, worrying about political consistency is a lot less important than stopping the ITU proposal from going forward.
When the US government started seizing domains, there was significant criticism of ICANN and calls for a more decentralized solution that no one could control. The move towards ITU oversight is a move in the opposite direction. It would make things significantly worse and not better.
For those in the US, we need to speak up and keep the pressure on our elected officials to fight this move in the ITU. While they're saying the right things now, we need to be vigilant and ensure it continues. Trust me, the "irony" of their own attacks on internet freedom and openness have not gone unnoticed by supporters of this ITU takeover plan. Expect them to offer "deals" to the US, by which the ITU gets control over the internet, in exchange for allowing the US to use that process to move forward with efforts to censor the internet for copyright reasons, as well as to get better backdoors to data for snooping.
For those outside of the US, it's also time to speak up. Don't fall for the easy story that this is just about wresting the control from US interests. If you believe in the value of a free and open internet, the ITU is not the answer. You, too, will inevitably be significantly worse off with what results.
The folks over at Access have put together a petition to tell the UN that the internet belongs to us, the people, not to the UN or the governments of the world. While the UN is not as subject to public opinion, if the world speaks out loudly enough against this effort to capture and control the internet, it won't be able to move forward. But people have to speak out to make this happen.
Filed Under: china, cispa, internet, itu, pipa, russia, sopa, united nations, vint cerf
Companies: icann
