NET NEUTRALITY
Commission Impossible: How and why the FCC created net neutrality
Devin Coldewey - May 30, 2017
Net neutrality is viewed by many as a bright spot in the otherwise rather dim and confused tech policies of the United States, and its enemies are subject to the harshest disdain. How, many ask, could anyone oppose such a simple, common-sense measure, except out of ignorance, avarice or both?
Net Neutrality Timeline: 10 Events That Led to Dec. 14 FCC Meeting
Paige Leskin - November 26, 2017
Net neutrality is center-stage as the Trump administration FCC eyes its removal, but this isn’t the first time the war over internet service has waged loudly and publicly.
What started as a way to connect people and spread information has become an industry that’s tightly regulated to ensure speed and access isn’t sacrificed for corporate financial interests. Here are some of the events that have led to where we are in net neutrality today:
How the FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Breaks With 50 Years of History
Tim Wu - December 06, 2017
Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai has proposed repealing longstanding net neutrality rules. Only he has a different phrase for them: “The Obama administration’s heavy-handed regulations.” Wait a second: Did Obama really invent net neutrality? Even in a country with famously short attention spans, at least some people might have noticed that net neutrality has been around longer than that. So where did net neutrality come from? How did it get started?
FCC votes to repeal net neutrality rules
Harper Neidig - December 14, 2017
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has voted to repeal its landmark net neutrality protections, capping off a months-long campaign by the agency’s Republicans to deregulate the broadband industry.
The FCC voted 3-2 along party lines Thursday to scrap its 2015 Open Internet Order as Democratic lawmakers and dozens of activists protested outside.
The US net neutrality fight affects the whole world
Vlad Savov - November 23, 2017
The United States is a nation quarreling with itself right now. Most of the country’s population wants to keep the internet an equitable and free place, embracing net neutrality rules as a necessary guardian against corporate overreach. But the current political administration seems hellbent on dismantling net neutrality and handing internet service providers the freedom to mold, shape, manipulate, and price internet access in whatever fashion they like. The downsides to this regulatory repeal are too numerous and appalling to list, but you don’t have to agree that it’s a bad idea to see something else important about it: whatever the American authorities do with respect to the internet will have major repercussions for the rest of the world as well.
On Internet Regulation, The FCC Goes Back To The Future
Larry Downes - March 12, 2018
Exactly two years ago, I predicted in a lengthy post that eight major Internet policy initiatives undertaken by the FCC under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler would fall victim, sooner rather than later, to legal and political challenges.
Inventor of internet: 'Regulate social media companies!'
Deutsche Welle - March 03, 2018
The inventor of the worldwide web has argued that some internet platforms and social media firms are becoming too powerful. Tim Berners-Lee said they were in a position to "weaponize the internet at scale."
digital data mining
Senate overturns FCC rules on web data mining
Eric DuVall - March 23, 2017
March 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to block regulations by the Federal Communications Commission that prohibited Internet service providers from collecting and selling customers' web usage data.
The vote was 50-48, largely along party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed.
everything you need to know about congress' decision to expose your data to internet providers
Devin Coldewey - March 29, 2017
A joint resolution has just been passed by both houses of Congress and all but signed by the president, reversing the Broadband Privacy Rule, a piece of regulation from the FCC that made some inconvenient changes to the ways internet providers can collect and sell the data they collect on consumers. But what exactly can they do now that they couldn’t last week?
How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions
Matthew Rosenberg, Nicholas Confessore, and Carole Cadwalladr - March 17, 2018
LONDON — As the upstart voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica prepared to wade into the 2014 American midterm elections, it had a problem.
With Trump's election and arguments over neo-Nazi websites, the tech industry consensus against internet regulation is crumbling
Becky Peterson - September 16, 2017
Matthew Prince isn't shying away from the internet censorship debate.
That was clear this week when the CEO of Cloudflare hosted the third annual Internet Summit at his company's San Francisco headquarters. Instead of just concentrating on technology or business issues, several of the sessions at the conference focused on the philosophical concern with which the tech industry has been wrestling lately — how and when the internet should be regulated.
Facebook critics want regulation, investigation after data misuse
David Ingram - March 17, 2018
Facebook Inc faced new calls for regulation from within U.S. Congress and was hit with questions about personal data safeguards on Saturday after reports a political consultant gained inappropriate access to 50 million users’ data starting in 2014.
Knowledge and technology flows in priority domains within the private sector and between the public and private sectors - Study
Directorate - General for Research and Innovation - August 02, 2017
With the amount of digital data created and stored increasing day upon day, the opportunities offered by big data — paired with the development of novel data management, storage and analysis tools — are almost endless and promise to revolutionise many sectors. In fact, it is quite clear from the scientific literature that most of the gains to be made from the use of data mining are to come from the exploitation of big data.
Regulating big data: Rules for the new tools
K.N.C - May 7th, 2014
WHEN the internet was gathering steam in the mid 1990s, White House policy wonks got together under President Clinton’s nerdy aide, Ira Magaziner, to find ways to support it. Principles emerged like the "tax free internet" (ie, no punishing tariffs on ecommerce). Today, with big data in the headlines, a new gaggle of policy geeks have put forward a plan to harness technology while preserving privacy.
global
Rwanda requires candidates to have online messages approved
Article 19 - June 05, 2017
ARTICLE 19 is concerned by a new regulation by Rwanda's National Electoral Commission (NEC) requiring all candidates in August's presidential elections to seek approval for campaign messages they plan to post online. The regulation allows the NEC to censor any campaign message it disagrees with, or which is critical of the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) party, and is hugely restrictive of political speech during the election period.
Manipulating Social Media to Undermine Democracy
Freedom House - November 2017
Governments around the world have dramatically increased their efforts to manipulate information on social media over the past year. The Chinese and Russian regimes pioneered the use of surreptitious methods to distort online discussions and suppress dissent more than a decade ago, but the practice has since gone global. Such state-led interventions present a major threat to the notion of the internet as a liberating technology.