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FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
by gianluca May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted in favor of advancing a proposal that could dramatically reshape the way consumers experience the Internet, opening the possibility of Internet service providers charging Web sites for higher-quality delivery of their content to American consumers. The plan, approved in a three-to-two vote along party lines, could unleash a new economy on the Web where an Internet service provider such as Verizon would charge a Web site such as Netflix for the guarantee of flawless video streaming. The proposal is not a final rule, but the vote on Thursday is a significant step forward on a controversial idea <http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/net-neutrality-issue-puts…> that has invited fierce opposition from consumer advocates, Silicon Valley heavyweights, and Democratic lawmakers. The FCC will now open the proposal to a total 120 days of public comment. Final rules, aimed for the end of the year, could be rewritten after the agency reviews the public comments. After weeks of public outcry over the proposal, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the agency would not allow for unfair, or "commercially unreasonable," business practices. He wouldn't accept, for instance, practices that leave a consumer with slower downloads of some Web sites than what the consumer paid for from their Internet service provider. [...] continua qui http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/15/fcc-approves-p…

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Fwd: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
by bernardo parrella May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 00:50:16 -0400 From: Free Software Foundation <info(a)fsf.org> Reply-To: To: /You can read this post online at https://u.fsf.org/xk./ FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Wednesday, May 14th, 2014 — In response to Mozilla's announcement that it is reluctantly adopting DRM in its Firefox Web browser, Free Software Foundation executive director John Sullivan made the following statement: "Only a week after the International Day Against DRM <https://defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm/>, Mozilla has announced that it will partner with proprietary software company Adobe to implement support for Web-based Digital Restrictions Management <https://defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management> (DRM) in its Firefox browser, using Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). The Free Software Foundation is deeply disappointed in Mozilla's announcement. The decision compromises important principles in order to alleviate misguided fears about loss of browser marketshare. It allies Mozilla with a company hostile to the free software movement and to Mozilla's own fundamental ideals. Although Mozilla will not directly ship Adobe's proprietary DRM plugin, it will, as an official feature, encourage Firefox users to install the plugin from Adobe when presented with media that requests DRM. We agree with Cory Doctorow that there is no meaningful distinction between 'installing DRM' and 'installing code that installs DRM.' We recognize that Mozilla is doing this reluctantly, and we trust these words coming from Mozilla much more than we do when they come from Microsoft or Amazon. At the same time, nearly everyone who implements DRM says they are forced to do it, and this lack of accountability is how the practice sustains itself. Mozilla's announcement today unfortunately puts it -- in this regard -- in the same category as its proprietary competitors. Unlike those proprietary competitors, Mozilla is going to great lengths to reduce some of the specific harms of DRM by attempting to 'sandbox' the plugin. But this approach cannot solve the fundamental ethical problems with proprietary software, or the issues that inevitably arise when proprietary software is installed <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/proprietary.html> on a user's computer. In the announcement <https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challenge-of-serving-u…>, Mitchell Baker asserts that Mozilla's hands were tied. But she then goes on to actively praise Adobe's "value" and suggests that there is some kind of necessary balance between DRM and user freedom. There is nothing necessary about DRM, and to hear Mozilla praising Adobe -- the company who has been and continues to be a vicious opponent of the free software movement and the free Web -- is shocking. With this partnership in place, we worry about Mozilla's ability and willingness to criticize Adobe's practices going forward. We understand that Mozilla is afraid of losing users. Cory Doctorow points out <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/firefox-closed-source-drm…> that they have produced no evidence to substantiate this fear or made any effort to study the situation. More importantly, popularity is not an end in itself. This is especially true for the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit with an ethical mission. In the past, Mozilla has distinguished itself and achieved success by protecting the freedom of its users and explaining the importance of that freedom: including publishing Firefox's source code, allowing others to make modifications to it, and sticking to Web standards in the face of attempts to impose proprietary extensions. Today's decision turns that calculus on its head, devoting Mozilla resources to delivering users to Adobe and hostile media distributors. In the process, Firefox is losing the identity which set it apart from its proprietary competitors -- Internet Explorer and Chrome -- both of which are implementing EME in an even worse fashion. Undoubtedly, some number of users just want restricted media like Netflix to work in Firefox, and they will be upset if it doesn't. This is unsurprising, since the majority of the world is not yet familiar with the ethical issues surrounding proprietary software. This debate was, and is, a high-profile opportunity to introduce these concepts to users and ask them to stand together in some tough decisions. To see Mozilla compromise without making any public effort to rally users against this supposed "forced choice" is doubly disappointing. They should reverse this decision. But whether they do or do not, we call on them to join us by devoting as many of their extensive resources to permanently eliminating DRM as they are now devoting to supporting it. The FSF will have more to say and do on this in the coming days. For now, users who are concerned about this issue should: * *Write to Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal and let him know that you oppose DRM <mailto:agal@mozilla.com>*. Mozilla made this decision in a misguided appeal to its userbase; it needs to hear in clear and reasoned terms from the users who feel this as a betrayal. Ask Mozilla what it is going to do to actually solve the DRM problem that has created this false forced choice. * *Join our effort to stop EME approval <https://defectivebydesign.org/no-drm-in-html5> at the W3C*. While today's announcement makes it even more obvious that W3C rejection of EME will not stop its implementation, it also makes it clear that W3C can fearlessly reject EME to send a message that DRM is /not/ a part of the vision of a free Web. * *Use a version of Firefox without the EME code*: Since its source code is available under a license allowing anyone to modify and redistribute it under a different name, we expect versions without EME to be made available, and you should use those instead. We will list them in the Free Software Directory <https://directory.fsf.org>. * *Donate to support the work of the Free Software Foundation <https://u.fsf.org/xi> and our Defective by Design <https://u.fsf.org/xh> campaign to actually end DRM.* Until it's completely gone, Mozilla and others will be constantly tempted to capitulate, and users will be pressured to continue using some proprietary software. If not us, give to another group fighting against digital restrictions." References * What is DRM? <https://defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management> * https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challenge-of-serving-u… * https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-mission-and-w3c-eme/ * https://defectivebydesign.org/dbd-condemns-drm-in-html * https://fsf.org/news/coalition-against-drm-in-html * https://defectivebydesign.org/oscar-awarded-w3c-in-the-hollyweb Media Contact John Sullivan Executive Director Free Software Foundation +1 (617) 542 5942 campaigns(a)fsf.org <mailto:campaigns@fsf.org> About the Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at https://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA. -- Follow us on GNU social <https://status.fsf.org/fsf> | Subscribe to our blogs via RSS <https://fsf.org/blogs/RSS> | Join us as an associate member <https://www.fsf.org/jf> Sent from the Free Software Foundation, 51 Franklin Street Fifth Floor Boston, Massachusetts 02110-1335 United States Unsubscribe <https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/mailing/unsubscribe?reset=1&jid=130068&qid=7806…> from this mailing list. Stop all email <https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/mailing/optout?reset=1&jid=130068&qid=7806059&h…> from the Free Software Foundation, including Defective by Design, and the Free Software Supporter newsletter.

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Slate: "Yes, Your Internet Is Getting Slower"
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014

*Yes, Your Internet Is Getting Slower */Your provider likes it that way. And the government doesn't care./ By David Auerbach David Auerbach is a writer and software engineer based in New York. His website is http://davidauerba.ch. The ongoing battle over broadband network neutrality is confusing, and the stakes for consumers and businesses are high. What's the worst that can happen if network neutrality doesn't prevail? Yes, you will pay more for worse service, but just how bad will it get? To answer that complicated question, there's one easy analogy available: the California energy crisis of 2000. In the late 1990s, the deregulation of the California utilities---which forced them to sell off their power supplies to independent electricity wholesalers---proved to be a disaster. The magic hand of the market was supposed to bring down energy fees for all. What happened instead was that "efficient markets" turned out to be nothing of the sort. In 2000, market manipulation, artificial scarcity created by shutting down power plants to reduce supply, and deliberately inferior service resulted in blackouts and brownouts, an 800 percent rise in energy prices, and lucrative profiteering by Enron. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric went bankrupt, and the whole crisis cost somewhere upward of $40 billion. Electricity wholesalers such as Enron are akin to Internet service providers such as Time Warner and Comcast in important ways. The electricity wholesalers had incentives to starve the energy market in order to extract greater fees from utilities and consumers. ISPs have similar incentives to manipulate their bandwidth in order to extract fees from websites (such as Netflix and YouTube), as well as not build out any infrastructure that would make bandwidth cheaper or make your Internet faster. Many customers are already living with a virtual Internet brownout. This is, in fact, what is already happening. Ars Technica reports that gigabit broadband could easily become a reality, but the ISPs have no interest in pursuing that path. Instead, ISPs like Time Warner repeatedly try to switch to capped bandwidth plans, despite widespread customer opposition to what is basically price gouging. In the face of actual competition, they wouldn't dare. [...] Continua qui: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/05/network_neutral…

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Zittrain: "Don’t Force Google to ‘Forget’"
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014

*Don’t Force Google to ‘Forget’* By JONATHAN ZITTRAIN MAY 14, 2014 CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — THE European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that Europeans have a limited “right to be forgotten” by search engines like Google. According to the ruling, an individual can compel Google to remove certain reputation-harming search results that are generated by Googling the individual’s name. The court is trying to address an important problem — namely, the Internet’s ability to preserve indefinitely all its information about you, no matter how unfortunate or misleading — but it has devised a poor solution. The court’s decision is both too broad and curiously narrow. It is too broad in that it allows individuals to impede access to facts about themselves found in public documents. This is a form of censorship, one that would most likely be unconstitutional if attempted in the United States. Moreover, the test for removal that search engines are expected to use is so vague — search results are to be excluded if they are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” — that search engines are likely to err on the safe side and accede to most requests. [...] Continua qui: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/opinion/dont-force-google-to-forget.html

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Call for Papers, Simposio finale progetto ADAM (2-3 ottobre 2014, Parigi) - Nuova scadenza abstract: 5 giugno
by Francesca Musiani May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014

Un reminder... e un annuncio: la scadenza per proporre un abstract è stata posticipata al 5 giugno. Carissimi saluti Francesca > > [image: Images intégrées 1] > > *Call for Papers, Final Symposium of the ADAM project** - **October 2-3, > 2014, MINES ParisTech (Paris, France)* > > > > *« Reclaiming the Internet » with distributed architectures:** rights, > technologies, practices, innovation* > > > > The research program ADAM (Distributed Architectures and Multimedia > Applications, adam.hypotheses.org) studies the technical, political, > social, socio-cultural and legal implications of distributed network > architectures. We invite paper proposals for the ADAM final symposium, in > French and/or English, in the form of a 500 to 800 word abstract. > > > Read the full Call for Papers here: http://adam.hypotheses.org/1939 > > > -- > > > *Appel à communications pour le colloque final du projet ADAM* 2-3 > octobre 2014, MINES ParisTech > > > > *Architectures distribuées et réappropriations de l’Internet :** droits, > techniques, usages, innovation* > > > > Le programme de recherche *ADAM – Architecture distribuée et applications > multimédias *(adam.hypotheses.org) étudie les implications techniques, > politiques, sociales, socio-culturelles et légales des architectures de > réseau distribuées. Nous sollicitons des propositions de communication > pour le colloque final du projet, en français et/ou en anglais, sous la > forme d’un résumé de 500-800 mots. > > > Lisez l'appel à communications dans son intégralité: > http://adam.hypotheses.org/1937 > > > > *ADAM Project Team and Program Committee/* > > *Equipe du projet ADAM et comité de programme* > > > Maya Bacache, Département SES, Télécom ParisTech > > Danièle Bourcier, CERSA, CNRS > > Primavera De Filippi, CERSA, CNRS > > Isabelle Demeure, INFRES, Télécom ParisTech > > Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, ISCC, CNRS > > Annie Gentès, CoDesign Lab, Télécom ParisTech > > François Huguet, CoDesign Lab, Télécom ParisTech > > Alexandre Mallard, CSI, MINES ParisTech > > Cécile Méadel, CSI, MINES ParisTech > > Francesca Musiani, CSI, MINES ParisTech > > > > > -- Francesca Musiani Postdoctoral researcher Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation <http://www.csi.mines-paristech.fr/> MINES ParisTech 60, Boulevard Saint-Michel 75272 Paris Cedex 06, France Co-Chair, ESN-IAMCR <http://iamcr.org/s-wg/cctmc/esn> | Outreach officer, GigaNet <http://giga-net.org> Projet ANR ADAM - Architectures distribuées et applications multimédias<http://adam.hypotheses.org/> Internet Policy Review @ HIIG Berlin <http://policyreview.info/> Personal website <http://www.csi.mines-paristech.fr/People/musiani/> | Twitter <https://twitter.com/franmusiani>

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il ruolo di Google e il diritto
by Simone Aliprandi May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014

Condivido qualche mia riflessione sul ruolo di Google come intermediario dell'informazione, alla luce di recenti sentenze in materia di privacy e diritto all'oblio. Quanto costa la nostra privacy? Google è semplice fornitore di un servizio asettico rispetto ai contenuti o è un sotterraneo manovratore delle dinamice del web? http://aliprandi.blogspot.com/2014/05/chi-cerca-tratta-google-privacy.html Un cordiale saluto. -- Simone Aliprandi - http://www.aliprandi.org | http://www.array.eu

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Re: [nexa] 1a cosa sulla sentenza ECJ
by Philippe Aigrain May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014

In La Quadrature du Net, we are still analyzing the decision, but it is our impression that : - The analysis on which the Court bases its decision is at best ambiguous, and probably misled. The fact that Google processes data does not allow the Court to disregard the fact that Google does not create nor collect from users the data to which its links give access (the real data that Google collects in DP sense are the user queries). This issue is made a bit complex by the fact that search engine results provide a kind of crossing by juxtaposition of various results. - As mentioned by several on this list, attributing to Google (or any other similar operator) the task to balance the right to information and communication with the right to privacy or data protection assigns to a private party a prerogative of the judiciary. - Finally, the guidance provided by the Court to Google on how to do it and the scope of cases where demands can be formulated to withdraw links is very challengeable : the public interest in information cannot be restricted to information on the rich, powerful or famous, and the idea that "no longer valid information" should be withdrawn from references (links are references) is very worrying. In short, it seems to me that the Court reasoned under influence of emotion and context, rather than with a true rational analysis. But this needs to be confirmed by a more in-depth analysis of the decision. Philippe Aigrain

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Il diritto nella rete, diritti, vincoli e opportunità [segnalazione]
by Guido Scorza May 13, 2014

May 13, 2014

Carissimi, mi permetto di segnalare il confronto - credo di interesse per molti in lista - in programma domani, a Roma tra Stefano Rodotà ed Antonio Nicita (agcom) che mi toccherà immeritatamente di moderare con gli interventi di Antonio Palmieri, Stefano Quintarelli e Paolo Gentiloni e le conclusioni del sottosegretario Giacomelli. Qui il programma completo e l'invito: http://www.isimm.it/images/stories/archivio/14.05.14_il%20mondo%20nella%20r… Buona serata, gs

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1a cosa sulla sentenza ECJ
by Stefano Quintarelli May 13, 2014

May 13, 2014

La Corte di Giustizia dell’Unione Europea stabilisce che, nel caso in cui, a seguito di una ricerca effettuata a partire dal nome di una persona, l’elenco di risultati mostri un link verso una pagina web che contiene informazioni sulla persona in questione, questa può rivolgersi direttamente al gestore oppure, qualora questi non dia seguito alla sua domanda, adire le autorità competenti per ottenere, in presenza di determinate condizioni, la soppressione di tale link dall’elenco di risultati. ... La Corte giudica inoltre che il gestore «estrae», «registra» e «organizza» tali dati nell’ambito dei suoi programmi di indicizzazione, prima di «conservarli» nei suoi server e, eventualmente, di «comunicarli» e di «metterli a disposizione» dei propri utenti sotto forma di elenchi di risultati. Tali operazioni, contemplate in maniera esplicita e incondizionata dalla direttiva, devono essere qualificate come «trattamento», indipendentemente dal fatto che il gestore del motore di ricerca applichi le medesime operazioni anche ad altri tipi di informazioni diverse dai dati personali. mi-vi chiedo quali sono le "dtereminate condizioni" per far sopprimere i link ? vuol dire che notizie tipo queste possono sparire ? http://is.gd/lu4ebI -- meet me at: http://me.quintarelli.it blog: http://blog.quintarelli.it web clips: http://clips.quintarelli.it tumblr: http://stefanoquintarelli.tumblr.com

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2a cosa sulla sentenza della ECJ
by Stefano Quintarelli May 13, 2014

May 13, 2014

domanda: questa potrebbe avere risvolti in materia di imposizione fiscale ? Quanto all’ambito di applicazione territoriale della direttiva, la Corte osserva che Google Spain costituisce una filiale di Google Inc. nel territorio spagnolo e, pertanto, uno stabilimento ai sensi della direttiva. La Corte respinge l’argomento secondo cui il trattamento di dati personali da parte di Google Search non viene effettuato nel contesto delle attività di tale stabilimento in Spagna. La Corte considera al riguardo che, quando dati siffatti vengono trattati per le esigenze di un motore di ricerca gestito da un’impresa che, sebbene situata in uno Stato terzo, dispone di uno stabilimento in uno Stato membro, il trattamento viene effettuato “nel contesto delle attività” di tale stabilimento, ai sensi della direttiva, qualora quest’ultimo sia destinato ad assicurare, nello Stato membro in questione, la promozione e la vendita degli spazi pubblicitari proposti sul motore di ricerca al fine di rendere redditizio il servizio offerto da quest’ultimo -- meet me at: http://me.quintarelli.it blog: http://blog.quintarelli.it web clips: http://clips.quintarelli.it tumblr: http://stefanoquintarelli.tumblr.com

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