Last week on the Internet: internet as public utility, net neutrality victory, Australia’s Copyright Alert System, IoT and privacy, Russia’s surveillance state

Net Neutrality

• The Internet as Public Utility is a big breakthrough for our times and for the future. This is what last week’s net neutrality means. But even so, the big telecom companies and the republicans sare still fighting both in court and in designing new laws to overwrite FCC’s decision to keep Net Neutrality.

• Long Before Net Neutrality is a little bit of history on “common carriers” in US.

• Obama’s thank you note to Redditors.

• In Europe the discussions on Net Neutrality are still on going, with telecom companies pushing for “pragmatism” and “flexibility” from the regulators and the political youth organizations demanding strict net neutrality rules. The discussions are expected to be concluded at the end of this spring.

Copyright

• The one copyright issue everyone should agree on is that the Copyright laws should be adapted to the 21^st Century.

• Copyright monopolist gone insane on sending “takedown notices” to everybody and lying about holding copyrights. That it’s still not a crime…

• A new study has revealed that just three companies are responsible for 93% of all lawsuits against anonymous file-sharers.

• After years of lobbying from Hollywood, the White House wants to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement containing the most restrictive interpretation of U.S. policy to become the international “norm”.

• In Australia a proposed Copyright Alert System would allow rightsholders to spy on users, but even so, it has some better sections than its counterparts from US or Canada.

• Apple complains about unfair prices for Ericsson patented technologies and decides to continue selling Apple products without paying the rightholders. Thus, Ericsson files nine lawsuits against Apple, saying that Apple infringed on a total of 41 patents.

Surveillance

• The cowboy practices of US, UK secret services are yet again to surprise(?) us with another unlawful program for stealing encryption keys from the biggest SIM cards manufacturer in the world, Gemalto.

• But the question to be raised is: “Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave Threats?”

• Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and author explains his view on What’s Next in Government Surveillance and How to Mess With Surveillance.

• The Edward Snowden story led to the Guardian receiving the Pulitzer prize for public service. Here is a discussion with Alan Rusbridger, Ewen MacAskill, Janine Gibson and Stuart Millar about how the story made the headlines.

• Dealing with the privacy and security implications of Internet of Things will be one of the biggest challenges of this century and yet we still have BIG problems dealing with the Internet we have today.

• La Quadrature du Net, together with the FDN Federation, which represents not-for-profit internet service providers (ISPs) in France fight against new laws for retaining even more data about user communications.

• A joint investigation by Agentura.Ru, CitizenLab and Privacy International speaks about the death of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and Russia’s Surveillance State.

• As a tool for avoiding government surveillance, Signal, an Encrypted open-source Messaging App for iPhone, could be a solution in this period of governments’ hype for spying in mass.

• Free Software though, seems to be more and more the answer for the tech problems we face today, regarding privacy, security, ownership and others.

• “Free Software Everywhere” is the theme for this year LibrePlanet annual conference for free software enthusiasts. It’s a place that brings together software developers, policy experts, activists and computer users to learn skills, share accomplishments and face challenges to software freedom.

 Featured image: President Obama’s handwritten note to the reddit community.

(Courtesy of reddit.)