Technology for Opening Up Government
Today's event on "open" and "participatory" government at Google's DC office was interesting, if inconclusive. We all agreed that making government more transparent and ready for participation by the citizenry was good. But I left not knowing what it all really means or the best way to get there. Tech reporter Grant Gross has a good report, and here's what I got out of it: Disclosure -- At a minimum, opening up government requires more disclosure. Any and all data, [...]
ACT, Cambridge University and Birmingham University dream of EUtopia
“What does the entrepreneurial idyll look like?” This is the question a new report by the Association for Competitive Technology, in conjunction with the University of Cambridge (UK) and the University of Birmingham (UK), seeks to answer. The report finds that fragmentation and the still incomplete integration of the single market are major obstacles to the success of SMEs in Europe. One telling example of the fractured EU regulatory framework, the report points out, is its system of IP protection: [...]
FTC bans companies from selling scareware products
Yahoo!Tech reports that “[a]t the request of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, a U.S. district court has ordered two companies marketing supposed computer security products online to stop their efforts. The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland has ordered Innovative Marketing and ByteHosting Internet Services to stop promoting so-called "scareware" through online advertisements. The companies used online ads to scare consumers into buying products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe and XP Antivirus, by falsely claiming that scans [...]
Obama administration to roll our broadband and put more computers in schools
Yahoo!Tech writes that “[r]olling out broadband and putting more computers in schools will be pieces of a massive economic recovery package proposed by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, he has announced. Obama, in a radio address Saturday, told listeners that he will push for the largest government-funded infrastructure program since the Interstate highway system in the 1950s as a way to stimulate the struggling U.S. economy. […] Obama's plan will include funds to make public buildings more energy efficient, repair roads [...]
IGF And The Secret War on Freedom of Speech (AMENDED)
Three years ago, the Financial Times published an op-ed by ACT president Jonathan Zuck regarding the first effort by governments like China, Iran, and Cuba to replace ICANN and its multi-stakeholder, bottom up-decision making process with a top-down government led body to dictate technological and policy decisions. At the time, Jonathan wrote: These countries and others want to become global regulators of the internet. This effort is being driven under the guise of "internet governance", but it is really about [...]
The Latest Fallout from the Financial Crisis – Governments Want to Bail Out The Internet
Here at the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Hyderabad, we saw yet another domino begin to fall in the growing financial crisis. Despite the lack of interest in a bailout package by the Internet community and its companies, world governments seem to be interested in "rescuing" the Internet anyway. In one of the first sessions of the first day of the IGF, the dryly titled "Legal Aspects of Governance of Critical Internet Resources Functions – Contributing to Capacity [...]