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It would be something of an understatement to say that encryption
is a hot topic at the moment. But leaving aside deeper issues like the
extent to which the Internet's cryptographic systems are compromised,
there is a more general question about whether Web sites should be
pushing users to connect using HTTPS in the hope that this might improve
their security. That might seem a no-brainer, but for the Wikimedia
Foundation (WMF), the organization that runs Wikipedia and related
projects, it's a more complex issue.
On
Techdirt.
As more and more information about the NSA's global surveillance
capabilities emerges through leaks of material obtained by Edward
Snowden, the US authorities have been playing the terrorist card
heavily. That is, they concede that they have been spying on pretty
much everyone, but claim that it was only to fight terrorism, and thus
to save lives. In particular, the NSA insists it is not spying on anyone for the purposes of industrial espionage -- here's what it wrote in an email to the Washington Post on the subject just a couple of weeks ago:
On
Techdirt.
We've been reporting for several years about the extraordinary levels of secrecy
surrounding the TPP negotiations, where little information was released
about what was going on, and there were few opportunities for
representatives of civic and other groups to meet with negotiators to
present their point of view. More recently, there have been some
indications that this lack of transparency is fuelling increasing discontent among some of the participating nations.
On
Techdirt.
A couple of years ago, Techdirt carried an article by Andy Kessler
about the difference between entrepreneurs who create value, and those
who lock it up. The former tend to drive prices down constantly,
innovating all the while in order to make a profit; the latter, by
contrast, typically enjoy monopolies that allow them to push up prices without offering anything more in return.
On
Techdirt.
As many have already observed, the detention of David Miranda comes across as an act of blatant intimidation, as does the farcical destruction
of the Guardian's hard drives. But something doesn't ring true about
these episodes: spooks may be cynical and ruthless, but they are not
generally clueless idiots.
On
Techdirt.
As long-suffering readers of this column will know, I've been
following for a while the winding road leading to the European
Commission's proposals regarding net neutrality in Europe. Along the
way, there have been many twists and turns, with hints of first one
direction, then another. But today, the Commission has finally released
its plans - not just for this area, but for the whole telecoms market in Europe:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the recurrent themes on this blog has been the UK government's
use - or failure to use - open source and open data. To be fair, on
the open data side, things are going pretty well. Open source was
previously conspicuous by its absence, and that is finally changing,
albeit rather slower than many of us would wish.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
When Stephen Elop moved from Microsoft to run Nokia, many saw this as
part of a cunning plan to prepare the latter for purchase by the
former. There's no real evidence for that, although soon after joining,
Nokia did place the Windows Phone platform at the heart of its future
strategy, despite the many drawbacks of doing so, effectively betting
the company on the success of Windows as the third mobile platform
alongside Android and Apple.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As I've pointed out many times in previous posts, one of the key
benefits of mandating network neutrality is that it promotes innovation
by creating a level playing field. Such statements are all very well,
but where's the evidence? An important new study entitled "The
innovation-enhancing effects of network neutrality" [.pdf], commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs from the independent SEO Economic Research unit provides perhaps the best survey and analysis of why indeed network neutrality is so beneficial:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Back in April, I wrote
about in interesting new venture from the Linux Foundation called the
OpenDaylight Project. As I pointed out then, what made this significant
was that it showed how the Linux Foundation was beginning to move
beyond its historical origins of supporting the Linux ecosystem, towards
the broader application of the important lessons it has learnt about
open source collaboration in the process. Following that step, we now
have this:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Last year, I wrote
about some serious issues with Microsoft's Secure Boot Technology in
Windows 8. It seems that the German government has started to wake up
to problems with Windows 8, as this headline in Die Zeit attests:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
If you follow me on Twitter or elsewhere, you'll have noticed that I've been tweeting rather extensively about the NSA's spying, the most recent attacks on Glenn Greenwald and now the Guardian. If you were still wondering what any of this has to do with open source, this latest news might clarify things a little:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As even a cursory glance at articles on Open Enterprise over the last
few years will indicate, open source is a massive success in
practically every market. Except, unfortunately, on the desktop
(famously) and more, generally, for consumers. And as Aral Balkan
points out in an important post from a few weeks ago, that's a real problem:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As I noted in my first TTIP Update
about the current negotiations between the EU and US over a massive
trade agreement that is far from being only about trade, it is probably
true that it will not include many of the more outrageous ideas found in
ACTA last year. But that is not to say that TTIP does not threaten many key aspects of the Internet - just that the attack is much more subtle.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the incredible spectacle of the European arm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) attacking Mozilla
on the grounds that the latter had "lost its values" because it
insisted on defending the users' rights to control how cookies were used
on their systems.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Back in the mists of time - I'm talking about 2000 here - when free
software was still viewed by many as a rather exotic idea, I published a
book
detailing its history up to that point. Naturally, I wrote about
Apache (the Web server, not the foundation) there, since even in those
early days it was already the sectoral leader. As I pointed out:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
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