Net Neutrality under Threat in Europe - Unnecessarily

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.

NSA's Crypto Betrayal: Good News for Open Source?

Revelations from documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden that GCHQ essentially downloads the entire Internet as it enters and leaves the UK, and stores big chunks of it, was bad enough. But last week we learned that the NSA has intentionally weakened just about every aspect of online encryption:

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK Gov: Smaller, Better, Faster, Stronger...Opener.

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.

Microsoft + Nokia = Dog

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.

How Network Neutrality Promotes Innovation

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.

Linus on Linux, 22 - and 5 - Years Later

In case you weren't aware, Linus is on Google+. Here's a recent post:

On Open Enterprise blog.

A New Chapter for Open Source?

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.

Windows 8+TPM: Germany Warns of 'Loss of Control'

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.

The Canary in the Coal Mine: Groklaw Shuts Down

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.

Open Source in the UK: Sharing the Fire

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.

TTIP Update II

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.

Did You Know that Mozilla is Hijacking the Internet?

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.

Is Apache the Most Important Open Source Project?

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.

Is This Finally the Year of Open Source...in China?

One of the long-running jokes in the free software world is that this year will finally be the year of open source on the desktop - just like it was last year, and the year before that. Thanks to the astounding rise of Android, people now realise that the desktop is last decade's platform, and that mobile - smartphones and tablets - are the future. But I'd argue that there is something even more important these, and that is the widespread deployment of open source in China.

On Open Enterprise blog.

When Transparency Is A Matter Of Life And Death

Against a background of the leaks about NSA spying, transparency -- or lack of it -- is a hot topic at the moment. But there are situations where it can be even more important than just a matter of enhancing confidence in government actions and acting as a check on them, as this Wired story about Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) makes clear: 

On Techdirt.

European Commission Report Says Open Access At 'Tipping Point'

Techdirt has been reporting for some time on the growing number of moves towards making academic work freely available to the public -- for example this recent major boost from the University of California. But what about the bigger picture? How is open access doing overall? The European Commission has just published a new report trying to answer those questions, which offers an extremely upbeat assessment:

On Techdirt.

Guantanamo Bay Authorities Ban Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago'

Some stories, you just couldn't make up. Like this one, reported on the UK site Reprieve, about a failed attempt to pass some reading material to one of the people detained at Guantanamo Bay. Something unsuitable you might guess, perhaps advocating terrorist ways? Well, not exactly:

On Techdirt:

Did New Zealand Spooks Tap Into PRISM To Spy On Dotcom?

As Techdirt has reported, the attempts to extradite Kim Dotcom from New Zealand to the US have turned into one of the most catastrophically bungled legal cases in a long while. One of the biggest scandals to emerge was that New Zealand citizens had been wiretapped in an effort to gain evidence against Dotcom, since domestic spying was forbidden there just as it is in the US (oh, wait...). Unfortunately, rather than rapping knuckles and telling the local spooks not to do it again, the New Zealand government has instead just brought in new legislation to make it legal in the future.

On Techdirt.

Russia Prepares To Block Tor And Anonymizing Proxies

As more and more countries start introducing Web blocks, some people console themselves with the "at least there's always Tor" argument. Politicians may be slow, but they are not all completely stupid, and they are beginning to get the message that Tor and other anonymous services potentially render their Web blocks moot. It's then not a huge leap for them to move on to the next stage -- banning or blocking Tor -- as Russia now seems to be contemplating, according to this article on Russia Today: 

On Techdirt.

German Supreme Court Confirms RapidShare Must Police The Internet And Restrict Anonymous Use

A post on TorrentFreak updates us on the continuing saga of the file-hosting site RapidShare. The Supreme Court in Germany has apparently confirmed a regional High Court decision that had itself confirmed two earlier verdicts concerning the Swiss company: 

On Techdirt.

Undownloading: Further Proof Those eBooks You Paid For Really Aren't Yours

Over the years Techdirt has run a number of stories that make it abundantly clear that you don't own those ebooks you paid for. But in case you were still clinging to some faint hope to the contrary, here's a cautionary tale from Jim O'Donnell, a classics professor at Georgetown University. He is currently attending the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Singapore, and naturally wanted to bring along some serious reading material; ebooks on an iPad seemed the perfect way to do that. As O'Donnell explains: 

On Techdirt.

Who Will Take The Privacy Seppuku Pledge?

When Techdirt wrote recently about yet another secure email provider opting to close down its service rather than acquiesce in some future US government demand to spy on its users, we noted that Cryptocloud has promised something similar for a while -- what it terms "corporate seppuku": 

On Techdirt.

Massive Overblocking Hits Hundreds Of UK Sites

Two years ago, Techdirt reported on a very troubling ruling in the UK courts that BT had to block access to the Usenet service provider Newzbin2. At the time, many feared that this would be the thin end of the wedge, giving copyright companies an easy way to shut down other sites. And with that power, of course, would come the inevitable errors, blocking completely unrelated sites. Just how seriously those mistakes could be is shown by this recent case of massive overblocking, reported here on PC Pro: 

On Techdirt.

The Getty Gets It: 'Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come'

Techdirt has published a number of posts that explore the issue of whether art organizations can stop people sharing images of works in their collections when the latter are indisputably in the public domain. Even if museums might be able to claim copyright in their "official" photographic images, the more important question is whether they ought to. The good news is that some institutions are beginning to realize that using copyright monopolies in this way contradicts their basic reason for existing -- to share the joy of art. Here, for example, is a wonderful statement of that principle from the Getty Museum entitled "Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come": 

On Techdirt.

Extending The Spectrum Of Openness To Include The Moral Right To Share

Prefixing concepts with the epithet "open" has become something of a fashion over the last decade. Beginning with open source, we've had open content, open access, open data, open science, and open government to name but a few. Indeed, things have got to the point where "openwashing" -- the abuse of the term in order to jump on the openness bandwagon -- is a real problem. But a great post by David Eaves points out that the spectrum of openness actually extends well beyond the variants typically encountered in the West: 

On Techdirt.