Internet

Newspapers: Effects of Closing their Content Ecosystem?

/ Christopher Parsons

whoownsknowledgeI rely on other people to produce content for me to consume, and I reciprocate by providing my own content (via this blog, government submissions, submissions to alternative news sites, interviews on radio, etc.) to the public. I see this as a reciprocal relationship, insofar as anyone can come here and use my content so long as they abide by my creative commons license. Unfortunately, most advocates for newspapers would see what I do (i.e. blog, think publicly) as unequal to their own work. I’m just an amateur, and they’re the professionals.

One of my colleagues recently linked me to a statement that David Simon presented to Congress about the life or death of newspapers. His argument is (roughly) that bloggers and other ‘amateurs’ cannot be expected or trusted to perform the high quality journalism that these ‘amateurs’ then talk about online (Note from Chris: clear case in point, the critical analysis by journalists of the Bush administration and Iraq compared to bloggers. Oh…wait…). You need dedicated professionals who are professionally trained to generate consistently high quality and accurate content. At the same time, the for-profit model of newspapers has led them to cannibalize their operations for profit. Newspapers will perish if capitalism and the market are seen as ‘solutions’ to the demise of newspapers, just as amateur culture and their appropriation of media will destroy content producers. Something must be done.

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EU: Judicial Review Central to Telecom Disconnects

/ Christopher Parsons

elpalaciodejusticiaI’m perhaps a bit idealistic, but I think that there are clear contemporary demonstrations of democracy ‘working’. Today’s example comes to us from Europe, where the European Parliament has voted to restore a graduated response to copyright infringement that pertains to when and how individuals can be disconnected from the Internet. Disconnecting individuals from the ‘net, given its important role in citizens’ daily lives, can only be done with judicial oversight; copyright holders and ISPs alone cannot conspire to remove file sharers. This suggests that any three-strike policy in the EU will require judicial oversight, and threatens to radically reform how the copyright industry can influence ISPs.

What might this mean for North America? If policy learning occurs, will we see imports of an EU-style law on this matter? Do we want our policy actors to adopt an EU-model, which could be used to implement a three-strike rule that just includes judicial review at the third strike? In Canada, with the tariffs that we pay, there are already permissible conditions for file sharing – do we really want to see strong American or WIPO copyright legally enforced on our soil?

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Analysis: ipoque, DPI, and bandwidth management

/ Christopher Parsons

Bandwidth-exceededIn 2008, ipoque released a report titled “Bandwidth Management Solutions for Network Operators“. Using Deep Packet Inspection appliances, it is possible to establish a priority management system that privileges certain applications’ traffic over others; VoIP traffic can be dropped last, whereas P2P packets are given the lowest priority on the network. Two  modes of management are proposed by ipoque:

  1. Advanced Priority Management: where multi-tiered priorities maintain Quality of Experience (rather than Service) by identifying some packet-types as more important than others (e.g. VoIP is more important than BitTorrent packets). Under this system, less important packets are only dropped as needed, rather than being dropped once a bandwidth cap is met.
  2. Tiered Service Model: This uses a volume-service system, where users can purchase so much bandwidth for particular services. This is the ‘cell-phone’ model, where you sign up for packages that give you certain things and if you exceed your package limitations extra charges may apply*. Under this model you might pay for a file-sharing option, as well as a VoIP and/or streaming HTTP bundle.

The danger with filtering by application (from ipoque’s position) is that while local laws can be enforced, it  opens the ISP to dissatisfaction if legitimate websites are blocked. Thus, while an ISP might block Mininova, they can’t block Fedora repositories as well – the first might conform to local laws, whereas blocking the second would infringe on consumers’ freedoms. In light of this challenge, ipoque suggests that could ISPs adopt Saudi Arabia-like white-lists, where consumers can send a message to their ISP when they find sites being illegitimately blocked. Once the ISP checks out the site, they can either remove the site from the black-list, or inform the customer of why the site must remain listed.

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Three-Strikes to Banish Europeans and Americans from the ‘net?

/ Christopher Parsons

200903281552.jpgThroughout the Global North there are discussions on the table for introducing what are called ‘three-strikes’ rules that are designed to cut or, or hinder, people’s access to the Internet should they be caught infringing on copyright. In the EU, the big content cartel is trying to get ISPs to inspect consumer data flows and, when copywritten content is identified, ‘punish’ the individual in some fashion. Fortunately, it is looking that at least the EU Parliament is against imposing such rules on the basis that disconnecting individuals from the Internet would infringe on EU citizens’ basic rights. In an era where we are increasingly digitizing our records and basic communications infrastructure, it’s delightful to see a body in a major world power recognize the incredibly detrimental and over-reactionary behavior that the copyright cartel is calling for. Copyright infringement does not trump basic civil liberties.

Now, I expect that many readers would say something along this line: I don’t live in the EU, and the EU Parliament has incredibly limited powers. Who cares, this: (a) doesn’t affect me; (b) is unlikely to have a real impact on EU policy.

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Review: Access Denied

/ Christopher Parsons

The OpenNet Initiative’s (ONI) mission is to “identify and document Internet filtering and surveillance, and to promote and inform wider public dialogs about such practices.” Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering is one of their texts that effectively draws together years of their research, and presents it in an accessible and useful manner for researchers, activists, and individuals who are simply interested in how the Internet is shaped by state governments.

The text is separated into two broad parts – the first is a series of essays that situate the data that has been collected into a quickly accessible framework. The authors of each essay manage to retain a reasonable level of technical acumen, even when presenting their findings and the techniques of filtering to a presumably non-technical audience. It should be noted that the data collected includes up to 2007 – if you’re reading the text in the hopes that the authors are going to directly address filtering technologies that have recently been in the new, such as Deep Packet Inspection, you’re going to be a disappointed (though they do allude to Deep Packet technologies, without explicitly focusing on it, in a few areas). Throughout the text there are references to human rights and, while I’m personally a proponent of them, I wish that the authors had endeavored to lay out some more of the complexities of human rights discourse – while they don’t present these rights as unproblematic, I felt that more depth would have been rewarding both for their analysis, and for the benefit of the reader. This having been said, I can’t begrudge the authors of the essays for drawing on human rights at various points in their respective pieces – doing so fits perfectly within ONI’s mandate, and their arguments surrounding the use of human rights are sound.

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Common-law = Snooplaw

/ Christopher Parsons

Rather than talk about the FBI’s desire to patrol the Internet backbone, have your laptop searched without warrant or any particular reason when facing US Customs officers, or Microsoft’s Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), I want to quickly talk about the Australian government’s desire to give law enforcement and corporate IT the power to monitor and inspect any and all electronic employee communications. What is most concerning is that it continues an Australian trend to insert American attitudes into common-law.

Terrorism Down Under

I don’t want to come off seeming as though I think terrorism is a small or unimportant issue. It’s not – terrorism is a very real issue, and it has incredible financial and human costs. That said, whenever someone mentions either children or terrorism as a justification for a new piece of legislation that would dramatically extend the surveillance powers of public and private actors, I immediately want to know just how invasive those new powers might be. Whereas Australian law presently only allows security companies and those dealing with the government to survey communications without permission, after a four year fight to revise the Telecommunications Interceptions Act the government may be successful in extending those surveillance powers. If the amendments are passed, all corporate IT groups will be able to survey employees’ digital communciations. The government’s reason for extending the surveillance powers is that, by monitoring workers’ emails, it will be possible to stop/deploy coercion towards those who would;

attack to disable computer networks that sustained the financial system, stock exchange, electricity grid and transport system “[and would consequently] reap far greater economic damage than would be the case of a physical [terrorist] attack”. (Source)

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