Information

Teresa May Says Internet Must Now Be Regulated, Following Violent Muslim Attacks

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The British PM called the internet a safe space for ideas to breed, and, she said, we cannot allow that:

“We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed – yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide.”

Therefore, and in the wake of the recent violent Muslim attacks in the UK, democratic governments should work together to “reduce the risks of extremism” by making new international agreements to regulate the internet, May said.

However, during the same speech, she noted that the three recent attacks were not linked by “common networks” but were “bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamic extremism.”

Russian Gov Wants Control of Big Data

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Big Data is the “new oil” of the digital economy, according to speakers at Russia’s 2017 SPIEF economic forum.

In order to prevent uncontrolled sales of this valuable and important info, the government should streamline and oversee it, according to the participants.

The chips haven’t yet settled in the global understanding of how we should treat Big Data. Is it private information or public domain? is one of the most pressing questions around which laws and regulations will be made.

“Right now we are undergoing a major revolutionary upheaval in the society,” noted residential aide Igor Shchegolev, “not only a technological revolution, but a revolution of moral standards as well.” He said that sometimes ordinary citizens don’t understand what they’re doing, and inadvertently give away too easily things like personal information.

“Maybe some of the users will do what Native Americans did, when they traded their land for glass beads, unaware of its true value,” he added.

“Today, a vast amount of Internet companies offer software for free, but collect Big Data on users in return,” commented Alexander Zharov, the head of Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor. “Currently, the Russian legislation and international laws do not mention the notion of Big Data. We need to codify approaches toward the processing of Big Data, terms of its storage, transfer and secondary use.”

“My forecast is that a law on the issue will inevitably appear,” maybe in 2018 or 2019, he told reporters on the sidelines of the forum.

Microsoft Obtains Patent to Use for Detecting Pirated Content

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The company was granted a patent for technology that scans items users have stored on the cloud when they are shared.

Microsoft envisions using software based on the patent for services like Google Drive, Dropbox and other storage services, social networks, and pirate sites.

A summary of how the patent is understood: “When objects are shared by one user with another user, prohibited content, if identified as such, can be blocked from being shared, while the remainder of the shared objects can be accessed by the other user.”

Microsoft intends that people who share copyrighted content can be banned.

It is illegal to share copyrighted content, although not illegal to store it on the cloud.

FCC Vote, ‘One Step Closer to a Closed Internet’ Says Mozilla

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This week the FCC voted to move forward with repealing and replacing net neutrality protections enacted in 2015.

The issue is public access to an open, equal internet. The laws from 2015 placed providers (the companies that pipe internet into your house or phone) in a special category of communications. The laws made it so that internet providers couldn’t increase or decrease internet speeds for whatever content, apps, or services they wanted to prioritize. Citizens feared this would lead to service providers throttling content and apps they didn’t profit from while boosting stuff they could profit from.

While recent polling suggests the majority of Americans want net neutrality, the argument was given voice by Mozilla (who makes the Firefox browser). Mozilla summarized:

“Today’s FCC vote to repeal and replace net neutrality protections brings us one step closer to a closed internet. Although it is sometimes hard to describe the ‘real’ impacts of these decisions, this one is easy: this decision leads to an internet that benefits Internet Service Providers (ISPs), not users, and erodes free speech, competition, innovation and user choice.”

Mozilla blog