Category: Internet

In late January, the FCC announced the Gigabit City Challenge. The campaign aims to get at least one gigabit network in all 50 states by 2015. To do that, the Commission will be holding a number of workshops to help community and industry leaders get started.

Telecompetitor reports that the first FCC-hosted gigabit workshop will take place in Washington D.C. on March 27. The Commission isn’t saying what will happen at the workshop, but it revealed a rough idea of what the workshops will accomplish in the release:

The goal of this workshop is to explore how current gigabit communities deployed their networks, the economic and social benefits that accrue to gigabit communities, ways communities can aggregate demand in order to make a gigabit network deployment more economically appealing, and how communities can leverage their assets to incent an ultra-fast network.

Here’s hoping not all the workshops take place in D.C. It would be more advantageous for everyone if the FCC were to host a number of workshops in regions around the country so that every state can get in on the action.

Even with these workshops, it will be a daunting task to get a gigabit network in every state. The incumbent ISPs will lobby against any serious competition brought against them while arguing that nobody wants gigabit speeds in the first place. These workshops will hopefully prove once and for all that the majority wants gigabit speeds, and will do anything to get it.

If you want to check out the first workshop, it will be held in the Commission Meeting Room at the FCC headquarters.

The Internet is widely regarded as a highway of free information that doesn’t discriminate against color, sexuality or religious beliefs. This is a common misconception, however. Although most people aren’t aware of it, today’s Internet is tailored to your specific needs. Companies like Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB) and others gather detailed information about users and then sell it to advertisers. A company must then decide who to target with its ads. For example, a company like Gucci wouldn’t bother paying to advertise its products to someone who makes an income below a certain threshold, knowing he or she would be less likely to make a purchase. As noted by Michael Fertik of Scientific American, the rich see a very different Internet compared to the rest of us.

Continue reading…

When the company isn’t focused on attacking the public’s opinion of Google, researchers at Microsoft (MSFT) are working on some interesting projects. At the company’s annual TechFest event taking place this week, Microsoft unveiled one such project, known as ViralSearch, that is meant to track the origins of popular Web content that has been shared on Twitter.

Continue reading…

Recent reports have suggested that Google (GOOG) is interested in launching a music streaming service to compete with Pandora (P) and Spotify. According to Fortune, the company is looking to launch the service through its YouTube brand later this year. The service also is expected to have some overlap with new features that are rumored to arrive in the Google Play Store. Both services are said to incorporate subscription fees that will unlock additional features, such as ad-free YouTube streaming. A Google spokesperson confirmed that “there are some content creators that think they would benefit from a subscription revenue stream in addition to ads, so we’re looking at that.” Earlier reports claimed that paid subscription options for individual YouTube channels are scheduled to roll out this spring.

The strangest story from yesterday came in the form of The Pirate Bay moving to North Korea. The site said that it had routed through the country’s ISP after being invited to by the government. It seemed a little suspect, and the site said just as much today.

In a statement released on The Pirate Bay’s Facebook, the site’s team said that they never moved to North Korea and never would. The entire “hoax” was done for the “lulz:”

Today, we’ve all learned something.

We hope that yesterdays little hack proved that we know the internet better than our enemies. Since about 40% of the entire internets traffic consists of torrents enabled by us, you can almost say that we ARE the internets. Fuck with the internets and we’ll ridicule you (points at MAFIAA with a retractable baton) until you beg for mercy.

We’ve hopefully made clear (once again) that we don’t run TPB to make money. A profit hungry idiot (points at MAFIAA with a retractable baton) doesn’t tell the world that they have partnered with the most hated dictatorship in the world. We can play that stunt though, cause we’re still only in it for the fuckin lulz and it doesn’t matter to us if thousands of users disband the ship.

We’ve also learned that many of you need to be more critical. Even towards us. You can’t seriously cheer the “fact” that we moved our servers to bloody North Korea. Applauds to you who told us to fuck off. Always stay critical. Towards everyone!

10 years and still running.
We are Schrödingers site and it’s up to us whether we want to stay alive or not, or both.

In retrospect, The Pirate Bay moving to North Korea made little sense. It would have been kind of funny if true though.

The team wasn’t lying, however, when they said they were kicked out of Norway. So now The Pirate Bay will be on the lookout for somewhere else to drop anchor. We’ll let you know when they do.

Last week, The Pirate Bay announced that it would be moving to Norway and Spain after some legal trouble in Sweden. Only half of that plan worked, however, as the site was quickly booted out of Norway by a local anti-piracy group. Now the infamous torrent tracker has set up shop in the most unlikely of countries.

The Pirate Bay announced over the weekend that the site is now being routed through North Korea. The site’s admins say that they were invited to do so by “the leader of the republic of Korea.” The Pirate Bay didn’t elaborate on which “leader” invited them, but an insider told TorrentFreak that the communist nation had been in talks with The Pirate Bay for the past few weeks.

Here’s the full statement from The Pirate Bay:

The Pirate Bay has been hunted in many countries around the world. Not for illegal activities but being persecuted for beliefs of freedom of information. Today, a new chapter is written in the history of the movement, as well as the history of the internets.

A week ago we could reveal that The Pirate Bay was accessed via Norway and Catalonya. The move was to ensure that these countries and regions will get attention to the issues at hand. Today we can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network.

This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.

We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country’s changing view of access to information. It’s a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond. We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it’s also ones duty to grab their hand.

TorrentFreak was able to confirm that The Pirate Bay is indeed being routed through North Korea so at least part of the story is true. It still remains to be seen what kind of arrangement was struck between the two parties though.

Regardless, it’s going to be interesting to see the response from the copyright owners. They have used various derogatory buzzwords to demonize the site before, but they can now say the site loves communism. That will gain it no friends in the U.S. political spectrum, but at least it’s safe from those who wish to shut it down.

Piracy is a problem that needs to be dealt with. I don’t think anybody is going to refute that. Where people are divided is how we actually deal with this problem. After years of reputation destroying legal battles against dead people and little girls, copyright owners think they have an answer.

On Monday, the Copyright Alert System, or “Six Strikes”, went into affect across the five biggest ISPs in the U.S. The system hopes to catch those pirating content over P2P networks, and send them a notice detailing their infringement. The hope is that those who are caught will start using legal alternatives.

Do you think the Copyright Alert System will work? Will people truly stop pirating content after receiving an alert? Let us know in the comments.

To better understand the CAS, we have to look at what the Center for Copyright Information is doing with it. First, there are three tiers to the CAS that consumers should be aware of with each tier having two levels within it. The three tiers are as follows – educational alerts, acknowledgement alerts and mitigation measures.

The first two warnings – “educational alerts” – tell consumers they’ve been caught. The email will then direct them to legitimate sources of content with the hopes that the early warnings are enough to scare people into buying content.

The next two warnings step it up a notch with what’s called “acknowledgement alerts.” The first two alerts were simply emails, but these next two will actually hijack your browser. You will be hit with a message telling you that you’ve been caught yet again, and must acknowledge that you’ve been caught before you can start browsing.

The next two tiers, and presumably every alert afterwards, will be “mitigation measures.” In essence, the ISPs will begin throttling your bandwidth or blocking Web sites you frequently visit. The ISPs will not be able to cut off your Internet connection under the plan.

For a visual explanation, here’s the CCI’s soothing jazz version:

The actual specifics of these tiers will be different across the five ISPs participating in the CAS. We don’t know what every alert will look like, but Ars Technica did manage to get a hold of what Comcast’s alerts would look like.

As you would expect, the CAS hasn’t exactly garnered many fans. New Jersey Gubernatorial candidate Carl Bergmanson recently spoke out against it by saying ISPs have no right to monitor what you download:

“The internet has become an essential part of living in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility. The electric company has no say over what you power with their service, the ISPs have no right to decide what you can and can not download”.

The EFF has also come out swinging against CAS. The group says the system presents a number of troubling statements that don’t just hurt Internet users but the Internet for itself. For instance, the group points out that the CCI Web site tells people to lock down their Wi-Fi connections so others don’t pirate on your connection. The EFF sees this as an attack on the open Wi-Fi movement and it would be especially troublesome for those who do share their Internet connections with others, like small businesses.

Small businesses are where we run into the biggest problems. The CCI says that rights holders won’t target open Wi-Fi networks run by businesses. Your local Starbucks or Panera Bread are safe as they run off of a business network. The problem comes in the form of small businesses like a local coffee shop or bakery that runs free Wi-Fi off of a residential network. These businesses will be held liable for the actions of its consumers.

The CCI argues that it won’t hurt small businesses running residential networks because the CAS will never terminate an Internet connection. That’s entirely true, and it’s good that copyright owners didn’t go as far to request that ISPs terminate connections. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the fifth warning and afterwards will either block popular Web sites or throttle connections. For a small business that has multiple customers all on the same network, that’s just as good as shutting off the connection. People who want to use the Internet at these places will find it too much of a pain and take their business elsewhere.

Do you think the CAS will hurt small businesses? Or do you think the EFF and other groups are just exaggerating? Let us know in the comments.

This all brings us to the question of whether or not the CAS will even stop piracy. That’s obviously the goal, but it doesn’t look like an attainable one at the moment. In fact, the CAS is its own biggest enemy in the war on piracy.

The alerts obtained from Comcast all have one troubling thing in common. They don’t list any of the alternative, legal sources for content. The main point of the program is to educate consumers on legal alternatives, and it can’t even do that. Consumers receiving the alert with no prior knowledge of the system will most likely see it as a scam email and won’t act upon it. Later tiers require consumers to watch an educational video on copyright, but it doesn’t say whether these videos will present legal alternatives.

Fortunately, legal alternatives are doing a good enough job stopping piracy themselves. A recent report from the NPD found that legal alternatives like Spotify were driving music piracy down. It proves once again that easy access at a fair price can beat out piracy any day. Heck, the proliferation of streaming services even gave the music industry its first raise in revenue since 1999.

So why do copyright owners think the CAS will work? Do they really expect piracy rates to magically drop once the alerts start flying out? Past examples would suggest that no such thing would happen. In fact, previous efforts on the part of copyright owners to curtail piracy have had the opposite effect. Just look at the shutdown of Megaupload or the blocking of The Pirate Bay in the UK. Both cases actually saw an increase in piracy.

At this point, it’s still too early to tell how much the CAS will actually accomplish. At best, copyright owners will be able to proclaim that piracy rates are down as more people either use VPNs or move off of P2P and onto Usenet or Mega. At worst, consumers revolt and ISPs drop it after seeing that it’s costing them customers. Either way, piracy isn’t going anywhere.

Do you think piracy will ever stop being a problem? Or is it just a fact of life in the Internet age? Let us know in the comments.

One of the Internet’s founding fathers envisions a bright future that one day may involve communicating with animals and even aliens using the Web. During a speech given at the annual TED conference, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf described how technology can be used to communicate with other species, explaining that the Internet isn’t just a way of connecting machines but a way for people to interact.

Continue reading…

By now you’ve probably read the comments from Time Warner Cable (TWC) CTO Irene Esteves explaining that her company doesn’t plan to build out fiber to the home because there’s no evidence that American consumers actually want super-fast networks. While a lot of people expressed surprise in response to this attitude, it’s actually been a common refrain from the cable industry and its defenders for quite some time now — let’s recall that National Cable & Telecommunications Association CEO Michael Powell recently described achieving gigabit speeds as an “irrelevant exercise in bragging rights.” That this attitude isn’t just consigned to one company but is apparently held by the entire industry indicates that the market for home broadband in the United States is horrendously uncompetitive and is in desperate need of a shakeup.

Continue reading…

The co-founder and executive director of MIT’s Auto-ID lab, Kevin Ashton, coined a term in the mid-1990s — the Internet of Things — that has increasingly attracted the attention of marketers. He proposed to apply the logic of the web to objects in the physical world: to connect everything that exists physically to the Internet through the application of ubiquitous tags and sensors. Like individual web pages, everything down to a single product on a grocery store shelf would have a unique digital identity — and, in effect, its own URL. Addressable as a web page, every object would naturally become an element of the media landscape, capable of interacting directly with end-users to deliver commercial messaging — including advertising.

Fifteen years later, we are seeing Ashton’s vision play out. In some industries, machines such as aircraft engines and cars already share diagnostic and other information with humans and other machines. In the not too distant future we can expect to see refrigerators that place grocery orders when you’re running low on staples like milk and eggs; ovens that recommend a trusted repair service before they break down; dresses that are “aware” of current fashion trends and recommend alternative looks; and glucose monitors that give you recipes that best suit your type of diabetes. Arguably, outside of commercial environments like the Consumer Electronics Show or academic ones like Ashton’s lab, we are still in the early days of turning today’s “dumb” objects into “smart” ones. But for marketers, the potential value of building stronger brands through interactions between products and users is clear.

Consider what a company called EVRYTHNG, based in the United Kingdom, did for Diageo’s spirits marketing business last year. It ran a pilot program in Brazil for Father’s Day. The company enabled consumers to use smart phones to scan product codes on individual bottles of spirits, turning each physical product into a uniquely identifiable object of digital media. In this case, the giver could use his or her smart device to create a video for Dad and upload it to the cloud; the receiver, Dad, could then download the video to receive the gifter’s message. The result: increased loyalty to the brand; increased personalization of the brand experience; and increased insight for Diageo about how its products were bought, sold, and used.

Without resorting to high-tech augmentations of its products, such as RFID tags and Near-Field Communications (NFC), Diageo’s marketers could create new advertising experiences in which the products themselves became its media vehicles. From the moment a unique code was entered into the Cloud from a smart phone, each bottle became one of a kind; such connectivity birthed a digital avatar of that bottle, to which the company could then link customer profiles, loyalty and rewards programs, and a host of other consumer-pleasing innovations. Knowing that a product was “gifted” — between two identifiable parties — also generated a social graph of users, which may not be an asset today, but surely could become one of real value at scale, over time.

Clearly, this is just the beginning. It’s a persuasive example, because it asks that companies like Diageo do very little differently from what they’re doing today. Marketers already print QR or bar-codes on labels, and consumers already carry smart phones. Most companies access Cloud-based infrastructures.

What’s new is how this example reframes the definition of advertising. It does this in at least five ways: First, it places advertising messaging — where the product is the media platform — into the social flow of everyday life. Second, it calls upon the giver to create what is, in effect, the advertising message to augment the product, making this an example of participative (and, at scale, crowdsourced) creative (to which Diageo has unlimited access). Third, it enables users to personalize products, by definition, in unique ways. Fourth, it converts existing, even generic, products into functionally intelligent ones, which (with the addition of smart phones) can deliver dynamic ad messaging linked to specific physical objects. Fifth, it creates a rationale for the consumer to have an on-going relationship with the brand — by linking continuing online interactions to real world product-based experiences.

This is a far cry from advertising as a one-way, interruptive, broadcast-style form of messaging and delivery. Indeed, it bears so little resemblance to conventional advertising as to be almost unrecognizable as such. It’s so elegantly integrated into the life of the customer. If that’s where advertising is going — my bet is that it is — then there’s plenty here from which to learn, even before we enter the brave new world of grocery store products talking to us from their shelves.

This is the sixth in a series of posts from our March issue on the future of advertising. Stay tuned for more “Creative That Cracks the Code” over the coming weeks; topics include Variations on a Meme; Collaborating With the Crowd; The Ad as a Game; Just Enough Humor; A New Social Movement; Ads that “Go Native”; Apps as the New Ads; and Ads in the Public Sphere.

We also want to know which ad campaigns strike you as innovative; tell us below and we could analyze your pick as part of this series.

The internet connects people all over the world. But could the internet also connect us with dolphins, apes, elephants and other highly intelligent species?

In a bold talk in Session 10 of TED2013, four incredible thinkers come together to launch the idea of the interspecies internet. Each takes four minutes to talk, then passes the metaphorical baton, building the narrative in parts.

The talk begins with Diana Reiss, a cognitive psychologist who studies intelligence in animals. She shows us a video of an adorable dolphin twirling in the water. But the dolphin isn’t spinning playfully for the camera — the dolphin is watching itself in a two-way mirror.

“A dolphin has self-awareness,” says Reiss. “We used to think this was a uniquely human quality, but dolphins aren’t the only non-human animals to show self-recognition in a mirror. Great apes, our closest relatives, also show this ability.” Ditto for elephants and even magpies.

Reiss shares her work with dolphins — she’s been teaching them to communicate through an underwater keyboard of symbols that correspond to whistles and playful activities. Through this keyboard, the dolphins learned to perform activities on demand, and also to express their desire for them. (For more on how a similar dolphin keyboard works, read up on Denise Herzing’s talk from earlier today.)

“You can’t get more alien than the dolphin. We’re separated by 95 million years of divergent evolution. These are true non-terrestrials,” says Reiss. “This self-organized learning, the same thing we heard from TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra. I’m suggesting this is our Hole in the Water.”

Reiss was conducting this work on her own. And then she got a call from iconic musician Peter Gabriel.

“I make noises for a living, and on a good day it’s music,” says Gabriel. He has always looked into the eyes of animals and wondered what is going on inside their heads, he says, soe excitedly read about research, like Reiss’, examining communication with animals.

“What was amazing to me was that [the animals] seemed a lot more adept at getting a handle on our language than we were at getting a handle on theirs,” says Gabriel. “I work with a lot of musicians from around the world. Often we don’t have any common language at all. We sit behind our instruments and it’s a way to connect.”

So Gabriel started cold-calling scientists to see if he could be a part of this work. His goal: To try writing music with an animal. And he got his chance.

In a video clip that raises oohs and ahhs from audience, Gabriel shares a video of a bonobo with a keyboard. While bonobos had been introduced to percussion instruments before, and bashed them with their fists, this was the first time this bonobo had ever seen a keyboard. And with accompaniment, she played truly amazing music.

“She discovers a note she likes. She finds the octave,” says Gabriel, narrating the beautiful melody in the video. “We began to dream … What would happen if we could somehow find new interfaces – visual, audio — to allow us to communicate with the remarkable beings we share the planet with.”

Gabriel brought the video of this unusual jam session to Neil Gershenfeld, the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms.

“I lost it when I saw that clip,” says Gershenfeld, stepping up to the stage. “I was struck by the history of the internet, because it started as the internet of middle-aged white men … I realized that we humans had missed something — the rest of the planet.”

At this point, Gershenfeld video-conferenced in animals live — including orangutans in Waco, Texas, dolphins at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, and elephants in Thailand.

Gershenfeld is known for his work in the internet of things. And he thinks animals can be a part of it, too. ”We’re starting to think about how you integrate the rest of the biomass of the planet into the internet,” he says.

Which brings us to Vint Cerf, who helped lay the foundations for the internet as we know it and is now vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for  Google.

“Forty years ago we wrote the script of the internet. Thirty years ago we turned it on,” says Cerf. “We thought we were building a system to connect computers together. But we quickly learned that it’s a system for connecting people.”

“You know where this is going,” Cerf continues, to a laugh, bringing it back to research in communicating with animals. ”What’s important about what these people are doing: They’re beginning to learn how to communicate with species that are not us, but share a sensory environment. [They’re figuring out] what it means to communicate with something that’s not a person. I can’t wait to see these experiments unfold.”

So what’s next? The internet of things, yes, and the ability for us to communicate with computers without keyboards and mice. And in addition to the internet of species, he even imagines an interplanetary internet.

“These interactions with other animals will teach us, ultimately, how we might interact with an alien from another world,” says Cerf. “I can hardly wait.”

Consumers have lined up for the gigabit speeds of Google’s high-speed Internet service, unfortunately it is only offered in Kansas City. The company has teased expanding the service to additional markets, but until then consumers are forced to rely on traditional cable companies for less than stellar speeds. Despite the success of Google Fiber, Time Warner Cable’s (TWC) chief financial officer Irene Esteves claimed consumers don’t want breakneck Internet speeds.

Continue reading…

Five of the largest Internet service providers in the U.S. detailed their respective plans this week for implementing the “six strikes” Copyright Alert System. Comcast (CMCSA), AT&T (T), Cablevision (CVC), Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Verizon (VZ) all plan to utilize the system in different ways. Despite the fact that the CAS allows ISPs to terminate service for repeat offenders, none of the major ISPs have chosen to go that far. Penalties will range from annoying pop-up and email alerts to throttled speeds depending on your provider. It should be noted, however, that the “six strikes” system only applies to wired connections and not services from Verizon Wireless or AT&T Mobility. 

Continue reading…

Following threats of increased legal action from a local anti-piracy group, Sweden’s Pirate Party will no longer host the The Pirate Bay, a website it has provided bandwidth to for the last three years. Responsibilities of hosting the file-sharing site have now been handed to pirate parties in Norway and Spain, according to TorrentFreak. Local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance had warned the party and other Swedish companies that if they continued to work with The Pirate Bay beyond February 26th it would take legal action. The group is backed by world’s largest movie and music companies, and litigation with them would have been a huge burden for the Swedish Pirate Party.

Continue reading…

A new system designed to combat copyright infringement was launched in the U.S. on Monday, a joint venture between content companies and internet service providers known as the Copyright Alert System. The name sounds harmless enough, and its supporters argue that it is an appropriate balance between copyright and an open internet — but critics argue that the so-called “six strikes” process is the thin edge of an increasingly broad wedge that copyright holders are trying to drive between consumers and digital content.

The new rules, which have been in the works for over a year and have been repeatedly delayed, are being administered by the Center For Copyright Information — a non-profit entity made up of theoretically independent representatives from agencies like the Internet Education Foundation and the Future of Privacy Forum, and includes Jerry Berman, a former director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge. They have partnered with five of the largest ISPs, including Verizon and Comcast.

Part of what makes this new strategy difficult to understand is that each service provider’s method for implementing the rules is different. Verizon says that after several warnings via email and popup message, users who are downloading or sharing copyrighted content will be given several options, including a temporary reduction in their internet speed. AT&T’s policy apparently says that after several warnings a user’s ability to access popular websites will be blocked until they complete a course in understanding piracy and copyright infringement.

So should you be afraid of these new rules? That depends. Are you are only worried about how they might affect you directly, or are you concerned about the ways in which private corporations are seeking to snoop on and limit your behavior? Let’s break these two viewpoints down:

Why you shouldn’t be worried:

It doesn’t affect all internet service providers: Although providers like Comcast and Verizon are huge, they don’t cover all internet users in the United States, so it’s possible that you might not even be affected by the new restrictions even if you do download a lot of copyrighted content.

You get six strikes, which is probably more than you need: Copyright owners and the Center for Copyright Information say that the intent of these new rules is to go after the most egregious downloaders and sharers of content, not the person who occasionally downloads a new song or a movie. So if you don’t do a lot of peer-to-peer file-sharing, you probably won’t be affected.

You won’t get cut off, just lectured and irritated: Even if you do get flagged for something, the worst that most of the ISPs say they will do is limit your download speeds, show you popup warnings or send annoying emails. And some have said even if you ignore them, nothing will happen (although they could always change their minds about that later).

There are lots of ways around these restrictions: One of the criticisms of such rules isn’t that they are too invasive, but that they don’t work against the really hard-core file-sharers that are allegedly the target of this strategy — since virtual private networks, proxy addresses, cloaking software and other tools can make it almost impossible to detect infringing downloads.

Why you should be worried:

Your ISP is going to be doing some heavy snooping: One of the broader risks that groups like the EFF point to in their criticism of these new restrictions is that they rely on ISPs snooping on their users to an almost unprecedented degree — and this raises the same issues about privacy that debates around technology like “deep packet inspection” have. The potential downside is fairly significant.

The new rules don’t take into account fair use: Much of the material produced by the Center for Copyright Information makes it sound as though anyone downloading or sharing any copyrighted content is breaking the law — but that’s not the case at all. There are many instances in which the principle of fair use applies, and these rules don’t take that into account.

Copyright holders are unlikely to stop here: One fear about the six-strikes process is that it is just the latest move in an ongoing attempt by copyright holders and content companies to exert more and more control over what users can do, and that allowing it to proceed only encourages them to pursue even harsher measures such as SOPA and PIPA.

This puts commercial entities in place of laws: One of the biggest criticisms from free speech and open-web advocates is that the six-strikes rules essentially allow private corporations — movie studios, music labels and large telecom providers — to set up a quasi-legal process for pursuing their copyright claims, when the legal system is the appropriate place for those arguments.

The bottom line: There’s reason for concern

In the end, while this move may not affect you directly — or may only be a minor irritation in your daily life — the fact remains that it marks another attempt by content owners to exert their influence in areas that should belong to the courts and should in principle be protected by things like the First Amendment and the principle of fair use, neither of which are even mentioned by the promoters of this process.

Not only that, but as my colleague Jeff Roberts notes, focusing on these kinds of efforts feels a lot like what the music industry did while it was trying hard not to innovate as the web grew bigger and bigger. The risk for copyright owners is that they rely too much on these kinds of measures, instead of working to create a market and a digital ecosystem that fosters the creation, sale and distribution of content in a way that works with the web instead of against it.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock / Cienpies and Flickr user Pew Center

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Pinterest reawakens Napster-style debate over copyright
• A near-term outlook for big data
• SOPA, OPEN and the fight for the Internet

It was widely reported that the Copyright Alert System was “turned on” yesterday. The CAS, or more widely known as six strikes, detects the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials over P2P networks and alerts users via their ISP. There are a few glaring problems with it, but inaction on the part of government suggests lawmakers are fine with it. One politician, however, has recently spoken up against it.

Carl Bergmanson, the Gubernatorial Candidate in New Jersey, recently said that the six strikes policy was no good for the Internet or consumers:

“The internet has become an essential part of living in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility. The electric company has no say over what you power with their service, the ISPs have no right to decide what you can and can not download”.

Bergmanson says that he doesn’t condone piracy, and added that he finds it unethical. That being said, he says that piracy is a result of bad laws.

“…it is not surprising that as the law evolves to disrespect the public domain, that the public would grow to disrespect copyrights.”

I think we can add fair use to the number of things that laws continue to “disrespect” that lead people to piracy. The Internet has changed the consumer/provider dynamic, yet the content provider refuses to update their business model to reflect this new reality.

Aside from the argument against more restrictive copyright laws, it’s far more interesting to see Bergmanson address the idea of the Internet being a public utility. Some of the Internet’s most outspoken proponents have suggested such a reclassification in order to ensure that more people get access to affordable Internet. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, however, as major telecommunications companies have powerful lobbying arms.

All that being said, Bergmanson and his ideas will probably not see the light of day in New Jersey. Current governor Chris Christie is a local favorite, and he has the support of some powerful people in the Internet business if his recent fundraiser hosted by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is any indication.

[h/t: TechDirt]

Google announced today that its philanthropic arm, Google.org, is making new investments to improve Internet access in emerging markets.

For one, it is providing $3.1 million to the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) to help get local network engineering expertise to universities and national research & education networks in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Through labs and a train-the-trainers program, NSRC will provide hands-on training on campus network planning, deployment, and management for over 600 university and NREN staff,” explains Google.org principal Jennifer Haroon. “Their work will bring the Internet to students and staff at over 50 institutions and increase network engineering know-how in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

Additionally, Google.org is providing $1.3 million to the Internet Society (ISOC) to improve and create Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) in emerging markets.

“IXPs play a big role in core Internet infrastructure, allowing Internet Service Providers to peer locally (and cheaply), which can lower end user costs, promote competition, and improve user experience,” says Haroon. “ISOC will create a toolkit for those who want to create and improve IXPs and build an industry portal to share IXP information and data.”

According to Google, five billion people are currently without access to the Internet.

Image: NSRC

For the past year, we’ve seen delay after delay for the Center for Copyright Information’s six strikes Copyright Alert System. For a while, it looked like it would never become a reality. Not it looks like the system is finally in place, however, and it may be launching today.

The Daily Dot reports that the CCI plans to launch the six strikes Copyright Alert System across all the major participating ISPS – AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon – this week. Each ISP will reportedly launch on a different day this week which Comcast reportedly launching its system today.

A small recap for those unaware, the Copyright Alert System is a joint operation between ISPs and major content holders around the country. In essence, these content holders will be scanning Internet connections looking for people downloading pirated content via BitTorrent. If you’re caught, the content holders will send your a notice through your ISP. There are three tiers of warning with two warnings per tier, hence the six strikes.

The first two warnings are “educational alerts” that tell consumers they’ve been caught. The email will then direct them to legitimate sources of content with the hopes that the early warnings are enough to scare people into buying content.

The next two warnings step it up a notch with what’s called “acknowledgement alerts.” The first two alerts were simply emails, but these next two will actually hijack your browser. You will be hit with a message telling you that you’ve been caught yet again, and must acknowledge that you’ve been caught before you can start browsing again.

The next two tiers, and presumably every alert afterwards, will be “mitigation measures.” In essence, the ISPs will begin throttling your bandwidth or blocking Web sites you frequently visit. The ISPs will not be able to cut off your Internet connection under the plan.

Of course, the real fun of all of this is that the copyright holders have all the power in this relationship. They can simply accuse you of piracy with little proof, and the ISPs must hit you with whatever tier of alert you’re on. Sure, you can appeal the accusation, but it costs you $35 up front and goes before the American Arbitration Association. In short, it’s not worth fighting, and the content holders know it.

Despite being anti-consumer and potentially damaging to small businesses, the CCI wants you to know that it’s your friend. The group put together a small video that says it only wants to be your friend as long as you purchase all your content legally.

I’m sure that the CCI will announce that P2P sharing is down in a few months from now, but we’ll know what’s really up. The number of VPN subscriptions in the U.S. is already on the rise, and more people will presumably start using Mega, Usenet and other non-P2P networks.

Nonetheless, It will be interesting to see the response from Internet users not aware of these programs once the first alerts start rolling in. The response may be so vitriolic that ISPs and the CCI call it off until it can formulate another plan. The consumer is king in the U.S. and corporations have been known more than once to back down when programs like this only serve to piss off their most loyal consumers.

[h/t: TechDirt]

The spectrum freed up for Wi-Fi is a finite resource. Too many devices can congest the networks and slow down service for everybody. The FCC wants to prevent that from happening, and have taken steps to relieve congestion with its latest proposal.

The FCC announced today that it has unanimously voted to free up 195 MHz of additional spectrum in the 5 GHz band. This new spectrum will be available to unlicensed devices. The Commission also proposed to relax regulations on wireless devices and to streamline existing rules.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the Commission is taking “a big step to ease congestion on traditional Wi-Fi networks, which will mean faster speeds and fewer headaches from U.S. consumers.”

The FCC notes that the freed up spectrum will not only help decrease congestion in public spaces, but it will help increase speeds of personal wireless networks in the home. That’s great news for those of who have multiple devices running on a single Wi-Fi network in the home.

Before you start lining up more devices on your personal network, know that the FCC has only voted on a proposal to free up the spectrum. The Commission now has to take public comments before making its final decision. The plan will probably not face any real opposition, however, as industry groups are already praising it.

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association said that the FCC’s bid to free up more spectrum will help meet increasing consumer demand:

“…existing Wi-Fi spectrum is growing increasingly congested and more must be found to meet skyrocketing consumer demand and enable increased speeds of next-generation Wi-Fi. More extensive use of the 5 GHz band, along with additional unlicensed spectrum in other bands, will permit cable companies and other innovators to continue to provide Americans with new benefits, businesses with new opportunities, and those in need with life-saving connections.”

The FCC’s proposal fits snugly into its National Broadband Plan that aims to increase access to broadband across the nation. Freeing up more Wi-Fi can help accomplish that, but let’s hope the Commission can get to work on setting up Gigabit networks across the nation as well.

[h/t: The Hill]

In case you’ve ever wondered just how much power Jimmy Wales has over Wikipedia, you can rest easy knowing that he can’t just pull the plug on his own. Someone on Quora was apparently wondering about this, and decided to ask him about it, as he is quite active on the Q&A site. His response is both humorous and reassuring.

Read Quote of Jimmy Wales’s answer to Hypothetical Questions: Can Jimmy Wales shut down Wikipedia at his will? on Quora

Very stupid.