EFF: Free eBook Buyer's Guide to eBook Privacy, 2010 Edition

Electronic Frontier Foundation blog: "With the 2010 holidays upon us, it's time to update EFF's eBook Buyer's Guide to E-Book Privacy, which summarizes and comments on the privacy-related policies of several e-readers. ... "

Pondering the End of the Digital Frontier

NYTimes.com:

“The Web is dead,” Wired magazine declared in a recent cover story. “The golden age of the Web is coming to an end,” wrote Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research. The Atlantic ... warned of “the closing of the digital frontier.”

The argument goes something like this: After falling in love with the openness of the Web, consumers are recoiling from its chaos and embracing the sense of order offered by walled-off digital realms. These include applications for mobile devices like the Apple iPad and iPhone and password-protected social networks like Facebook, where much of what people do takes place beyond the reach of search engines and Web browsers. ...

Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor of Internet law, says that the growth of walled gardens like Apple’s applications store have threatened the “generative” character of the Internet, which has permitted users to build on what is already there, as with Lego toys.

“The serendipity of outside tinkering that has marked that generative era gave us the Web, instant messaging, peer-to-peer networking, Skype, Wikipedia — all ideas out of left field,” he writes in a recent book, “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.” “Now it is disappearing, leaving a handful of new gatekeepers in place, with us and them prisoner to their limited business plans and to regulators who fear things that are new and disruptive.”  ...

Even if the supposed threats have been overblown, it is clear that the Web and the Internet are changing.

Mobile devices increasingly come with Internet access as a standard feature. Within a few years, analysts predict, more people will connect to the Internet from smartphones than from deskbound computers.

The popularity of applications for smartphones, often with content or features similar to those available on open Web sites, could steer more toward private digital gardens, like those that existed in the heyday of online services like CompuServe and Prodigy ...

Stupid (aka: Dangerous) "Justice" Department/NSA Ideas 2.0

NYTimes.com:

... [Federal] officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.” ...

Net Neutrality Agonistes

Time Magazine via Yahoo! News: "On a Thursday night in August, some 750 people crammed into a high school auditorium in Minneapolis to discuss the future of the Internet. Most of them went to beseech members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to act to protect Internet neutrality, the premise that all data on the Web should be treated equally. During the three-hour forum, organized by the pro-Net-neutrality coalition Save the Internet, an array of speakers warned that without safeguards in place, corporate behemoths would cut lucrative deals to prioritize some kinds of content and throttle others, turning themselves into the unofficial gatekeepers of the world's best leveling force. Net neutrality, said Senator Al Franken, is 'the First Amendment issue of our time.' In the weeks since Google and Verizon published a controversial proposal on the issue, Net neutrality has become the newest front in an ideological war waged by the pricey lobbyists, paid spokesmen, partisan media outlets and Washington ward bosses who feast on fractiousness. Relying on a now familiar playbook, a tableau of conservative interest groups has used the specter of a so-called government takeover of the Internet to mobilize Tea Party organizations. Liberal counterparts warn that corporate bigwigs are trying to cement their control of the Web at your expense. ... "

The Google/Verizon Attack on Net Neutrality

NYTimes.com:

SAN FRANCISCO — Google and Verizon on Monday introduced a proposal for how Internet service should be regulated — and were immediately criticized by groups that favor keeping the network as open as possible.

The proposal includes exceptions for wireless Internet access and for potential new services that broadband providers could offer, including things like “advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options.”

The announcement is the latest move in a high-stakes battle over a principle known as net neutrality. The debate is over whether Internet users should be able to access all types of online information on an equal basis, or whether Internet service providers should be able to charge content companies for faster transmission.

The proposal says that nonwireless Internet providers should not be able to discriminate against or offer paid prioritization to any Internet content providers, and that the Federal Communications Commission should have the authority to stop or fine those who break these rules.

But the proposal excludes wireless access, a fast-growing portion of Internet traffic.

The proposal “sacrifices the future of the mobile wireless Internet as this platform becomes more central to the lives of all Americans,” said Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a consumer group, in a statement. ...

Net Neutrality - F.C.C. Opposes Fees for Internet Priority

F.C.C. Chief Opposes Fees for Internet Priority - NYTimes.com:

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that he believed it was “unacceptable” for Internet service providers to offer faster Internet transmission to content providers willing to pay higher fees.

“Any outcome, any deal that doesn’t preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet for consumers and entrepreneurs will be unacceptable,” Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, told reporters on Thursday.

His remarks came in response to press reports that Google and Verizon were nearing an agreement about broadband management that could clear the way for Verizon to consider offering such a service. ...

Many Internet purists believe that a system that includes a sort of toll lane for faster routing of some content to Internet users violates the long-held tenet of net neutrality, which holds that no form of content is favored over another. But a federal appeals court said in April that the F.C.C. did not have the authority to regulate how Internet service providers manage their systems. ...

The F.C.C. is studying the possibility of reclassifying broadband service under the Communications Act. The proposed new designation would allow the agency to apply stricter regulation to broadband service and to further its efforts to expand broadband access to rural areas, particularly where it is not profitable for Internet service providers to offer connections. ...

Google and Verizon Team Up to Kill Net Neutrality

This is very bad news.

Google and Verizon in Talks on Selling Internet Priority - NYTimes.com: "Such an agreement could overthrow a once-sacred tenet of Internet policy known as net neutrality, in which no form of content is favored over another. In its place, consumers could soon see a new, tiered system, which, like cable television, imposes higher costs for premium levels of service. Any agreement between Verizon and Google could also upend the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to assert its authority over broadband service, which was severely restricted by a federal appeals court decision in April."

A bit of useful background from the EFF here.

LOC: 'Jailbreaking' of iPhones OK

Steve Jobs loses a round; Apple gets shoved a few steps closer to being open. Exemption Will Allow ‘Jailbreaking’ of iPhones - NYTimes.com: "The Library of Congress, which has the power to define exceptions to an important copyright law, said on Monday that it was legal to bypass a phone's controls on what software it will run to get 'lawfully obtained' programs to work. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group, had asked for that exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to allow the so-called jailbreaking of iPhones and other devices. ..."