InternetPolicy.net

Vietnam's datalink disrupted

According to the Associated Press, "The [underwater fiber optic] cable connecting Vietnam to Hong Kong, Western Europe and North American broke somewhere off the coast of Hong Kong Monday evening, said an official with Internet service provider FPT Communications Company. It will take several days to fix the cable, he said..."

New Book: The Digital Sublime

The MIT Press has just published The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace by Vincent Mosco (232 pages, price $27.95 / £18.95, ISBN 0-262-13439-X):

"Myths are not just falsehoods that can be disproved, Mosco points out, but stories that lift us out of the banality of everyday life into the possibility of the sublime. He argues that if we take what we know about cyberspace and situate it within what we know about culture - specifically the central post-Cold War myths of the end of history, geography, and politics - we will add to our knowledge about the digital world; we need to see it 'with both eyes' - that is, to understand it both culturally and materially. After examining the myths of cyberspace and going back in history to look at the similar mythic pronouncements prompted by past technological advances - the telephone, the radio, and television, among others - Mosco takes us to Ground Zero. In the final chapter he considers the twin towers of the World Trade Center...

"Vincent Mosco is Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society in the Department of Sociology at Queen's University and the author of The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal..."

Standards elusive for online Arabic

Reuters has a story today about the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC), chaired by Syrian-born Khaled Fattal, and their efforts to develop global standards for using the Arabic alphabet online. Some people might wonder why this wasn't resolved years ago as part of the UNICODE project, but the article says only that the "Arab Internet community has partly itself to blame because, more so than its counterparts in the Far East, [they] wasted several years in disagreement over which characters are essential and how to map them... The process is more complicated than it might appear because apart from the basic characters the Arabic script also contains a set of optional diacritical marks which can be crucial." Arabic lettering is widely used in 30+ countries for at least 4 different languages. "Fattal said that given enough funding, say $6 million, his organisation could produce tangible results within nine months. [Charles Sha'ban, a MINC board member] is less optimistic. 'A good solution would be to have direct characters in the route itself, which according to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) would take another five years...'"

UPDATE: James Seng in Singapore read this item and posted a rejoinder in his blog. After noting that Chinese has a thousand times more characters than Arabic, he joked that his crew should have gotten $6 billion for publishing RFC 3743 last month (the full title of that document is "Joint Engineering Team [JET] Guidelines for Internationalized Domain Names [IDN] Registration and Administration for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean").

Mr. Seng goes on to say: "I was one of founding member of MINC. The original vision is to have an organization that can help faciliate and resolve the language issues with IDN that will not be tackled by the IETF IDN-WG. But after [having] been hijacked by certain commerical interests, and then hijack again and again, I stayed away from them as far as I can... My personal view of MINC has shift from 'harmless' to 'dangerous', especially when they tried to paint themselves as the group that should 'govern the multilingual Internet'. Thanks, but no thanks..."

Prioritizing the WSIS targets for 2015

The ICT Development Agenda (published by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation) reported the results of an ITU survey which were announced last week. 1250 people expressed their opinions about the importance of the 10 "targets for improving access and connectivity" set by the WSIS Action Plan. Here are the goals, ranked by their level of support. These preferences are non-binding, of course, but it is interesting that access to radio and TV broadcasts finished in last place:

1. Connecting universities, colleges, secondary schools and primary schools.
2. Connecting scientific and research centers.
3. Ensuring that more than half the world's inhabitants have access to ICTs within their reach.
4. Connecting villages and establishing community access points.
5. Connecting all local and central government departments, establish their websites and email addresses.
6. Connecting health centers and hospitals.
7. Connecting public libraries, cultural centers, museums, post offices and archives.
8. Adapting all primary and secondary school curricula to meet the challenges of the Information Society, taking into account national circumstances.
9. Encouraging the development of content and to put in place technical conditions in order to facilitate the presence and use of all world languages on the Internet.
10. Ensuring that all of the world's population have access to television and radio services.

Nigeria: web filters to catch 419 scammers?

This seems far-fetched, but quoting the latest issue of Kaza-Kaza (a weekly email bulletin with ICT news from Africa):

"According to the President of the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem, while discussing 'Internet Penetration, Access and Usage in the Country' on a Nigerian television station in Lagos, the recently set-up Presidential Committee against online scam under the leadership of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Lt. General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau (rtd), is re-strategising to make things hard for online scammers. He disclosed that most Cyber cafe operators would soon be compulsorily asked to deploy filters to 'filter off any unwanted mails or [sites]' and scammers would be apprehended before they conclude their deals..."

Imposing filters against "unwanted sites" in order to fight 419 scams sounds like a cure much worse than the sickness.

Bangladesh: universal wireless access?

The Daily Star reports that a "three-day workshop on 'Nationwide Internet access & online applications' began [on 22 May in Dhaka] under the auspices of Alexandria Research Institute (ARI). The workshop aims to find out ways to provide sustainable and affordable Internet access to the people of Bangladesh and other developing countries at a large scale. Experts from home and other countries, including Canada, India, Nepal, Singapore, Thailand and the United States, are taking part in the workshop sponsored by the US National Science Foundation, the UNDP, BRAC University, Grameen Cyber Society and Jobs, a USAID project. Keynote speaker Prof. Saifur Rahman of ARI said, 'About 90 percent people of the country could be served with as few as 25 towers with multiple base stations using Wireless Local Loop or 802.16 technology.' The 802.16 technology delivers true broadband speed wireless connection. Posts and Telecommunications Secretary Faruq Ahmad Siddiqi said the government is committed to providing Internet access to all citizens..."

China to censor online games

Chow Chung-yan wrote in yesterday's South China Morning Post: "The mainland's rapidly growing online games industry will face a new censorship committee aimed at preventing imported games from spreading politically incorrect messages, Xinhua reports. The committee, which falls under the control of the Ministry of Culture, was set up to help 'cleanse the cultural environment on the internet,' the report said. The committee is made up of scholars, government officials, political consultants and teachers. It will have a permanent office that will review all online games imported from abroad. Online game operators are required to submit the games they want to import to the committee for assessment. Once the content had been approved, it would then be tested on the public for 30 days, Xinhua said. The committee will review the games a second time after the public testing period finishes. It will decide if any content needs to be changed based on information collected from the initial assessment and public testing. The report said the measures were designed to root out 'unhealthy elements.' Authorities fear players may use online games to promote Taiwan's or Tibet's independence, or to spread Falun Gong messages... It also announced that each imported online game should only be operated by one Chinese company. The report said the requirement was aimed at protecting intellectual property rights and ensuring the games' content could not be changed without official approval.

"China's online game market is the one of the largest and fastest growing in the world, with revenue increasing by 117 per cent to 2 billion yuan last year, according to media reports. An official with the Ministry of Culture said the online games business had overtaken the film industry in terms of revenue. The most popular games boast hundreds of thousands of players..." [Thanks to the Asia Pacific Media Network for citing this article.]

CDT joins ACLU to protect US net users

Our colleagues at the Center for Democracy and Technology "joined other privacy groups and an ISP trade association in filing an amicus brief today [24 May] in support of the ACLU's challenge to the FBI's National Security Letter authority, which allows [the FBI] to obtain certain customer records from ISPs and other businesses without a court order." The text of CDT's brief is here.

ACLU's website gives the background of this case: "the American Civil Liberties Union has challenged the FBI’s unchecked authority to issue 'National Security Letters' (NSLs), which demand sensitive customer records from Internet Service Providers and other businesses without judicial oversight. Before the Patriot Act, the FBI could use the NSL authority only against suspected terrorists and spies. Thanks to Section 505 of the Patriot Act, the FBI can now use NSLs to obtain information about anyone..."

Here is the item we posted last month about this case.

How to Build Open Information Societies

Amy Mahan and Yuri Misnikov at UNDP's regional center in Bratislava, Slovakia, have edited a book on How to Build Open Information Societies: A Collection of Best Practices and Know-How. "Case studies and examples from 19 countries illustrate different e-governance programmes and applications - from a diverse range of initiatives including support for policy formulation, customs reform, youth sexual education, rural deployment of ICTs and training, country database building, and others." It will be available in a few days as a free download here.

Europe overtakes US in filesharing

According to Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent for Reuters, "The latest Hollywood movies, television shows and albums zipping between Internet users accounts for 70 percent to 80 percent of all Internet traffic handled daily by European Internet service providers (ISPs). The level of peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic, according to Canadian traffic filtering company Sandvine Inc., has remained steady since the start of the year...Sandvine said file-sharing activity in the United States has dipped five percent to account for 65 percent of all Internet traffic in recent months, suggesting the American law suits are having a modest impact... There is one stark difference between the two regions. Europeans tend to download more bulky movie-sized files, making users of such file-trading protocols as BitTorrent and eDonkey more popular among Europeans... Europe's biggest broadband markets -- Germany, the UK and France -- have some of the most active peer-to-peer users, Sandvine said..."