By retracing the stages of development of a 'peer-to-peer cloud' storage service, Francesca Musiani argues that decentralised network architectures are internet governance 'in practice'.

Big data, big responsibilities

Primavera De Filippi, Research and Studies Center of Administrative Science (CERSA/CNRS), Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas)
PUBLISHED ON: 13 Jan 2014 DOI: 10.14763/2014.1.227

The legal and moral obligations of private online operators collecting and processing large amounts of data are unclear. Researcher Primavera de Filippi explains why.

Is there such a thing as free government data?

Federico Morando, Nexa Center for Internet & Society, Politecnico de Torino
Raimondo Iemma, Nexa Center for Internet & Society
Simone Basso, Nexa Center for Internet & Society
PUBLISHED ON: 21 Nov 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.4.219

The new European public sector information directive, released in June 2013, makes “marginal cost” the default charge for government data. How to implement this principle? A consultation is ongoing. This article focusses on the calculation criteria for marginal costs.

Re-thinking civil disobedience

Theresa Züger, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society
PUBLISHED ON: 11 Nov 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.4.216

Civil disobedience is a familiar and well established phenomenon in Western societies. Currently, this concept of political action is challenged by new practices evolving on and around the internet. This paper focusses on the question of whether several forms of digital civil disobedience are legitimate.

Flawed cloud architectures and the rise of decentral alternatives

Primavera De Filippi, Research and Studies Center of Administrative Science (CERSA/CNRS), Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas)
PUBLISHED ON: 1 Nov 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.4.212

Currently dominant cloud services raise challenges in terms of security, privacy and user autonomy. Decentralisation, advocated by civil society, may overcome some of the drawbacks.

Network architecture as internet governance

Francesca Musiani, MINES ParisTech
PUBLISHED ON: 24 Oct 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.4.208

Changes in the internet's architectural design affect the repartition of competences and responsibilities between service providers, content producers, users and network operators. This article outlines the dialectic between centralised and distributed architectures, institutions and practices, and how they mutually affect each other.

The changing role of collecting societies in the internet

Sebastian Haunss, University of Bremen
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Sep 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.3.199

The system of national collecting societies provided a relatively stable framework for licensing musical works – until the internet changed the field of music distribution. The GEMA-Youtube case serves as a starting point to discuss the future of collective copyright management.