News and Research articles on Business

Cloud computing: analysing the trade-off between user comfort and autonomy

Primavera De Filippi, Research and Studies Center of Administrative Science (CERSA/CNRS), Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas)
PUBLISHED ON: 13 Jun 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.2.135

This article presents a general analysis of how user autonomy in the internet cloud is increasingly put into jeopardy by the growing comfort and efficiency of the user-interface. Although this issue has not been, thus far, explicitly addressed by the law, it is a fundamental ethical question that should be carefully assessed to guide the future deployment of cloud computing.

New global top-level domain names: Europe, the challenger

Francesca Musiani, MINES ParisTech
PUBLISHED ON: 6 Jun 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.2.134

gTLDs are the highest level of domain names in the domain name system, including .com, .net and .org; their number has been restricted to twenty-two for several years. This will change, as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) - the organisation responsible for managing and coordinating the system - rolls out a new gTLDs programme. Businesses and organisations are now able to apply for their own customised top-level domain names. But ICANNs move is mired in controvery, as Francesca Musiani reveals.

Apple in Germany: the potentially long-lasting impact of a short judgment

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 28 May 2013

Until the early days of June, Apple still has time to appeal against a Court ruling that nobody expects the tech company can afford to accept. The Berlin Regional Court in April decided [PDF] Apple's data protection directives were illegal according to German law. Will Apple appeal the decision? Yes, says everybody except Apple itself.

Ten years after the first World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS+10 was held in February 2013 at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Internet governance scholar Francesca Musiani attended and reports back with a critical assessment of the “multi-stakeholder” approach to global governance of information and communication technologies.

Dangerous Liaisons? Governments, companies and Internet governance

Francesca Musiani, MINES ParisTech
PUBLISHED ON: 18 Feb 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.1.108

Private actors in the information technology sector are currently playing an increasingly important role in content mediation, as well as in regulation of online forms of expression, with implications for both internet rights and economic freedom. The latest Google Transparency Report (Google, 2013) released on January 24, 2013, sends a clear and somewhat disquieting message to the advocates of a more transparent internet governance worldwide. Several governments in the European Union are submitting a steadily increasing number of requests to the giant of online information search, with two purposes: the acquisition of several types of sensitive information about internet users – including …