Is Bitcoin a fair and reliable currency? Contrary to what its proponents might hope, Bitcoin is far from fulfilling their expectations.
News and Research articles on Private Actors
This paper analyses social media blocking in Brazil, as a consequence of "regulatory disruption".
This article distils from the various (proposals for) platform regulation operational principles that can serve as the basis for productive debate on the subject.
Internet accessibility for people with disabilities is long overdue. We draw on pioneering Australian efforts, compared with recent US and European initiatives, to argue for better disability internet policy now.
The ‘lawful’ intrusion or interference with information communication infrastructures poses challenges to democratic freedoms in Australia.
Fernando N. van der Vlist and Anne Helmond discuss Data Selfie, an open source browser extension that collects and analyses data about your behaviour on facebook.com
Artworks in the public space are not in the public domain: an apparent lightweight topic is polarising European copyright lobbyists.
KEYWORDS:
Public domain, Public art, Freedom of panorama, Public space, Text-mining, Copyright law, Lobbying
The history of the internet design process as depicted in the internet RFCs provides evidence of the value of social capital, interpersonal relationships, and community in the face of instability. Drawing conceptual distinctions is a necessary first step for many of the other coping techniques.
Disclosing and concealing: internet governance, information control and the management of visibility
Datafication leads to subtle forms of governance; this article explores them by drawing on science and technology studies as well as sociologies of visibility.
How did early network designers govern the internet before internet governance? With archival research, this article shows how designers conceived of the Domain Name System (DNS) as a solution to the problem of governing future network users.
This paper demonstrates the benefit of using the concept of governmentality to understand how online behaviours are directed, constrained and framed through the management of technical resources that enact logics of power and control.
Openness, inclusion and empowerment – how do these buzzwords determine the directions of access policy?
Internet governance bodies agree that improving online security is important, but disagree on what a more secure internet would look like.
Cogent and Deutsche Telekom were peers... until the US network operator sued its German counterpart. The case serves to illustrate a broader issue in net policy.
Bitcoin is the first decentralised, peer-to-peer network that allows for the proof and transfer of ownership of virtual currencies without the need for a trusted third party. The purpose of this article is to address how we can capture Bitcoin’s potential benefits for the economy while addressing new regulatory challenges.
For less than a week now, German internet access providers have completed filing their requests for reservations of vectoring locations - in which they can offer vectoring enhanced internet access to customers. Vectoring technology allows to push broadband speed of old DSL subscriber lines to 100 Mbit/s by removing what the experts call 'crosstalk', an interference in the copper bundles resulting from putting more and more data onto them.
Online fan communities create fascinating and in-depth work based on what they love - but are they in the clear when it comes to copyright?
The European Union’s Court of Justice has ruled against Google in a case in which a Spanish citizen, backed by his national data protection authority, wanted the company to remove search links to an old local newspaper story related to his bankruptcy. Jef Ausloos argues that implications should not be too extreme, but warns of the Court’s prioritising of data subjects over internet users.
Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 our international system is based upon the principle of territorial sovereignty. Today, however, cross-border online spaces made possible by the internet span across a system of fragmented national jurisdictions. Tension rises since we do not have the legal equivalent to the technical interoperability that enables the global internet. A choice has to be made.
The dominant narrative about the governance of the internet in media and with high-level policymakers is misleading. Researchers Francesca Musiani and Julia Pohle explain what stands in the way of genuine multistakeholder internet governance as all eyes are turning towards Brazil and its NETmundial meeting.