Skyway Recommended April 21st to 27th

This week: Internet Explorer Vulnerability; Independent Net Governance Step Closer; Ottawa threatens to cut Telus out of Wireless Auction; Goodbye to Net Neutrality?

 

Reuters | U.S., UK advise avoiding Internet Explorer until bug fixed

(Reuters) – The U.S. and UK governments on Monday advised computer users to consider using alternatives to Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer browser until the company fixes a security flaw that hackers used to launch attacks. Read More…

IT World Canada | Conference moves independent Internet governance closer

The move to a more multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance took another step with large agreement on the final statement from the NETmundial conference in Brazil. Read More…

Globe and Mail | Ottawa threatens to cut Telus out of wireless auction

The Conservative government is prepared to cut Telus Corp. out of a valuable auction of cellular frequencies if the big wireless player doesn’t abandon repeated attempts to acquire spectrum that was set aside for new entrants, government sources say. Read More…

The New Yorker | Goodbye Net Neutrality, Hello Net Discrimination

In 2007, at a public forum at Coe College, in Iowa, Presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked about net neutrality. Specifically, “Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate net neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint F.C.C. commissioners that support open Internet principles like net neutrality?” “The answer is yes,” Obama replied. “I am a strong supporter of net neutrality.” Explaining, he said, “What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites…. And that I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet—which is that there is this incredible equality there.”

If reports in the Wall Street Journal are correct, Obama’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Thomas Wheeler, has proposed a new rule that is an explicit and blatant violation of this promise. Read More…