Tag: Filtering

George Ou, the former Technical Director of ZDNet, has found a new job where he continues to lead the technology sector by publishing innovative thoughts and ideas – sometimes not necessarily his own.

Ever since Robb Topolski unleashed his exposé on behavioral advertising company NebuAd, behavioral advertisers and their partners have found themselves in the hot seat. And judging by the looks of it, that heat isn't going to let up anytime soon. You'll recall that back in May, Representatives Joe Barton (R-TX, Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce) and Edward Markey (D-MA, Chairman of the Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee) sent a letter to NebuAd's CEO, politely asking him to put his pilot tests on hold, pending an investigation into the company's practices. A coalition of 15 consumer advocacy and privacy groups, including Public Knowledge, voiced its support for Barton and Markey's letter and urged the Congressmen to continue their investigation into the practice of behavioral advertising. And continue they have.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been quick to blame problems with service quality on so-called “bandwidth hogs.” According to AT&T, the top 5% of their Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) subscribers use 46% of the consumed bandwidth, and the top 1% of subscribers use 21%. But it is unclear what these figures mean, and if congestion problems could even be caused by those who use the network the most. These figures would seem to be describing the bandwidth consumption totals at the end of some designated time period (day, week, month). If this is the case, then 5% of subscribers using 46% of bandwidth consumed is not necessarily cause for alarm.

Excessive bandwidth usage is only a problem when it degrades the quality of service for other users of the network.

Whats New:

• Public Knowledge and Free Press Shine A Light on Behavioral Advertising
• PK Conditions Included in FCC’s XM-Sirius Merger Draft Order
• OECD Ministerial: Protecting the Internet is a Public Policy Priority
• G8 Endorses Secretive Trade Agreement
• Notable Press Mentions: June-July 2008

Even though I was in Seoul a little less than a month ago, I would be remiss if I didn’t take note of the nightly protests that were occurring there. For one thing, they were impossible to miss—the convention center where the OECD Ministerial was held had a small phalanx of orderly protesters and riot police outside it during the days—a scene mirrored in vastly greater numbers each evening downtown. But another reason for me to pay attention to the protests was an issue that touched on media and even copyright issues.

On June 18, the front page of the Korea Times covered a speech given by President Lee Myung-Bak at the OECD Ministerial. The headline?

In its “Declaration on the World Economy”, the G-8 included an endorsement of ACTA and ongoing efforts to “standardize” IP enforcement through customs organizations. “We encourage the acceleration of negotiations to establish a new international legal framework, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and seek to complete the negotiation by the end of this year,” the statement says.

So we have a major endorsement of ACTA from the leadership of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And pressure to have this international legal agreement ready to roll at the end of the year. So what’s going to be in this critically important, possibly binding international agreement, to be completed in less than six months?

We have no idea.

Representatives from the US, EC, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, S. Korea, Canada, and Mexico have been holding close-to clandestine meetings over the past year to construct a trade agreement that tightens the level of regulations on IP-related goods and services. This proposed pact is called ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. No official agendas or results of the talks have been released, though a “discussion paper” was leaked to Wikileaks in late May. This discussion paper is the basic extent of the world’s knowledge on ACTA, yet some version of ACTA will apparently be up for adoption at the G8 Summit in July.

As you might recall, last Friday, we took a look at a deal made between Internet service provider (ISP) Charter and NebuAD, a company that specializes in “highly-targeted” advertising. In a nutshell, NebuAD installed Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) devices on Charter’s network, in order to harvest user data, which was then used to serve ads to specific users based on their surfing habits. This, of course, raised a number of privacy concerns and furthermore, served as a disconcerting reminder that non-neutral or “tiered” networks are very much technologically feasible.

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This year, the 18th annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference will focus on what constitutes technology policy. CFP: Technology Policy ‘08 is an opportunity to help shape public debate on those issues being made into laws and regulations and those technological infrastructures being developed.

For more information please visit: http://www.cfp2008.org

It seems that Charter, an Internet service provider (ISP) based in St. Louis, Missouri, is having a bit of trouble keeping its customers happy. Last year, Charter came in dead last in PC World’s rankings of "The Best and Worst ISPs," which was based on a survey of over 6,400 readers. Meanwhile, BroadbandReports currently rates Charter as 22nd out of 25 listed cable Internet providers, in accordance with user reviews submitted to the site. Based on these two facts alone, we can safely conclude that there are a lot of unsatisfied Charter customers out there. So, what is the company doing to remedy this situation? They’ve decided to offer their users "enhanced" service, free of charge.