Category: Internet Governance

Posted on

The Internet As an Intrinsic Threat: Yesbutters vs Whynotters

Italian politcians’ mantra, starting from the Chair of the Low Chamber, Boldrini and down to local parties’ minions is “The Internet is an opportunity but…” and then a stream flows of statement like “we need to regulate it”, “we need to keep it free for the righteous citizen”, “we must block hate speeches” and so on.

This reminds me of an old, untitled essay I read on Giancarlo Livraghi’s gandalf.it:

Yesbutters don?t just kill ideas.
They kill companies, even entire industries.
The yesbutters have all the answers.
Yesbut we?re different. Yesbut we can?t afford it.
Yesbut our business doesn?t need it.
Yesbut we couldn?t sell it to our workforce.
Yesbut we can?t explain it to our shareholders.
Yesbut let?s wait and see.
All the answers. All the wrong answers.

For the positive part, dedicated to the Whynotters, just follow this link.

Posted on

Microsoft Blog Post on Safe Harbour. A Different Perspective

The collapse of the US-EU Safe Harbor: Solving the new privacy Rubik?s Cube is a post on the official Microsoft’s blog that is gaining momentum since it is possibly the first “cooled down” analysis of the EUCJ decision on Safe Harbour. Though well articulated, nevertheless, I think that the “hook” where the chain of reasoning hangs is weak.

I don’t think we should go for “global laws” because of the technological evolution.

“Global laws” means “Single Government” or, in other words, the end of democracy.

From a legal standpoint, the technological evolution is irrelevant because technology only affects the way things are done and not the right to do it.

You don’t need to amend the provision that punishes killing or manslaughtering everytime that somebody figure out some “creative” mode to put a R.I.P. stone over somebody else head. Or, dealing with the technological “evolution”, you don’t need a new provision to sanction hate speeches, personal life intrusions, libel and defamation, stalking and so on “just” because of the Internet. The illegal behaviours were already there before the computer era.

Furthermore, we all know that law is rather Lobbyists’s pressures, political mediation, economic and financial differences driven, than God-inspired.

Guess who would going to write this “Global Regulation”?

Posted on

Why the Right To Be Forgotten Is Plain Wrong (and What Is the Best Way to Protect Your Reputation)

The Right to be forgotten – not a “right” per se, by the way – is a distorted way to enforce the right to privacy and an actual form of censorship because strips from the Court’s hands the power to decide what should be known and what shouldn’t and, further more, is a way to enforce a bottoms-up censorship that a State can easily turn into a top-down dissent shutting.

The Right to be forgotten is the wrong answer to a (maybe) real question: how do you get rid of your embarrassing past if I’ve changed course of life?

Answer: instead of trying to hide the dust under the carpet by removing the search engines’ indexes, just use it at your advantage: run a blog, a social network page or whatever elicit the interest of the search engines’ robots and tell your story. This way you can counterbalance the (allegedly) negative effect of a news relating to you because a search engine will reveal? your side of the story too.

This, of course, if you are sincere in your life-changing effort because, if you’re not,? you might find yourself exposed again to the consequences of your con stunt.

Is the solution to the Right to be forgotten actually as simple as that?

No, because to do so you should be able to properly handle an argument, collect and provide evidences and effectively deliver your statement. And since Cicero’s adepts aren’t that much, it is better to go for the censorship solution: cheaper, faster and good for the powers-that-be.

Posted on

How Do Cameron and Obama Are Going to Forbid This?

cipherThis is – the news is as recent as today – what the Italian Polizia di Stato found during a Ndrangheta (organized crime from Calabria) related investigation.

Although the cipher, in this case, is not that hard to handle for an expert codebreaker it shows that “old school” systems still work.

So, following the announced ban of side-to-side encryption application made by US Presidente Obama and UK Prime Minister Cameron (coupled with the statement by Italian Home Affair Ministry) I wonder how they’re going to fight this “new”, dangerous way to exploit the encryption.

Maybe outlawing paper and pencil?

Posted on

The (Italian) Internet Bill of Rights To Get Momentum

Starting from Oct. 27 and for the next four months ahead, the “Commissione per i diritti e i doveri relativi ad Internet” (Commission for the rights and duties related to the Internet) of the Italian low chamber launched a series of hearing with the major Italian and European players to gather information and suggestion about this “revolutionary” initiative.

I wander who will have the … gut to tell them that:

  • there is no “mr. Internet”, the Internet as such being just a protocol,
  • the Internet doesn’t have rights. People do,
  • the European Convention of Human Rights already contains all the legal guarantee for a free (and law-abiding) use of the communication technologies, thus there is no need for another piece of nasty bureaucratic legislation,
  • the actual problem of the online ecosystem is the (still present) lack of a true commitment of the law enforcement and judicial community to properly understand the technical side of the issue so to create a reasonable case law,
  • the telco and ISP industry is paying a huge financial and technical cost for the illiteracy of lawmakers, public authorities, judges and law enforcers, with no actual benefit for the society,
  • these issues have been raised since 1994 and ahead, but nobody in the powers-that-be realm was available to hear it.

Let’s wait and see…