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L'internet des objets – Un plan d'action pour l'Europe

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:47:45 +0200

La Commission européenne vient de faire paraître un plan d’action pour le développement de l’Internet des Objets en Europe. Parmi les recommandations de ce plan, le droit au “silence des puces” qui avait été proposé lors de la Présidence Française de l’Union Européenne.

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NY TIMES : Google Taking a Step Into Power Metering

Mon, 9 Feb 2009 17:44:05 +0100

By MATTHEW WALD and MIGUEL HELFT
SAN FRANCISCO — Google will announce its entry Tuesday into the small but growing business of “smart grid,” digital technologies that seek to both keep the electrical system on an even keel and reduce electrical energy consumption.
Google is one of a number of companies devising ways to control the demand for electric power as an alternative to building more power plants. The company has developed a free Web service called PowerMeter that consumers can use to track energy use in their house or business as it is consumed.
Google is counting on others to build devices to feed data into PowerMeter technology. While it hopes to begin introducing the service in the next few months, it has not yet lined up hardware manufacturers.
“We can’t build this product all by ourselves,” said Kirsten Olsen Cahill, a program manager at Google.org, the company’s corporate philanthropy arm. “We depend on a whole ecosystem of utilities, device makers and policies that would allow consumers to have detailed access to their home energy use and make smarter energy decisions.”
“Smart grid” is the new buzz phrase in the electric business, encompassing a variety of approaches that involve more communication between utility operators and components of the grid, including transformers, power lines, customer meters and even home appliances like dishwashers.
“They’ve been putting a chip in your dishwasher for a long time that would allow you to run it any time you want,” said Rick Sergel, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry group that sets operating standards for the grid.
If the utility could “talk” to the dishwasher, it might tell the machine to run at 2 a.m. and not 2 p.m., or it might tell the homeowner how much money would be saved by running the dishwasher at a different hour.
“It provides an opportunity to create dancing partners that will help the system balance itself,” he said.
It also might be useful for plug-in hybrid cars, which will draw significant amounts of energy, perhaps doubling the electric demand of a small household. A smart grid would recognize the car wherever it was plugged in, the way a cellphone network recognizes a mobile phone when it is turned on.
The grid could bill the owner of the car for recharging the battery no matter where the car was plugged in. It would charge the owner a rate based on the time of day or night. If the car were left plugged in, the grid could decide when to charge it at the lowest rate.
The stimulus bill now going to a House-Senate conference committee has allocated $4.4 billion for “smart” technologies, including four million of these next-generation monitors, called smart meters. Proponents say that could make more effective use of existing power lines and generate employment.
“You can hire a lot of people to install smart meters,” said James Hoecker, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has some jurisdiction over transmission lines.

From major to minor (The Economist)

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:59:51 +0100

Last year was terrible for the recorded-music majors. The next few years are likely to be even worse

IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.
In public, of course, music executives continued to talk a good game: recovery was just around the corner, they argued, and digital downloads would rescue the music business. But the results from 2007 confirm what EMI's focus group showed: that the record industry's main product, the CD, which in 2006 accounted for over 80% of total global sales, is rapidly fading away. In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected. For the first half of 2007, sales of music on CD and other physical formats fell by 6% in Britain, by 9% in Japan, France and Spain, by 12% in Italy, 14% in Australia and 21% in Canada. (Sales were flat in Germany.) Paid digital downloads grew rapidly, but did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs. More worryingly for the industry, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing.
“In 2007 it became clear that the recorded-music industry is contracting and that it will be a very different beast from what it was in the 20th century,” says Mark Mulligan, an analyst at JupiterResearch. Last year several big-name artists bypassed the record labels altogether. Madonna left Warner Music to strike a deal with Live Nation, a concert promoter, and the Eagles distributed a bestselling album in America without any help from a record label. Radiohead, a British band, deserted EMI to release an album over the internet. These were isolated, unusual deals, by artists whose careers had already brought years of profits to the big music companies. But they made the labels look irrelevant and will no doubt prompt other artists to think about leaving them too.
The smallest major labels, EMI and Warner Music, are struggling most visibly. Warner Music's share price has fallen to $4.75, 72% lower than its IPO price in 2005, and it is weighed down by debt. EMI's new private-equity owner, Terra Firma, paid a high price for the business in August 2007. Now, having got rid of most of EMI's senior managers and revealed embarrassing details of their spending habits (£200,000 a year went on sundries euphemistically referred to in the music business as “fruit and flowers”), Terra Firma is due to produce a new strategy later this month. But many observers reckon the private-equity men are out of their depth.
The two biggest majors—Universal, which is owned by Vivendi, a French conglomerate, and Sony BMG, a joint venture between Sony and Bertelsmann, a German media firm—derive some protection from their parent companies. Universal is the strongest and is gaining market share. But people speculate that Bertelsmann may want to sell out to Sony next year.
Three vicious circles have now set in for the recorded-music firms. First, because sales of CDs are tumbling, big retailers such as Wal-Mart are cutting the amount of shelf-space they give to music, which in turn accelerates the decline. Richard Greenfield of Pali Research, an independent research firm, reckons that retail floor-space devoted to CDs in America will be cut by 30% or more in 2008. The pattern is likely to repeat itself elsewhere as sales fall.

Circular arguments

Second, because the majors are cutting costs severely, particularly at EMI and Warner Music, artists are receiving far less marketing and promotional support than before, which could prompt them to seek alternatives. “They've cut out the guts of middle managers and there are fewer people on the ground to promote records,” says Peter Mensch, manager of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Shania Twain.
Third, record companies face such hostile conditions that their backers, whether private equity or corporations, are loth to spend the sums required to move into the bits of the music industry that are thriving, such as touring and merchandising. The majors are trying to strike “360-degree” deals with artists that grant them a share of these earnings. But even if artists agree to such deals, they will not hand over new rights unless they get better terms on recorded music, so the majors may not see much benefit overall. Tim Renner, a former boss of Universal Music in Germany, says the majors should have acted years ago. “Then they had the money and could have built the competence by buying concert agencies and merchandise companies,” he says. Now it may be too late.
By mid-2007, when the majors realised that digital downloads were not growing as quickly as they had hoped, they landed on a more adventurous digital strategy. They now want to move beyond Apple's iTunes and its paid-for downloads. The direction of most of their recent digital deals, such as with Imeem, a social network that offers advertising-supported streamed music, is to offer music free at the point of delivery to consumers. Perhaps the most important experiment of all is a deal Universal struck in December with Nokia, the biggest mobile-phone maker, to supply its music for new handsets that will go on sale later this year. These “Comes With Music” phones will allow customers to download all the music they want to their phones and PCs and keep it—even if they change handsets when their year's subscription ends. Instead of charging consumers directly, Universal will take a cut of the price of each phone. The other majors are expected to strike similar deals.
“‘Comes with Music' is a recognition that music has to be given away for free, or close to free, on the internet,” says Mr Mulligan. Paid-for download services will continue and ad-supported music will become more widespread, but subsidised services where people do not pay directly for music will become by far the most popular, he says. For the recorded-music industry this is a leap into the unknown. Universal and its fellow majors may never earn anything like as much from partnership with device-makers as they did from physical formats. Some among their number, indeed, may not survive.

Yahoo Criticized in Case of Jailed Dissident

Tue, 6 Nov 2007 19:26:12 +0100

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (AP) — Two top Yahoo officials on Tuesday defended their company’s role in the jailing of a Chinese journalist but ran into withering criticism from United States lawmakers who accused them of complicity with an oppressive Communist regime.
“While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” Tom Lantos, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said angrily after hearing from the two executives, Jerry Yang, the chief executive, and Michael J. Callahan, the general counsel.
The journalist Shi Tao was sent to jail for 10 years for engaging in pro-democracy efforts deemed subversive after Yahoo turned over information about his online activities as requested by Chinese authorities.
Mr. Lantos angrily urged the two men to apologize to the journalist’s mother, who was sitting directly behind them.
Mr. Yang and Mr. Callahan turned around from the witness table and bowed from their seats to Mr. Shi’s mother, Gao Qinsheng, who bowed in return and then began to weep.
The committee is investigating statements Mr. Callahan made at a Congressional hearing early last year. He said then that Yahoo had no information about the nature of the Chinese government’s investigation of Mr. Shi when the company turned over information about him in 2004.
Mr. Callahan has since acknowledged that Yahoo officials had received a subpoenalike document that referred to suspected “illegal provision of state secrets” — a common charge against political dissidents.
Last week Mr. Callahan issued a statement saying that he had learned the details of the document months after his testimony in February 2006 and that he regretted not alerting the committee to it once he knew about it.
He reiterated that regret Tuesday and contended that Yahoo employees in China had little choice but to comply with the government’s demands.
“I cannot ask our local employees to resist lawful demands and put their own freedom at risk, even if, in my personal view, the local laws are overbroad,” Mr. Callahan said.
Mr. Callahan could not say whether there were outstanding demands from the Chinese government for information from Yahoo, or whether Yahoo would react the same today to a demand for information from the Chinese government.
He did say that in going into future markets, like Vietnam, Yahoo would aim to find a way to avoid turning over to the government information on citizens’ online activities.

Tech titans seek virtual world interoperability

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:22:53 +0200

By Daniel Terdiman
http://www.news.com/Tech-titans-seek-virtual-world-interoperability/2100-1043_3-6213148.html

Story last modified Fri Oct 12 06:28:02 PDT 2007

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Get ready to hop your avatar onto a hoverboard and fly seamlessly between Second Life and There.com. To buy armor or gold pieces in World of Warcraft or EverQuest II with actual dollars or euros. Or to pack up your 3D models from a Multiverse virtual world and take it with you to Gaia Online.
Welcome to virtual world interoperability: a new era where the many previously walled-garden virtual worlds can share content, currency and even identity, all in the guise of making life easier for end users and, ideally, for enterprises trying to leverage the Second Lifes of the world for businesses purposes.
Unfortunately for those who like that notion of interoperability, it's not going to be happening just yet. But a group of representatives from some of the biggest and most powerful technology companies on earth--including IBM, Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Google and Sony, as well as from leading virtual-world developers like Second Life publisher Linden Lab, the Multiverse Network, Mindark and others--is hoping to change that in the not too distant future.
The first really public shot in this battle was fired Wednesday when Linden Lab and IBM announced their intention to work toward a day when virtual-world users can port a single virtual identity from one service to another.
The announcement was timed to coincide with the Virtual Worlds conference here, an event that has attracted hundreds of people interested in exploring how such environments can be used for business, entertainment, education and other purposes.
"I was a bit bothered by (the assumption) that seemed to exist in the room that moving avatars or objects across virtual worlds is actually much of a market need."
--Raph Koster, founder, Areae
But the real work may well have begun on Tuesday, a day ahead of the show, when representatives from 23 companies and institutions gathered here for a meeting organized around the principle of investigating what it will take to make virtual-world interoperability a reality. The offensive continued Thursday with a keynote address on the subject given by Christian Renaud, the chief architect of networked virtual environments for Cisco.
And while there is no formal leader of the interoperability movement, it seems that the ones fronting the charge, in the U.S. at least, are Renaud and Peter Hagger, a senior technical staff member of IBM's emerging technology and standards group.
"We've had lots of discussions with various companies and, of course, with our customers, and found a common need and desire for interoperability between the various virtual worlds," Hagger said. "We talked about interoperability and decided to kick the tires and see how much interest there was...(The Tuesday meeting) was a very good discussion. The common theme was interoperability as well as standardization to support (it) and the integration of the worlds with each other and with the Web."
To be sure, the idea of making discrete virtual worlds function in tandem like this is nothing new. In 1989, Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins and several colleagues filed a patent application for the concept of moving avatars across worlds, and for anyone who joined Second Life and There.com in 2003 or 2004, the notion seemed obvious as a way of getting the benefit of the better There interface and the more interesting collection of user-generated content in Second Life.
But despite the wishes of many who would prefer to populate multiple worlds with a single avatar identity or to create a particular 3D build only once for use across different platforms, there has been little, if any, progress.
And to some, that's just fine.
"I was a bit bothered by (the assumption) that seemed to exist in the room," Raph Koster, the founder of virtual-world platform developer Areae, said in a posting on his blog after the Tuesday meeting, "that moving avatars or objects across virtual worlds is actually much of a market need."
Indeed, Koster added in his blog post that it struck him as odd that at the meeting, "entertainment, which accounts for 98 percent of all virtual world users and revenue, was not really represented well in the room."
What's really unexpected, in fact, is that the movement for interoperability is being promoted by technology companies like IBM and Cisco, since neither actually makes a virtual world.
But IBM has put a lot of effort into being involved in environments like Second Life, and has many customers interested in participating in virtual worlds. And for its part, as Renaud pointed out, Cisco is deeply involved by virtue of its making much of the backbone technology that makes such worlds possible.
For Renaud, who focused his Thursday keynote address on the idea of how to bring some level of common usability to what he estimated are the 465 million global users of virtual worlds, the search for interoperability between the services is no less than an attempt to avoid being the butt of a generation of Betamax-versus-VHS jokes.
"I hope (the initiative) will be successful," Renaud told CNET News.com. "If we can do this, it will be a rite of passage. If we fail and there's no suitable substitute, it's going to be war of the competing worlds."
That may well be overstating the case, since the various virtual worlds are currently not interoperable and everyone seems to be getting along just fine. But the point is that end users and corporate customers may well lose patience with the requirement to create an entirely new identity or to have to build any kind of content multiple times if participation in multiple worlds is the goal.
And some have interesting visions for the infrastructure that would govern interoperable virtual worlds.
For example, Robert Gehorsam, president of Forterra Systems, which makes virtual worlds for clients like the U.S. military, universities and others, foresees a sort of search system that would allow users to locate content of many different kinds from within a series of worlds.
"It gets pretty wild," Gehorsham said. "In a 3D world, you're not looking for a document. You're looking for a thing. I'm looking for a blue Chevrolet, and up come 32 hits in some form: here's what it is, here's who owns it and here's where it is (in different worlds)."
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For now, anyway, there is no specific plan for what happens next in the interoperability pursuit, and in that regard it would be easy to dismiss the concept as a pie-in-the-sky vision that is years away.
On the other hand, it's hard to do when you consider the companies that were involved in the Tuesday meeting and the fact that those companies did agree to consider the formation of a consortium that would be comprised of the 23 companies and institutions that participated Tuesday, as well as anyone from the public that wanted to be involved. There is also a public wiki in the works which would allow for the sharing of ideas and concepts for how to move forward.
But despite the vocal, if not actual, leadership on the subject taken by IBM and Cisco, some feel that the entire interoperability battle would be better led by those who actually make virtual worlds than those giant companies.
"If the platforms, like (Linden Lab) and Areae and Multiverse, can help steer the direction of this group," said Chris Sherman, the executive director of Show Initiative, which put on the Virtual Worlds conference, "then it's got a better chance of succeeding than if it's (run) by companies that have limited experience in the space."

U.S. Government Seeks To Deny The Internet To Its Enemies

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:42:36 +0200

The 2007 National Strategy for Homeland Security focuses on the "uninterrupted use of the Internet and the communications systems that comprise our cyberinfrastructure."
By Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek  Oct. 12, 2007  URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202402122  
Cyberspace may become a more active battlefield in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
The new National Strategy for Homeland Security, issued earlier this week by the White House, places a greater emphasis on the "uninterrupted use of the Internet and the communications systems, data, monitoring, and control systems that comprise our cyberinfrastructure."
While such sentiment was clearly evident in the government's 2002 National Strategy for Homeland Security, the new guidelines show more concern for and about the Internet, in keeping with the government's 2006 National Infrastructure Protection Plan.
One measure of that is the frequency with which word "Internet" appears in the two national security plans. In the 2002 guidelines, "Internet" appears five times; in this year's version, it appears nine times.
The new guidelines acknowledge the need to better secure cyberspace; they also suggest that defensive actions will be accompanied by offensive measures.
"The Internet has become a training ground, with terrorists acquiring instruction once possible only through physical training camps," the document explains. "In addition to discrediting their terrorist propaganda on the Internet with the promotion of truthful messages, we will seek to deny the Internet to our terrorist enemies as an effective safe haven for their recruitment, fund-raising, training, and operational planning."
Exactly how the government expects to deny the Internet to terrorists isn't spelled out. One possible way might be through the United State's de facto control of the Domain Name System, though it's unlikely that card would be played outside of a confrontation with a major world power.
Whatever its plan for cyberspace, the Bush administration describes the Internet as a tool for the nation's enemies and as a source of vulnerability.
"Terrorists increasingly exploit the Internet to communicate, proselytize, recruit, raise funds, and conduct training and operational planning," the document reads. "Hostile foreign governments have the technical and financial resources to support advanced network exploitation and launch attacks on the informational and physical elements of our cyberinfrastructure. Criminal hackers threaten our nation's economy and the personal information of our citizens, and they also could pose a threat if wittingly or unwittingly recruited by foreign intelligence or terrorist groups. Our cybernetworks also remain vulnerable to natural disasters."
The ongoing effort to secure U.S. cyberinfrastructure relies on federal, state, and local governments, working in conjunction with the private sector, to "prevent damage to, and the unauthorized use and exploitation of, our cybersystems," according to the guidelines.
The document doesn't detail the specific means by which such security will be realized.

Expert says world misunderstands China's Web controls

Sun, 7 Oct 2007 12:14:45 +0200

BEIJING (Reuters) -By Ben Blanchard

The Internet in China is not as restricted as sometimes believed in the West, with most controls actually coming from sites practising self-censorship, an academic who studies the Chinese Web said on Thursday.
But the government has also effectively stopped online dissent, defying expectations that the Communist Party would never survive broadband, said Rebecca MacKinnon, assistant professor of new media at Hong Kong University's Journalism and Media Studies Centre.
Although MacKinnon added there was no doubt the government could crack down hard when it wanted to, pointing to the example of people jailed for expressing their opinions online, she said it was important to keep it in perspective.
"There's a real contradiction that's difficult to explain to the West and the outside world about China and about the Internet. On the one hand, you have a lot of efforts -- and fairly successful efforts -- to control content on the Internet and control what people can access," she said.
"Yet on the other hand, you have this contradiction that at the same time the space for conversation thanks to the Internet has grown tremendously in China," MacKinnon told the Foreign Correspondents Club.
The "Back Dorm Boys", who took the Chinese Internet world by storm with their lip-synching video of a Backstreet Boys song, were a good example of how popular the Web is becoming in China, said MacKinnon, a former Beijing-based reporter.
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"I showed this video to people in Washington, and their reaction was 'oh my goodness, they're just like my teenagers and they're doing the same things'," she added.
"They're not acting repressed and they're not acting oppressed. They're not spinning around being angry about not being able to do this or that on the Internet."
Instead, censorship is targeted, at dissidents or other opposition groups, and so effectively that China has avoided the Internet-organised "colour revolutions" that countries like Ukraine experienced, she said.
"What we've found is that the government has done a far better job than anybody ever imagined at basically making enough control that there has been no colour revolution that has been organised by the Internet," MacKinnon said.
China's 30 million or so blogs are managed by getting the Web site hosts to practise self-censorship, stopping content objectionable to the government appearing lest their own businesses be shut down, she added.
"Overseas people often have this impression that Internet users may be living in fear or something, or always very worried about the police calling up or knocking at their door. Actually what's happening is much more subtle," MacKinnon said.

Learning to live with Big Brother

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:27:31 +0200

IT USED to be easy to tell whether you were in a free country or a dictatorship. In an old-time police state, the goons are everywhere, both in person and through a web of informers that penetrates every workplace, community and family. They glean whatever they can about your political views, if you are careless enough to express them in public, and your personal foibles. What they fail to pick up in the café or canteen, they learn by reading your letters or tapping your phone. The knowledge thus amassed is then stored on millions of yellowing pieces of paper, typed or handwritten; from an old-time dictator's viewpoint, exclusive access to these files is at least as powerful an instrument of fear as any torture chamber. Only when a regime falls will the files either be destroyed, or thrown open so people can see which of their friends was an informer.
AP

That old-time data: East Germany's files

These days, data about people's whereabouts, purchases, behaviour and personal lives are gathered, stored and shared on a scale that no dictator of the old school ever thought possible. Most of the time, there is nothing obviously malign about this. Governments say they need to gather data to ward off terrorism or protect public health; corporations say they do it to deliver goods and services more efficiently. But the ubiquity of electronic data-gathering and processing—and above all, its acceptance by the public—is still astonishing, even compared with a decade ago. Nor is it confined to one region or political system.
In China, even as economic freedom burgeons, millions of city-dwellers are being issued with obligatory high-tech “residency” cards. These hold details of their ethnicity, religion, educational background, police record and even reproductive history—a refinement of the identity papers used by communist regimes.
Britain used to pride itself on respecting privacy more than most other democracies do. But there is not much objection among Britons as “talking” surveillance cameras, fitted with loudspeakers, are installed, enabling human monitors to shout rebukes at anyone spotted dropping litter, relieving themselves against a wall or engaging in other “anti-social” behaviour.

Even smarter technology than that—the sort that has been designed to fight 21st century wars—is being used in the fight against crime, both petty and serious. In Britain, Italy and America, police are experimenting with the use of miniature remote-controlled drone aircraft, fitted with video cameras and infra-red night vision, to detect “suspicious” behaviour in crowds. Weighing no more than a bag of sugar and so quiet that it cannot be heard (or seen) when more than 50 metres (150 feet) from the ground, the battery-operated UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) can be flown even when out of sight by virtue of the images beamed back to a field operator equipped with special goggles. MW Power, the firm that distributes the technology in Britain, has plans to add a “smart water” spray that would be squirted at suspects, infusing their skin and clothes with genetic tags, enabling police to identify them later.
Most of the time, the convenience of electronic technology, and the perceived need to fight the bad guys, seems to outweigh any worries about where it could lead. That is a recent development. On America's religious right, it was common in the late 1990s to hear dark warnings about the routine use of electronic barcodes in the retail trade: was this not reminiscent of the “mark of the beast” without which “no man might buy or sell”, predicted in the final pages of the Bible? But today's technophobes, religious or otherwise, are having to get used to devices that they find even spookier.
Take radio-frequency identification (RFID) microchips, long used to track goods and identify family pets; increasingly they are being implanted in human beings. Such implants are used to help American carers keep track of old people; to give employees access to high-security areas (in Mexico and Ohio); and even to give willing night-club patrons the chance to jump entry queues and dispense with cash at the bar (in Spain and the Netherlands). Some people want everyone to be implanted with RFIDs, as the answer to identity theft.
Across the rich and not-so-rich world, electronic devices are already being used to keep tabs on ordinary citizens as never before. Closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) with infra-red night vision peer down at citizens from street corners, and in banks, airports and shopping malls. Every time someone clicks on a web page, makes a phone call, uses a credit card, or checks in with a microchipped pass at work, that person leaves a data trail that can later be tracked. Every day, billions of bits of such personal data are stored, sifted, analysed, cross-referenced with other information and, in many cases, used to build up profiles to predict possible future behaviour. Sometimes this information is collected by governments; mostly it is gathered by companies, though in many cases they are obliged to make it available to law-enforcement agencies and other state bodies when asked.

Follow the data

The more data are collected and stored, the greater the potential for “data mining”—using mathematical formulas to sift through large sets of data to discover patterns and predict future behaviour. If the public had any strong concerns about the legitimacy of this process, many of them evaporated on September 11th 2001—when it became widely accepted that against a deadly and globally networked enemy, every stratagem was needed. Techniques for processing personal information, which might have raised eyebrows in the world before 2001, suddenly seemed indispensable.
Two days after the attacks on New York and Washington, Frank Asher, a drug dealer turned technology entrepreneur, decided to examine the data amassed on 450m people by his private data-service company, Seisint, to see if he could identify possible terrorists. After giving each person a risk score based on name, religion, travel history, reading preferences and so on, Mr Asher came up with a list of 1,200 “suspicious” individuals, which he handed to the FBI. Unknown to him, five of the terrorist hijackers were on his list.
The FBI was impressed. Rebranded the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or Matrix, Mr Asher's programme, now taken over by the FBI, could soon access 20 billion pieces of information, all of them churned and sorted and analysed to predict who might one day turn into a terrorist. A new version, called the System to Assess Risk, or STAR, has just been launched using information drawn from both private and public databases. As most of the data have already been disclosed to third parties—airline tickets, job records, car rentals and the like—they are not covered by the American constitution's Fourth Amendment, so no court warrant is required.
In an age of global terror, when governments are desperately trying to pre-empt future attacks, such profiling has become a favourite tool. But although it can predict the behaviour of large groups, this technique is “incredibly inaccurate” when it comes to individuals, says Simon Wessely, a professor of psychiatry at King's College London. Bruce Schneier, an American security guru, agrees. Mining vast amounts of data for well-established behaviour patterns, such as credit-card fraud, works very well, he says. But it is “extraordinarily unreliable” when sniffing out terrorist plots, which are uncommon and rarely have a well-defined profile.
By way of example, Mr Schneier points to the Automated Targeting System, operated by the American Customs and Border Protection, which assigns a terrorist risk-assessment score to anyone entering or leaving the United States. In 2005 some 431m people were processed. Assuming an unrealistically accurate model able to identify terrorists (and innocent people) with 99.9% accuracy, that means some 431,000 false alarms annually, all of which presumably need checking. Given the unreliability of passenger data, the real number is likely to be far higher, he says.
Those caught up in terrorist-profiling systems are not allowed to know their scores or challenge the data. Yet their profiles, which may be shared with federal, state and even foreign governments, could damage their chances of getting a state job, a student grant, a public contract or a visa. It could even prevent them from ever being able to fly again. Such mistakes are rife, as the unmistakable Senator “Ted” Kennedy found to his cost. In the space of a single month in 2004, he was prevented five times from getting on a flight because the name “T Kennedy” had been used by a suspected terrorist on a secret “no-fly” list.

Watching everybody

Another worry: whereas information on people used to be gathered selectively—following a suspect's car, for example—it is now gathered indiscriminately. The best example of such universal surveillance is the spread of CCTV cameras. With an estimated 5m CCTV cameras in public places, nearly one for every ten inhabitants, England and Wales are among the most closely scrutinised countries in the world—along with America which has an estimated 30m surveillance cameras, again one for every ten inhabitants. Every Briton can expect to be caught on camera on average some 300 times a day. Few seem to mind, despite research suggesting that CCTV does little to deter overall crime.
In any case, says Britain's “NO2ID” movement, a lobby group that is resisting government plans to introduce identity cards, cameras are a less important issue than the emergence of a “database state” in which the personal records of every citizen are encoded and too easily accessible.
Alongside fingerprints, DNA has also become an increasingly popular tool to help detect terrorists and solve crime. Here again Britain (minus Scotland) is a world leader, with the DNA samples of 4.1m individuals, representing 7% of the population, on its national database, set up in 1995. (Most other EU countries have no more than 100,000 profiles on their DNA databases.) The British database includes samples from one in three black males and nearly 900,000 juveniles between ten and 17—all tagged for life as possible criminals, since inclusion in the database indicates that someone has had a run-in with the law. This is because in Britain, DNA is taken from anyone arrested for a “recordable” offence—usually one carrying a custodial sentence, but including such peccadillos as begging or being drunk and disorderly. It is then stored for life, even if that person is never charged or is later acquitted. No other democracy does this.
In America, the federal DNA databank holds 4.6m profiles, representing 1.5% of the population. But nearly all are from convicted criminals. Since January 2006 the FBI has been permitted to take DNA samples on arrest, but these can be expunged, at the suspect's request, if no charges are brought or if he is later acquitted. Of some 40 states that have their own DNA databases, only California allows the permanent storage of samples of those charged, but later cleared. In Britain, where people cannot ask for samples to be removed from the database, it was recently proposed that the best way to prevent discrimination is therefore to include the whole population in the DNA database, plus all visitors to the country. Although this approach is commendably fair, it would be extremely expensive as well as an administrative nightmare.
In popular culture, the use of DNA has become rather glamorous. Tabloids and television dramas tell stories of DNA being used by police to find kidnappers or exonerate convicts on death row. According to a poll carried out for a BBC “Panorama” programme this week, two-thirds of Britons would favour a new law requiring that everyone's DNA be stored. But DNA is less reliable as a crime-detection tool than most people think. Although it almost never provides a false “negative” reading, it can produce false “positives”. Professor Allan Jamieson, director of the Forensic Institute in Glasgow, believes too much faith is placed in it. As he points out, a person can transfer DNA to a place, or weapon, that he (or she) has never seen or touched.

Wiretapping is too easy

More disturbing for most Americans are the greatly expanded powers the government has given itself over the past six years to spy on its citizens. Under the Patriot Act, rushed through after the 2001 attacks, the intelligence services and the FBI can now oblige third parties—internet providers, libraries, phone companies, political parties and the like—to hand over an individual's personal data, without a court warrant or that person's knowledge, if they claim that the information is needed for “an authorised investigation” in connection with international terrorism. (Earlier this month, a federal court in New York held this to be unconstitutional.)
Under the Patriot Act's “sneak and peek” provisions, a person's house or office can likewise now be searched without his knowledge or a prior court warrant. The act also expanded the administration's ability to intercept private e-mails and phone calls, though for this a court warrant was supposedly still needed. But in his capacity as wartime commander-in-chief, George Bush decided to ignore this requirement and set up his own secret “warrantless” eavesdropping programme.
The outcry when this was revealed was deafening, and the programme was dropped. But in August Mr Bush signed into law an amendment to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allowing the warrantless intercept of phone calls and e-mails if at least one of the parties is “reasonably believed” to be outside America. So ordinary Americans will continue to be spied on without the need for warrants—but no one is protesting, because now it is legal.

Where's your warrant?
According to defenders of warrantless interception, requiring warrants for all government surveillance would dramatically limit the stream of foreign intelligence available. Privacy should not be elevated above all other concerns, they argue. But would it really impede law-enforcement that much if a judge was required to issue a warrant on each occasion? Technology makes wiretapping much easier than it used to be—too easy, perhaps—so requiring warrants would help to restore the balance, say privacy advocates.
Britain has long permitted the “warrantless” eavesdropping of its citizens (only the home secretary's authorisation is required), and few people appear to mind. What does seem to worry people is the sheer volume of information now being kept on them and the degree to which it is being made accessible to an ever wider group of individuals and agencies. The government is now developing the world's first national children's database for every child under 18. The National Health Service database, already the biggest of its kind in Europe, will eventually hold the medical records of all 53m people in England and Wales.
Even more controversial is Britain's National Identity Register, due to hold up to 49 different items on everyone living in the country. From 2009, everybody is to be issued with a “smart” biometric ID card, linked to the national register, which will be required for access to public services such as doctors' surgeries, unemployment offices, libraries and the like—leaving a new, readily traceable, electronic data-trail. America plans a similar system, with a string of personal data held on a new “smart” national driver's licence that would double up as an ID.
Companies are also amassing huge amounts of data about people. Most people do not think about what information they are handing over when they use their credit or shop “loyalty” card, buy something online or sign up for a loan. Nor do they usually have much idea of the use to which such data are subsequently put. Not only do companies “mine” them to target their advertising more effectively, for example, but also to give their more valued (ie, higher-spending) customers better service. They may also “share” their data with the police—without the individual's consent or knowledge.
Most democratic countries now have comprehensive data-protection and/or privacy laws, laying down strict rules for the collection, storage and use of personal data. There is also often a national information or privacy commissioner to police it all (though not in America). Intelligence agencies, and law-enforcement authorities often as well, are usually exempt from such data-protection laws whenever national security is involved. But such laws generally stipulate that the data be used only for a specific purpose, held no longer than necessary, kept accurate and up-to-date and protected from unauthorised prying.
That all sounds great. But as a series of leaks in the past few years has shown, no data are ever really secure. Laptops containing sensitive data are stolen from cars, backup tapes go missing in transit and hackers can break into databases, even the Pentagon's. Then there are “insider attacks”, in which people abuse the access they enjoy through their jobs. National Health Service workers in Britain were recently reported to have peeked at the intimate medical details of an unnamed celebrity. All of this can lead to invasions of privacy and identity theft. As the Surveillance Studies Network concludes in its recent report on the “surveillance society”, drawn up for Britain's information commissioner, Richard Thomas, “The jury is out on whether privacy regulation...is not ineffective in the face of novel threats.”

Boiling the frog

If the erosion of individual privacy began long before 2001, it has accelerated enormously since. And by no means always to bad effect: suicide-bombers, by their very nature, may not be deterred by a CCTV camera (even a talking one), but security wonks say many terrorist plots have been foiled, and lives saved, through increased eavesdropping, computer profiling and “sneak and peek” searches. But at what cost to civil liberties?
Privacy is a modern “right”. It is not even mentioned in the 18th-century revolutionaries' list of demands. Indeed, it was not explicitly enshrined in international human-rights laws and treaties until after the second world war. Few people outside the civil-liberties community seem to be really worried about its loss now.
That may be because electronic surveillance has not yet had a big impact on most people's lives, other than (usually) making it easier to deal with officialdom. But with the collection and centralisation of such vast amounts of data, the potential for abuse is huge and the safeguards paltry.
Ross Anderson, a professor at Cambridge University in Britain, has compared the present situation to a “boiled frog”—which fails to jump out of the saucepan as the water gradually heats. If liberty is eroded slowly, people will get used to it. He added a caveat: it was possible the invasion of privacy would reach a critical mass and prompt a revolt.
If there is not much sign of that in Western democracies, this may be because most people rightly or wrongly trust their own authorities to fight the good fight against terrorism, and avoid abusing the data they possess. The prospect is much scarier in countries like Russia and China, which have embraced capitalist technology and the information revolution without entirely exorcising the ethos of an authoritarian state where dissent, however peaceful, is closely monitored.
On the face of things, the information age renders impossible an old-fashioned, file-collecting dictatorship, based on a state monopoly of communications. But imagine what sort of state may emerge as the best brains of a secret police force—a force whose house culture treats all dissent as dangerous—perfect the art of gathering and using information on massive computer banks, not yellowing paper.

Who's afraid of Google?

Fri, 7 Sep 2007 16:17:20 +0200

The world's internet superpower faces testing times

RARELY if ever has a company risen so fast in so many ways as Google, the world's most popular search engine. This is true by just about any measure: the growth in its market value and revenues; the number of people clicking in search of news, the nearest pizza parlour or a satellite image of their neighbour's garden; the volume of its advertisers; or the number of its lawyers and lobbyists.
Such an ascent is enough to evoke concerns—both paranoid and justified. The list of constituencies that hate or fear Google grows by the week. Television networks, book publishers and newspaper owners feel that Google has grown by using their content without paying for it. Telecoms firms such as America's AT&T and Verizon are miffed that Google prospers, in their eyes, by free-riding on the bandwidth that they provide; and it is about to bid against them in a forthcoming auction for radio spectrum. Many small firms hate Google because they relied on exploiting its search formulas to win prime positions in its rankings, but dropped to the internet's equivalent of Hades after Google tweaked these algorithms.

And now come the politicians. Libertarians dislike Google's deal with China's censors. Conservatives moan about its uncensored videos. But the big new fear is to do with the privacy of its users. Google's business model (see article) assumes that people will entrust it with ever more information about their lives, to be stored in the company's “cloud” of remote computers. These data begin with the logs of a user's searches (in effect, a record of his interests) and his responses to advertisements. Often they extend to the user's e-mail, calendar, contacts, documents, spreadsheets, photos and videos. They could soon include even the user's medical records and precise location (determined from his mobile phone).
More JP Morgan than Bill Gates
Google is often compared to Microsoft (another enemy, incidentally); but its evolution is actually closer to that of the banking industry. Just as financial institutions grew to become repositories of people's money, and thus guardians of private information about their finances, Google is now turning into a custodian of a far wider and more intimate range of information about individuals. Yes, this applies also to rivals such as Yahoo! and Microsoft. But Google, through the sheer speed with which it accumulates the treasure of information, will be the one to test the limits of what society can tolerate.
It does not help that Google is often seen as arrogant. Granted, this complaint often comes from sour-grapes rivals. But many others are put off by Google's cocksure assertion of its own holiness, as if it merited unquestioning trust. This after all is the firm that chose “Don't be evil” as its corporate motto and that explicitly intones that its goal is “not to make money”, as its boss, Eric Schmidt, puts it, but “to change the world”. Its ownership structure is set up to protect that vision.
Ironically, there is something rather cloudlike about the multiple complaints surrounding Google. The issues are best parted into two cumuli: a set of “public” arguments about how to regulate Google; and a set of “private” ones for Google's managers, to do with the strategy the firm needs to get through the coming storm. On both counts, Google—contrary to its own propaganda—is much better judged as being just like any other “evil” money-grabbing company.
Grab the money
That is because, from the public point of view, the main contribution of all companies to society comes from making profits, not giving things away. Google is a good example of this. Its “goodness” stems less from all that guff about corporate altruism than from Adam Smith's invisible hand. It provides a service that others find very useful—namely helping people to find information (at no charge) and letting advertisers promote their wares to those people in a finely targeted way.
Given this, the onus of proof is with Google's would-be prosecutors to prove it is doing something wrong. On antitrust, the price that Google charges its advertisers is set by auction, so its monopolistic clout is limited; and it has yet to use its dominance in one market to muscle into others in the way Microsoft did. The same presumption of innocence goes for copyright and privacy. Google's book-search product, for instance, arguably helps rather than hurts publishers and authors by rescuing books from obscurity and encouraging readers to buy copyrighted works. And, despite Big Brotherish talk about knowing what choices people will be making tomorrow, Google has not betrayed the trust of its users over their privacy. If anything, it has been better than its rivals in standing up to prying governments in both America and China.
That said, conflicts of interest will become inevitable—especially with privacy. Google in effect controls a dial that, as it sells ever more services to you, could move in two directions. Set to one side, Google could voluntarily destroy very quickly any user data that it collects. That would assure privacy, but it would limit Google's profits from selling to advertisers information about what you are doing, and make those services less useful. If the dial is set to the other side and Google hangs on to the information, the services will be more useful, but some dreadful intrusions into privacy could occur.
The answer, as with banks in the past, must lie somewhere in the middle; and the right point for the dial is likely to change, as circumstances change. That will be the main public interest in Google. But, as the bankers (and Bill Gates) can attest, public scrutiny also creates a private challenge for Google's managers: how should they present their case?
One obvious strategy is to allay concerns over Google's trustworthiness by becoming more transparent and opening up more of its processes and plans to scrutiny. But it also needs a deeper change of heart. Pretending that, just because your founders are nice young men and you give away lots of services, society has no right to question your motives no longer seems sensible. Google is a capitalist tool—and a useful one. Better, surely, to face the coming storm on that foundation, than on a trite slogan that could be your undoing.

Feds OK Fee for Priority Web Traffic

Fri, 7 Sep 2007 15:45:11 +0200

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department on Thursday said Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic.
The agency told the Federal Communications Commission, which is reviewing high-speed Internet practices, that it is opposed to "Net neutrality," the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user.
Several phone and cable companies, such as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp., have previously said they want the option to charge some users more money for loading certain content or Web sites faster than others.
The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its filing.
Such a result could diminish or delay network expansion and improvement, it added.
The agency said providing different levels of service is common, efficient and could satisfy consumers. As an example, it cited that the U.S. Postal Service charges customers different guarantees and speeds for package delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight delivery.
"Whether or not the same type of differentiated products and services will develop on the Internet should be determined by market forces, not regulatory intervention," the agency said in its filing.
The agency's stance comes more than two months after Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras cautioned policy makers to enact Net neutrality regulation.
Such a regulation could prevent rather than promote Internet investment and innovation and have "significant negative effects for the economy and consumers," the Justice Department said in the filing.
Supporters of Internet regulation have said that phone and cable companies could discriminate against certain Web site and services.
However, the agency said it will continue to monitor and enforce any anticompetitive conduct to ensure a competitive broadband marketplace.

The Tech Lab: Vint Cerf

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:42:05 +0200

Vint Cerf is known as one of the founder fathers of the internet and played a key role in the development of the protocols which underpin the global net. He was a founding member of the Internet Society and is Google's Chief Internet Evangelist.

As intellectual phenomena go, the internet is still very young.
If we look at other innovative technologies that fundamentally transformed human communications - the printing press, the telephone and television, to name a few - we are confronted with the fact that it takes generations for their full effects to be understood.
The internet, by comparison, has only existed for three decades, and the World Wide Web is younger still.
The internet, however, stands poised to become the greatest communications platform humanity has ever known. It has profoundly increased access to information around the world, and it has likewise provided a platform for free expression on a scale unimaginable a generation ago.
For a variety of reasons - cultural, political, technological - the internet has grown rapidly.
The benefits it offers and the degree to which we rely on it (for everything from personal communications to global financial transactions), far outstrip its relatively short existence.
As access to the internet spreads to more and more places around the world, more people will come online; they'll access the net through a wider variety of devices, and they'll produce and consume new types of content.
The continued expansion of the internet poses very real challenges to those of us responsible for its health.
Key infrastructure
The robustness and security of the internet will climb in importance as we rely increasingly on it and its services.
Improving the resilience and resistance to attack of key infrastructure such as the Domain Name System (the phone book of the internet) and the routing system will be major focal points for near-term internet development.
WHAT IS THE TECH LAB?
The world's leading thinkers give a personal view of future technologies
Introducing DNSSEC (security for the Domain Name System) and the digital signing of address space by the Regional Internet Registries will assume much higher priority.
Internet-based software and digital goods have historically been vulnerable to various kinds of failures and subject to a variety of attacks. The computer science community is challenged to devise solutions to these problems.
Capacity poses a further challenge to the future of the web. As more devices become part of the internet (think of the three billion mobile phones already in operation), we will need to move to a new internet address space, called IPv6.
With its 128 bits of address space (about 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses), there will be ample address space for the foreseeable future.
It will be a non-trivial exercise to bring IPv6 online in parallel with the present IPv4 system and it is not too early to get started. Efforts in Japan and China have begun blazing trails towards this important new goal.
Stunningly valuable
Going forward, we must also remain aware of limitations of the data we access through the internet. Information on the web varies in quality from completely useless or even damaging to stunningly valuable.
Today's search engines draw the most relevant information to our attention, and as more data become available online, the importance of search engines will only increase. In the future, people around the world will likely look for new ways to identify the authenticity of online information sources.

The idea that all the world's knowledge could be discoverable not just by humans but by programs acting on their behalf at speeds well beyond the superhuman, is one of this century's most exciting opportunities
We will also be confronted with a kind of "information decay" in which digital objects become less and less accessible owing to the age of the software that created it.
As an example: it is already a challenge to watch videos posted on the BBC website in 1997.
Imagine trying to watch the same video in 100 years. Or in one thousand years.
It's not only file formats that change, though. Changes in computer programs, operating systems and even the hardware that we use to build computers will accentuate the challenge of keeping digital information meaningful.
This raises a host of intellectual property questions that will almost certainly need to be considered.
Prosaic opportunities
From a strictly technological standpoint, then, the future of the internet poses a number of challenges to computer scientists. The future of the net also poses opportunities for society as a whole.
Some of these opportunities are prosaic. With home, car and office appliances all online and rich sensor networks as part of the landscape of the internet, it is easy to predict that people will be looking for online services to manage these devices and systems, regardless of where they happen to be.

We have barely begun what will no doubt be a long journey, but already the openness of the web is fostering free expression in parts of the world that need it most
It is clear that programmable mobiles have the potential to become general purpose "controllers" that allow us to interact, possibly indirectly through online services, with the many devices that service us from moment to moment.
The internet is a medium for communicating information, and by democratising access to information the internet is changing people's lives for the better.
We have barely begun what will no doubt be a long journey, but already the openness of the web is fostering free expression in parts of the world that need it most.
There are challenges and setbacks along the way, but the trend is clear and inexorable. At the same time, access to information is expanding rapidly.
Usage spike
When Google News for mobile devices became available in French, the biggest spike in usage outside France was in Côte d'Ivoire.
In the developing world especially, the proliferation of mobile devices and improvements in the ability of those devices to access the web will accelerate access to information.
Every year, humanity produces more data, and we must decide how that data will be found, shared, remembered, and interpreted. As we become better able to cope with huge quantities of information, scientific and otherwise, our appetites for organising and mining it will increase.
We have already witnessed the salient benefits of shared scientific databases such as the online human genome archives.
The idea that all the world's knowledge could be discoverable not just by humans but by programs acting on their behalf at speeds well beyond the superhuman, is one of this century's most exciting opportunities, especially as much of this information may lead to medical understanding and breakthroughs.
As we deepen our understanding of our biology - the move from genetics to epigenetics and the proteome - our understanding of ourselves and the universe around us will deepen.
What a gift to be a part of this period in the evolution of our civilisation.

Imagining the future of technology

Reporters sans frontières dénonce le Pacte d’autodiscipline signé par une vingtaine d’hébergeurs de blogs, dont Msn.cn et Yahoo.cn, et annonce la mort du blogging anonyme

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:28:08 +0200

Chine | 23.08.2007

Reporters sans frontières dénonce la signature, le 21 août 2007, par plus d’une vingtaine d’entreprises qui hébergent des blogs en Chine, d’un "Pacte d’autodiscipline" élaboré par la Société Internet de Chine (SIC), affiliée au ministère chinois de l’Industrie de l’Information. Certes, le gouvernement a renoncé à imposer l’enregistrement obligatoire des blogueurs, mais il peut dorénavant contraindre les entreprises à censurer le contenu des blogs et identifier les blogueurs.
"Une fois encore le gouvernement de Pékin oblige les entreprises du secteur de l’Internet à collaborer sur des sujets aussi sensibles que l’enregistrement des blogueurs et le contenu des blogs. Comme elles l’ont déjà fait pour les sites Internet, en imposant un Code d’autodiscipline aux entreprises, les autorités se donnent les moyens d’identifier les blogueurs jugés "subversifs". C’est une décision qui aura des conséquences très graves pour la blogosphére chinoise et qui marque de fait la mort du blogging anonyme. Une nouvelle vague de censure et de répression risque de s’ouvrir, particulièrement avant le Congrès du Parti communiste chinois", a déclaré Reporters sans frontières.
Les entreprises sont dorénavant "encouragées" à enregistrer l’identité de leurs clients avant de pouvoir mettre en ligne leurs articles. Le plus grave est que les entreprises devront garder les informations des blogueurs, permettant ainsi aux autorités de les identifier. Dans le passé, certaines de ces entreprises ont donné à la police des informations sur leurs clients, conduisant à des arrestations.
Le Pacte signé à Pékin prévoit notamment que "les fournisseurs de blogs devront surveiller les commentaires (...) et supprimer rapidement les informations illégales et mauvaises". Les articles 11 et 12 les encouragent à se doter d’un système de gestion sécurisé permettant de conserver les identifiants des blogueurs, comprenant le vrai nom, l’adresse, le numéro de téléphone et la boîte postale.
Lors de la signature du Pacte, Huang Chengqing, secrétaire général de la Société Internet de Chine (SIC), a été très clair : "Les plateformes de blogs qui permettent l’utilisation de pseudonymes peuvent être plus attractives pour les blogueurs, mais elles seront punies si elles n’effacent pas des informations illégales".
Les entreprises doivent également adopter une "autodiscipline sincère et protéger de leur propre chef les intérêts de l’État et du Parti".
Voici une liste non exhaustive des fournisseurs ayant accepté d’apposer leur signature à ce code de conduite : Msn.cn, Renmin Wang, Xinlang, Sohu, Wangyi, Tom, Qianlong Wang, Hexun Wang, Boke Tianxia, Tianji Wang, Yahoo.cn, Huasheng Zaixian, Bolianshe, Tengxun.

Spock.com et le silence des puces

Thu, 9 Aug 2007 04:17:08 +0200

Par Bernard Benhamou (maître de conférences à Sciences Po) 13H04 09/08/2007
Spock.com (1) représente la première version grand public d’outils de recherche qui jusqu’ici étaient réservés aux professionnels de l’intelligence économique. Mais, plus encore que la sophistication de ces outils de recherche, ce sont les conditions de leur extension qui ont évolué. En effet, le recueil d’information sur les personnes a connu une montée en puissance à mesure que les utilisateurs eux-mêmes participaient à la diffusion de ces informations et c’est l’un des paradoxes de ce que l’on nomme le web 2.0; les informations confiées volontairement par les utilisateurs au travers des blogs et des "réseaux sociaux" comme MySpace, Facebook et autres LinkedIn… pourraient à terme créer les conditions d’une crise de confiance massive à mesure que ces réseaux pourront remettre en cause… la vie sociale de leurs usagers.
De l’Internet… à l’Everyware (2)
Le règne de l’hypertransparence que beaucoup prédisent pourrait prendre bientôt une forme bien différente de celle qu’avaient imaginée les auteurs de science-fiction. Ainsi, s’il était déjà possible de connaître de nombreux éléments liés à la vie privée via l’Internet actuel, il sera possible d’en connaître infiniment plus lorsque l’ordinateur ne sera plus le moyen d’accès prioritaire à l’Internet.
En effet, l’adoption des outils mobiles de connexion (téléphone mais aussi automobile et bientôt l’ensemble des outils électroniques) changera profondément le profil (et la quantité) des données recueillies sur les personnes. L’entrée de l’Internet dans la "vie de tous les jours" soulève en effet de nombreuses questions sur les mesures que les créateurs de ces nouveaux services prendront pour éviter que la vie privée ne soit progressivement remise en question.
Ainsi, la convergence des technologies de mobilité, de géolocalisation et d’identification des objets pourrait installer dans la vie de leurs utilisateurs des systèmes de plus en plus intrusifs. Ces réseaux ubiquitaires ou encore cet "Everyware", pour reprendre le néologisme d’Adam Greenfield, pourraient alors remettre en cause la notion même de vie privée. Les services offerts par ces technologies pourraient dans un premier temps être jugés assez utiles pour que les contreparties en termes de libertés individuelles puissent passer au second plan.
En effet, avec ces nouveaux outils, le recueil d’information sera permanent là où jusqu’ici il était "fractionné" par la connexion des usagers aux ordinateurs. Avec l’avènement de l’Internet mobile et bientôt de l’Internet des objets, c’est l’ensemble des activités quotidiennes qui auront une traduction sur le réseau.
Du droit à l’oubli… au droit au "silence des puces"
Ces technologies une fois combinées aux technologies des puces sans contact (ou puces RFID) pourraient devenir littéralement indiscernables, ce qui faisait dire récemment à Alex Türk, président de la CNIL, dans son rapport d’activité 2006:
"Les nanotechnologies permettront bientôt de dissimuler complètement une technologie informatique en la réduisant à l'échelle du millionième de millimètre. les règlements suggérés par la CNIL pourraient être complètement submergés et contournés par cette "nouvelle vague de miniaturisation."
Les conflits entre les impératifs de sécurité des États et la protection de la vie privée prendront aussi de nouvelles formes. Le contrôle par les usagers des informations les concernant qui apparaissait comme une nécessité théorique deviendra une obligation de plus en plus évidente pour les acteurs de l’Internet. Ainsi, Google a "préventivement" modifié sa politique de conservation des données issues des recherches des internautes pour éviter des accusations de "big brotherisation" (3) du moteur de recherche.
Le droit à l’oubli, qui semble pourtant bien difficile à établir sur un réseau ouvert, pourrait bientôt être remplacé par un nouveau droit, le droit au "silence des puces". En effet à mesure que l’Internet des objets se développera, le contrôle démocratique par les citoyens devra leur permettre de désactiver ces puces afin d’éviter qu’elles ne les privent durablement… de leur vie privée.
Bernard Benhamou est maître de conférence à Sciences Po et enseignant à l’Université Panthéon Sorbonne. Il a aussi été conseiller de la délégation française au Sommet des Nations Unies sur la Société de l’Information.
(1) Le moteur de recherche "personnel" reprend en effet le nom de Spock, le personnage de Star Trek originaire de Vulcain et adepte du culte de l’"hyperlogique" dénuée d’émotion.
(2) Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing par Adam Greenfield (Peachpit Press 2006)
(3) EU privacy group: Google cookie life still too long (ZDNet UK 20 Jul 2007)

Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 05:58:11 +0200

Discovering the New World 7 glimpses into the hyperlocal future.

The Internet of Things
 What if you could walk down an unfamiliar street, use your camera phone to take a picture of a building, and instantly know everything about it, from the architect to the list of tenants. The technology to make common objects clickable, like hyperlinked words on a Web site, is available today in the form of 2-D barcodes. These digital tags look like empty crossword puzzles. Users create them online, print them out, and paste them around the city. Then anyone with a phonecam can "click" on them. A program on the phone decodes the pattern and redirects the curious pedestrian to a Web page. One project, called Smartpox, is using these barcodes to build online communities that center around, for example, scavenger hunts and restaurant reviews. Members slap a barcode on a given establishment, and in-the-know passersby can get the dirt on its crème anglaise. At Semapedia.com, you can drop in any Wikipedia URL to instantly generate a 2-D barcode pointing to the corresponding entry.

Lire le dossier dans Wired

Washington Post : Does Virtual Reality Need a Sheriff?

Sat, 2 Jun 2007 15:03:45 +0200

Reach of Law Enforcement Is Tested When Online Fantasy Games Turn Sordid
By Alan Sipress Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, June 2, 2007; A01

Earlier this year, one animated character in Second Life, a popular online fantasy world, allegedly raped another character.
Some Internet bloggers dismissed the simulated attack as nothing more than digital fiction. But police in Belgium, according to newspapers there, opened an investigation into whether a crime had been committed. No one has yet been charged.
Then last month, authorities in Germany announced that they were looking into a separate incident involving virtual abuse in Second Life after receiving pictures of an animated child character engaging in simulated sex with an animated adult figure. Though both characters were created by adults, the activity could run afoul of German laws against child pornography, prosecutors said.
As recent advances in Internet technology have spurred millions of users to build and explore new digital worlds, the creations have imported not only their users' dreams but also their vices. These alternative realms are testing the long-held notions of what is criminal and whether law enforcement should patrol the digital frontier.
"People have an interest in their property and the integrity of their person. But in virtual reality, these interests are not tangible but built from intangible data and software," said Greg Lastowka, a professor at the Rutgers School of Law at Camden in New Jersey.
Some virtual activities clearly violate the law, like trafficking in stolen credit card numbers, he said. Others, like virtual muggings and sex crimes, are harder to define, though they may cause real-life anguish for users.
Simulated violence and thievery have long been a part of virtual reality, especially in the computer games that pioneered online digital role-playing. At times, however, this conduct has crossed the lines of what even seasoned game players consider acceptable.
In World of Warcraft, the most popular online game, with an estimated 8 million participants worldwide, some regions of this fantasy domain have grown so lawless that players said they fear to brave them alone. Gangs of animated characters have repeatedly preyed upon lone travelers, killing them and making off with their virtual belongings.
Two years ago, Japanese authorities arrested a man for carrying out a series of virtual muggings in another popular game, Lineage II, by using software to beat up and rob characters in the game and then sell the virtual loot for real money.
Julian Dibbell, a prominent commentator on digital culture, chronicled the first known case of sexual assault in cyberspace in 1993, when virtual reality was still in its infancy. A participant in LambdaMOO, a community of users who congregated in a virtual California house, had used a computer program called a "voodoo doll" to force another player's character to act out being raped. Though this virtual world was rudimentary and the assault simulated, Dibbell recounted that the trauma was jarringly real. The woman whose character was attacked later wept -- "post-traumatic tears were streaming down her face" -- as she vented her outrage and demand for revenge in an online posting, he wrote.
Since then, advances in high-speed Internet, user interfaces and graphic design have rendered virtual reality more real, allowing users to endow their characters with greater humanity and identify ever more closely with their creations.
Nowhere is this truer than in Second Life, where more than 6 million people have registered to create characters called avatars, cartoon human figures that respond to keyboard commands and socialize with others' characters. The breadth of creativity and interaction in Second Life is greater than on nearly any other virtual-reality Web site because there is no game or other objective; it is just an open-ended, lifelike digital environment.
Moreover, Linden Labs, which operates Second Life, has given users the software tools to design their characters and online setting as they see fit; some avatars look like their real-life alter egos, while others are fantastical creations.
This virtual frontier has attracted a stunning array of immigrants. Former senator John Edwards of North Carolina, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has opened a virtual campaign headquarters. Reuters and other news agencies have set up virtual bureaus. IBM has developed office space for employee avatars. On May 22, Maldives became the first country to open an embassy in Second Life, with Sweden following this week.
Second Life is intended only for adults, and about 15 percent of the properties on the site -- in essence, space on computer servers that appear as parcels of land -- have been voluntarily flagged by their residents as having mature material. Though some is relatively innocent, in some locations avatars act out drug use, child abuse, rape and various forms of sadomasochism.
"This is the double-edged sword of the wonderful creativity in Second Life," Dibbell said in an interview.
One user found herself the unwilling neighbor of an especially sordid underage sex club. "Tons of men would drop in looking for sex with little girls and boys. I abhorred the club," wrote the user on a Second Life blog under the avatar name Anna Valeeva. She even tried to evict the club by buying their land, she wrote.
The question of what is criminal in virtual reality is complicated by disagreements among countries over what is legal even in real life. For example, virtual renderings of child abuse are not a crime in the United States but are considered illegal pornography in some European countries, including Germany.
After German authorities began their investigation, Linden Labs issued a statement on its official blog condemning the virtual depictions of child pornography. Linden Labs said it was cooperating with law enforcement and had banned two participants in the incident, a 54-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman, from Second Life.
Some Second Life users objected on the blog that Linden Labs had gone too far.
"Excuse me. You banned two residents, both mature, who did a little role-playing? No children, I repeat no children, were harmed or even involved in that act," protested another user on the Second Life blog. "Since when is fantasy against the fricking law?"
Philip Rosedale, the founder and chief executive of Linden Labs, said in an interview that Second Life activities should be governed by real-life laws for the time being. He recounted, for example, that his company has called in the FBI several times, most recently this spring to ensure that Second Life's virtual casinos complied with U.S. law. Federal investigators created their own avatars and toured the site, he said.
In coming months, his company plans to disperse tens of thousands of computer servers from California and Texas to countries around the world in order to improve the site's performance. Also, he said, this will make activities on those servers subject to laws of the host countries.
Rosedale said he hopes participants in Second Life eventually develop their own virtual legal code and justice system.
"In the ideal case, the people who are in Second Life should think of themselves as citizens of this new place and not citizens of their countries," he said.

L'Inde se donne deux ans pour fabriquer un ordinateur à 10 dollars

Sat, 19 May 2007 16:35:02 +0200

NEW DELHI CORRESPONDANCE

Les enfants indiens pourraient bientôt être équipés de l'ordinateur (PC) le moins cher du monde. Le ministère local du développement et des ressources humaines se donne deux ans pour assembler un PC à 10 dollars. "Nous avons déjà conçu un ordinateur à 47 dollars. S'il est produit à au moins un million d'unités, nous pensons pouvoir atteindre notre objectif", explique un haut fonctionnaire.

Les caractéristiques détaillées de la machine ne sont pas encore connues. Car sa conception n'en est qu'à ses débuts et pour une raison évidente de protection du secret industriel, explique-t-on au ministère.
Ce projet a deux géniteurs. Le premier est un chercheur membre du prestigieux Institut scientifique indien de Bangalore, le second est un étudiant de l'Institut technologique de Vellore.
Six instituts scientifiques vont être chargés de mobiliser les efforts de recherche à travers le pays. Aucun acteur privé n'a encore pris part au projet, même si le gouvernement envisage de confier la fabrication de l'ordinateur à des entreprises indiennes.
Celui-ci serait constitué d'un seul bloc pour diminuer les coûts d'assemblage et de maintenance. Ses composants seraient réunis sur la carte mère. Il permettrait d'accéder à Internet. Le gouvernement compte en effet ouvrir un accès à haut débit dans chaque école publique du pays. Ce service serait gratuit pour les enfants pauvres, payant pour les autres.
S'il est fabriqué, l'ordinateur à 10 dollars pourrait compromettre les chances de réussite du programme "Un ordinateur portable par enfant", initié par Nicholas Negroponte, fondateur du Media Lab au Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) de Boston.
Le centre de recherche américain est en effet sur le point de distribuer des ordinateurs portables à 100 dollars dans les pays en voie de développement. "En réalité, le prix approche plutôt les 200 dollars du fait des coûts supplémentaires liés à l'utilisation de l'ordinateur", explique Akshaya Mukul, journaliste au quotidien Times of India.
Le 26 juillet 2006, le secrétaire d'Etat indien à l'éducation, Sudeep Banerjee, critiquait ce programme : "Il est plus urgent d'avoir des salles de classe et des professeurs plutôt que des outils fantaisistes." Assemblé en Inde pour 10 dollars, l'ordinateur apparaît déjà moins "fantaisiste".
D'autant plus que Novatium, une firme basée à Madras, dans le sud du pays, a déjà commercialisé un PC à 80 dollars. Un petit boîtier est connecté par Internet à un serveur central, d'où l'utilisateur peut utiliser des logiciels comme Word ou Excel. Là, les puces classiques ont été remplacées par des puces utilisées dans les téléphones portables, moins puissantes et beaucoup moins chères.
Toutefois, la réussite du PC à 10 dollars en Inde ne relève pas seulement d'une prouesse industrielle ou technologique. Pour que les enfants puissent utiliser l'ordinateur, comme le gouvernement local le souhaite, encore faut-il qu'ils sachent lire et écrire. Or, 25 % ne fréquentent pas l'école primaire. En Inde, 40 % des habitants sont illettrés.

Julien Bouissou

Courrier International : Les cyberpirates prennent l'Estonie à l'abordage

Fri, 18 May 2007 10:02:46 +0200

Patrick Jackson
BBC News Online

Les autorités estoniennes affirment que leur pays est l'objet de cyberattaques pilotées par la Russie et appellent leurs partenaires de l'OTAN et de l'UE à la rescousse. La BBC Online enquête sur le prolongement, via la Toile, de cette crise provoquée par le déplacement d'un monument de l'Armée rouge à Tallinn.

L'Estonie est l'un des Etats les plus connectés à la Toile de l'Union européenne (UE). Mais depuis que Tallinn a décidé de déplacer un monument aux morts soviétique du centre-ville de la capitale – ce qui a déclenché des émeutes de la part des Russes ethniques – le pays est méthodiquement attaqué par des pirates informatiques. Les sites Internet du gouvernement de ce minuscule Etat balte, ainsi que ceux des partis politiques, des médias et du monde des affaires, ont dû fermer temporairement après avoir été l'objet d'attaques par déni de service qui les ont submergés de requêtes externes.

Les internautes ont ainsi été redirigés vers des images de soldats soviétiques et des citations de Martin Luther King invitant à résister au "mal". Quant aux pirates qui s'en sont pris au site du Parti de la réforme (au pouvoir), au plus fort des tensions le 29 avril dernier, ils ont laissé un faux message selon lequel le Premier ministre estonien, Andrus Ansip, et son gouvernement demandaient pardon aux Russes et s'engageaient à réinstaller la statue sur son emplacement d'origine.

En réaction, le gouvernement a verrouillé les accès extérieurs vers les sites visés, tout en s'efforçant de les maintenir à disposition des usagers en Estonie même. Mais ces attaques, que le ministère de la Défense a comparées à des "activités terroristes", ont coûté cher. "Bien sûr, [les sites] peuvent être relancés, mais ils peuvent aussi être de nouveau attaqués", estime Mikhail Tammet, responsable de la sécurité informatique au ministère estonien de la Défense. L'Estonie dépend considérablement d'Internet avec le programme "administration sans papier" du pays [qui vise à transférer sur le Net l'ensemble des services des administrations et du gouvernement] et son système bancaire en réseau sur la Toile. "Si ces services sont ralentis, nous perdons évidemment sur le plan économique", assure-t-il.

Si Tallinn n'a pas officiellement accusé les autorités russes d'être derrière ces agissements, le ministère des Affaires étrangères a publié une liste d'adresses IP à partir desquelles "les attaques ont été lancées". Parmi les coupables présumés, on trouve des adresses du gouvernement et de l'administration présidentielle russes. Dimitri Peskov, porte-parole du Kremlin, a assuré que "l'Etat [russe] ne saurait en aucune façon être impliqué dans le cyber-terrorisme. Quand on voit les adresses IP incriminées, on constate qu'il s'agit d'une sélection très variée de pays du monde entier. Mais cela ne veut pas dire que des gouvernements étrangers sont derrière ces attaques. De plus, comme vous le savez probablement, il est possible de falsifier des adresses IP." Et de rappeler que le site de la présidence russe lui-même est quotidiennement soumis à des "centaines" d'attaques.

David Emm, consultant auprès de Kasperskiy Lab, société moscovite de logiciels antivirus, pense que les pirates sont selon toute probabilité "des jeunes qui, en d'autres temps, auraient écrit et répandu des virus. Je ne serais pas surpris si des gens branchés utilisaient des moyens d'expression techniques", explique-t-il. Anton Nossik, l'un des pionniers d'Internet en Russie, ne voit pas pourquoi l'Etat russe serait impliqué dans ces actes de piraterie, sinon pour attiser le sentiment anti-estonien. "Contrairement à une frappe militaire conventionnelle ou nucléaire, un gouvernement pour ce genre d'attaques n'est pas nécessaire. Le sentiment anti-estonien est présent, alimenté par la propagande officielle russe, et il s'est exprimé dans des articles, sur des blogs, des forums, dans la presse. Il est donc naturel que des hackers aient éprouvé ce sentiment et aient agi en conséquence. Ils n'ont pas besoin de fonds importants et peuvent louer des serveurs puissants dans des pays aussi divers que les Etats-Unis ou la Corée du Sud. Le niveau d'expertise requis est minime, les scripts de virus et les codes sources sont disponibles en ligne, et on trouve des centaines de milliers de groupes qui ont les ressources nécessaires pour lancer une attaque virale massive. Le principe est très simple : il suffit d'envoyer une énorme vague de requêtes simultanées."

Il considère que l'Estonie, en bloquant les accès extérieurs, a opté pour une solution habile, mais qui ne peut fonctionner que dans un pays "de 1,4 million d'habitants parlant une langue non internationale. En Russie, par exemple, les serveurs étrangers représentent 60 % du Net" commente-t-il. Il s'inquiète davantage de savoir comment la Toile mondiale peut se protéger contre les grands virus comme Backbone et son déni de service qui, en février 2007, a touché trois serveurs clés qui font partie de l'épine dorsale d'Internet. "Si on évalue le problème à l'échelle mondiale, celui de l'Estonie est microscopique", conclut-il.

Washington Post : The Sound of Copy Restrictions Crashing

Thu, 17 May 2007 10:08:13 +0200

By Rob Pegoraro Thursday, May 17, 2007; D01

The idea of ditching "digital rights management" for music downloads is rapidly changing from dream to business reality -- and faster than anybody might have hoped.
Amazon said yesterday that it would open an online store that stocks only MP3 music files without copying restrictions. That would be huge news, except that Amazon is only catching up with Apple, which announced in early April that it would offer DRM-free downloads by the end of this month.
Both stores have the public backing of EMI, one of the four big record labels, which yesterday also said it would sell unrestricted music downloads at some European sites.
This should delight customers, who will no longer have to worry about being able to listen to their song files on their next music player or their computer. But it must unsettle many music industry executives.
Abandoning the copy-control systems meant to stop people from sharing a new digital purchase on the Internet -- but which also keep buyers from listening to these downloads on unauthorized hardware or software -- remains heresy in much of Hollywood.
But when the biggest music download store, one of the biggest CD retailers and a Big Four record label think they should drop that approach, it means things have changed drastically.
We are no longer talking about shovelfuls of dirt on the coffin of computer-enforced copying restrictions; that sound you hear is the beep-beep-beep of the dump truck backing up to the grave site.
ITunes shoppers won't have long to wait for this liberation from copying limits. Apple says the new downloads will be available by the end of this month at $1.29 a song (30 cents more than for the current, limited versions). Albums will cost the same with or without usage restrictions. These new downloads will also come at a higher bit rate, meaning they should sound better but will take up twice as much space on your iPod or computer.
Amazon customers may face a longer delay, as the Seattle retailer won't specify a launch date more specific than "later this year." It also won't talk about pricing or describe its inventory besides saying the store will carry the catalogues of EMI and "more than 12,000" other labels.
Amazon did, however, offer hints. Bill Carr, the site's vice president of digital media, suggested that the download store would follow the same basic pattern as Amazon's CD store: "A couple of our tried-and-true tenets are broad selection and great prices."
That suggests Amazon expects to sell music from all the major labels, not just EMI. The minor labels, many of which don't share the majors' fixation on copying restrictions, are probably already on board.
A publicist for one Washington-area independent label confirmed yesterday that his employer's catalogue would be carried on Amazon. He put the phone down to confirm the details of that arrangement, then picked it up and said with a laugh, "Apparently, we've signed a nondisclosure act. So I wasn't even supposed to tell you that we're one of those labels."
If Amazon's download store mirrors the outlines of its CD store, you can also expect labels to compete on price -- something Apple doesn't like.
Apple and Amazon should soon have company. In addition to the many sites that stock MP3s from smaller labels -- for example, eMusic, Amie Street and Other Music -- Yahoo has experimented with selling regular MP3s, and MySpace has revealed plans for its own MP3 store.
When copy-restriction routines no longer lock songs to certain players or programs, a few other things will change.
Music buyers can return to treating their purchases as their property -- reselling as they see fit or passing them on to their heirs. They will also be free to choose digital-music formats, programs and players based on their price and quality, instead of being limited to those supported by one download store.
Apple's iPod -- which dominated the market before the arrival of the iTunes Store -- should still do well, as should the Advanced Audio Coding format Apple uses for iTunes downloads. But Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format could be drifting onto the rocks; its biggest fans aren't users but the stores that sell copy-controlled WMA files.
Some of those users will still take music online without paying for it. DRM has yet to make a meaningful dent in that, but convenient, fairly priced and well-stocked download stores like iTunes have.
As people get in the habit of enjoying downloads from various sites on all of their devices -- not just some -- more of them may wonder why their movies remain trapped inside the usage restrictions that once encumbered their music.
Why, for example, should Apple's iTunes or Amazon's Unbox sell video downloads that can't even be burned to DVD? Doesn't the same logic apply to movies? How long until some enterprising studio makes the same decision as EMI and decides to give customers what they want?

“Jefferson Rebuffed” : la fin d’une opportunité historique entre les Etats-Unis et l’Union Européenne sur la Neutralité du Net ?

Fri, 11 May 2007 01:13:45 +0200

La Columbia Science and Technology Law Review vient de publier l’article de la Harvard Kennedy School of Government qui félicitait l'Union Européenne pour sa position sur la Neutralité de l'Internet lors du Sommet des Nations Unies pour la Société de l’Information et qui regrettait une perte d'opportunité historique entre l'Europe et les Etats-Unis.

Wired Magazine : As Google Challenges Viacom and Microsoft, Its CEO Feels Lucky

Wed, 9 May 2007 04:46:42 +0200

On March 23 I spent an hour interviewing Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a cramped conference room 50 feet from his even more cramped office. (It's so small that if you spread your arms you can almost touch both walls.) We talked about everything from Google's competition with Microsoft and its partnership with Apple to all those data centers it is building.  - Fred Vogelstein

WIRED: When you joined Google it was just a search engine. Now it's redefining the way the world thinks about computing. Explain.

ERIC SCHMIDT: It's pretty clear that there's an architectural shift going on. These occur every 10 or 20 years. The previous architecture was a proprietary network with PC clients called client-server computing. With this new architecture you're always online; every device can see every application; and the applications are stored in the cloud. It means that your servers are professionally managed, so you can actually have a weekend and not spend all your time trying to manage your servers. It's like having banks manage your money rather than you managing your money. And the networks have become secure, and the computers have become fast enough that this is mechanically possible - it actually works.
The other thing that's interesting is that the new architecture brings in other voices. The earlier model was pretty proprietary. The protocols, which were typically Microsoft-based, didn't allow for other (interface) choices very well. Now, with the Internet protocols you can pretty much plug in your own interpretation of how email should work and your own interpretation of how voice over IP should work.
This point about anyone being able to enter the market is a big deal. Photo sharing, social networks, all of them have this property. And what's interesting is that Google, although we're one of the companies, we're, by far, not the only company that's doing this. Yahoo is an example of a company like this. eBay is a company like this. Amazon is a company like this. And each of the companies I've named makes money in a different way.
Right.
We have talked about this network, or the cloud computing model for years, but we were beholden to the old software selling model - the one where the salesperson is making a million-dollar sale. I used to be in this business [when I was at Novell and Sun]. That model doesn't scale for Internet users. You just can't get that kind of money out of the average citizen. So the new model allows you to have free services with advertising. And this targeted advertising thing is a really, really big deal.

Isn't it more likely that we'll have a hybrid model - with some applications in the cloud and others on the desktop?

It depends. There is not a middle ground when it comes to protocols. In order for this vision (of cloud computing) to work, the protocols have to be open. They can't be proprietary. Everyone has to have access to them. So that's a clear, binary answer.
With respect to the user experience, which I think is your real question, a hybrid works depending on how it's architected. It makes sense, for example, to have graphics computing close to the end user because that's where your frame buffer is and your computation is. Games are a good example because it's very, very hard to imagine games that are network resident only. They're so highly interactive.
Right.
But it's perfectly possible to have most of the other computing being done on the server, so that's an example of a hybrid model. If it's something (like a video or a document or a spreadsheet) where there's relatively few changes (to the file), you can put it on a service (in the cloud) and then you can cache it locally.

All these features don't exist yet, though.

True. Google docs and spreadsheets don't work if you're on an airplane. But it's a technical problem that is going to get solved. Eventually you will be able to work on a plane as if you are connected and, then when you get reconnected to the Internet, your computer will just synchronize with the cloud.
Here's another way of saying this - and these are not my words. People call this an Internet operating system. And by "this" I don't mean Google, I mean the sum of this vision. And if you think about it as an Internet operating system, the Internet operating system will have to have all of the normal features of the older versions of operating systems. It will have to have security, it will have to have caching, it will have to have replication, and it will have to have performance.

Why is it taking so long?

Well, one answer is that the systems they're replacing are very complicated, and people have very high standards for interactive services. So everything has to work; all the features have to be there; and they have to never break. We used to think that the enterprise was the hardest customer to satisfy, but we were wrong. It turns out, consumers are harder than the enterprise because the consumer will not give you a second chance.
And by the way, I would argue that we in the industry forgot this. We became as a group - certainly I did - consumed with the complexity of the systems that we were building for powerful corporations, and we forgot that there's a much larger market around consumers for simple solutions.
Online calendars are the perfect example of this. Sharing a calendar in the older (client server) model was hard. Now it's easy because the model says the calendars are stored on professional servers, and they are visible everywhere you want them to be. Making this happen reliably and securely is complicated and technical, but it is ultimately justified by delivering on a very simple concept.

When you joined Google it was just a search engine. It has grown into much more. How should we think about Google today?

One is as an advertising system. Another one is as this end-user system (the search, email, and other applications Google delivers to users through an Internet browser). A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. And then a fourth way is to think of Google as a social phenomenon involving the company, the people, the brand, the mission, the values - all that kind of stuff.

How powerful is the supercomputer?

There's never been anything like it, so we don't know how to express it. We build our own data centers, and we do a lot of the work ourselves because the commercial solutions do not have high enough performance.

What do you mean you do a lot of the work yourself?

Well, essentially, we do all of the software. So the computers that we're running start off with Linux as the base, but after that it's really custom software to move all the data around. The Web services, all the identity management, all of the database activities, all of the indexing, all the searching, all the ranking, all that kind of stuff in the cloud we do ourselves. This is a great core competency of the company.
And we have not only data centers, but we have fiber that interconnect those data centers, and connect to the ISPs. At Google, speed is critical. And part of the way we get that speed is with that fiber.

How many data centers are there?

I don't actually know.

Are we talking about a half dozen? A dozen? Or are we talking about dozens?

I think my overall description would be in the dozens. There are a few very large ones, some of which have been leaked to the press. But in a year or two the very large ones will be the small ones because the growth rate is such that we keep building even larger ones, and that's where a lot of the capital spending in the company is going.

Why do you have to control your own fiber to connect the data centers?

One of the neat things about the bubble is that people built all of this fiber that is now essentially free. What's funny about our fiber leasing and purchasing is that people are always assuming that we have some master plan involving telecommunications when, in fact, if you think about it as just solving the supercomputer problem, we just want the thing to be faster.

Then why are you being so aggressive trying to get muni Wi-Fi projects going around the country?

Because we benefit from broadband. Remember, one of the critical things in our model is that having inexpensive or, ideally, free access to broadband is a good thing. Especially if it's somebody else who's going to subsidize that using their economics, we think it's great. And the more broadband we can get globally, the better. It's better for the world; it's better for our advertisers; it's better for Google.

So you want to increase broadband penetration in San Francisco, for example, rather than replace the broadband penetration (from cable and telephone companies) that already exists?

Yes. That's a better way of saying it, thank you. So if you have 10 percent market share and we can get it to 50 percent, we know that produces a happier citizen. And we know that those searchers will use our services more. They're much more likely to become a calendar user or a G-mail user or a news user, or whatever, because they like the performance. And, by the way, we're indifferent as to which broadband it is. I mean, it could be Wi-Fi, it could be fiber, it could be coax, it can be any of them.

But you're not doing last-mile fiber?

No, no, no. There are plenty of great companies doing that, and we're perfectly happy to go right on top of all that fiber they're putting in place.

You just recently joined the board of Apple and have talked about potential partnerships between Google and Apple. Explain.

Google's architectural model around broadband and services and so forth plays very well to the powerful devices and services Apple is doing. We're a perfect back end to the problems that they're trying to solve. And they have very good judgment on user interface and people. They don't have this supercomputer I'm talking about, which is the data centers. What they have is a manufacturing business that's doing quite well. And the obvious example is the iPhone, which they announced has in it Google Maps.

Let's talk about the fun stuff. Why do you think Viacom sued you guys?

It's a business negotiation. And it's well established that we've been negotiating with them, and I'm sure at some point we'll negotiate with them some more.

Their argument is that you're not working hard enough to keep infringing stuff off.

Well, if they would look at the law, they would understand that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, there's a shared responsibility. The law basically says that the copyright owner monitors, and then we expeditiously remove, and we've done that. And it's well documented because Viacom told everybody that they gave us 100,000 video take-downs, which we did very, very quickly. And what was interesting was that our traffic to YouTube has grown very strongly since then. So one of the arguments that they made was that somehow YouTube was built on stolen content, which is clearly false.

What's so hard about finding all the infringing stuff users put up on YouTube? Surely, you at Google have the ability to write better content filters.

We are working on the appropriate filters, but it's a hard problem. You could do audio sampling. You could do video sampling. But the audio and video sampling technology is not nearly as good as the technology that allows you to spot infringing text. But it's important that we do it because we don't want to be in the position of having to be given these constant takedown notices.

News Corp. and NBC Universal just announced they are joining forces to create their own video-distribution channels online. Does that represent serious competition?

No. They are taking content that they created and using an exclusive licensing agent to license that content for anybody. That's, clearly, a good thing because it means that that content will be available to everybody.

I got the impression that they were gearing up to compete with you?

No. In fact, Peter (Chernin, News Corp. COO) and I have had a long conversation about this. We spoke yesterday (March 22) before the announcement, and Peter explicitly said that this was not a competitor to YouTube. In fact, their site doesn't even exist yet. They're still designing it. So, to me, it's responsive to finding a way to get the content out.

More broadly, how could copyright law in the digital age be clearer?

The balance that has been struck in the DMCA has worked pretty well, overall. And I think that it may be better for all of us to work within it for a while as we develop these new businesses. It's the unintended consequences of laws that always get you.

You thought there was a good chance of litigation when you bought YouTube. The deal sets aside a $200 million reserve. Why do the deal if you anticipated so much hassle?

Because we think it's fantastic. I mean, we really do think that the YouTube phenomenon is a sustainable phenomenon for many, many years. And the argument is very simple: People are using video everywhere. People are building communities of people who use video. They're sharing them. YouTube's traffic continues to grow very quickly. Video is something that we think is going to be embedded everywhere. And it makes sense, from Google's perspective, to be the operator of the largest site that contains all that video.
Obviously, we would like it to include licensed, copyrighted content, legally, and make money on it. But YouTube itself can pay back - and this is where the critics get it wrong - YouTube itself can pay back in simple searches. Because, remember, when you go to YouTube, you do a search. When you go to Google, you do a search. As we get the search integrated between YouTube and Google, which we're working on, it will drive a lot of traffic into both places. So the trick, overall, is generating more searches, more uses of Google...

Which generates more pageviews, which generates more advertising revenue.

You got it.
The other interesting thing about pageviews is that we make our money by improving the quality, not the quantity, of ads showed on a page. This is very confusing to people. In a normal media business, you make money by showing more ads.

What does it take to improve the quality of ads on Google?

More computers, basically, and better algorithms. And more information about you. The more personal information you're willing to give us - and you have to choose to give it to us - the more we can target. The standard example is: When you say "hot dog," are you referring to the food, or is your dog hot? So the more personalized the information, the better the targeting. We also have done extensive engineering work with Google Analytics to understand why people click on ads. That way we can actually look at the purchase and go back and see what buyers did to get there. That is the holy grail in advertising, because advertisers don't advertise just to advertise, they actually advertise to sell something.

How big is the market for all these Google ads?

Today, the vast majority of our revenue is in text ads correlated with searches. In the last couple of years, we have developed what are called display ad products, including banner ads, video ads, click-to-call ads, and things like that. And I've also said that we are pursuing the possibility of television advertising. By that I mean traditional television advertising. And we bought dMarc Broadcasting to do radio ads.
So let's rank the probability of them being affected by targeted ads. There's search: That's 100 percent affected. What about radio? Is it possible to get a targeted ad right to your car right now? Not yet because we can't target the individual receiver in your car. If two cars are next to each other, the same radio station cannot have two different ads. However, if it's at a regional level we can do it to the zip code level. So let's call that partial targeting.
Now, let's look at television. Every one of the next generation of cable set-top boxes is going to get upgraded to an IP-addressable set-top box. So all of a sudden, that set-top box is a computer that we can talk to. We can't tell whether it's the daughter or the son or the husband or the wife in a household. All we know is we're just talking to the television. But that's pretty targetable because family buying patterns are pretty predictable, and you can see what programs they're watching. And if you're watching a YouTube video, we know you're watching that video.
My point of going through this little treatise is to say, if the total available market is ($600 billion to $800 billion, we won't be able to target all $800 billion. It will not be a 100 percent perfectly targetable, straight into your brain, but we should be able to offer a material improvement (in response rates) to many businesses.

Do ad agencies want that kind of automation?

Sure they do, because the advertisers do. You'd be amazed at how sophisticated the ad agencies are now.

That wasn't true a couple of years ago.

No, but it's changed. This is actually an important piece of data. When we started talking with them, the ad agencies were not sure what their role was going to be. And, in some cases, we were at odds with them. That is all gone as best I can tell. The ad agencies now see us as a major new revenue stream because all of the advertising models that I've described require the services of an ad agency. Somebody still has to produce the targeted ad, somebody still has to figure out what the demographic is. Somebody still has to figure all that out.
Don't you guys do that?
Well, we certainly don't make the ads, and we're certainly not the creative people. All we are is a targeting mechanism. We're just a distribution channel. So we need these ad agencies. And I'll tell you - and I spend a lot of time with these global ad agencies - I can tell you that it is very impressive how quickly they have changed.

Are advertisers going to start actually producing video ads to run on YouTube?

Absolutely. These ad systems tend to produce a lot of video they don't use. So for a 30-second ad, they actually will shoot hours of video. With that they can do the five-second teaser and the 10-second teaser and the single-shot still, and the low resolution one and the high resolution one - and they have terminology for each of these and ad formats for each of these. So the Internet, for them, represents a new creative medium. So we will see the emergence of new categories of ads and ways of making money.

When you and I talked a while ago, you talked about Dell and Sony and Intel as being sort of models for how you manage. Still true?

Very much so.
Despite the fact that Dell and Sony have had issues.

I don't think that those are management issues. I think those are just changes in their ecosystem.

Google's revenue and employee head count have tripled in the last two years. How do you keep from becoming too bureaucratic or too chaotic?

It's a constant problem. We analyze this every day, and our conclusion is that the best model remains small teams running as fast as they can and tolerating a certain lack of cohesion. The attempt to provide order drives out the creativity. And so it's a balance.

How do you keep different groups of engineers from unintentionally duplicating one another’s work and wasting resources?

Well, there is some duplication, but most of it is avoided through communications. The information systems that are within the company are quite good. But we've reined in certain things. For example, we don't tolerate the kind of "Hey I want to have my own database and have a good time" behavior that was very effective for us five years ago because the cost of this from a manageability, maintenance, and scaling perspective is a problem. So virtually all of the product groups are now told, "Build on top of this common set of services. Now, we internally use exactly the same code running on the same servers - like Gmail and Calendar and Google apps - as our customers do.

You mean you eat your own dog food?
Yes.

Google is a global corporation. What do you do to make employees in other countries all feel like they are working here in Mountain View?

It's a great unsolved problem. We do videoconferencing; we do a lot of visits where people are invited to one of the main campuses for a month or two. So they feel a part of a bigger entity when they go back. And that model does work. Of course, we do all the normal meetings - the sales meetings and training meetings, and all that. More and more of our time is being spent on that.

What about "20 percent time" - the time everyone is supposed to allocate in their week to personal projects?

It's still essential. Virtually all of the innovation at the company is still coming out of 20 percent time.

How do you and Larry and Sergey divide your duties?

Pretty much the same as we always have. Today, I can tell you that Larry and Sergey spent all day in the boardroom doing product reviews. They haul the engineering teams and product managers into a room, and they go through each product in great detail. At the same time, I'm interviewing some (prospective) executives, talking to a couple of partners about potential deals, and then in a few minutes the three of us are coming together on stage to answer employee questions. That's a very typical day. Today is Friday - Friday is essentially an all product-review day on their part. I do the same meeting on Tuesday, which I run and they attend.
I think it's fair to say that the skill sets (of the three of us) are just as complementary as they were five years ago. They have brilliance and technical understanding, and they're quicker in some things than I am. They're very clear thinkers. And there is my background of knowing how to scale things (grow a corporation). I think the combination has worked very well, and it's not going to change. We're going to do this for a long time. We enjoy what we do. We like to work with each other. And we're all the best of friends.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Google a one-trick pony. Thoughts?

I don't think it makes sense for me to comment on words and actions by Steve Ballmer. You can phrase the question in a way that does not involve him, if you want.

Google gets its revenue from online advertising. One could make the argument that it is not diversified enough. Is that something that you think about? If so, what are some of the things you are doing about it?

The criticism is correct. We do get the vast majority of our revenue from advertising, and it's a business that a lot of other people would like to be in. So the first thing is, let's understand that we're in a great business. Also, there are some emergent models for revenue that are very interesting. The one that is probably most interesting is Google Apps. We're now beginning to get some significant enterprise deals. Basically, companies are tired of dealing with the complexity of the old model, and our products are now strong enough that they really can reliably serve a corporation.

Implicit in any kind of conversation about Google Apps is the fact that if it is successful, it will take market share away from Microsoft Office. Do you agree?

It may very well be that what you said is true, or it may very well be that consumers will drive us to solve completely new problems.

Why do you place such a premium on hiring the smartest people and developing and releasing software so quickly?

Fast learners win. We're in new, uncharted space. So the traditional assumptions that you and I might have about the future might actually just be wrong. There might be a new answer. And the only way to discover that is to put out your idea and then test it. And we track the results of that very, very, very rigorously, and this is not something we talk a lot about, but it's critical for us. How are these new ideas doing? What's their growth rate? What are the issues around them? And we push. What can we do to accelerate the development of this feature? What's the new problem? What's the new opportunity?

Google gets criticized a lot in the following way: It's a great search engine, but all the other products it has invented and released haven't done well at all. Thoughts?

The person who's saying that does not understand the economic leverage of the company. We know that Google Earth and Google Maps have had a tremendous impact on Google traffic, users, brand, adoption, and advertisers. We also know Google News, for example, which we don't monetize, has had a tremendous impact on searches and on query quality. We know those people search more. Because we've measured it.
Another example is Google Base, which we have been derided about for years. Google Base is how we get structured data. The quality of our index is better because of Google Base. The computers are smarter because of Google Base. Now, would you say Google Base is a mistake? Under the initial formulation, it's a waste of money because we don't monetize it. We could, but what we really do is we use it to improve search.
So one way of thinking about it is it all gets back to search. If you think about YouTube, YouTube is a "searching the world's videos" problem, right? They all have to be there, but how do you find them? What I guess I'm trying to say is that search is still the killer app.

Wired News : Virtual Rape Is Traumatic, but Is It a Crime?

Sat, 5 May 2007 19:41:52 +0200

Last month, two Belgian publications reported that the Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen's allegations of rape -- in Second Life.
I am half convinced that the tantalizingly brief story, printed in De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, is a hoax or an April Fool's joke.
Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums.
Unfortunately, rape in virtual spaces is not unheard of. And I'm not talking about the "consensual" rape built into some games (although if you're interested in that debate, GameGrene has a good conversation about it).
There is no question that forced online sexual activity -- whether through text, animation, malicious scripts or other means -- is real; and is a traumatic experience that can have a profound and unpleasant aftermath, shaking your faith in yourself, in the community, in the platform, even in sex itself.
Our laws say that an adult subjecting a teenager or child to sexual words, images or suggestions on the internet is preying on their mental and emotional state in a sexual way. Even if you never try to meet the minor in person, and even if you never touch them or expose your naked self to them, it is a crime to attempt to engage sexually with a minor.
If it is a criminal offense to sexually abuse a child on the internet, how can we say it is not possible to rape an adult online?
But I have a hard time calling it "rape," or believing it's a matter for the police. No matter how disturbed you are by a brutal sexual attack online, you cannot equate it to shivering in a hospital with an assailant's sweat or other excretions still damp on your body.
That's not to say I dismiss the trauma a person suffers after being raped online. Virtual rape is not just a prank, one the target needs to get over or expect as part of a role-playing world. (And if you are inclined to pooh-pooh this, first read author Julian Dibble's chapter about a rape that occurred in a text-only MOO in the early '90s.)
A virtual rape is by definition sudden, explicit and often devastating. If you've never immersed yourself in online life, you might not realize the emotional availability it takes to be a regular member of an internet community. The psychological aspects of relating are magnified because the physical aspects are (mostly) removed.
Even regular users might not realize how wide open they are until something drastic happens -- they fall in love, get dumped, have a huge fight or get attacked in the online parallel of rape. In that context, a sexual assault can indeed have a deep impact on a person's life, especially if they are actual rape survivors.
Some suggest that the best way to deal with a virtual rape is to ignore it, or simply log off and come back as another user.
But in a game, you don't want to lose the long-term investment you've made in your character. And these days, your real world income or professional reputation can depend on your online self.
In a 3-D marketplace, your avatar's name is your brand. You can change the appearance of your cartoon without much impact, but changing your name makes it too difficult for customers or clients to find you.
If an online environment becomes too hostile or scary, or causes you such great anxiety you cannot work or interact with friends, more has been taken from you than your playtime. Your friends will gather around to give you emotional support -- but your customers will wander off and shop elsewhere.
Adult communities facilitate our need to go deeper into our sexual selves, even into secret places around gender and taboos that we cannot acknowledge anywhere else. We feel safe because of the peculiar blend of disclosure and anonymity provided in online communities, and we journey along paths we might not even glance at in the physical world. We don't expect to have our control wrenched away or our minds assaulted or even the intensity of our anguish during and after.
The truth is, anywhere people gather, we bring all of our potential with us -- for love, for sex, for community and creation, and for violence and destruction, too. That's why we still enjoy pondering whether cybersex is real sex and whether an online affair is more or less damaging to a relationship than a physical affair. It's a tacit acknowledgement that while the time-space continuum may change, people don't.
Rape is the ultimate perversion of sexual intimacy. Like sex, rape has mental and emotional elements that go beyond the body and the damage to the mind and spirit generally takes much longer to heal than the body.
But that doesn't make the psychological upheaval of virtual rape anywhere near the trauma of real rape. And I can't see us making virtual rape a matter for the real-life police.
It's a shitty thing to do to someone. But it's not a crime.
See you next Friday,

Regina Lynn

NetPolitique : Programmes TIC des candidats à la présidentielle / Question de Bernard BENHAMOU (gouvernance de l'Internet)

Fri, 4 May 2007 21:15:24 +0200

Bernard BENHAMOU (http://netgouvernance.org) Maître de conférence à l'Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, Conseiller de la délégation française au Sommet des Nations Unies pour la Société de l'Information (SMSI 2003-2006).
Alors que la France est sur le point d'exercer la Présidence de l'Union Européenne, quelles actions internationales mènerez-vous pour que les infrastructures critiques de l'Internet (et bientôt de l'Internet des objets) ne soient plus gérées par les seuls États-Unis ?

Réponse de Maurice RONAI (pour Ségolène Royal)
La reconnaissance de l’internet comme un bien commun mondial impose la mise en place d'une gouvernance internationale, notamment pour les ressources qui y restent rares ou soumises à des arbitrages comme les noms de domaines et adresses internet correspondantes.
La mainmise actuelle des États-Unis sur les infrastructures critiques de l'Internet constitue un sujet important pour la France et plus généralement pour l'Europe. En effet, la maîtrise de ces infrastructures en plus des questions de souveraineté qu’elle soulève, pourrait constituer un levier essentiel pour favoriser les entreprises américaines et à terme limiter le développement du secteur européen des technologies de l’Internet. Plus encore que les noms de domaines et leur système de gestion (DNS) la mise en place de l'Internet des objets passera désormais par une technologie dérivée l’Object Naming Service (ou ONS) qui elle aussi est actuellement contrôlée par les autorités américaines. Nous devrons veiller à ce que le contrôle de ce nouvel Internet qui ira bien au-delà du milliard d’utilisateurs actuels ne soit « unilatéral » .
Afin de promouvoir la mise en place d’une gouvernance multilatérale, transparente et démocratique de l’Internet une structure de coopération assurant la supervision des ressources critiques du réseau devra être mise en place . Cette structure rapide et flexible veillera à la sécurité, à la stabilité et la souveraineté des ressources relevant des pays . Elle devra aussi veiller à l’interopérabilité, l’ouverture et l’unicité du réseau ainsi qu’au développement du multilinguisme. En raison du caractère crucial de l’Internet pour la diffusion des innovations technologiques et culturelles ainsi que pour la diffusion des idées, une part prépondérante devra y être accordée à la représentation des pays démocratiques.
Il n'est plus pensable que le contrôle de ces ressources soit confié à un pays (les Etats-Unis) ou à un acteur privé (l’ICANN). Il ne serait pas souhaitable, pour autant, de le confier à un organisme international technique ou à une organisation intergouvernementale classique. En effet, des arbitrages complexes entre acteurs sociétaux, acteurs économiques et Etats sont nécessaires lorsqu’il est question de l’internet. Les problèmes aigus de libertés sur internet dans des pays comme la Chine, la Tunisie ou la Syrie illustrent l'impossibilité de confier la gestion aux seuls états. Mais les dangers d'un abus de pouvoir sur le marché ou abus d'appropriation font également redouter une emprise excessive d'acteurs privés. Quant aux acteurs associatifs, ils n'ont pas forcément les mêmes priorités entre eux.
La question de la gouvernance de l’internet a fait l’objet d’un processus original de gouvernance internationale : l’internet Gouvernance Forum (dont la première réunion a eu lieu à Athènes en octobre 2006) dont la mission est d’installer un dialogue permanent entre tous ces acteurs.
Afin de promouvoir la mise en place d’une gouvernance multilatérale, transparente et démocratique de l’internet, une structure de coopération assurant la supervision des ressources critiques du réseau devra être mise en place. Cette structure rapide et flexible devra veiller à la sécurité, à la stabilité et la souveraineté des ressources relevant des pays. Elle devra aussi veiller à l’interopérabilité, l’ouverture et l’unicité du réseau ainsi qu’au développement du multilinguisme. En raison du caractère crucial de l’internet pour la diffusion des innovations technologiques et culturelles ainsi que pour la diffusion des idées, une part prépondérante devra y être accordée à la représentation des pays démocratiques.

Réponse de Eric WALTER (pour Nicolas Sarkozy)
Dans son projet numérique, Nicolas Sarkozy a précisé que le dispositif institutionnel qu’il propose sera chargé à la fois de la préparation de la position française (en concertation avec l’ensemble des acteurs impliqués) et de la représentation de la France lors des négociations européennes et internationales.
Ce dispositif sera constitué autour d’un membre du Gouvernement directement chargé d’incarner et de mettre en œuvre la volonté politique sur l’Internet et le numérique, à ses côtés, un forum de concertation permanent permettra d’anticiper les évolutions de l’Internet et de dialoguer avec les nombreux acteurs concernés par ces sujets. Nicolas Sarkozy a en particulier souhaité que les avis de cette instance de concertation soient systématiquement associés à tous les projets de réglementation numérique.
Si l’idée d'une meilleure coordination de l’action publique en matière d’Internet fait désormais l'objet d'un consensus, les formes que devra prendre cette coordination sont encore débattues. Cette coordination est en effet devenue nécessaire en raison du très fort développement des réseaux et de leurs usages ces 5 dernières années. Nicolas Sarkozy souhaite privilégier des modalités souples ne remettant pas en cause les compétences numériques des administrations thématiques (culture, éducation, santé, etc.) mais il souhaite inscrire son action dans une véritable dynamique stratégique. La concertation doit avoir une très large place dans un tel dispositif, et c’est pourquoi le candidat a préféré un dispositif souple plutôt que de créer une énième structure publique. La multiplication des structures transversales « ad hoc » ayant été jusqu’ici le mal français en matière d’action publique.
Dans le domaine de la gestion des infrastructures techniques de l'Internet ; sur le plan des principes le partage équilibré de cette gestion doit être recherché, mais les avancées récentes du Sommet de Tunis (SMSI) ont aussi montré toute la difficulté de l’élaboration et surtout de la mise en œuvre d’un tel partage. Si le dialogue avec les États-Unis doit être privilégié par rapport à la confrontation, dans le même temps, les décisions du SMSI et en particulier la "coopération renforcée" doivent aussi être mises en application. Nicolas Sarkozy a souligné dans une interview récente que la prochaine réunion du Forum sur la Gouvernance de l’Internet (IGF) à Rio serait pour la France l’occasion de participer plus activement à ces débats. Cela implique en amont l’élaboration d’une véritable position française, et la réforme institutionnelle proposée par le candidat en donnera le moyen ; d’autre part, en aval, l’élaboration d’une position européenne commune dans la perspective de parvenir à des avancées réelles à l’occasion de la Présidence française en 2008.
Lors du dernier SMSI, la France a déjà fait la preuve de sa capacité à convaincre ses partenaires européens. C'est en effet à l'initiative de la France que la position européenne a souligné l’importance des principes fondamentaux de l’architecture de Internet comme le principe de neutralité « end to end », l’ouverture ou encore l’interopérabilité. La France a donc considérablement pesé sur l’ensemble des débats sur la gouvernance. Il convient non seulement de continuer dans cette voie, mais surtout d’aller plus loin en nous donnant les moyens politiques et humains nécessaires.
Voir les autres questions posées aux représentants TIC des candidats

Yale Information Society Project : The Structure of Search Engine Law par James Grimmelmann

Wed, 2 May 2007 21:44:29 +0200

Les moteurs de recherche sont devenus à ce point cruciaux tant sur le plan économique que culturel qu’ils pourraient déterminer la création de nouvelles régulations spécifiques. Etat des lieux du droit en gestation des moteurs de recherche par James Grimmelmann de la New York Law School.

Télécharger la version PDF de l’article

ABSTRACT : Search engines are the new linchpins of the Internet, and a new body of law - search engine law - will increasingly determine the shape of the Internet. Making sensible search policy requires a clear understanding of how search works, what interests are at stake, and what legal questions intersect at search. This article offers the first comprehensive overview of search engine law, which it organizes into a systematic taxonomy. It then demonstrates the dense legal interrelationships created by search by discussing a series of important themes in search engine law, each of which cuts across many doctrinal areas

The Economist : The hidden revolution - A survey of telecoms

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:17:36 +0200

28 Apr 2007

The hidden revolution
What you don't see will need careful watching

MACHINES, buildings, fields and human bodies have a lot to say, if only they are given a chance to talk. "The previous information revolution was IT, which was basically: take all the paper and turn it digital to share. What we provide [now] is a bridge to the physical world," says Joy Weiss, the boss of Dust Networks, which makes wireless chips.
Yet dealing with lots of wireless gadgets everywhere is an unpractised art. Security must be assured and privacy protected. All those radio waves raise health worries. There may not be enough radio spectrum to go around as demand grows. And in the longer term disparate systems may converge and become interconnected, bringing up a whole host of new questions.
What is already clear is that the infrastructure required to support wireless communications will have to be massive. Already, tens of billions of e-mails, mobile text messages and instant messages are being sent through the world's public networks each day, not to mention quasi-closed networks used by stock exchanges, flight-reservation systems and the like. Each CDMA mobile phone communicates with a cell tower 800 times a second just for its power management.
VeriSign, which manages networks such as the internet's address system, the global RFID registry and mobile text messages, is spending $200m-300m on its system to handle a peak load of 4 trillion internet-address queries a day by 2010. Cyber-attacks are expected to grow at a rate of 50% a year. The design of the new systems will be critical and the penalties for failure severe. For example, faulty RFID infrastructure in the initial stages of the Iraq war in 2003 resulted in supplies to the value of $1.2 billion being lost during transport, according to the US General Accounting Office. Projects to embed robust RFID chips into passports and national ID cards around the world are beset with delays.
The issue is trickier than many people appreciate. As wireless systems become common in homes, businesses and public spaces, says Lee McKnight of Syracuse University and the founder of Wireless Grids Corp, they will eventually integrate and work together on the fly, in the same way that today a property website might choose to overlay Google maps on its listings. Moreover, the streams of data from devices and sensors are different in kind from what most people are used to: the information is "probabilistic" rather than definitive, explains Martin Illsley of Accenture. And the systems are vulnerable to being hacked into.
The way we look at privacy protection will need to be overhauled. Today it works like a minuet, with a defined set of partners and parameters, says Elliot Maxwell, a technology-policy guru and former official at America's commerce department. But M2M and sensor networks change the tune: the systems are more decentralised and interwoven. Who keeps an audit trail? How are the data verified? Who gives consent to whom? Today's privacy rules presume a relationship between citizen and government or consumer and company. But the way in which information will be generated and shared may involve so many parties that the minuet will turn into a punk rock concert.
The issues feel new because the technology is only just beginning to be deployed. Where it is already in use, with RFID chips, it has generated controversy. American Express has patented a technique to track people in public places based on the RFID tags in their clothing and products they carry, but has agreed not to use it without disclosing the fact, after pressure from privacy advocates. Last year a Wisconsin legislator proposed a law to ban any mandatory microchip implants in humans (although nothing of the kind exists as yet), or embedding a chip in a person without the recipient's knowledge. The European Commission is set to issue guidelines on privacy and security standards for RFID technology later this year.

Silent chips

"The 'silence of the chips' must be preserved as a fundamental right of citizens," says Bernard Benhamou of the Institute of Political Science in Paris, who was a member of the French delegation at UN meetings on internet governance in 2003-06. Mobile phones, he believes, should be able to pick up the presence of sensors. People should be able to read basic RFID tags--and destroy them too to preserve their privacy. Such rights, he says, will become more important as wireless technologies become small enough to be invisible.
Yet the technology cuts both ways. Prisons in America are experimenting with bracelets that have wireless chips embedded in them to keep track of inmates. It sounds Big Brotherish, but prison officials say that violence among prisoners has decreased. Guards are also tagged, so prisoners may feel safer from abuse.
A 2004 report for the European Parliament on the effects of new wireless technologies on health and the environment argued for the "precautionary principle": holding back until any adverse effects have become clear. But in practice that is hard to do. The report recommended that technology products be sold with factual labels, rather like processed foods, so consumers will know how much radiation they emit, how much energy they use and so on. The report did not cover privacy, but there should probably be disclosure of the presence of wireless systems too.
Another possibility is to separate the data. Adam Greenfield, in his book "Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing", published last year, makes an impassioned plea for "seamfulness". Whereas the computer industry strives to make things as "seamless" (that is, integrated) as possible, he advocates keeping some networks and data apart.
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government has come up with a more innovative proposal: requiring information to be deleted over time. He describes this as a legal and technical version of human forgetting. Today's computer systems do not do that; tomorrow we may wish they did.
We are in the early stages of the creation of a new industry, reminiscent of computing in the early 1970s when companies began to adopt it in earnest. There was plenty of resistance. The systems were difficult to operate and seemed to be set up for nerds. The economic benefits were questioned. There were privacy and regulatory worries. Yet in time the rough edges were smoothed and everybody benefited.
Technology rarely evolves in the way that people think it will. When Marconi invented his wireless telegraph, he never imagined broadcast radio. A decade earlier Heinrich Hertz had famously declared: "I do not think that the wireless waves that I have discovered will have any practical application." To the men at Bell Labs in 1947 the transistor was simply an efficient replacement for vacuum tubes; they had no inkling of its use in computers. Today these technologies are omnipresent: televisions in every home; computers in every office; phones in every pocket; radio towers looming overhead.
What is different about new wireless communications is that people will barely notice them. Machines will talk to machines without human intervention. But humans will nevertheless be laying the foundation of a new infrastructure which, like the electrical power grid, will become a platform for subsequent innovation. There is no saying how it will be used other than that it will surprise us.

L’Express : Le décret qui inquiète l’Internet français…

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:17:42 +0200

01net, par Jean-Baptiste Dupin, 01net.
Le gouvernement veut imposer à tous les éditeurs de contenu en ligne, aux FAI et aux hébergeurs de conserver les traces des internautes passant sur leurs sites. Le Net français s'indigne.
Apparemment sans fin, le feuilleton de l'instauration de mesures destinées à surveiller les réseaux vient de connaître un nouveau rebondissement. La publication d'une version« de travail » d'un décret d'application de la loi LCEN de juin 2004 (Loi pour la confiance dans l'économie numérique) a en effet soulevé une vague de protestations, tant de la part des professionnels du Net que de l'association de défense des libertés IRIS (Imaginons un réseau Internet solidaire).

Ce texte, qui date de janvier dernier, a pour but de préciser un point de l'article 6 de la LCEN. Depuis mars 2006 , les FAI, les hébergeurs et les opérateurs de communication ont pour obligation de conserver pendant un an certaines données de connexion des internautes et des abonnés à la téléphonie mobile. Le texte en préparation va bien au-delà, puisqu'il concerne tous les éditeurs de contenus (sites Web, forums, blogs, etc.) y compris les entreprises qui proposeraient de tels services en ligne.

Il dresse la liste des données que ces prestataires devront conserver un an pour permettre si nécessaire« l'identification de quiconque a contribué à la création du contenu ou de l'un des contenus ». En l'état actuel du décret, cette liste comporte à peu près tout ce qu'il est possible d'enregistrer : identifiants, mots de passe, nature de l'opération, numéros de carte bleue... Par ailleurs, ces données pourront être exigées dans le cadre de toute enquête administrative (sans contrôle d'un juge) et plus seulement judiciaire, et les services de police pourront, quant à eux, les conserver ensuite pendant trois ans, sans le moindre contrôle.

Des entreprises transformées en « indics »
Les professionnels ont été les premiers à tirer le signal d'alarme par la voix de Philippe Jannet, président du GESTE (Groupement des éditeurs de services en ligne, dont fait partie 01net.) Dans un article publié le 21 avril 2007 dansLe Monde, il dénonce à la fois le principe, qui transformerait les entreprises françaises en« indics » et susciterait la plus grande défiance des internautes, et le coût« incroyable » d'une telle mesure.« Dans ces conditions, il faudrait payer simplement pour ouvrir un blog. Pour des raisons économiques et de tranquillité, les internautes iront sur des sites étrangers, les éditeurs français qui en auront les moyens délocaliseront et les autres fermeront boutique », explique Philippe Jannet, très remonté.

Les fournisseurs d'accès se sont également élevés contre ce texte, s'appuyant notamment sur une étude d'un cabinet indépendant qui chiffre à 224 euros par abonné et par an le montant des investissements nécessaires pour répondre aux exigences de la loi.« Outre une harmonisation et une clarification des textes, il est essentiel que l'Etat définisse les modalités de compensation des investissements nécessaires, pour contribuer ainsi à la sauvegarde de l'ordre public, dans l'intérêt général de la population et à des fins tout à fait étrangères à l'exploitation des réseaux de télécommunications », explique Dahlia Kownator, déléguée générale de l'AFA.

A l'heure actuelle, les membres de l'AFA répondent globalement à 10 000 réquisitions par an, et ils souhaiteraient être indemnisés (1), comme en Finlande par exemple, pour la totalité des frais engagés, c'est-à-dire pour chaque extraction de données mais aussi, et surtout, pour la mise en place des infrastructures techniques permettant leur stockage et leur exploitation.

Enfin, les internautes n'ont pas tardé à s'emparer d'un texte qui concerne directement la protection de leur vie privée.« Ce qui est très ennuyeux, c'est que ce texte censé préciser la loi la dépasse, en ajoutant des données qui vont au-delà de l'identification et des délais de conservation qui excèdent [dans le cas de la Police, NDLR]les 24 mois autorisés par l'Union européenne. Il semble que toutes les occasions soient bonnes pour grignoter sur les libertés individuelles », note Meryem Marzouki, présidente de l'association IRIS.

Pour l'heure cependant, il ne faut pas oublier que ce texte n'est qu'une ébauche, plus d'inspiration technocratique que politique selon Philippe Jannet, et toutes les parties prenantes espèrent pouvoir se faire entendre afin qu'il soit modifié et que soit défini, enfin, un cadre clair et équilibré pour l'Internet français.

(1) Depuis septembre 2006 , le gouvernement a prévu d'indemniser partiellement les FAI et les opérateurs de téléphonie.

Public Sénat : Conversations d’Avenirs avec Jacques Attali sur la Gouvernance de l’Internet

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:06:13 +0200

Qui contrôle le net ?

La très récente décision passée inaperçue du ministère américain de la sécurité intérieure de prendre le contrôle des réseaux internets mondiaux permettra au gouvernement américain de conserver pendant très longtemps un pouvoir planétaire.

Voir la vidéo archivée de l’emission animée par Stéphanie Bonvicini

AP / Net challenges lead to clean-slate work

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:55:13 +0200

Government and university researchers have been exploring ways to redesign the Internet from scratch. Some of the challenges that led researchers to start thinking of clean-slate approaches:
SECURITY
THE CHALLENGE: The Internet was designed to be open and flexible, and all users were assumed to be trustworthy. Thus, the Internet's protocols weren't designed to authenticate users and their data, allowing spammers and hackers to easily cover their tracks by attaching fake return addresses onto data packets.
THE CURRENT FIX: Internet applications such as firewalls and spam filters attempt to control security threats. But because such techniques don't penetrate deep into the network, bad data still get passed along, clogging systems and possibly fooling the filtering technology.
THE CLEAN-SLATE SOLUTION: The network would have to be redesigned to be skeptical of all users and data packets from the start. Data wouldn't be passed along unless the packets are authenticated. Faster computers today should be able to handle the additional processing required within the network.
MOBILITY
THE CHALLENGE: Computers rarely moved, so numeric Internet addresses were assigned to devices based on their location. A laptop, on the other hand, is constantly on the move.
THE CURRENT FIX: A laptop changes its address and reconnects as it moves from one wireless access point to another, disrupting data flow. Another workaround is to have all traffic channel back to the first access point as a laptop moves to a second or a third location, but delays could result from the extra distance.
THE CLEAN-SLATE SOLUTION: The address system would have to be restructured so that addresses are based more on the device and less on the location. This way, a laptop could retain its address as it hops through multiple hot spots.
UBIQUITY
THE CHALLENGE: The Internet was designed when there were relatively few computers connecting to it. The proliferation of personal computers and mobile devices led to a scarcity in the initial address system. There will be even more demand for addresses as toasters, air conditioners and other devices come with Internet capability, as will standalone sensors for measuring everything from the temperature to the availability of parking spaces.
THE CURRENT FIX: Engineers expanded the address pool with a system called IPv6, but nearly a decade after most of the groundwork was completed, the vast majority of software and hardware still use the older, more crowded IPv4 technology. Even if more migrate to IPv6, processing the addresses for all the sensors could prove taxing.
THE CLEAN-SLATE SOLUTION: Researchers are questioning whether all devices truly need addresses. Perhaps sensors in a home could talk to one another locally and relay the most important data through a gateway bearing an address. This way, the Internet's traffic cops, known as routers, wouldn't have to keep track of every single sensor, improving efficiency.

Les Echos - La "République 2.0" veut graver dans le marbre la neutralité de l'Internet (par Charles de Laubier)

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:18:56 +0200

Il faut " inscrire le principe de neutralité de l'Internet dans les cadres de régulation français et européens en matière de télécommunications ". C'est la recommandation n°14 du rapport que Michel Rocard vient de remettre, le 5 avril 2007, à Ségolène Royal, la candidate PS à la présidence de la République. Elle fait partie des 94 propositions formulées dans ce document intitulé " République 2.0 : vers une société de la connaissance ouverte ". Les auteurs y prônent un cadre de régulation ouvert et non-discriminant. " Afin de permettre à l'ensemble des fournisseurs de services et de contenus un accès à l'ensemble des réseaux (...), il convient d'inscrire le respect du principe de neutralité de l'Internet dans les cadres de régulation français et européens en matière de télécommunications (...) ".

Sur fond de " séparation fonctionnelle des activités de services et de réseaux "

Le député socialiste au Parlement européen fait en outre référence aux propositions de Viviane Reding, la commissaire européenne chargée de la Société de l'information et des Médias, qui préconise la séparation fonctionnelle des activités de services et de réseaux dans le secteur des télécommunications. Réaffirmer la neutralité de l'Internet permettrait, selon le rapport, de sauvegarder l'architecture du réseau des réseaux qui " possède en effet des particularités qui ont contribué à son succès : l'interopérabilité, l'ouverture et le principe du 'end-to-end' [bout en bout] ". " Cette organisation en réseau et la 'neutralité' de l'Internet qui en découle doivent être préservées ", affirment les auteurs qui font aussi référence à Bernard Benhamou, professeur à l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris*. " L'une des particularités de cette architecture, a expliqué ce dernier, est liée à l'indépendance des différentes "couches" qui constituent le réseau. Le double protocole fondamental de l'Internet TCP/IP assure en effet une séparation entre les fonctions de transport et les fonctions de traitement des informations ".

Principes fondamentaux : interopérabilité, ouverture et neutralité de l'Internet

Quoi qu'il en soit, la neutralité de l'Internet doit contribuer à promouvoir une " société de la connaissance ouverte en Europe et au plan international". " L'Europe a dans ce domaine montré le chemin en inscrivant dans ses fondamentaux de la gouvernance les trois principes essentiels de l'architecture de l'Internet que sont l'interopérabilité, l'ouverture et la préservation de la neutralité de l'Internet ", explique Michel Rocard qui considère ces principes comme " un élément crucial de l'architecture de l'Internet ".

PBS / We Don't Need No Stinking Best Effort: Net neutrality may have been just a fantasy all along.

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 05:24:35 +0200

Let me tell you about the problems I am having with my fax line. Fax? Why would anyone still have a fax line? Well I have a few thousand business cards orbiting out there with my fax number attached, but the line also serves quite well as a secure (if slow) access point for remote control software when I am on the road. Or it would serve that role if my fax line actually worked, which it doesn't.
My fax line isn't a regular phone line, it is a Vonage Voice over IP phone line. I have two such lines with the other being my main business number. The business number works reliably, though the audio quality isn't what I would like and there are plenty of dropped bits. But the fax line doesn't work at all. It connects but won't sync no matter what I try. It is already set on the slowest possible speed and I have spent literally hours on the phone with Vonage, which can't find anything wrong.
For all its legal troubles, Vonage has always been a reliable supplier to me and they have made a valiant effort to get this fax line functioning. So what can the problem be?
It's not a lack of bandwidth. I am a Comcast business customer and pay three times the residential rate in exchange for eight megabits down and one megabit up with five static IP addresses, the right to run servers, and what they call a Service Level Agreement.
That's the good news. The bad news is I just tested my 8/1 connection and the actual speeds with tests that Comcast accepts as valid (Comcast service likes the Speakeasy speed test) are 6764 down and 1410 up. That's substantially faster than I am promised upstream but substantially slower than I am promised downstream, yet both are still plenty for a 9600 bps fax, right? Wrong.
When I ask Comcast business about the Service Level Agreement, they snort. I can do the paperwork and demand some money back, they say, but my numbers to them look pretty good and there isn't much they can do to improve them. So Comcast's Service Level Agreement in this case is probably more of a marketing tool than anything else. In terms of actually guaranteeing service levels, it is meaningless.
So why can't I get a fax, then?
I don't know for sure, but I suspect the answer may well lie in an extension of last week's column about net neutrality. In that column I explained that the big broadband ISPs were apparently preparing to offer tiered levels of service and at this point it is a matter of flipping a switch, with the result that Comcast's VoIP might suddenly work a LOT better than Vonage's VoIP, which is to say my fax line.
Well it turns out that I may have, in this case, actually understated the problem. Readers claim that some -- who knows, maybe ALL -- big broadband ISPs are ALREADY running tiered services.
"I used to work at Time-Warner Cable's Road Runner High Speed HQ," wrote one reader, "and as of 2005, TWC marked all VoIP packets with the TOS bit turned to 1. TWC has 5 levels of priority, VoIP having the highest, router tables second, commercial services 3rd, Road Runner consumer 4th and everything else is classified as 'best effort'."
Wow!
In the strictest sense, this is perfectly in keeping with my point from last week that having a native VoIP service changes the rules of the game when it comes to net neutrality because VoIP in this case is a PHONE service, not an INTERNET service and is therefore not restricted from QoS prioritization. But what about those other service levels? They generally have to do with Internet services and so ought to come under the net neutrality rules.
THERE ARE NO NET NEUTRALITY RULES.
I went to one of my smartest, best-informed, and most cynical friends who has a long career making these networks work and he wrote, "Well, there are no Net Neutrality rules/laws in place (yet). Correct? So, they can do anything they want, right? Besides, your point about why your fax doesn't work on Vonage may be explained..."
Suddenly it is all beginning to make sense to me.
Last year SBC (now AT&T), Comcast, and other big broadband ISPs began to make noise about how Google wasn't paying them for priority access and should. Feeling threatened, the Internet community tried to push through net neutrality rules that said every packet should be treated equally. The net neutrality rules haven't yet gone through but the ISPs also aren't charging anyone yet for priority access.
Too bad those of us on the side of net neutrality were so naïve. I looked in the RFCs and saw that the Internet was defined as a "best effort" network, which seemed to embody the principles of net neutrality. So, like most other people, I assumed that the de facto state of things was that all packets were being treated equally and what the ISPs were looking for was a change in the status quo.
Silly me.
What turns out to be the case is that some ISPs have all along given priorities to different packet types. What AT&T, Comcast and the others were trying to do was to find a way to be PAID for priority access -- priority access that had long existed but hadn't yet been converted into a revenue stream.
This reminds me of the problems Silicon Graphics (SGI) and NeXT Computer had making their machines work with the Network File System (NFS) protocol back in the late 1980s. NFS was invented by Sun Microsystems and published as an open standard for accessing data on other systems using a remote procedure call. Dozens of vendors supported NFS, but SGI and NeXT couldn't get their machines to interoperate. What turned out to be wrong was that SGI and NeXT both wrote their NFS code from scratch using Sun's published specification, while all the other vendors generally lifted Sun code and concentrated on making their implementations interoperate with Sun's, the de facto standard. BUT SUN'S NFS CODE WASN'T COMPLIANT WITH ITS OWN SPEC.
So lots of we "pundits" have been sitting around believing that the Internet is a "best effort" network, which in practical terms it isn't and probably hasn't been for a long time. We've believed that by being out of compliance with RFCs this combination of QoS and non-QoS services wouldn't work, but they do. And the result is that I can sit here with 100+ times enough bandwidth for fax service and still can't send a damned fax.
We should have seen this coming. When ISPs claimed that private peering arrangements gave them priority routing (a best-effort no-no) we should have believed them. OF COURSE they would give priority for services such as DNS and, frankly, I wouldn't want that any other way.
So instead of a true "best effort" network upon which some ISPs want to impose tiered services, what most of us probably have are already tiered services, which means that net neutrality, if imposed, would make some Internet services slower than they presently are.
Net neutrality threatens ISPs while a regulated lack of net neutrality rewards them, so they push for it.
The reality of this argument, then, is that in the strictest sense net neutrality is already dead and we don't really want it if that means slowing down every page access. At the same time, we have already paid for that bandwidth, so allowing our ISPs to effectively sell it twice seems unfair to users.
What's to be done, then? Well we won't be going back to true net neutrality. Revealing that it had never existed was probably a weapon the ISPs were saving for their final defense of the status quo. In the long run, the ISPs will probably get their way, too, on being paid for access to higher service tiers. But since we've already paid for that bandwidth, I propose the ISPs be made to share their bounty with us.
If an ISP can account for packets on different service levels accurately enough to bill a Google or a Yahoo, then they can take half of the revenue generated by allowing faster access to me and credit that to my account, lowering my bill. I can either take the money and run or apply it toward raising the priority level of some of my own services.
In my case, of course, that would be fax.

Reuters : Domain name .eu in world top 10 a year after launch

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:54:53 +0200

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A year after its launch, 2.5 million Europeans and companies have registered a .eu domain name, making it the seventh most widespread Web site address suffix in the world and the third in the

European Union.
ADVERTISEMENT

Air France KLM, Italian design house Versace and Belgian-French financial services group Dexia are among the firms that have registered and have functioning Web sites, the

European Commission said on Wednesday.
"After just one year, .eu has become a well-established part of Europe's cyberspace," EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement. "This is a positive sign of the attractiveness of electronic commerce within the EU."

Just under 80 percent of registered names are used, rather than bought only to reserve a name, the EU's executive arm said.

In the 27-member bloc, Britain's .uk and Germany's .de are more popular than the .eu domain, which is surpassed worldwide by .com, .net, .org and .info, according to the Commission.

The registration process is managed by an independent not-for-profit organization called EURid, which says domain names can cost at least 5-45 euros depending on whether they are for a private entity, public body, or trademarked name.

The Commission said last April it expected EURid to register almost a quarter of a million firms and organizations by the end of 2006.

Neutralité : les 4 règles qui devront exister sur les réseaux Internet mobiles par Tim Wu

Sat, 7 Apr 2007 21:23:34 +0200

Tim Wu professeur à l’Université Columbia propose d'étendre les règles de Neutralité du Net à l’Internet mobile. Lire le rapport Wireless Net Neutrality: Cellular Carterfone and Consumer Choice in Mobile Broadband remis à la News America Foundation (février 2007)

Wireless Net Neutrality

http://www.newamerica.net/files/WorkingPaper17_WirelessNetNeutrality_Wu.pdf

The report makes four major recommendations:

1. Cellphone Carterfone – The basic and highly successful Carterfone rules in the wired world allow any consumer to attach any safe device to his or her phone line through a standardized jack. The same rule for wireless networks would liberate device innovation in the wireless world, stimulate the development of new applications and free equipment designers to make the best phones possible.

2. Basic Network Neutrality Rules – Wireless carriers should be subject to the same core network neutrality principles under which the cable and DSL industries currently operate. Consumers have the basic right to use the applications of their choice and view the content of their choice. Wireless carriers who offer broadband services should respect the same basic freedoms. Carriers can tier o meter pricing for bandwidth without blocking or degrading consumer choice.

3. Disclosure – Consumer disclosure is a major problem in the wireless world. In addition to the disclosure of areas lacking coverage and rate-plan information, carriers should disclose—fully,prominently, and in plain English—any limits placed on devices,limits on bandwidth usage, or if devices are locked to a single network.

4. Standardize Application Platforms – The industry should re-evaluate its "walled garden" approach to application development, and work together to create clear and unified standards for developers. Application development for mobile devices is stalled, and it is in the carriers' own interest to try and improve the development environment.

Les Echos : Internet gagnerait à rester neutre vis-à-vis des contenus

Fri, 6 Apr 2007 14:51:59 +0200

par CHARLES DE LAUBIER

Imaginez que l'Internet ne vous donne plus accès aux contenus numériques de votre choix. Que vous, internautes, n'ayez plus le loisir d'accéder à tous les sites de partage vidéo, à tous les moteurs et portails d'informations, à toutes les plates-formes de téléchargement de films ou de télévisions à la carte, à tous les logiciels de messageries instantanées ou d'échange peer-to-peer, à tous les sites de jeux interactifs en ligne ou encore à tous les services de commerce électronique ou d'enchères. Imaginez que votre fournisseur d'accès à Internet (FAI) vous interdise l'entrée à Google, Skype, Youtube, eBay, Amazon, Myspace, MSN, Dailymotion, eMule ou à Second Life, en justifiant ce « déni de service » par la « non-validité » de votre abonnement haut débit vis-à-vis du contenu en ligne désiré. A l'instar d'un refus de vente, ce barrage aurait de quoi vous contrarier. Et vous auriez raison de vous plaindre de cette e-discrimination à votre égard, alors que vous avez souscrit un abonnement à Internet non bridé.
Imaginez que votre accès à la société de l'information soit ainsi restreint par votre FAI, lequel bloquerait l'accès à des services Web qui ne lui auraient pas payé leur tribut pour empreinter son réseau haut débit (pourtant interconnecté au « réseau des réseaux »). Au mieux, le site « non référencé » resterait accessible mais de manière dégradée : les paquets de données transmis ne seraient pas tous acheminés, afin de laisser passer d'autres flux considérés comme « prioritaires ». Au pire, l'accès au site honni serait interdit de séjour sur son réseau. En revanche, les autres qui auraient conclu avec votre FAI - moyennant royalties ou taxe - un accord pour réserver à leurs applications une meilleure qualité de transmission et un taux de disponibilité de 99,9 % seraient favorisés. Cette discrimination de certains contenus au profit d'autres ayant payé leur droit de passage et la qualité de service garantie qui va avec se ferait comme pour un véhicule voulant circuler sur une autoroute à péage. Cette gestion de « classes de services » est déjà monnaie courante sur les réseaux privés virtuels d'entreprises, où les flux sont hiérarchisés et transportés en fonction de « priorités » prédéfinies pour chaque application.

Imaginez cet Internet à deux vitesses. Parce que les contenus numériques explosent, vidéo en tête, les capacités des réseaux haut débit ne suffiraient plus à satisfaire toutes les applications multimédias de plus en plus gourmandes en mégaoctets reçus et envoyés. C'est du moins ce qu'avancent les opérateurs télécoms soucieux d'amortir la montée en puissance de leurs infrastructures, en estimant que les fournisseurs de contenus devraient y contribuer en fonction de la bande passante qu'ils utilisent (plus elle est large, plus le débit est élevé). Sinon, leurs « services d'information » - lesquels, aux Etats-Unis, ne sont pas soumis aux règles d'accès non discriminatoires - ne devraient plus transiter sur le réseau en question. La « Net Neutrality » (dixit les Anglo-Saxons) serait donc en sursis, bien qu'elle ait été réaffirmée en septembre 2005 par le régulateur fédéral américain des communications (la FCC). Les directives européennes « paquet télécoms » ont, elles, fait de la neutralité le fondement de l'accès depuis les années 1990. Mais pour combien de temps encore ? De part et d'autre de l'Atlantique, les opérateurs déploient des réseaux de nouvelle génération, très haut débit, qui exigent des milliards d'euros d'investissements. Avec leur projets de fibres optiques au plus près des abonnés (« FTTx »), AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom ou France Télécom verraient d'un bon oeil la fin de cette obligation de donner accès à tout service Web.

Aux Etats-Unis, en novembre dernier, le changement de majorité au Congrès en faveur des démocrates a redonné du poids à ces derniers pour tenter de préserver la « Net Neutrality » à laquelle une majorité de républicains s'était opposée. Deux projets de loi, l'un de la Chambre des représentants (Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act) et l'autre du Sénat (Internet Freedom Preservation Act), visaient à interdire aux FAI de limiter l'accès aux contenus ou d'en dégrader la qualité. En substance : oui aux services payants « premium » (streaming vidéo par exemple), non à la modulation des débits en fonction des contenus. Les parlementaires américains ne se sont finalement pas prononcés sur ces textes en 2006, au soulagement des opérateurs télécoms, des câblo-opérateurs comme Comcast et des équipementiers tels que Cisco ou Alcatel. Mais deux amendements similaires reviennent devant le Congrès cette année. Et si George W. Bush, affaibli, n'(ab)use pas de son veto présidentiel, la « Net Neutrality » pourrait enfin être gravée dans le marbre. Pour l'heure, seule garante de ce principe de neutralité né avec Internet, la FCC a obtenu de SBC, Verizon et AT&T de le respecter pendant deux ans à partir de leur fusion récente avec, respectivement, AT&T, MCI et Bellsouth. Et après ?
Cette crainte de voir la neutralité de l'Internet disparaître est renforcée par les alliances que cherchent à nouer les opérateurs du (très) haut débit et les producteurs de contenus numériques. Quitte à être tentés de « verrouiller » le marché. « Le débat sur la Net Neutrality ressemble aux débats de l'an 2000 sur les terminaux mobiles qui verrouillaient l'accès aux services WAP (affaire Wappup), ou sur les terminaux de réception satellitaires qui empêchaient un accès aux services d'une plate-forme concurrente. Aujourd'hui, la question de l'interopérabilité se pose aussi pour l'iPod. Le fournisseur de l'outil d'accès est accusé d'empêcher le consommateur d'avoir accès aux contenus de son choix », explique Winston Maxwell, avocat associé chez Hogan & Hartson. Imaginez France Télécom passant un accord exclusif avec Dailymotion et interdisant à ses abonnés Orange l'accès à YouTube ! Ou AT&T empêchant l'accès à Skype qui cannibalise ses revenus téléphoniques sans payer l'usage de son réseau. Voire Universal Music réservant sa production musicale aux seuls abonnés de tel opérateur « partenaire ». Car les industries culturelles (musique, cinéma, édition) pourraient, elles aussi, y voir un moyen de fournir les « tuyaux » qui leur garantissent sécurité et juste rémunération des ayants droit.

Les Etats-Unis en sont au dernier round de ce débat sensible qui s'engage à peine en Europe, où les contenus en ligne pèseront 8,3 milliards d'euros de chiffre d'affaires en 2010. Faut-il « autoriser les opérateurs de réseau à offrir des services préférentiels de haute qualité à certains prestataires au lieu de fournir un service neutre » ? Telle est la question posée par la Commission européenne qui prévoit de « prendre des mesures au second semestre 2007 ». France Télécom, qui fait état de ses « investissements élevés dans l'accès » et de ses « coûts de bande passante et de qualité de service », lui répond en faisant référence au Japon qui a une approche combinée entre « Net Neutrality » et « coût équitable de distribution des réseaux ». Le régulateur français, lui, semble prêt à « remettre en question le principe de séparation des revenus » en justifiant qu'« une part des revenus perçus par les fournisseurs de services revienne aux opérateurs d'accès ». Encore faut-il que l'Europe - tout en condamnant le piratage en ligne - réaffirme haut et fort la « neutralité des réseaux » pour éviter que n'émerge une société de l'information à deux vitesses.

CHARLES DE LAUBIER est journaliste au service high tech-médias des « Echos ». claubier@lesechos.fr
http://www.lesechos.fr/info/comm/4560843.htm

Department of Homeland and Security wants master key for DNS

Fri, 6 Apr 2007 11:28:40 +0200

Le Department of Homeland Security déclare qu'il souhaite prendre le contrôle direct du DNS et détenir les "master keys" du nouveau système de sécurisation du DNS sécurisé ou DNSsec) qu'il souhaite mettre en place. Les registres nationaux en particulier européens se sont déclarés hostiles à ce changement.

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/87655

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was created after the attacks on September 11, 2001 as a kind of overriding department, wants to have the key to sign the DNS root zone solidly in the hands of the US government. This ultimate master key would then allow authorities to track DNS Security Extensions (DNSSec) all the way back to the servers that represent the name system's root zone on the Internet. The "key-signing key" signs the zone key, which is held by VeriSign. At the meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Lisbon, Bernard Turcotte, president of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) drew everyone's attention to this proposal as a representative of the national top-level domain registries (ccTLDs).

At the ICANN meeting, Turcotte said that the managers of country registries were concerned about this proposal. When contacted by heise online, Turcotte said that the national registries had informed their governmental representatives about the DHS's plans. A representative of the EU Commission said that the matter is being discussed with EU member states. DNSSec is seen as a necessary measure to keep the growing number of manipulations on the net under control. The DHS is itself sponsoring a campaign to support the implementation of DNSSec. Three of the 13 operators currently work outside of the US, two of them in Europe. Lars-Johan Liman of the Swedish firm Autonomica, which operates the I root server, pointed out the possible political implications last year. Liman himself nomited ICANN as a possible candidate for the supervisory function.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which handles route management within the ICANN, could be entrusted with the task of keeping the keys. An ICANN/IANA solution would offer one benefit according to some experts: there would be no need to integrate yet another institution directly into operations. After all, something must be done quickly if there is a problem with the signature during operations. If the IANA retains the key, however, US authorities still have a political problem, for the US government still reserves the right to oversee ICANN/IANA. If the keys are then handed over to ICANN/IANA, there would be even less of an incentive to give up this role as a monitor. As a result, the DHS's demands will probably only heat up the debate about US dominance of the control of Internet resources. (Monika Ermert) (Craig Morris) / (jk/c't)

ICANN may be looking for immunity from U.S. law

Tue, 3 Apr 2007 11:31:46 +0200

April 3, 2007 12:11 AM PDT

http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6172758.html

The closest thing the Internet has to a governing body seems to want the same kind of immunity from national laws that the International Red Cross and the International Olympic Committee have enjoyed for decades.
A recent report prepared for the board of ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) says the organization should "explore the private international organization model" and it should "operationalize whatever outcomes result."
Dejargonized, that means ICANN could become largely immune from civil lawsuits, police searches and taxes, and its employees would have quasi-diplomatic privileges (such as importing items into the U.S. without paying customs duties).
The only catch? The Bush administration doesn't appear to like the idea of ICANN becoming an independent international organization. In fact, instead of letting ICANN slip further out of its grasp, the administration seems to be tightening its grip on the Marina del Ray, Calif.-based group.
This nicely sets the stage for yet another potential power struggle over the future of Internet governance--things like domain names, trademark rules, and conflict resolution procedures. (The Bush crowd already was getting worried about ICANN almost--but but not quite--approving a .xxx domain suffix.)
One option ICANN has is what wags erroneously speculated Microsoft would do at the height of the Clinton administration's antitrust pursuit of the company seven years ago: Move elsewhere.
The speculation at the time was that Microsoft would move its Redmond, Wash., headquarters north of the border to British Columbia and thereby escape some of the zanier actions of the Justice Department. The speculation today about ICANN is that it could relocate to Switzerland, where it's far easier to obtain the privileges of an international organization (the U.N., WIPO, and countless other agencies happen to be located in Geneva).
This time, it's not just speculation. An August 2006 analysis from ICANN makes it clear that the Swiss framework for such international groups would be an especially attractive one. Another telling sentence in the new report says that "ICANN's headquarters may remain in the U.S.," as opposed to a flat statement saying it will remain here.
In the U.S., international organizations are governed by a 1945 law that grants them "immunity from suit" and says their property and assets "shall be immune from search." Employees are generally immune from income taxes and from customs duties and taxes. Plus, legal immunity would certainly help ICANN eliminate some of its expensive litigation headaches.
If all this sounds kind of familiar, it is. A few years ago the question was whether the United Nations would take over ICANN. Today, though, it looks more like ICANN will try to mimic the United Nations.
PS: For your aural delectation, here's our podcast on the subject from Monday afternoon.

Posted by Declan McCullagh

European Commission keeping an eye on RFID

Tue, 3 Apr 2007 04:18:01 +0200

By Anne Broache Staff Writer, CNET News.com

The European Commission may have decided against imposing new rules on radio frequency identification tags for now, but a top official warned on Monday that regulations are likely if future uses of the technology don't protect fundamental privacy rights.

Gerald Santucci, head of the European Commission unit whose domain includes RFID issues, said he feared that rushing to place restrictions on industries hoping to use the technology would choke its potentially valuable application in health care, business, transportation and other realms.
But if regulators deem that widespread RFID use is insufficiently safe, secure and privacy-preserving, then "Mrs. Reding will have no other option but to trigger legislation," Santucci told participants at a luncheon discussion here organized by the law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge.
He was referring to a recent announcement by commissioner Viviane Reding, whose group focuses on "information society and media." She said that instead of issuing regulations, the commission plans to develop a set of guidelines--a "soft law," by Santucci's characterization--by year's end to lay out its expectations on issues like privacy and security. To get there, it plans to consult over the next several months with a to-be-named group of 25 to 30 people representing all facets of the RFID debate. (The European Commission is the European Union's executive arm and is composed of 27 commissioners, one from each member nation.)
By the close of 2008, the commission plans to reevaluate whether legislation is necessary. It's unclear how restrictive any potential rules would be.
That option is preferable for now because it typically takes as many as three years for new laws to gain final passage at the commission, and by then, RFID-specific rules may already be out of date, Santucci said. He indicated that even if the commission does decide it needs to enact new laws, they would cover more than just RFID.
Advocates of RFID, which broadcasts a unique ID through radio frequencies, argue that the technology affords myriad benefits, such as adding precision to medical operating rooms, allowing retailers to track inventory more closely, and helping doctors to monitor elderly or other homebound patients from afar.

But the idea of unfettered use has attracted a fair amount of outcry from privacy groups concerned about the potential for secret tracking, unauthorized collection of information and other abuses. Those fears have prompted a number of state legislatures to propose laws aimed at restricting, or in some cases outlawing, RFID use. (Some politicians on Capitol Hill, by contrast, formed a working group last year focused on exploring how the tiny chips might improve their constituents' quality of life.)
That sentiment is no different in Europe. More than two-thirds of the people who expressed their views to the commission during a recent public comment period on RFID said they had strong convictions against the chips' use, Santucci said.
Santucci attributed what he called a "problem of trust" to a lack of understanding about how the technology works. He suggested that governments and industry worldwide should build privacy protections into their RFID use, but they also must present a unified message about "why RFID is something that can add a lot to improve (citizens') quality of life."

Le Monde : Qui contrôlera demain Internet

Mon, 2 Apr 2007 18:55:28 +0200

Le nombre de données personnelles stockées sur Internet va se multiplier. L'expert Bernard Benhamou appelle à une gestion plus transparente du réseau mondial. Entretien.

propos receuillis par Stéphane Foucart LE MONDE | 31.03.07 |

Le coeur du réseau Internet est toujours sous la tutelle du gouvernement américain. Les pays émergents, notamment la Chine, vivier des futurs internautes, vont-ils se satisfaire de cette situation ?

A l'évidence, non ! Des tensions diplomatiques existent entre les Etats-Unis et le reste du monde depuis 1998, date de création de l'Icann, la société californienne qui gère le "DNS", l'annuaire universel qui assure le fonctionnement de l'Internet. L'administration Clinton avait prévu de donner son indépendance à l'Icann, mais l'essor politique et économique de l'Internet a fait reculer le gouvernement américain. Celui-ci résume désormais sa position en ces termes : "Internet est le moteur de notre croissance et nous ne permettrons pas qu'il soit pris en otage pour des raisons politiques."
Au sommet des Nations unies sur la société de l'information en 2005, les Etats-Unis ont refusé catégoriquement toute forme de gouvernance multilatérale du Réseau. Pour eux, revenir sur ces questions relève désormais du casus belli.

Peut-on imaginer la création de systèmes alternatifs à celui contrôlé par les Américains ?

Cette tentation existe déjà. La Chine a essayé à plusieurs reprises, de s'éloigner des standards techniques de l'Internet. Ces tentatives auraient pu aboutir à la fragmentation ou à la balkanisation du réseau, c'est-à-dire la formation d'"îlots" peu connectés entre eux. Mais la Chine peut-elle encore se permettre de créer un Réseau incompatible avec le reste du monde ? Elle a besoin des innovations de l'Ouest pour alimenter une croissance qui est devenue cruciale pour la survie politique du régime. Si l'Iran a décidé récemment de réduire le débit des accès Internet de ses citoyens afin de freiner les échanges avec l'Occident, de telles mesures ne pourraient plus être adoptées en Chine.

Si la "sécession" technique est improbable, comment la Chine peut-elle s'émanciper du contrôle américain ?

En renforçant son contrôle sur le réseau par d'autres mesures techniques. L'Internet repose en effet sur un assemblage de technologies qu'il peut être tentant de modifier pour des motifs politiques ou économiques. Ainsi les autorités chinoises, soucieuses de mieux contrôler les connexions sans fil sur leur territoire, ont demandé à des industriels américains de modifier les technologies Wi-Fi afin qu'en temps réel le ministère de l'intérieur chinois soit informé de l'identité des personnes connectées. Les industriels américains n'ont pas accédé à la demande des autorités chinoises. Si tel avait été le cas, cette technologie développée à des fins "politiques" aurait pu être exportée vers l'ensemble de la planète. L'important n'est donc plus de savoir si l'Internet peut menacer le régime chinois, mais bien de savoir si la Chine aura un rôle déstabilisateur sur l'architecture et les valeurs de l'Internet dans le reste du monde.

Quels pourraient être les autres risques liés aux évolutions de l'Internet ?

Si le premier milliard d'internautes s'est connecté au Réseau par le biais des ordinateurs, le deuxième milliard sera connecté à Internet par le biais de toutes sortes d'objets, qu'il s'agisse des produits alimentaires, des vêtements ou des livres... à mesure que les codes-barres présents sur les objets manufacturés seront remplacés par des puces sans contact (ou puces RFID, comme la puce qui équipe la carte Navigo des Franciliens).

Le consortium mondial de gestion des codes-barres, EPC Global, a choisi un système qui permettra à terme de stocker sur Internet toutes les informations relatives à la vie de ces objets (lieu de fabrication, acheminement, contrôles effectués, etc.). Ce changement vers un "Internet des objets" sera effectué pour des raisons logistiques, d'économie et de traçabilité. Cela générera d'importantes économies pour les distributeurs.

Qui contrôlera ce nouvel "Internet des objets" ?

Nous en revenons à la même situation qu'avec l'Internet actuel, centralisé aux Etats-Unis. Une technologie nommée Object Naming Service (ONS) sera pour l'"Internet des objets" ce que le DNS est à l'Internet actuel. C'est là encore VeriSign, société sous contrat avec le département américain de la défense, qui est le gestionnaire ultime de cette grande carte d'aiguillage des objets connectés à l'Internet... Cette nouvelle architecture centralisée rendra encore plus sensible le contrôle que les Etats-Unis exercent sur l'Internet. En effet, s'il devient possible de connaître les mouvements de tous les objets et personnes sur l'ensemble de la planète, le gouvernement qui contrôlera ce système détiendra un pouvoir qu'aucun gouvernement n'a jusqu'ici rêvé de posséder. Le premier droit des citoyens devra être celui de désactiver s'ils le souhaitent ces dispositifs ; il conviendra d'établir un droit au "silence des puces".

Un nouveau mode de gouvernance de l'Internet doit-il être inventé ?

Il faut instaurer une transparence du mode de gouvernance qui n'a jamais existé pour l'Internet "traditionnel". Il revient à l'ensemble des citoyens - en particulier dans les pays démocratiques - d'éviter que cette évolution ne corresponde à la mise en place de Big Brother. Pour cela, il faut créer le débat sur l'avenir de nos sociétés face à ces mutations. Les responsables politiques n'en ont pas encore mesuré les enjeux...

Propos recueillis par Stéphane Foucart

LEXIQUE

DNS (DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM).
Ce système fait correspondre les adresses (de type http://www.lemonde.fr) aux adresses IP (Internet Protocol) correspondantes (de type 123.45.678.9). La copie de référence de cet annuaire essentiel au fonctionnement du Réseau est conservée sur un ordinateur (le "serveur racine") situé dans l'Etat de Virginie, aux Etats-Unis, sous l'autorité administrative de l'Icann(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

ICANN.
Cette société de droit californien à but non lucratif gère le DNS. Elle est placée sous la tutelle du département américain du commerce, qui a un droit de veto sur toutes ses décisions.

VERISIGN.
Cette entreprise, sous contrat avec l'Icann, est l'opérateur technique chargé du bon fonctionnement du "serveur racine" de référence. VeriSign est également investie de la gestion des extensions ".com" et ".net".

SUR INTERNET

WWW.NETGOUVERNANCE.ORG/

POLITIQUEETRANGERE.PDF
Internet et Souveraineté : la gouvernance de la société de l'information (Bernard Benhamou et Laurent Sorbier, Politique étrangère, automne 2006).

WWW.INTGOVFORUM.ORG
Site de l'organisme intergouvernemental Forum pour la gouvernance d'Internet (Internet Governance Forum, IGF).

Article paru dans l'édition du 01.04.07

New York Times : Agency Rejects .xxx Suffixes for Sex-Related Sites on Internet

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 20:12:02 +0200

By THOMAS CRAMPTON
A longstanding proposal to create a specialized .xxx suffix for sex-related entertainment Web sites received a final rejection yesterday by the agency governing the Internet address system.
The plan, first introduced seven years ago by ICM Registry, was rejected by a vote of 9 to 5 by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, at a meeting in Lisbon.
The issue will not be brought for further discussion by Icann, but ICM Registry, the Florida company that was also applying to manage the address, said it would continue to pursue the issue.
“We are extremely disappointed by the board’s action today,” Stuart Lawley, chairman of ICM Registry, said. “It is not supportable for any of the reasons articulated by the board.”
Board members who voted against the plan expressed concern that it would compel Icann to become involved in regulating content, among other issues.
To ease concerns over promoting content, ICM had said that .xxx Web sites would be issued only to entertainment providers identifying themselves as complying with a set of business practices that included a ban on child pornography and warnings about content.
ICM had argued that creation of the domain would enhance safety for young users by clearly defining .xxx sites as a no-go zone.
Described last week by Paul Twomey, Icann’s chief executive, as “clearly controversial, clearly polarizing,” the issue had been discussed among Internet enthusiasts and on blogs.
Some who objected to the proposal included companies in the sex-related entertainment industry as well as religious groups. The entertainment executives raised fears that use of the domain, although voluntary, could open the way for governments to isolate sex-oriented Web sites into a single part of the Internet.
Religious groups expressed concern that creation of the .xxx domain would serve only to encourage creation of more sex-related content.
Others warned that the move would create a bonanza for ICM Registry, since companies with existing Web sites would be compelled to buy .xxx domain names to prevent someone else from creating sites using their company names.
Supporters of the proposal on the Icann board argued that the agency’s role was to serve as a technical arbiter about the feasibility of new domain names, not to discriminate on the basis of content.
The decision to reject .xxx was “weak and unprincipled,” a board member, Susan Crawford, said.
“No centralized authority should set itself up as the arbiter of what people may do together online,” Ms. Crawford said in a statement to the board, adding that political pressures played an undue role. “This is not a technical stability and security question.”

Le Monde : Bruxelles plaide pour séparer les activités de services et de réseaux de télécommunications

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 20:05:49 +0200

Viviane Reding, la commissaire chargée des télécommunications, a plaidé, jeudi 29 mars à Bruxelles, pour l'instauration d'une séparation fonctionnelle entre les activités de services et de réseaux dans le secteur des télécommunications.

Les anciens monopoles semi-privatisés Deutsche Telekom et France Télécom conserveraient la propriété de leurs infrastructures, mais devraient créer un organe distinct de gestion de celle-ci, sous le contrôle de l'autorité de régulation nationale, comme cela existe au Royaume-Uni. Dans les marchés en pleine évolution, comme le haut-débit, cette réforme aurait le mérite, selon Mme Reding, de faciliter l'accès des nouveaux entrants aux réseaux aujourd'hui contrôlés par les opérateurs historiques dans la plupart des pays membres.

Elle pourrait faire l'objet d'une proposition législative en juillet dans le cadre de la refonte d'ici à 2010 du cadre réglementaire du secteur. "Je ne dis pas que c'est la panacée mais cela devrait être mis à la disposition des autorités nationales, sous surveillance de la Commission", a-t-elle précisé, en présentant mercredi son rapport annuel sur le secteur.
La commissaire cherche à insuffler davantage de concurrence dans un marché déjà dopé, selon elle, par la libéralisation engagée au début des années 1990. Ce processus "est une réussite de l'Union européenne, comme le montrent la tendance à la baisse des tarifs et l'amélioration des services", s'est réjoui Mme Reding, qui a par ailleurs martelé son intention de mettre en place un régulateur européen.
Comme pour justifier son initiative, la commissaire a de nouveau menacé de traîner l'Allemagne en justice à propos d'une récente législation qui permet à Deutsche Telekom d'exclure pendant quelques années ses concurrents du réseau en fibres optiques que le groupe construit dans cinquante grandes villes.
La commissaire s'est cependant félicitée des performances de l'Union dans le haut-débit : cette technologie a progressé de 39 % en 2006 pour concerner 73 millions de lignes. Pour Mme Reding, le marché français du haut-débit est "dynamique et concurrentiel", grâce à la vigilance de l'autorité de régulation, l'Arcep. Mais elle a toutefois critiqué le niveau élevé des prix de la téléphonie mobile en France.

MIT Tech Review : 10 Emerging Technologies 2007

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:52:24 +0100

As always, Technology Review's annual list of emerging technologies to watch comprises projects in a broad range of fields, including medicine, energy, and the Internet. Some, such as optical antennas and metamaterials, are fundamental technologies that promise to transform multiple areas, from computing to biology. Our reports on peer-to-peer video, personalized medical monitors, and compressive sensing reveal how well-designed algorithms could save the Internet, simplify and improve medical diagnoses, and revamp digital imaging systems in cameras and medical scanners. Nanohealing and quantum-dot solar power demonstrate the potential of nanotechnology to make a concrete difference in our daily lives by changing the way we treat injuries and helping solar energy deliver on its promises. Precise neuron control could help physicians fine-tune treatments for brain disorders such as depression and Parkinson's disease. And single-cell analysis could not only revolutionize our understanding of basic biological processes but lead directly to predictive tests that could help doctors treat cancers more effectively. Finally, by combining location sensors and advanced visual algorithms with cell phones, mobile augmented reality technology could make it easier to just figure out where we are.
View the 10 Emerging Technologies in a special

Google efface de sa mémoire neuf ans d'espionnage

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:58:25 +0100

VALÉRIE COLLET Publié le 15 mars 2007

Le moteur de recherche américain devance les demandes de respect de la vie privée.

SOUVENT accusé d'être le « Big Brother » des temps modernes, Google, le moteur de recherche le plus utilisé dans le monde, a annoncé hier qu'il allait effacer de sa mémoire des milliards de données sur ses utilisateurs. L'« opération » interviendra d'ici à la fin de l'année. Des dizaines d'ingénieurs basés aux États-Unis et en Suisse vont en effet rendre anonymes les informations stockées depuis 1996 sur les serveurs de Google dans le monde entier. « Nous changeons notre politique concernant les»logs de connexion*, ces informations collectées à chaque fois qu'un internaute effectue une recherche, explique Peter Fleischer, le responsable européen des questions de confidentialité. Dorénavant, nous conserverons les informations sur les utilisateurs pendant 18 à 24 mois, alors que jusque-là nous les conservions indéfiniment. »

En effet, à chaque recherche sur Google, mais aussi lors d'une connexion à Google Earth ou même à Google News, la firme américaine stocke l'adresse de l'ordinateur, la date et l'heure, le système d'exploitation et le mot clé utilisés. Par ailleurs, d'autres informations sur ses préférences sont recueillies par de petits logiciels espions, les « cookies ». Il s'agit là d'une masse d'informations commercialisée par Google auprès des annonceurs qui ont besoin de statistiques sur les mots clés les plus souvent sélectionnés, et ainsi cibler leurs campagnes de publicité en fonction de l'audience.

La Cnil est montée au créneau

L'entreprise de Montain View modifie sa stratégie de conservation des données sous la pression de plusieurs acteurs. D'une part, les associations de défense de la vie privée, qui réclament des réformes depuis des années. Les régulateurs du monde entier, comme la Cnil en France, sont aussi montés au créneau sur les questions de respect de la confidentialité des données. Le 15 mars 2006, une directive européenne a même été votée pour que les pays membres de l'Union se prononcent avant 2009 sur la durée de conservation des données électroniques. La directive leur propose une fourchette de 6 à 24 mois. Au-delà, il sera illégal de stocker toute information. « En attendant 2009, un certain flou entoure la législation, estime Peter Fleischer. Nous avons pensé que c'était le moment d'améliorer nos pratiques et de créer une certaine transparence à l'égard des utilisateurs. » Le responsable des questions de confidentialité souligne que le coût de ce travail d'effaçage est bien supérieur au gain que représente la place ainsi libérée sur les serveurs de Google. D'autant que le moteur de recherche ne supprime pas toutes ces informations. La firme se contente de les rendre « anonymes », et conserve les éléments qui nourrissent ses statistiques. Les utilisateurs qui souhaiteraient au contraire être scrutés au-delà de 24 mois pourront toutefois en faire la demande, assure Peter Fleischer.

L'entreprise caricaturée pour sa volonté d'« organiser » l'information a prouvé hier qu'elle faisait des progrès dans le domaine de la communication. Elle n'a pas attendu d'être mise au pied du mur pour respecter la législation

Are We Slowly Losing Control of the Internet?

Fri, 9 Mar 2007 12:39:44 +0100

Posted by Karl Auerbach on Mar 09, 2007

I have long been intrigued by the question of how do we turn the internet into a lifeline grade infrastructure. (See, for example my presentation From Barnstorming to Boeing - Transforming the Internet Into a Lifeline Utility [PowerPoint] with speakers notes [PDF].)
My hope that this will occur soon or even within decades is diminishing.
Most of us observe, almost daily, how even well established infrastructures tend to crumble when stressed, even slightly. For example, even something as small and foreseeable as a typo in someone’s name or SSN number during a medical visit can generate months of grief when dealing with insurance companies.
I was at the O’Reilly Etel conference last week. The content was impressive and the people there were frequently the primary actors in the creation and deployment of VOIP. However, not once during the three days did I hear a serious discussion by a speaker or in the hallways about how this evolving system would be managed, monitored, diagnosed, or repaired.
My mailbox is being filled with IETF announcements for the upcoming meeting in Prague. I see internet draft after internet draft making proposals that are going to cause implementation errors, security holes, and ultimately service outages.
Take for example the prime candidate protocol for VOIP - SIP.
I’ve spoken to many people who have implemented SIP components. There is a common theme - that SIP is far too complex. Even the basic encoding method is a mess - apparently the SIP working group could not agree among alternatives, so like most committees, they comprised by allowing all alternatives. The result is that the SIP implementer has to write code to handle many different representations of exactly the same information. That means that there will probably be code paths that are insufficiently, or never, tested. It also means that SIP systems will probably be susceptible to failure or misbehavior when introduced, perhaps years after initial instillation, to new SIP devices based on different SIP engines.
And to top that off, many of the new proposals for SIP use completely different encoding methods (the darling of the moment is XML) from the textual ASCII/UTF8 form used in the core parts of SIP. Implementers are going to go gray from the stress of trying to make this mish-mosh work. And people who have to maintain and troubleshoot VOIP will go bleary eyed and take hours longer to resolve outages than they would had there been a consistent and uniform design.
There is a lot of talk about the benefits of network effects, but few people talk about how those same network effects lock-in the work of the past and make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to evolve to new and improved mechanisms.
History often survives and reaches out through very long periods of time. It has been said that the size of modern day airplanes are derived from the width of the Roman horse: The width of the horse dictated the spacing of wheels on Roman carts. Those carts created standardized ruts that coerced other carts to conform through the ages. Early railroads, adopting carts, spaced the rails one-rut-pair width apart. That width dictated cargo load size. The need to carry those cargos has affected airplane design.
Consider how long it has taken to deploy IPv6 - a technology that celebrated its 10th anniversary a few years ago. And IPv6 has the luxury of being an alternative to IPv4 rather than a transparently compatible upgrade. Consider how much longer it will take to deploy VOIP protocol redesigns when the old protocol is embedded in telephones around the world?
We have to admire old Ma Bell for building a reliable and maintainable system. Yes, it took a 100 years of work - and modern telco phones, particularly on the local loop, use a lot of technology created in the late 1800’s.
You would have thought that in this internet age that we might have learned that clarity of internet protocol design is a great virtue and that management, diagnostics, and security are not afterthoughts but primary design goals.
There is a lot of noise out there about internet stability. And a lot of people and businesses are risking their actual and economic well being on the net, and the applications layered on it, really being stable and reliable.
But I have great concern that our approach to the internet resembles a high pillar of round stones piled on top of other round stones - we should not be surprised when it begins to wobble and then falls to the ground.
I am beginning to foresee a future internet in which people involved in management, troubleshooting, and repair are engaged in a Sisyphean effort to provide service in the face of increasingly non-unified design of internet protocols. And in that future, users will have to learn to expect outages and become accustomed to dealing with service provider customer service “associates” whose main job is to buy time to keep customers from rioting while the technical repair team tries to figure out what happened, where it happened, and what to do about it.

Comments
By The Famous Brett Watson | Mar 12, 2007, 12:06 am PDT
Karl, I’d like to separate your discussion into two distinct but related issues.
The bulk of your article talks about protocol design, albeit slightly obliquely. I will be the first to agree that the art of protocol design isn’t anywhere near the engineering discipline I’d like it to be. The IETF has BCPs on the administrative processes of the IETF, but the nearest they come to a BCP on the actual subject of protocol design is currently RFC 3205, “On the use of HTTP as a Substrate”. With all due respect to the work of the IETF, the title itself is a misnomer: it’s a guild of craftsmen, not engineers, because the field itself is more “craft” than “discipline”.
I don’t know how inflammatory active members of the various IETF groups will find that remark. It’s not intended to be inflammatory: some of the craftsmanship is high grade stuff in my opinion, but without a solid engineering discipline behind the process, an opinion like mine is just an aesthetic judgement. And, in broad terms, that’s the trouble with protocol design today: there’s too much “taste” and not enough cold, hard, quantifiable paradigm.
In fact, if your description of SIP is correct, aesthetic compromises (the inclusion of everyone’s favourite pet encoding) are undermining one of the few rough engineering maxims we have: specifically, “if there are several ways of doing the same thing, choose one.” [RFC 1958, 3.2] Engineering discipline demands that aesthetic preferences be subordinate to sound design, and we’re obviously not there yet. Of course, it doesn’t help that the design principles themselves read like a list of aesthetic judgements.
That brings me to my second issue: the question of turning the Internet into a lifeline grade infrastructure. You ask how it can be done, but I would first ask whether the project is a sensible goal at all from an engineering perspective. I grant you that a protocol like SIP suffers from poor engineering—or rather that it suffers from the lack of a surrounding engineering discipline, but even if it were as good as it could be, would it still be sensible to talk about making it “lifeline grade”?
It strikes me that there is a fundamental disconnect between a loose global collection of networks with a basic agreement to make a “best effort” at delivering individual packets and any kind of “lifeline grade” service. While it’s true that you can build a “reliable” service on top of an unreliable one, the classic example being TCP/IP, there are fundamental limits to that reliability. TCP presents a stream-oriented connection free (with high probability) of duplication and errors over an IP transport that promises far less, but that guarantee is reached by detecting errors and recovering from them, not by magically making the path between endpoints any better than it was. If it takes all day—or all week—to deliver one kilobyte of data reliably, TCP will do it. This is not a step towards “lifeline grade infrastructure”.
The beauty of the Internet is that it delivers the vast majority of packets placed on it to the desired destination at a cost approaching zero. It seems to me that this is fundamentally incompatible with any kind of “lifeline grade infrastructure” which must provide guarantee upon guarantee, each of which invariably increases the cost of delivery. It also seems to me that we are far better off with two or three “consumer grade” lifelines than a single “lifeline grade” one. The ideal emergency phone would communicate over the first available working medium of VOIP, POTS, and the emergency CB channel, rather than resting wholly on one super-reliable medium.
But that’s just my intuition on the matter. I don’t have an engineering paradigm in which I can demonstrate my assertions formally, particularly since I don’t have a formal model of a “lifeline” and other project goals.
By Karl Auerbach | Mar 12, 2007, 01:27 am PDT
Brett, I really appreciate how well you isolated the essential question whether we want the internet to be a lifeline grade utility.
And I do like your suggestion that lifeline grade *applications* ought to utilize multiple kinds of communications mechanisms to find one that works.
No matter what we say or think, people are beginning to treat the internet as something on which they feel safe building their businesses, even if they are not yet ready to entrust their personal safety. (But I have heard of people doing surgery via the net - I still shudder at the thought.)
So whether we think the net ought to be a lifeline grade utility, we could help avoid a lot of future unhappy users if we tried to at least narrow the gap between the net and a true lifeline utility.
The approach I suggested in the paper I referenced contained severl suggestions. One was was legal liability for flaws, using some sort of negligance standard (not strict liability.) I know that people do not like this, but I feel that some sort of compulsion is needed to incite people to move to the more boring, slower, and less fun approaches that the elder engineering disciplines use; techniques such as design rules and testing from the get-go.
I picked on SIP because it is such an easy target. On the other hand, clearly there are engineering wonders accomplished on the net - the network time protocol being one that I consider akin to magic.
Much of my perspective is colored from my family experience - my grandfather repaired radios, my father repaired TVs, and I have spent far to many 3am’s laying on a concrete floor in a wireing closet trying to figure out why a network is malfunctioning. I tried, and suceeded, in the early 1990’s to construct an internet “butt set" that, useful as it was (and still is) on its own, it was meant to be part of a more elaborate system to help monitor and diagnose the net.
From that perspective I am perhaps more sensitive than most to the need to engineer the net so that it can be maintained, diagnosed, and repaired.
There has been a lot of resistance to incorporating mechanisms to monitor, diagnose, and troubleshoot the net except on a piecemeal basis.
We need to stop thinking of the net as a collection of individual machines but, rather, as a great distributed process. (I was part of a DARPA project to work on this except that it, unfortunately, my time was devoured by my position on the ICANN board.)
Ultimately I believe that much of the net needs to become homeostatic - self healing (it already is in many regards, such as routing and soft tables such as ARP caches) - even if the control loops will for the foreseeable future, require the permission of people.
Unfortunately I see the design to be moving, and ossifying, in ways that make control, and time-to-recover, more difficult rather than less difficult. And many implementations are weak and waiting to be pushed into failure by the arrival of a new peer implementation that does the protocol in a slightly, but still legitimate way.

Social Networking and Web 2.0 Creating DNS Performance Issues for Carriers

Tue, 6 Mar 2007 20:08:34 +0100

Posted by Tom Tovar on Mar 06, 2007

A revolution is taking place on the Internet, with new sites redefining how we interact online. The next-generation Internet is emerging in collaborative and interactive applications and sites with rich, varied media (images, video, music). As with many revolutions, this one is driven by the younger generation, which is adopting social networking sites like MySpace and video sharing sites like Google’s YouTube. But the general shift is not restricted to the young, as more mature consumers and businesses alike are exploring the possibilities of collaborative, media-rich applications.
This major shift in Internet applications has its unintended victims. One of them turns out to be the Domain Name System (DNS). This service is part of nearly every Internet interaction, and operators of major IP networks know that DNS is essential to service performance and availability.
The Internet is poised for its next major burst of growth and usage as billions of telephones, fax machines and PDAs join the desktops, laptops and servers already communicating on the Internet. This is a critical moment for traditional telephone carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) developing next-generation voice, data and multimedia services; missteps or slowdowns can be enormously costly in the race for market and mindshare.
The next-generation Internet applications, as represented by today’s MySpace and YouTube, substantially increase the DNS query load for carriers. As is explained below, each page visit to one of these sites may require ten times more DNS queries than for traditional websites. As subscribers and traffic continue to grow to these sites, the underlying DNS traffic grows at a much more rapid rate. And as DNS traffic reaches capacity, the network slows down for all applications and becomes vulnerable to attacks and malicious traffic.
This issue affects all broadband providers, including DSL providers, cable operators, and wireless/cellular carriers offering IP services. Maintaining service performance and availability in this rapidly-changing world will require re-architecting the DNS infrastructure with much more capacity to sustain the new generation of Internet users and uses.
The Social Bottleneck
There are many traditional reasons why broadband carriers are seeing sustained growth in DNS traffic, including increases in broadband subscribers and increased usage per subscriber. This kind of ‘organic’ growth is to be expected, and is part of any carrier’s capacity planning. But broadband operators worldwide are experiencing a rapid growth in DNS traffic that cannot be attributed to subscriber growth. While viruses, worms or attacks cause temporary spikes in DNS traffic, these changes are significant and enduring. For example:
• A North American provider measured DNS traffic growing 8% per month.
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• A large European provider found that in the past year their DNS traffic grew 92% while their subscriber base grew 15%.
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• Another large Europe provider reported that their DNS traffic doubled in the last six months. Previously, it doubled every year.
Something else is going on in addition to increases in subscribers and growth in online usage. The next-generation of web applications is one of the key factors, and the story of MySpace is a good example.
The Social Slowdown
MySpace is an extremely popular social networking site. MySpace users post profiles of themselves, to which their friends add in a continuous blog. Its collaborative nature is representative of the Web 2.0 movement.
A typical MySpace profile page is a rich assortment of images and blogs posted from friends. Users can post videos and flash-based content, as well as links to favorite songs in MP3 files. In most cases, each of these content pieces is stored in a separate DNS domain. For example, each image belonging to a friend is retrieved from a distinct URI. This means that retrieving and displaying a profile page may require hundreds of DNS lookups in the background—compared to ten or so lookups for a ‘standard’ B-to-C web page.
MySpace is one of the most visited sites on the Internet. Each of those page downloads may account for ten times or more the amount of DNS traffic of a typical web page visit. Here is an important clue to the recent, unusually high increase in DNS traffic. And, alas, there is more to the story than meets the eye.
The Content Distribution Conundrum
The use of content delivery networks (CDN) puts further strain on the DNS for rich media and social networking site queries.
Increasing numbers of websites use content delivery (or content caching) networks to distribute content on the Internet. Content delivery companies use globally distributed servers to deliver rich content and interactive applications most effectively to users around the globe. They do so by caching content locally, and then using the DNS to direct users to the best source for content, based on current performance, load, proximity and availability information. This capability has been critical to helping popular websites deliver a good experience to users across the world.
Content delivery companies want to maintain control over how traffic is directed across their global platform and dynamically redirect traffic to the most appropriate servers in real or near real-time. This is accomplished by setting short Time to Live (TTL) values on the DNS data they deliver for low-level links in pages. This means that caching name servers cannot maintain the data in the cache for long to answer subsequent queries for the same pages, which puts further strain on the DNS system.
Back to our example of the MySpace page, assume that twenty kids from a high school all want to check out the latest MySpace posting from their favorite musician, and all use the same Internet provider. Not only does each page download generate hundreds of lookups, but in many cases the caching name server cannot use cached data and must return to the global Internet to get the right DNS data. Not only does the site increase the DNS traffic, it reduces the effectiveness of the DNS server’s cache and increases the time the server spends waiting for responses from “upstream” authoritative DNS servers.
The improvements that content distribution networks provide to the Internet at large are well worth the trade-off of increased DNS traffic, which is very small in volume in comparison to image and video content. By distributing data around the Internet in the most efficient manner (and caching frequently-accessed data closer to the user/s), content delivery networks both improve response times for users and reduce the amount of data traveling through core IP networks.
However, this is small comfort to the DNS administrator struggling to handle DNS traffic doubling every year with increasing query latency.
A sign of things to come: the Web 2.0 bottleneck?
The MySpace example above is not an isolated problem—it is the harbinger of things to come as new uses of the Internet take hold.
The term Web 2.0 refers to this next-generation of more collaborative websites rich in media: podcasts, social networking sites, web applications and wikis among them. YouTube, the popular video sharing site acquired by Google in late 2006, is another example of collaborative, media-rich Internet usage that is wildly popular, relying on content delivery networks and increasing the load on the DNS.
If the DNS impact of social networking and Web 2.0 sites only affected users of those sites, the problem would be still be serious. Wireless carriers, for example, want to gain subscribers from the demographic that uses MySpace and FaceBook. As wireless connectivity increases, wireless users will take advantage of their ‘instant connectivity’ to use location-based social networks. Slow page downloads will reduce the value of the service.
But the ramifications go well beyond the social networking users.
An overloaded DNS server eventually slows down query responses to all queries—affecting all other services and users. Carriers have to continuously build out DNS capacity to provide adequate response times. And, as systems run closer to capacity, the network is more vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks or to DNS overloads due to traffic generated by viruses and worms.
For carriers that still rely on general-purpose Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) software for DNS, the growth of DNS load puts them in an impossible situation. A BIND server can only handle so much DNS traffic before it starts behaving erratically, dropping packets, requiring frequent restarts as well as more hardware. And the more servers you add, the greater your ongoing cost of operation. Both CAPEX and OPEX increase—eroding the cost benefits of using open source software.
To make it more complex, none of this is happening in isolation. This server proliferation takes place while carriers are trying to streamline and optimize the IP infrastructure to support network convergence. Triple- and quadruple-play services are adding voice, video and mobility to the IP infrastructure, increasing service level expectations and traffic. And emerging standards like DNSSEC will put further load on the DNS.
A DNS Infrastructure for Web 2.0
Carriers need to shift how they think about the IP naming/addressing infrastructure of their networks, and DNS in particular. DNS has long been an ‘invisible’ service that performs in the background. Many carriers have relied for many years on BIND software, which was designed as a general-purpose DNS server (both authoritative and caching) for enterprises and small-range carriers. However, in a Web 2.0-enabled world, carriers trying to protect the customer experience cannot neglect the DNS.
Instead, they need to make a commitment to building a carrier-grade DNS infrastructure that can handle the rapid growth in traffic without sacrificing performance and resiliency. To do so, they will need to use the most efficient DNS solution possible that maximizes load capacity while minimizing server resources.
A good guideline is to provide enough DNS capacity to handle up to three times current peak load.
In addition, the DNS infrastructure must be tightly integrated in the entire network management scheme for optimal availability and reduced operating costs. It needs carrier-grade monitoring and alerting, and robust online configuration and remote management capabilities.
Carriers are not alone in this DNS investment. VeriSign, which operates two of the Internet’s root servers, has recently announced a massive investment in its DNS infrastructure, and is in the midst of increasing capacity 10,000-fold by year 2010. The Domain Name System as a whole has proven itself tremendously scalable over the past two decades, during a period of enormous change in IP networks. It will continue to scale and grow to handle the next-generation of Internet and converging IP networks, as long as we give it the attention and care it deserves.

Second Life's In-World Terrorism and The Struggle for Digital Rights

Fri, 2 Mar 2007 00:43:46 +0100

Written by George Dvorsky
Published March 02, 2007

Second Life, the immensely popular three-dimensional virtual world, is really starting to take on a life of its own. There are things going on in there that have undoubtedly gone beyond the wildest expectations of its developers.  The latest issue to grab my attention is the phenomenon of in-world terrorism and the rise of self-professed freedom fighters. These folks aren't your run-of-the-mill hackers or griefers looking to cause mischief. Rather, these are 'activists' who are working subversively within Second Life (SL) to achieve political ends. Their goal is to extend digital rights for SL users beyond the standard customer-company relationship. Subsequently, by dealing with current in-world problems they are, perhaps unintentionally, looking ahead to the day when Second Life and other virtual worlds play a much more meaningful role in our lives.  Avatars of Second Life, unite!   Specifically, I am referring to the Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA). Their intention is to liberate SL users from the perceived tyranny of Linden Labs, the developer of SL. The group was formed as the in-world paramilitary wing of a national liberation movement. They argue that universal suffrage is a right that should be established within SL immediately. The SLLA, who is led by 'political officer' Marshal Cahill, contends that Linden Labs has gone beyond its mandate and is now functioning as a de facto authoritarian government. Consequently, they see in-world fighting as the "only appropriate response."  Annoyed by the steady encroachment of corporations like Reebok and IBM, the SLLA works to undermine their virtual presence through disruption — what has been dubbed in-world terrorism. They set off "atomic bombs" and fire guns at other users. Their shenanigans are often posted on YouTube.  Obviously no one really gets hurt, but the intention is to create annoyances that will make the gaming experience uncomfortable and bring attention to their struggle. They say they will not seek to harm the normal operation of the world and will only attack "agents of the state" and other strategically important sites within SL.  The SLLA demands are,
The establishment of basic 'rights' for Second Life Players. Having consulted widely we now believe the best vehicle for this is for Linden Labs to offer public shares in the company. We propose that each player is able to buy one share for a set-price. This would serve both the development of the world and provide the beginnings of representation for avatars in Second Life.
A growing concern among users is land scarcity. Second Life has experienced such rapid growth that Linden Labs has been unable to keep up with the demand, which has in turn created land scarcity. Corporations, say the SLLA, are scooping up land and putting up eye sores.

A new world order?

Cahill describes himself as a kind of John Adams — a revolutionary who is just trying to make the world a better place. The analogy is certainly interesting. Many New World settlers who emigrated from Europe were certain that they could establish radically new social orders in the Americas. Early settler John Winthrop was famous for saying "we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." The goal was to create a new Zion free from European conventions and political baggage.

Today, Second Life and other virtual reality environments reveal the very real possibility that virtual space is livable space. Like the New World, it is virgin territory, unspoiled and open-ended (with all due respect to native Americans). The prospect for social renewal has some political ideologues (including some transhumanists) frothing at the mouth in consideration of the possibilities. In their mind utopia is only a few mouse clicks away.

At least until the big nasty corporations come in and rain on the parade. And that is precisely why the SLLA has taken it upon themselves to uproot what they perceive to be a very serious problem.

Personal livelihood and distributed personhood

Linden Labs claims that by allowing corporations to operate in Second Life they have opened a legitimate revenue stream. It's only recently, they say, that they have become a profitable company.

Which brings up an important question: is Linden Labs accountable in the way the SLLA claims they should be? There are a number of factors to consider.

First, Linden Labs is a company, not a government. Users are paying customers who voluntarily enter SL for entertainment purposes. Some even make a couple of bucks on the side. At the same time, however, users are the cogs that run the machine. In this sense they are like collaborators or workers who keep the environment running. The line distinguishing customer and collaborator is becoming hazy.

That said, there are two critical aspects to consider as virtual worlds mature: personal livelihood and distributed personhood.

Linden Labs opened a huge can of worms by allowing an internal economy to exist in-world. Savvy users are finding ways to make a living by exploiting scarcity in SL. Consequently, more and more people are becoming dependent on SL for their income. Moreover, it's not unreasonable to suggest that many future business models will come depend on virtual environments of this sort. They will be places to conduct business.

Second, due to rich and realistic in-world experiences, a significant degree of personhood is transmitted into cyberspace. Users tend to become attached to their SL personas; their avatars are their extended self.

Looking ahead to regulation

These considerations suggest that tangible harm and injustice can be done to an individual in the virtual world. The line separating the real from the synthetic is blurring, which necessarily means that civil laws will at some point have to extend into cyberspace. If it can be determined that customers are being harmed by the company running the virtual environment, and that the activities and ventures within the world transcend the company-customer relationship, then regulation and policing will have to be considered.

I completely anticipate the day when virtual worlds become regulated. How this will be accomplished, however, is a mystery to me — particularly considering the fact that a nearly unlimited number of virtual worlds can run independent of one another, each with their own rules and agendas. There will be as many worlds as there are ideas, including anarchist states, communist utopias, religious havens, hedonistic wonderlands and surreal environments.

My initial suspicion is that sanctioned and unsanctioned virtual environments will arise. Sanctioned worlds will be regulated and relatively safe, while users will take their lives and livelihoods into their own hands by venturing into unsanctioned areas.

On a related note, a time will come when people start to demand ubiquitous access to the Internet and the right to enter and operate within specific virtual worlds. People will start to insist on safe and fair environments in which they can work and play. Further, they will insist on citizenship rights for integral virtual worlds.

In the meantime groups like the SLLA will, perhaps naively, continue to agitate and fight for increased political rights and economic privileges in cyberspace. They will undoubtedly fail in their attempt to alter Linden Labs' business model, but it's the precedent of their work that's important. Human activity is very quickly migrating into cyberspace and it appears that humanity is taking their baggage with them.

Hitachi shows off powder-sized smart tag

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:18:45 +0100

Hitachi shows off powder-sized smart tag
Posted 2/23/2007 8:12 AM ET
By Yuri Kageyama, The Associated Press
TOKYO

Tiny computer chips used for tracking food, tickets and other items are getting even smaller. Hitachi, a Japanese electronics maker, recently showed off radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips that are just 0.002 inches by 0.002 inches and look like bits of powder. They're thin enough to be embedded in a piece of paper, company spokesman Masayuki Takeuchi said Thursday.
RFID tags store data, but they need to be brought near special reading devices that beam energy to the chips, which then send information back to the readers.
The technology is already widely used to track and identify items, such as monitoring the distribution of food products or guarding against forgery of concert tickets.
Shown to the public for the first time earlier this month, the new chip is an improvement on its predecessor from Hitachi — the Mu-chip, which at 0.4 millimeters by 0.4 millimeters, looks about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The latest chip, which still has no name, is 60 times smaller than the Mu-chip but can handle the same amount of information, which gets stored as a 38-digit number, according to Hitachi. One catch is that the new chip needs an external antenna, unlike the Mu-chip. The smallest antennas are about 0.16 inches — giants next to the powder-size chip. There are no plans yet to start commercial production of the new chip, Takeuchi said.
Invisible tracking brings to mind science-fiction-inspired uses, or even abuses, such as unknowingly getting sprinkled with smart-tag powder for Big Brother-like monitoring."We are not imagining such uses," Takeuchi said, adding that the latest chip is so new — and so miniature — Hitachi is still studying its possible uses.

Neutrality On the Net Gets High '08 Profile

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:43:08 +0100

Tech Issue Gains Traction in Election
By Charles Babington Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, February 20, 2007; D01

Bloggers and other Internet activists made their marks in the past two presidential elections chiefly by building networks of political enthusiasts and raising money for candidates. Now, they are pushing aggressively into policymaking -- and not just over high-profile issues such as Iraq.
They are pressing candidates to back a handful of issues that are obscure to many Americans but vital to those who base their livelihoods on the Internet and track its development.
Armed with massive e-mail lists and high-speed networks, these activists are bypassing the familiar campaign tactics of door-knocking and phone-banking. They are also using their new-age technologies for an old-fashioned purpose: making politicians take note of their legislative priorities.
One of those is "net neutrality." Hardly a household term, it has no overtly partisan or ideological dimensions. Yet it is shaping up as a Democratic issue this year, largely because its most fervid advocates are liberal bloggers and other Internet activists who play a big role in the early stages of choosing a Democratic presidential nominee.
Unlike their Republican counterparts, every major Democratic presidential candidate has endorsed net neutrality. The move keeps them in good standing with powerful grass-roots groups, such as MoveOn.org, and costs them little in return -- perhaps a bit of space on campaign Web sites to promote a matter that comparatively few voters might explore.
Net neutrality is a principle that bars Internet providers, primarily phone and cable companies, from charging higher rates to Web-based firms in return for giving their content priority treatment on the pathways to consumers. Without such restrictions, proponents say, a user might find it time-consuming, or even impossible, to call up a favorite site that carriers have relegated to slower lanes for economic or even philosophical reasons.
"It's an issue that really captures the attention of one of their core constituencies, especially the bloggers and 'netroots,' " said Craig Aaron of Free Press, a group that champions net neutrality. "For candidates looking to appeal to those folks, it was important to take a stand," he said, even though "nobody was talking about it a year ago."
A veteran Democratic consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity was more blunt. Among Democratic candidates, she said, "if you're not for net neutrality, then the blogs will kick your" rear. The grass-roots groups that strongly favor it are relatively small but very noisy, she said, "and you just don't want to have to deal with that."
Opposing net neutrality are the telephone and cable companies that control the "pipes" that transport Internet content from producers to users. The companies say they need flexibility to manage Internet traffic, even if it eventually means charging higher rates for priority service.
For several years, the issue has been debated mainly in legal and telecom circles. Recent telecom mergers have raised its profile, however, as regulators considered the possible ramifications of consolidating control over the Internet's major pathways.
Net neutrality restrictions "could prevent broadband providers from offering enhanced levels of service for specialized applications such a telemedicine, or to offer their own branded or co-branded products or services," said Christopher Wolf, co-chairman of Hands Off the Internet, a group sponsored by phone and cable companies . Such arrangements, he said at a recent Federal Trade Commission workshop, "will help pay for the build-out of the next generation of Internet pipes."
Moreover, Wolf said, his industry's critics cannot cite an example in which any U.S. user has been blocked.
But some groups that rely heavily on their Web sites to share information, raise money or promote causes say they fear it's only a matter of time. They cite, for example, a 2005 comment by William L. Smith, then chief technology officer for BellSouth, which has merged with AT&T, that Internet service providers should be able to charge a firm such as Yahoo for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than Google's site.
Last spring, the debate over net neutrality barely scratched the consciousness of Congress, let alone the general public, after a House subcommittee defeated an effort to add net-neutrality restrictions to a multi-faceted telecommunications bill. The 23 to 8 vote goaded more than 850 interest groups, many, but not all, politically left of center, to form a coalition called SavetheInternet.com.
Members included organizations such as Common Cause and the American Civil Liberties Union, but the name that really grabbed the attention of Democratic officials was MoveOn.org. The group, founded in 1998 to oppose the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, rocked the political establishment in 2003 and 2004 with its ability to rally supporters and raise money for causes such as opposing the Iraq war.
With MoveOn.org urging its 3 million members to sign and deliver pro-net-neutrality petitions to senators last spring, congressional support began to grow. The net-neutrality language died in an 11 to 11 Senate committee vote, but its backers claimed a moral victory after a wide-ranging telecom bill, which lacked their amendment, eventually collapsed.
The debate's partisan nature has surprised and disappointed some advocates, who note that conservative groups such as the Christian Coalition of America and the Gun Owners of America are part of the SavetheInternet coalition. The Christian Coalition of America, in its policy statement, said net neutrality is "extremely important to America's grassroots organizations and those Americans who want to ensure the cable and phone companies controlling access to the Internet will not discriminate against groups like Christian Coalition of America." Michele Combs, a spokeswoman for the Christian Coalition of America, said that net neutrality is a nonpartisan matter and that "the conservative side has not been educated on the issue."
MoveOn.org officials agree that net neutrality should transcend political lines. "There's a growing online people-powered movement that has increasing relevance in our politics," said Adam Green, a spokesman for MoveOn.org. "An issue like net neutrality, which directly taps into Internet issues, . . . could have a special energy in the political season," he said. "Every Republican and Democrat who uses the Internet is threatened by corporations that want to control which Web sites people can access."

BBC : The mash-up future of the web

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:04:28 +0100

The way we use the web is changing and the future lies in mixing, mash-ups and pipes, says columnist Bill Thompson.
When the web was young we were happy just to see words and pictures on the screen in front of us.
All backgrounds were grey, all fonts were Times and anything other than a static image required a "helper application" to be loaded and run, so that video clips and sounds played in separate windows on screen.
Compared to the text-based internet of the 1980's it was heaven, but it was only the beginning.
Since 1994 we have seen the web turn into an all-singing, all-dancing multimedia experience, with the simple page layouts we once delighted in replaced by interactive services and web-based tools, while embedded video is everywhere.
Anyone with an internet connection can have their own web site, whether a blog or a profile on MySpace, and photo and video sharing is becoming the standard way to share holiday snaps or family events.
And the quality of the experience has been enhanced by the move from a page-oriented model, where each site is collection of separate pages, to the services approach that underpins web 2.0.
Sites like Flickr and Google Maps don't load or reload pages, they use the browser to provide interaction with online data sources.
Move from static
This is sometimes described as a move from the static, read-only web to a "read-write" model, but this doesn't quite capture what is going on.

Yahoo! has given us a glimpse of the networked future,
Editable pages like wikis certainly work, but they are not the real breakthrough in how we are using the net, and while Wikipedia and other collaborative tools have a place, they are not the transformational technology that will drive the next generation of start-ups or challenge the dominance of the big players.
The real transformation comes from having the ability to take other people's content and then filter, refine, recombine and reuse it in interesting and innovative ways.
This remix model brings us closer to the original vision of a hypertext, put forward by Vannevar Bush in the 1940s and realised by Tim Berners-Lee at Cern in the 1980's.
Bush's "Memex", an electro-mechanical system for providing easy access to information stored on microfilm, relied on cross-references and user annotation, allowing people to add new documents but not directly to edit those they have.
Now Yahoo! has launched a new service that could have a massive impact on the way we think about our online activity.
While Google concentrates on challenging Microsoft Office with its online word processors and spreadsheets, Yahoo! has looked much more deeply into the way the net works and given us the building blocks for a brand new way of dealing with online content.
Data feed
Their new offering, Pipes, lets you take a data feed such as the result of a web search, or an RSS feed from a blog or news site, or a set of tagged photos on Flickr, and transform it to produce the outcome you want. You can then make it available for other people to see.
It's web-based, no more complicated than creating programs for Lego MindStorms, and already stirring up a lot of interest.
Publisher Tim O'Reilly, a web zealot not noted for his reticence, calls it "a milestone in the history of the internet" and while he may be slightly over the top he is certainly right to draw attention to it as a major innovation.
Naming it Pipes is a very shrewd move, because it brings to mind the simple tools-based philosophy that underpins the Unix operating system on which Linux is based.
You can use the Unix shell to take the output of any command, like a list of files in a directory, and send - or "pipe" it directly into another command, allowing you to build complex operations from simple parts.
Yahoo!'s Pipes do the same with a simple graphical tool that lets you define and connect data feeds, filters and user prompts, so that you can quickly build the service you want. You still need some technical ability, but you don't need to be a programmer.
Two sources
We have had mashups for a while now, like the projects coming out of the BBC's own Backstage project, but they generally require some programming ability and usually combine two sources at a time, like the BBC News and Google Maps mashup in Ben O'Neill's excellent news map.
Pipes take things much further.
This isn't user-generated content, it's user-controlled content. And unlike personalised pages or simple feed subscriptions it really does put control into the hands of the user.
Pipes mark the point at which remixing online content and creating mashups becomes something that anyone can do. If you can describe what you want then you can build it.
It is also, of course, a collaborative environment, at least for now. You can take someone else's pipe and "clone" it to make your own, with no hint that there could be copyright or intellectual property issues here.
That may change, as it so often does, and at the moment the Yahoo! site says nothing specific about Pipes in its terms and conditions so we can't be sure how it will evolve.
But Yahoo! has given us a glimpse of the networked future, where the world's information is not only at our fingertips, but available to be mixed, mashed and filtered on demand, giving us what we want, when we want it - and from wherever we can get it. There will be no going back.  Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

Mobile giants plot secret rival to Google

Tue, 6 Feb 2007 05:37:35 +0100

By Juliette Garside, Sunday Telegraph

Europe's biggest telecoms groups are aiming to create a mobile phone search engine that could challenge Yahoo! and Google, the US giants.
Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and one American network, Cingular, are among the companies that will come together for secret, high-level talks at the mobile industry's biggest annual trade show in Barcelona next week.

Declining call revenues are driving network operators together to compete against Google and Yahoo! search engines
Faced with declining revenues as calls become cheaper, network operators are determined to secure a large slice of the lucrative search advertising market.
In the UK alone, more than 20 per cent of subscribers are expected to have access to mobile internet at broadband speeds by the end of 2007, which should prompt a dramatic increase in the use of search engines via mobile phones.
The initiative will come as a surprise to Google and Yahoo!, which have lost no time in striking deals with mobile operators and handset makers. But the mobile industry believes it can retain a greater share of advertising revenues by developing its own service.
A joint approach is essential, because mobile networks will need to offer advertisers a large audience if they are to challenge the US search giants. The four big operators in Britain - Orange, owned by France Telecom, O2, part of Spain's Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile and Vodafone - will all be represented at the meeting next week. The groups involved have a combined customer base of 600m mobile phone users worldwide.
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The networks may decide to go with an existing search engine and use their combined might to secure a majority slice of the income. Another idea up for discussion is the creation of a white label service, with a single advertising sales house and technical team, to which mobile networks could then apply their own brand.
A UK executive at one of the companies involved said: "There is a big play in mobile search that we need to be part of, and we are exploring those options at a very high level."
It is not clear what the implications are for existing deals between networks and the big US search companies. Google has already signed up Vodafone and T-Mobile, as well as Hutchison's 3 and China Mobile. Its service also comes pre-loaded on handsets made by companies including Samsung. The Google mobile search engine does not make money because it hasn't started selling sponsored links to advertisers. However, trials are underway and the service should become fully commercial this year.
Yahoo! has so far signed up Vodafone and 3, and is already featuring sponsored links. Mobile search is seen as potentially more valuable to users and advertisers than the service currently provided to desktop computers because results can be made geographically relevant.
On Yahoo!'s service, for example, users can type in their location and receive local information on weather, travel or entertainment.
Mobile internet will be given a further boost at Barcelona when Far Eastern manufacturer LG Electronics is announced as the winner of a competition to produce an affordable, mass-market handset capable of accessing the web.
Twelve of the leading mobile operators spanning six continents and more than 620m subscribers have agreed to sell the 3G (third generation) phone to their customers. This will allow economies of scale sufficient to bring its price in well below existing 3G handsets.
The deal will also be a massive boost for LG, allowing it to challenge the dominance of the four largest handset makers: Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Siemens and Motorola.

Le Monde : Achetez, vous êtes surveillé...

Sat, 3 Feb 2007 05:53:25 +0100

Imaginez. Vous êtes dans la cabine d'essayage de votre magasin favori. Alors que vous regardez dans le miroir l'effet produit par votre nouveau pantalon, une vidéo en surimpression vous suggère le chemisier ou le pull qui pourrait aller avec. Finalement, vous optez pour le pull. En saisissant le vêtement dans le rayon, un nouvel écran s'active : il vous indique prix, tailles disponibles et conseils d'entretien. Mais vous les regardez d'un œil distrait. Vous savez que le pull est muni d'une puce qui sera automatiquement lue par votre machine à laver. Celle-ci programmera sans votre aide la température et l'essorage adapté.

Cette scène futuriste n'aura pas lieu avant une bonne dizaine d'années. Mais d'ores et déjà, la marque de luxe Prada a testé à New York un miroir intelligent dans une cabine d'essayage. Le fabricant italien d'électroménager Merloni a, lui, dans ses cartons un prototype de lave-linge interactif. Car ce qui peut aujourd'hui passer pour de la science-fiction est à portée de main sur un plan technologique grâce à l'identification par radiofréquence (RFID). Alors que le commerce n'a pas connu d'évolution majeure depuis l'apparition de l'hypermarché dans les années 1960, cette technologie va profondément bouleverser la distribution des vingt prochaines années.
Il s'agit de coller ou d'incorporer dans le packaging des produits une puce électronique dotée d'une antenne. Cette "radio étiquette" permet de stocker des données à distance. Non seulement, le produit devient "intelligent", mais également unique, la puce RFID étant une sorte d'ADN électronique. Les distributeurs utilisent déjà largement ce petit objet électronique pour mieux gérer les rayons, suivre les commandes... Mais l'étape la plus spectaculaire pour le client va consister à faire entrer cette technologie dans le magasin. Aux Etats-Unis, deux chaînes s'apprêtent à tester un chariot intelligent qui oriente le consommateur dans des rayons truffés de balises RFID. Le client n'aura qu'à saisir à l'écran les produits désirés. Le groupe allemand Metro joue déjà les précurseurs dans son hypermarché de Rheinsberg, une petite cité rhénane de 30 000 habitants.
Depuis 2003, une cinquantaine d'innovations sont testées grandeur nature. Grâce aux puces RFID apposées sur chaque article, les salariés du magasin sont instantanément alertés par un détecteur lorsqu'un objet est mal rangé ou qu'un rayon se vide. Les ingénieurs planchent déjà pour qu'à l'avenir ces étagères intelligentes soient reliées à de petits écrans publicitaires qui s'animent, face au consommateur, dès que celui-ci retire un produit du rayon.
Dans l'espace fruits et légumes, une balance intelligente est capable d'identifier instantanément le légume choisi. Après quelques secondes, l'image du produit apparaît sur un écran qu'il faut juste toucher pour obtenir l'étiquette autocollante. Un assistant personnel de shopping (PSA), mini-ordinateur que l'on accroche à son chariot dès l'entrée du magasin, scanne automatiquement les produits et évalue le prix des courses. En fin de parcours, la liste des achats peut être transférée électroniquement à la caisse et le client paye sans ressortir les marchandises du chariot. Plus étonnant encore : le Display Everywhere. Le consommateur qui veut trouver un produit dans un rayon se rend à une borne et entre le nom de l'article désiré. Un projecteur éclaire alors le rayon où il peut le trouver.
Le supermarché teste également des caisses automatiques sans caissière : le client passe lui-même ses produits devant un scanner et règle ses achats. D'ici cinq à dix ans, avec la généralisation des puces, cette manipulation ne sera même plus nécessaire. Le contenu du chariot sera scanné automatiquement en un clin d'oeil. "Actuellement, certains liquides ou matériaux comme le métal ne permettent pas l'utilisation de la RFID en toutes circonstances, mais on peut s'attendre ces prochaines années à de fortes évolutions du packaging des produits", prévoit Guillaume Rio de l'Echangeur, un centre spécialisé dans les pratiques innovantes en matière de distribution. Au Danemark, vient d'être réalisée pendant deux mois une expérience futuriste. Des "consommateurs cobayes" ont accueilli chez eux, dans leur frigo, des aliments tagués de puces RFID. En faisant leurs courses, ils pouvaient "demander", par "SMS" à leur "réfrigérateur ordinateur", l'état des stocks d'un produit, sa date de péremption...
Une autre innovation risque de changer le commerce de demain : le développement des logiciels de reconnaissance. A l'aide de caméras elles-mêmes placées à des endroits stratégiques (vitrine, allées du magasin), ces programmes informatiques permettent de détecter, par exemple, combien de femmes de 25 à 35 ans passent à tel endroit et combien de temps elles y restent. Des informations précieuses pour les commerçants qui adapteront leurs offres, leurs promotions en fonction des flux de clientèle. Plus futuriste, mais encore plus intrusif, ces systèmes qui traquent le regard et permettent de décrypter la façon dont le client scrute tel rayon afin d'adapter en conséquence l'agencement des magasins ou le packaging.
Ces innovations sont vues par les grands magasins comme des outils pour être plus réactifs face à l'inéluctable essor du commerce en ligne. "Internet habitue le consommateur à ne plus attendre, à disposer d'un choix immédiat et d'informations exhaustives, insiste Philippe Lemoine, PDG de Laser, filiale des Galeries Lafayette. S'il ne retrouve pas ces fonctionnalités dans un magasin, cela va devenir vite insupportable. Les nouvelles technologies poussent les lieux de vente physiques à se redéfinir."
Pour autant, cette révolution technologique pose la question du respect de la vie privée. Les fabricants de logiciels promettent la main sur le coeur que, par exemple, les bandes vidéo servant au décryptage du comportement du consommateur seront détruites sur-le-champ. Les puces RFID permettent, elles, de stocker un grand nombre d'informations et peuvent, par définition, être lues à distance. Pour M. Lemoine, "cette puce ne sera acceptée que si le client en retire une utilisation positive. Il faut trouver le bon équilibre entre la volonté des entreprises de connaître leurs clients et le besoin d'anonymat des personnes."
En voulant aller trop vite en besogne, Metro a provoqué une levée de boucliers de la part des associations de consommateurs qui s'inquiétaient de l'utilisation que le distributeur pourrait faire des informations contenues dans les puces. Le groupe allemand a dû s'engager à les désactiver une fois la caisse passée, mais le mal est fait : désormais la RFID est autant vécue comme une menace que comme une opportunité.

Cécile Calla et Stéphane Lauer

U.S.: No Net governance changes expected

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 03:46:11 +0100

By Anne Broache
http://news.com.com/U.S.+No+Net+governance+changes+expected/2100-1028_3-6150613.html

WASHINGTON--Are tensions related to the United States' historic influence over key Internet management functions a thing of the past?
Two senior Bush administration officials involved in setting Net policy say that's the case.
At a meeting here organized by the Federal Communications Bar Association, U.S. Ambassador David Gross and Assistant Secretary of Commerce John Kneuer said they view the question as settled: no United Nations body will be exercising additional control over tasks like handing out numeric Internet addresses or operating the root servers that power the Internet anytime soon.
They said they were encouraged that the new leadership of the International Telecommunications Union, a U.N. agency, claims to be more interested in focusing on promoting cybersecurity and bridging the so-called digital divide than on setting up a new management structure for the Net, as some have called for in the past.
"That's very much in harmony with our views," said Gross, whose chief responsibility is coordinating international communications and information policy.
In a familiar refrain, the ambassador said the United States doesn't believe it's appropriate for the ITU to take on expanded Internet management responsibilities because the system is fine as is. He predicted that future international meetings called Internet Governance Forums would center less on who's managing the Net's technical functions and more on issues like freedom of speech and multilingualism.
The officials' rosy outlook likely stems in large part from remarks given in Geneva last week by new ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure, whose term is scheduled to last until 2010.
According to various press reports, Toure, an electrical engineer from Mali, said at his first press conference that it was not his intention for the ITU "to take over the governance of Internet." Rather, the international group plans to forge ahead with the existing setup, headed largely by the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which remains under the U.S. Department of Commerce's supervision.

Whether those predictions will prove accurate remains to be seen. As recently as last fall's Internet Governance Forum in Greece, then-ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi accused the United States of using "self-serving justifications" to argue that the existing arrangement is the best.
Representatives from countries such as Tunisia, Cuba, Iran, China and many less developed nations also have criticized the current system, charging that it gives the United States undue influence over the day-to-day operations of the Internet. Some have suggested the need to create a new international "superstructure" to dull the United States' influence, and the topic is expected to be discussed at a U.N. summit in Brazil in late 2007.
For years, the U.S. government has been saying it ultimately intends to shift ICANN, which has operated under the auspices of the U.S. Commerce Department since 1998, into the private sector with less government oversight.
Assistant Secretary Kneuer indicated that he also was pleased that the ITU planned to distance itself from the technical management debate but said "coordinating the transition of the (domain name system) to the private sector...remains important for us."
CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.

France Info: “DRM : Virgin ouvre les vannes”

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:37:07 +0100

 Nouvel accroc dans la logique de protection de la musique sur Internet : le site de téléchargement VirginMega annonce qu’il va prochainement proposer à la vente 200 000 chansons sans DRM.  Des morceaux de musique en MP3 sans DRM cela veut dire sans protection contre la copie. Cela signifie sans contraintes que l’on pourra l’écouter sur n’importe quel baladeur et sur son ordinateur avec n’importe quel logiciel.  Une annonce qui intervient à quelques jours du Midem, le marché du disque, et alors que la pression sur ces fameux DRM ne cesse d’augmenter.  Le DRM, rappelons-le, c’est un logiciel de gestion des droits d’auteurs qui fixe le nombre de copie que l’on peut faire d’un morceau et les appareils sur lesquels on peut l’écouter.   VirginMega annonce la libéralisation dans les prochaines semaines de 200 000 chansons soit 10% de son catalogue de musique en ligne. Cela ne concerne que peu d’artistes de premier plan, parmi lesquels Anaïs ou Henri Salvador, mais cela préfigure sans doute un mouvement de fond beaucoup plus important.   Les marchands de musique en ligne, VirginMega mais aussi FnacMusic, avaient déjà fait testé l’an dernier la vente de quelques chansons non protégées mais cela restait très symbolique. En passant à la vitesse supérieure, ils veulent sans doute marquer leur volonté face aux majors qui demeurent, elles, officiellement opposées à la « dé-protection ».  Mais face à des ventes de disques qui continuent de décroître et à un marché de la musique en ligne qui peine à décoller, les distributeurs pensent qu’il vaut mieux déprotéger pour vendre plus que continuer à verrouiller et décevoir les utilisateurs.   En achetant de la musique sans DRM, il sera théoriquement plus facile de la pirater mais là n’est pas l’intérêt pour le consommateur. L’avantage, c’est la fin des problèmes de compatibilité. On ne risquera plus de perdre toute sa discothèque virtuelle à la moindre modification de sa configuration informatique comme c’est le cas aujourd’hui.  En tout cas, voilà qui ne fera sans doute pas plaisir à Microsoft et à Apple, fournisseurs deux principales solutions de DRM sur le marché.  www.virginmega.fr www.fnacmusic.com