Author: Stephen Schultze
-
Trying to Make Sense of the Comcast / Level 3 Dispute
[Update: I gave a brief interview to Marketplace Tech Report] The last 48 hours has given rise to a fascinating dispute between Level 3 (a major internet backbone provider) and Comcast (a major internet service retailer). The dispute involves both technical principles and fuzzy facts, so I am writing this post more as an attempt…
-
Join CITP in DC this Friday for "Emerging Threats to Online Trust"
Update – you can watch the video here. Please join CITP this Friday from 9AM to 11AM for an event entitled “Emerging Threats to Online Trust: The Role of Public Policy and Browser Certificates.” The event will focus on the trustworthiness of the technical and policy structures that govern certificate-based browser security. It will include…
-
HTC Willfully Violates the GPL in T-Mobile's New G2 Android Phone
[UPDATE (Oct 14, 2010): HTC has released the source code. Evidently 90-120 days was not in fact necessary, given that they managed to do it 7 days after the phone’s official release. It is possible that the considerable pressure from the media, modders, kernel copyright holders, and other kernel hackers contributed to the apparently accelerated…
-
New Search and Browsing Interface for the RECAP Archive
We have written in the past about RECAP, our project to help make federal court documents more easily accessible. We continue to upgrade the system, and we are eager for your feedback on a new set of functionality. One of the most-requested RECAP features is a better web interface to the archive. Today we’re releasing…
-
A Major Internet Milestone: DNSSEC and SSL
On July 15th, a small but significant internet event occurred. On that day, years of planning culminated in the deployment of a cryptographic signature on the root DNS zone. To simplify greatly, this means that internet users will soon be able to have a much higher degree of trust in the hierarchical Domain Name System…
-
Private Information in Public Court Filings
Court proceedings are supposed to be public. When they are public and easily accessible, citizens know the law and the courts are kept accountable. These are the principles that underpin RECAP, our project to help liberate federal court records from behind a pay-wall. However, appropriate restrictions on public disclosure are equally critical to democracy-enhancing information…
-
Announcing the CITP Visitors for 2010-2011
We are delighted to announce the CITP visiting scholars, practitioners, and collaborators for the 2010-2011 academic year. The diverse group of leading thinkers represents CITP’s highly interdisciplinary interests. We are looking forward to their work at the center, and welcome them to the family. The short list is below, but you can see more description…
-
Broadband Politics and Closed-Door Negotiations at the FCC
The last seven days at the FCC have been drama-filled, and that’s not something you can often say about an administrative agency. As I noted in my last post, the FCC is considering reclassifying broadband as a “common carrier” service. This would subject the access portion of the service to some additional regulations which currently…
-
Regulating and Not Regulating the Internet
There is increasingly heated rhetoric in DC over whether or not the government should begin to “regulate the internet.” Such language is neither accurate nor new. This language implies that the government does not currently involve itself in governing the internet — an implication which is clearly untrue given a myriad of laws like CFAA,…