Free Speech
Before beginning, it's worth stating that EFF-Austin [ @EFFaustin ] is based in...well, Austin. Our statements have no association with national EFF [ @EFF ], based in San Francisco, beyond the principles we share (see here for details on that history if you're interested; our hearts go out to
Free Speech
Repressive foreign governments - in China, Egypt, Iran and Syria, to name just a few - have cut off communications (the Internet, mobile service and landline) as a means to repress dissent or expressive acts the regime deems inconvenient. Often, the repressive regime asserts that silencing their citizens was necessary
Free Speech
EFF's Kevin Bankston has written an overview of the Wikileaks fracas, with relevant links. National EFF's position: "...we agree with other legal commentators who have warned that a prosecution of Assange, much less of other readers or publishers of the cables, would face serious First
Free Speech
Numerous Internet and technology leaders issued a joint statement this week encouraging the FCC to expand its recent analysis of open Internet policy in a newly fruitful direction. In the statement, they commend the agency's recent request for input on "Two Underdeveloped Issues in the Open Internet
Free Speech
David Weinberger interviewed Rick Whitt, a Google lawyer and lobbyist, about the proposed Google-Verizon framework. The original post is here.
Free Speech
Last week, Lawrence Lessig gave a fantastic presentation on how government policies for broadband, cybersecurity and copyright have been corrupted by special interest lobbying. Lessig does a great job explaining why reclassification caused American broadband to fall so far behind the rest of the developed world. This video is well
Free Speech
From the New York Times: Privacy is central to American law. And in 1986, Congress applied that principle to electronic communications by setting limits on law enforcement access to Internet and wireless technologies. It was a laudable law at the time, but cellphones were still oddities, the Internet was mostly
Events
The SXSW Film Festival is screening a documentary about the open Internet and Net Neutrality called Barbershop Punk at the Austin Convention Center on March 15th and 18th. The title refers to Robb Topolski's 2007 investigation of Comcast's network management practices after having trouble sharing public
Free Speech
Ever wondered how these IntarTubes work to to build up the IntarWebzNet thingy? Next time you run into someone who thinks of the Internet like that, you might want to point them to this video produced by TheEuroIX. It's simple, clear, only has a slight bias to support
Activism
As Time Warner’s metered broadband plans are currently shelved, awaiting a more palatable consumer climate, we have time to examine why broadband providers suddenly feel compelled to eliminate the flat-rate, all-you-can-eat pricing model. Metered Internet service is hardly a new idea; early services like AOL and Compuserve were metered,
Creativity and Innovation
In a recent Fox news article, the inevitable death of the Internet was recently announced. The exponential growth of Internet traffic has been a hotly debated reality from the the very beginning. Historically there have been two reactions to exponential Internet bandwidth demand, fear, and denial. Funny how that hasn&