Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell gave a speech on Monday at a broadband conference in Stockholm entitled ‘Technology and the Sovereignty of the Individual’. The message of the speech is clear; the Internet should not be regulated by government. In his speech he says, “To propel freedom’s momentum, policy makers should remember that, since their inception, the Internet and mobile connectivity have migrated further away from government control. As the result of longstanding international consensus, the Internet itself has become the greatest deregulatory … →

The Telegraph reports today that the Coalition Government has been building has been building a new identity system in the wake of the end of ID cards last year.The new system is due to be beta tested in October and it is intended to identify users of government websites. Details have yet to be announced so precisely how this system will work is still to be determined. Our friends at NO2ID have been notified of the new system. NO2ID General Secretary … →

In a report published today called ‘Digital Opportunity’ Professor Ian Hargreaves and a panel of experts make ten recommendations to modernise the intellectual property framework in the UK so that it can support innovation and growth.  The Prime Minister announced the IP framework review in November 2010 and the result of the review is the report published today. The key recommendations of the report are summarised below: Evidence – the IP framework should be driven by evidence based information especially … →

Yesterday, Sony made the announcement in a press release that “user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network.” Sony went on to say that the company discovered the intrusion in conjunction with a major attack on their PlayStation Network and Qriocity sometime between April 17th and April 19th this year. The PSN and Qriocity networks remain offline for now as the investigation takes place. The personal data of nearly 70 million users have … →

As no doubt you have heard by now, four out of the five judicial review claims on the Digital Economy Act brought to court by BT and TalkTalk have been dismissed. BT and TalkTalk argued that the Digital Economy Act was illegal under privacy and e-commerce laws, that the impact on business was disproportionate, and that the UK failed to notify the EU of the impending implementation of the law. Mr Justice Parker ruled today that all of these issues were … →

As we reported yesterday, May 25 is the deadline for the implementation of the EU Privacy Directive across all member states. The US is also mulling over legislation that would effectively introduce a ‘bill of privacy rights’ codified in law. As everyone tries to figure out what privacy rights and privacy implementation looks like, two web browser makers have their own idea. Today, Mozilla introduced Firefox 4. Along with all the new bells and whistles, Firefox has a ‘do not … →

On Friday, Yahoo! launched Ad Choices to help users understand online ads that are displayed to them on the Yahoo! network and to allow users to manage their advertising options. Ad Choices launches ahead of the May 25th deadline imposed by legislation from the EU for websites to provide for an ‘opt-out’ option from cookies and other online tracking used for advertising, among other data collection activities. Yahoo! is the first UK company to launch such an effort well in advance … →