By Min Wu

The European Parliament approved amendments to a telecommunications legislation package that would solidify net neutrality, according to Wired. The legislation still needs the approval of the Council of the European Union to become the law. 

Net neutrality is the notion that all traffic on the Internet should be treated equally by network service providers, without discrimination. The amendments prevent companies from arbitrarily defining services as “specialized services” to evade the net neutrality requirement. In the United States, net neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission were struck down earlier this year.

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April 07, 2014

By Matt Klinger

In response to concerns about government surveillance, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which develops technical standards for the internet, is working on a plan to expand the use of encryption on the web.  Most web traffic today is exchanged under the hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP), an unencrypted medium.  Some sites, however, like banks, online retailers, and Gmail, use HTTPS, which incorporates encryption into the exchange.  The IETF hopes to produce a standard by the end of 2014 that encourages the use of HTTPS for all web traffic, although adoption by websites would not be mandatory.

Salon reports the IETF is also looking into make anonymous surfing of the web easier by expanding the use of Tor - a networking software that anonymizes web traffic.  Journalists, activists, and others across the globe use Tor to protect their communications.  Meanwhile, the U.S. National Security Agency and its British counterpart seem intent on cracking the software.  Ironically, Tor's precursors were developed by the U.S. Department of Defense to safeguard its communications and the U.S. government reportedly still funds around 60 percent of Tor's development tab.

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December 04, 2013

Sanctions - Is World of Warcraft Sanctions Compliance More Than a Joke?

by Elizabeth Gibson

[Editor's Note: GJIL is having a symposium on the issue of international sanctions - The Evolution of Economic Sanctions: Increasingly Financial, Multilateral, and Robust - on February 13, 2012. Therefore, each month The Summit will feature a post on sanctions. We encourage you to attend our symposium.]

     Over the last month, the media has been all over the story of Iranian gamers getting kicked off World of Warcraft in the name of sanctions compliance, and who can blame them with all the great punch lines about elves, trolls, and the U.S. government?

     However, in addition to the mystery of why exactly Blizzard Entertainment chose now to shut down Iranian accounts (sorry, no refunds), the situation has raised other interesting issues. Should interactive community games be considered a productive form of communication for sanctions purposes, and how much does all this matter in a world where savvy gamers quickly reconnected by rerouting their Internet through foreign networks?

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November 27, 2012