Paul's Web Space 2.1

Internet for Everyone

I recently received a Facebook Group invitation to join an important campaign - Internet for Everyone. It is essential that we provide high-speed Internet access to everyone in the U.S. — to enhance fairness and close the digital divide, to enhance learning and freedom to communicate, and to enable more innovation and more widespread participation in the global information economy.

Tim Karr's article on Huffington Post, "America's Next Moon Shot: Internet for Everyone," introduced the initiative, and the Internet for Everyone Brochure lays out the specific goals of the campaign and provides copious evidence of the shortcomings that exist in U.S. broadband implementation today.


The announcement at last month's Personal Democracy Forum featured (among others):

• Jonathan Adelstein, FCC commissioner
• Jonathan Zittrain, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
• Tim Wu, Columbia Law School
• Vint Cerf, Google (and author, RFC 3271)
• Larry Lessig, Stanford Law School
• Van Jones, Green For All

I've been following efforts like this for some time, in venues such as the Freedom to Connect conference. Other involved organizations have programs and information worth checking out. The New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program is working hard to free up underutilized wireless spectrum to enhance broadband opportunities. EDUCAUSE has proposed a Blueprint for Big Broadband. The technology CEOs of TechNet also call for rapidly accelerated broadband deployment.

If you believe in the importance of Internet freedom, equity, and innovation, I encourage you to join the Facebook group or sign up here.

Labels: broadband policy, digital divide, freepress, internet

   Link: http://www.internetforeveryone.org

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F2C: Freedom to Connect

I'm looking forward to attending F2C: Freedom to Connect 2008, next Monday and Tuesday, March 31 and April 1, 2008, at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD (where I just happen to live). F2C always brings together the most interesting people and projects, all with one goal in mind, making the Internet more useful and powerful for everyone, making it a tool that people can use for whatever purpose, with the maximum capability, while not being limited by business rules set by telecommunications providers nor short-sighted government regulation.

I just received the last pitch email for this conference, so I want to pass along that after tonight, registration cost goes way up. So if you want to experience this stimulating and thought-provoking event in person, sign up today. They will have major WiFi capability, and a live chat online and on screen powered by 37 Signals CamfireNow.com, as well as a webcast for those who wish to simply watch remotely. (But then you also miss out on the truly killer networking that happens there as well.)

The names of the speakers this year are as good as ever, including Susan Crawford, Brad Templeton, Micah Sifry, Tim Wu, Bruce Schneier, Danny O'Brien, Gigi Sohn, Clay Shirky, and many others. As was the case last year, Howard Levy will provide the musical background to program breaks, this year accompanied by Chris Siebold. Should be fun AND informative.

Labels: broadband policy, netneutrality, telecommunications

   Link: http://freedom-to-connect.net/

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Civil society goals for the future of the Internet

Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) discusses his views on the important issues concerning the development of the Internet, as part of OpenLeft's Legislation 2.0 discussion of national broadband policy. He also mentions EPIC's Public Voice project.

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Labels: broadband policy, epic, internet, netneutrality, rotenberg, savetheinternet

   Link: http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=399

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