These are all internet problems and [internet users] think someone should do something about it. Although many internet users think the government should keep out of the internet, I suggest to you that most ordinary people who just use the internet like they use the banking system or the trains think that the government should make sure it all works properly for them and that bad things get stoppe...

Here’s a sophisticated pro-China argument on the fallout from the Google affair, specifically on the internet freedom versus internet sovereignty issue. There’s a good point within it: The infrastructure for the Internet was built in a way which did not...

Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident, points out the value of the internet to him . It does seem that the internet can be a key tool for dissidents in authoritarian countries like China. It enables far greater horizontal communication between people than would otherwise be possible. However, although technology can free us, it also can enable more monitoring and snooping of people. Computer technology ...

Plans to force internet providers to block sites carrying pirated music and films 'threaten freedom of speech and the open internet', says internet and telecom companies

Why are internet service providers above the law? Why do we assume the internet is above and beyond the law? The world wide web should be as much subject to the laws of the land as any other form of communication. Yet it’s still the “wild west web” where lawlessness is rife and politicians wring their hands claiming there is nothing they can do. The truth is that the internet ser...

The splendiferous Doc Searls has an alarming article about an outfit called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium. Global Internet Freedom Consortium sell tools to break the Great Internet Wall of China. Cool. They also sell the private details of their clients who have purchased these tools to 'vetted' companies for 'personalised advertising'. Extremely un-cool... catastrophi...

Via Slate, something of a classic, this: Why the Internet won't be the next big thing - from Newsweek Magazine, 1995. Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure. What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is that the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacki...

So now the EU wants to get its hands on the Internet. Viviane Reding, bonsai Commissioner from the bonsai state of Luxembourg, wants ICANN, the company that allocates Internet addresses, to be taken over by an international consortium: what she calls "a G12 for Internet governance". Eurocrats are upset because the web is run by Yanks What is her problem with the current model? That it doesn't...

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo. Hat tip to Metastwnsh, the new Welsh language internet and technology blog.

David Cameron, prime minister, and Joe Biden, US vice president, took a strong line on freedom of speech on the internet in what appeared to be a challenge to China and Russia