October 2012 Blog Posts (20)

Mobile phones once were thought of as only indispensable in the rich world but the way mobile phones are transforming lives in low income countries it has become an essential and indispensable tool for socio-economic development. For many areas in Pakistan having limited availability of communication roads, postal services, fixed line services, health services and financial services Mobile telephony represents the first modern infrastructure of any kind. Mobile phone services have brought…

Supreme Court to hear arguments in case of student who resold books.

A grad school student in the US got his family to purchase books overseas, ship them to him and then sold them on eBay. He was sued for copyright infringement by the publishers as the books were labelled "not for importation to or exportation from another region" and lost the case. The appeal now goes before the supreme court. Some people argue that the ruling could threaten ones right to resell items that were…

This post was published on Bytesforall today. Since many of us are also involved in research, the information may be useful.…

After a long outcry of Ugandans about spam text messages on their phones, some coming from short code content providers, Telecommunication service providers and at times commercial companies advertising their products, the communication regulatory body UCC has decided to regulate mobile content service provision.…

The First Arab IGF Meeting was held in Kuwait City between 9^th and 11^th of OCT 2012.

The Theme was for this meeting “A Better Internet for A better Arab World”.

The five accesses for this meeting was

            1-      Access & content

            2-      Internet Openness.

            3-      Critical Internet Resources.

            4-      Security and Privacy.

            5-      Youth.

The Agenda for…

Inclusiveness: attendance, collaboration and capacity building at LACIGF5

One of the positive results from LACIGF5 was the inclusion factor.

There were many new actors into the Internet Governance fora, particularly local stakeholders, and the event format has made room for the new voices to bring their fresh perspectives into IG issues that they are directly involved with.

And the participants who were already familiar with the…

When we get Internet browsing needs, we go to the web browser and type in names. We memorise a number of Internet names off our heads, the ones we usually use. We are however informed every now and then that the Internet works with numbers (digits) but humans cannot cram those numbers to represents our web-pages. There is therefore a system which translates Internet names (known to humans) to Internet numbers (known by the computers and Internet). This is system…

Just received this link to a discussion at Stanford about Online Learning. You may be interested.

During week 5 of the OMAN IGCBP group, interesting debates took place on self regulation on internet.

A student indicated that self-regulation is acceptable to be adopted to regulate or govern the internet, however, such approach should be along with other mechanism especially national legislation which could set the principles for self-regulation approach.

It was also noted that the public must be educated and awareness must be raised. If that is done, people…

OECD is one of the leading organizations when it comes to anti-spam initiatives. The anti-spam initiative was ignited in early 2003 when its members considered spam to be one of the latest challenges facing the economics of developed countries, especially in the information society sector which revolves closely around the future of the world…

LACIGF5: recurrent themes and emerging issues

Following the previous post about the multistakeholder and bottom up processes in Latin America and Caribbean preparatory meeting for Internet Governance Forum – LACIGF5 [ http://www.diplointernetgovernance.org/profiles/blogs/lacigf5-bogota-colombia-24-to-26-september-2012 ], this post…

In the footsteps of the global IGF - a regional IGF's experience: LACIGF5 

From 24 to 26 September 2012, it took place the Fifth Latin American and Caribbean Regional Preparatory Meeting to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum, so called LACIGF5, being held in Bogotá, Colombia.  

LACIGF5 underlies in the 'bottom-up' process, a key principle to Internet Governance, from the venue selection to discussions framework.  

To define the venue, the…

As we approach the IGF 2012 meeting, which is being held on 6-9 November 2012 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the IGF Secretariat will once again be providing remote participation facilities this year.



Many of us within the IG community will not be able to attend and some of us would require to invite others to actively take part of the debates. Taking into consideration the importance of the global as well as local debates, the IGF Secretariat has  issued a call for the setting up remote…

In regards to the ETNO proposal to the ITRs, I would wish to share the response by Ambassador Kennard.

In a nut-shell, Don't fix it unless it is broken. The current system is working just fine and it's change could only brake it!

He also mentions about the effects of the ETNO proposals to the emerging markets. The proposals once adopted, will just make it harder for the emerging markets to enjoy the Internet.

The remarks can be found at:…

Even in the developing nations, Internet is respected as an enabler. No doubt about this as more and more people are using Internet to go about business. Statements have come out predicting that by the year 2022, Internet will be a 'must' of life. In the same line the UN is moving to make broadband access a human right. It is with no doubt now that Internet is moving to rule our lives, in education, medicines, communications (emails and so on),…

Hello this information is useful to some of us.

See below:

European Commission

Hundreds of cyber security experts from…

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/malte_spitz_your_phone_company_is_watching.html

German Green politician Malte Spitz went to court to obtain the information that his cell phone operator, Deutsche Telekom, gathered (and kept) about his activity. The results astonished him. Over the course of six months, they had tracked his…

After reading Vladimir Radunovic's Blog on Net neutrality, I finally Understand the principle of 'Sender-party-pays' as proposed by the ETNO (Europeans Telecommunication Network Operators' Association) which has been appearing in a number of documents I have been reading with out understanding it's actual meaning.

First and foremost, as some…

Apply for $20 Mullion USD in ICT4D Grants from SIDA

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency is working on behalf of the Swedish parliament and government, with the mission to…