OneWebDay

Smartphones with mobile Internet have been around for years. I’ve seen people checking news, sorts scores, weather, etc. on their cell phones, but it doesn’t seem to be the most pleasant experience. It will be interesting to see if Apple’s iPhone will overcome some of the disadvantages of trying to use the web on a small screen. The demo of web browsing (and more) on the iPhone makes it look almost effortless, but I find needing to zoom or side-scroll annoying on a computer with a mouse. Perhaps the touch-screen with gestures will make it seem less troublesome.

The interesting question is how our interaction with each other and with our physical surroundings will change when we have on-the-spot access to the Internet as we walk around, sit in public places, and more. I’ve often felt that something was missing when I was away from my computer and wanted to Google something to find out more about it. With the Internet in your pocket, you wouldn’t have to wait. I’ve often wished I had mapping website access when I was getting lost looking for a store, driving somewhere, wondering if the was a store nearby when walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood.

Whether the iPhone makes this easier or not, it’s an idea that is growing. Once large numbers of people can be connected to the Internet wherever they are, I expect we’ll see even more interesting phenomena than flash mobs – and perhaps more useful (not that flash mobs aren’t fun or funny).

Today was the 10th anniversary of a major decision by the U.S Supreme Court that speech on the Internet should be given the highest protection possible under the U.S. Constitution. However, those who care about freedom can never rest. There are many threats to online freedom of speech around the world and in the U.S. In some places, this is from direct government censorship and control. In other cases, laws sometimes grant corporations or individuals too much power to threaten others with legal action.

It’s important to be aware of the issues. Freedom of speech is the root of all freedoms – without it, working on any other issue is impossible.

Read more at:
EFF: Ten Years After ACLU v. Reno: Free Speech Still Needs Defending

There is a great project underway by the people at dotSUB.com – to make it easy for people to share videos with people who don’t speak the language of the video creators. You create a free account on their site and use your language skills to create alternate subtitles in whatever language you know.

Here’s the OneWebDay video – it’s only English right now, so if you are multi-lingual and would like to help us make our mono-lingual video fit for world-wide sharing, we’d love your help!

&Well, the courts in the U.S. made clear that the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution applies to email. The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio ruled that the 1986 federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) violates the 4th Amendment by allowing the government to search email without a warrant and without providing notice to the owner of the email.

The government argued that once email has been read, there is no longer a reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus it can be searched without notice or a warrant. The government had been using this technique for about 20 years, although it is not known how often it was done, or whose email was searched. In addition to the fact that without notice people cannot defend themselves from unreasonable searches, there is also no record of how often this was quietly done, with the help of ISPs. That is exactly the reason why following the process of obtaining a warrant is so important – it creates a record of how the government is using the process so it can be held accountable for abuses.

Read more:

• Electronic Frontier Foundation – Court Protects Email from Secret Government Searches
• Ars Technica – Appeals court: Feds can’t secretly seize e-mail without a warrant
• Internet News – Want My E-Mail? Get a Warrant
• Wired Blogs – Appeals Court Says Feds Need Warrants to Search E-Mail

I mentioned I would write more about Net Neutrality. This important issue can be very complex, but one aspect of it is that Internet service providers should not be able to discriminate against certain types of traffic on their networks in favor of services they charge a premium rate to provide. The concern is that ISPs will make the services they provide work better than other Internet traffic that the customer tries to use. A simple example of what that could mean is that if the ISP provides Voice-over-IP phone service, it may reduce bandwidth available when its customers try to use Skype, instead of the ISP’s VoIP phone service. This gives those who have control over the lines going to Internet users to control directly what Internet services succeed or fail. This would replace the current world where success is based on whether people truly want to use a service.

Sometimes the argument is made that the companies that control the communication infrastructure would not do this. They suggest that everyone should count on their goodwill. However, there have often been situations where companies do not act in the best interests of their customers. Susan Crawford writes about a recent and troubling example of this in Why a two-lane internet is a bad idea. Verizon allegedly has started to reduce maintenance on its older copper wires that still provide Internet and phone service to large numbers of people in favor of its more lucrative optical fiber network.

The problem is that service providers often have what amounts to a local monopoly on Internet service, making it close to impossible for customers to switch to an ISP that does not discriminate against Internet services the customer wants to use. This makes the ISPs unaccountable by market forces. Therefore, the argument is that some form of rule is required that does not allow ISPs to use their monopolistic power to prevent competition in Internet services.

This is a very basic comment on Net Neutrality. You can read much more about what it means and what you can do about it at SaveTheInternet.com. There is also a detailed article on Net Neutrality at Wikipedia.

The Internet is important – be informed and make your voice heard!

If you’re interested in spreading the word about OneWebDay, we’d love for you to link to this site. Just go to the OneWebDay Action Page and copy the html code there to your own website or blog. Let’s start spreading the word!

Also, please comment here on this blog if you have any ideas or suggestions. There is a lot of planning and conversation going on through email and in person, but it would be great to see some of that here as well.

Nonprofit Status: OneWebDay is now a nonprofit organization – we obtained our 501(c)(3) status, thanks to the law firm WilmerHale. This makes it easier to do fund-raising and makes donations to OneWebDay, Inc. tax-deductible in most cases.

Plans: We’re in the process of starting a MySpace page – more on that when it is ready. Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be making some major updates to our wiki. Old events and information will be preserved, but moved to a History of OneWebDay section. I’ll update each existing section to show current participants, and start tracking all the OneWebDay resources both on this site and on the rest of the Internet.

Another major plan for this month is to reach out to other groups interested in participating or otherwise promoting OneWebDay: libraries, student groups that promote online issues and activities, and more. If you know of a student/professional/community/whatever group that has an interest in the Internet, let us know – send email to dan at onewebday.org.

Tonight’s OneWebDay preparation meeting in New York went well. We talked about how the Internet Archive is working to provide hosting and user contributions for the event. We also discussed the support that the Internet Society has offered. I’ll be posting more about those and other topics from the meeting over the next week.

PS. My apologies about saying the scaffolding is gone from around Cardozo in the previous post – it appears to have been brought back while I was gone. I hope no one got lost.

The next OneWebDay meeting is Tuesday, June 12th at 7:00 PM at Cardozo Law School, 55 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. We’ll be finalizing plans for location of the New York City OneWebDay event, and much more.

Note: If you lookup Cardozo in Google’s StreetView, keep in mind that the scaffolding is gone now, and there are instead a couple gold-colored signs above the doors. Come in through the entrance on Fifth Avenue near the corner with 12th Street and let the security people know you are there for the OneWebDay meeting on the 5th Floor. Anyone who can make it is welcome to come to the meeting. You can also join the OneWebDay Meetup.com group to get notices about upcoming meetings and to RSVP.

If you haven’t seen them already, check out this year’s Webby Awards winners! The Webby Awards are the “Oscars of the Internet” and are awarded in categories including Activism, Art, Best Navigation, Best Practices, Games, Humor, and many more. Their nomination and winners list is a great place to visit to find sites that are the best in their category. They also have a policy to save time during the awards ceremony and keep things moving, leading to some interesting 5-word acceptance speeches.

The People’s Voice Winner in the Activism category was SaveTheInternet.com, which is advocating for Net Neutrality. I’ll be writing more about them later.