New rules that aim to protect the openness of the Internet will allow telecom and cable groups to prioritize and earn potentially vast income from some types of data, setting up likely clashes with regulators in the future. Telecom companies such as AT&T and Vodafone have convinced US and European regulators, finalizing so-called “net neutrality”…
The rules will mean any company providing a broadband connection has to act in the public interest and conduct business in ways that are “just and reasonable”. Reddit has been a constant supporter of net neutrality and its users lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about the ruling. Their efforts did not go unnoticed: after…
Micro-blogging site twitter has added some new reporting tools to protect users and fight against abuse on its site.
The site had already made it easier to report harassment in tweets. Now, its making it easier to report others behaviours like imitation, sharing of private information and self-harm, said reports.
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The government has given the task of identifying objectionable content on the Internet to industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad informed Parliament on Friday. “Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), an association of content providers, has been mandated to prepare a list of objectionable sites, particularly…
Internet activists declared victory over the nation’s big cable companies on Thursday, after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to impose the toughest rules yet on broadband providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T to prevent them from creating paid fast lanes and slowing or blocking web traffic.
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Delhi transport authorities have asked the central government to block the Uber app, saying that the cab aggregator has been operating illegally in the capital. The city government had banned Uber in December after one of its drivers was charged with raping a passenger, but it resumed operations just weeks later. The US-based company has…
When the previous Congress-led government started using section 66A of the Information Technology Act to suppress dissent, it received plenty of flak from the opposition. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s supporters compared the government’s actions to strategies implemented during the Emergency and the leader of the opposition Arun Jaitley told Parliament that this amounted to excessive censorship. Read…
Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which prescribes ‘punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc.’ is widely held by lawyers and legal academics to be unconstitutional. In this post Pranesh Prakash explores why that section is unconstitutional, how it came to be, the state of the law elsewhere, and how we can…
As many as 37,721 cyber fraud cases involving Rs 497 crore have been reported by the RBI and CBI in the last four years, telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad informed Lok Sabha on Wednesday. Several cyber attack techniques are used in engineering these crimes and are normally reported as ATM/ debit card, credit…
Facebook is open to testing pilot alternative technologies such as solar-powered planes and satellites in India to provide broadband connectivity as the world’s biggest social network looks at ways to participate in the government’s Rs 1.13-lakh crore Digital India programme. “The government is going great in adopting broadband connectivity for delivering services to citizens,” Chris Daniels, vice-president (products)…