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By Jonathan Fildes, Technology reporter, BBC News
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The US government has relaxed its control over how the internet is run.
It has signed a four-page "affirmation of commitments" with the net regulator Icann, giving the body autonomy for the first time.
Previous agreements gave the US close oversight of Icann - drawing criticism from other countries and groups.
The new agreement comes into effect on 1 October, exactly 40 years since the first two computers were connected on the prototype of the net.
"It's a beautifully historic day," Rod Beckstrom, Icann's head, told BBC News.
The European Commission, which has long been critical of Icann's alliance with the US government, welcomed the new deal.
"Internet users worldwide can now anticipate that Icann's decisions...will be more independent and more accountable, taking into account everyone's interests," said Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for information society and media.
'Global system'
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is a not-for-profit private sector corporation - set up by the US government - to oversee critical parts of the internet, such as the top-level domain (TLD) name system. Top level domains include .com and .uk.
Since its inception in 1998, it has periodically signed accords - known collectively as the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) - with the US Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
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Eric Schmidt
CEO, Google |
These papers meant that the US government was responsible for reviewing the work of the body.
These have now been abandoned in favour of the new "affirmation of commitments", a brief document which turns the review process over to the global "internet community".
"Under the JPA, Icann staff would conduct reviews and hand them over to the US government," explained Mr Beckstrom.
"Now we submit those reviews to the world and post them publically for all to comment."
In addition, independent review panels - including representatives of foreign governments - would specifically oversee Icann's work in three specific areas: security, competition and accountability.
The US will retain a permanent seat on the accountability panel.
Mr Beckstrom said the decision to break away from the US government in all other areas had been made "over the last year and a half".
"Stakeholders told us that the JPA should not be renewed and that it wasn't appropriate for it to be renewed," he told BBC News.
"It is also recognition by the US government that the internet is a global system."
The internet began as a research project by the US military, known as Arpanet.
On 1 October 1969, the second computer was connected to the network, said Mr Beckstrom. Ever since, the US has played close attention to the workings and growth of the net.
"Today's announcement bolsters the long-term viability of the internet as a force for innovation, economic growth, and freedom of expression," said US Assistant Secretary for communications and information Lawrence Strickling.
"This framework puts the public interest front and centre."
Businesses have also welcomed the change of direction by the US.
"Google and its users depend every day on a vibrant and expanding internet; we endorse this affirmation and applaud the maturing of Icann's role in the provision of internet stability," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.
However, the new agreement does not totally sever the links between the US government and Icann entirely.
In addition, Icann also has a separate agreement with the US - to run the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) - that expires in 2011.
The IANA oversees the net's addressing system.





The Kindle DX is designed for newspapers
and periodicals - but is only black and white
The rise and rise of e-readers Nearly double the size of the book giant's existing e-reader, Amazon's wireless Kindle DX has adopted a tabloid-like format for ease of reading newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times and the Washington Post which have announced they will launch pilots editions on Kindle DX this summer. Although others, most notably the Japanese and the Dutch, have trials underway that publish tabloid-size digital editions for other handheld e-reader devices, Amazon with its mighty marketing clout represents the first mainstream commercial stab at the market. Increased graphics resolution and the larger size of the tablet-like, the $489 Kindle DX is also a departure from previous e-readers on the market, although Japan's Fujitsu has a similar sized colour reader on the market for twice the price. "Cookbooks, computer books, and textbooks - anything highly formatted -shine on the Kindle DX," claims Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO underlining the new Kindle's purported better handling of detail and graphics. Amazon already has a hit on its hands with the Kindle 2. The same heft as a paperback, weighing about eight ounces, such e-ink readers are basically handheld screens on which you can read words page by page reasonably comfortably. Amazon says it has already sold more than 500,000 of its $359 Kindle e-readers, which buyers use mostly as a portable library downloading print media via a wireless connection. The new Kindle DX, like other popular e-readers such as the Sony reader, employs "e-ink" technology that far enhances the reading of digitized print.
As there is no backlight and no glare, the effect is not unlike reading a page in a regular book. Publications are bought online making paid subscriptions, along the lines of paid for music on iTunes, a possibility. Such benefits have not been lost on newspaper editors who are desperate to find alternatives to today's failing business models of newspaper publishing. Alan Rusbridger, the editor of UK newspaper The Guardian, for one, has predicted there might be an "iPod moment" for the industry with the coming of a handheld device on which reading a newspaper will become commonplace. However excited some in the ailing newspaper and magazine industry are over the new Kindle, there are still severe shortcomings, not least that content offerings still come only in black and white. Vastly superior to reading off a computer monitor or conventional mobile phone screen Amazon's e-readers and their ilk are products of electronic-ink technology that creates clear, easy-to-read text even in sunlight. With electronic ink, charged particles migrate under the influence of an electric field. Depending on the field applied, either the white or the black particles move to the front of the screen to make up the image. The technology used in most e-readers are adaptations of this form of "ePaper" and "e-ink" that create bubbles of e-ink by pushing ink-like particles around under its light-grey plastic skin. As a leader in the field of e-paper development Japanese researchers at Fujitsu Frontech have attempted to sidestep the mono-chromatic drawbacks by creating colour e-ink and went to market last month with a full colour e-reader. Dubbed Flepia, the three-quarters of a pound device displays 260,000 colours - good enough to display magazine-like graphics, is slightly smaller than a sheet of A4 and just over a centimetre thick.
Colour for such e-ink technology does not come cheap, however, and Flepia retails at $1,000 in Japan. Looking at the Flepia, the future of e-ink digital e-readers, says Tokyo-based new media journalist Nobuyuki Hayashi, has a long way to go, not least on price. "Flepia has a too slow refresh rate (1.8 seconds), users have to use a stylus to turn pages and its user interface is no-frill, no-fun and non-intuitive. In my opinion this does not look like a serious consumer device," he says. "An easier-to-use device from outside of the country such as Kindle (or the iPhone), will probably eliminate this somewhat alien product." Whatever the outcome of both Fujitsu's and Amazon's new formats the rivals have entered an increasingly crowded marketplace for the e- reader. Sony and a Dutch firm iRex have both experimented with newspaper subscriptions on their paperback sized e-readers.
Since Christmas, iRex has offered over 800 newspapers from 81 countries on its new monochrome but high- resolution iRex Digital Reader 1000 series. While French telecoms provider Orange has just finished an e-reader trial in partnership with five French newspapers, including Le Monde and Les Echos, and will be looking to start a proper commercial service by the end of the year. But despite having success with using an e-reader with its e-reading clients, Orange is undecided which platform is best suited to delivering daily print media subscriptions "as the market is moving too fast to tell". With smartphones and net books falling in price, such all in one devices - suitable for anything from book reading to watching TV - might prove a more convenient platform for publishing and even present better business models for publishers as Japan has found. "Expect a slow beginning and a period of rapid evolution before e-reader's become ubiquitous, " says Japanese media consultant David Kilburn. "They will also need to compete successfully with what people can already do using their mobile phones." Already "keitai culture", the pervasiveness of mobile phone usage, as generated by Japan's early embracing of mobiles is making its impact felt in other activities such as newsgathering and newspaper reading. The popularity of Amazon's Kindle and the Sony e-book reader suggests there is a market that has been poorly exploited so far by smartphones in the west while Japan is racing ahead with manga by e-mail and paid for newspaper subscriptions by phone. Ryo Shimizu CEO of applications developer UEI in Tokyo says the phone as book, magazine or sketchpad is already something that has taken off in Japan. "The killer application in Japan is CGM, such as novels or comics, which can be read by mobile phones. Here, mobiles are already a true alternative to paper." Looking at Japan's reach for the handier keitais, going bigger isn't always going to be better, even for Amazon. |

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A child's view
of the $100 laptop
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| What will a child in the UK make of a laptop
designed to help children in the developing world? Rory Cellan-Jones
brought an XO home to find out.
In late November I returned from Nigeria with a sample of the XO laptop. The computer, made by the One Laptop per Child charity, is a robust little machine designed to entertain and educate children while allowing them to learn by themselves. I knew there was only one person who could review it for me. The Nine Year-old's View Enter Rufus Cellan-Jones. He is nine, has far more experience of games consoles than computers, and has strong views on most matters. "Looks fun," was his only comment when I handed over the small, green and white laptop, explaining that he was the only child in Britain to have one. But very quickly he was up and running. All I did was give him the security code for our home wireless network so he could take the XO online. The rest he figured out for himself, as he explains: Lots of fun "I just seemed to work it out. It was rather easy. I didn't even need help." Surprise, surprise, his first discovery was a game. "I found Block Party. It's like Tetris. I'm now up to Level 7." I thought my young games fanatic might stick there but he moved on. "Then I discovered paint. You can use pencils, change the texture, use different sizes of brush." Even better, there was an animation programme called Etoys. "That's my favourite.You make things. You can see tutorials and demos. Then you can make a new project. I've made a crazy UFO which you can move." But Rufus says it isn't just about play. "I use the calculator - that can be rather useful for sums. You can even browse onto the internet. You can watch and learn stuff. You can write things and it can also remind you which is extremely useful." What, I asked, does a nine year old need to remind himself about? "Christmas stuff," he said, with an air of mystery. Social networking But the real surprise came one evening, when Rufus asked me to explain what his friends were telling him on the laptop. I thought those imaginary childhood friends from years back must have returned. But I went and had a look - and it was true - he appeared to be chatting online. So how had he managed that? "You go on "neighbourhood", then you go to the chat thing. You go on Nigeria and you chat to them." But why, if he was online with the children at the Nigerian school I had visited, were they sending messages in Spanish? I decided he must be linking up with one of the South American schools taking part in the OLPC project but we still aren't sure quite how that is happening. Still, Rufus is widening his social circle. " I have three friends. It's nice to talk to them. They don't speak much English but I can understand them." The conversation is not exactly sparkling, but Rufus has learned to say "Hola". Not a toy So Rufus is using his laptop to write, paint, make music, explore the internet, and talk to children from other countries. Because it looks rather like a simple plastic toy, I had thought it might suffer the same fate as the radio-controlled dinosaur or the roller-skates he got last Christmas - enjoyed for a day or two, then ignored. Instead, it seems to provide enduring fascination. I had returned from Nigeria not entirely convinced that the XO laptop was quite as wonderful an educational tool as its creators claimed. I felt that a lot of effort would be needed by hard-pressed teachers before it became more than just a distracting toy for the children to mess around with in class. But Rufus has changed my mind. With no help from his Dad, he has learned far more about computers than he knew a couple of weeks ago, and the XO appears to be a more creative tool than the games consoles which occupy rather too much of his time. The One Laptop Per Child project is struggling to convince developing countries providing computers for children is as important as giving them basic facilities like water or electricity. Unusually, Rufus does not have an opinion about that controversy, but he does have a verdict on the laptop. "It's great," he says. |
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Big Brother is
watching us all
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The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game.
"Five nine, five ten," said the research student, pushing down a laptop button to seal the measurement. "That's your height." "Spot on," I said. "OK, we're freezing you now," interjected another student, studying his computer screen. "So we have height and tracking and your gait DNA". "Gait DNA?" I interrupted, raising my head, so inadvertently my full face was caught on a video camera. "Have we got that?" asked their teacher Professor Rama Challapa. "We rely on just 30 frames - about one second - to get a picture we can work with," he explained. Tracking individuals I was at Maryland University just outside Washington DC, where Professor Challapa and his team are inventing the next generation of citizen surveillance. They had pushed back furniture in the conference room for me to walk back and forth and set up cameras to feed my individual data back to their laptops. Gait DNA, for example, is creating an individual code for the way I walk. Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are.
Since 9/11, some of the best scientific minds in the defence industry have switched their concentration from tracking nuclear missiles to tracking individuals such as suicide bombers. Surveillance society My next stop was a Pentagon agency whose headquarters is a drab suburban building in Virginia. The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) had one specific mission - to ensure that when it comes to technology America is always ahead of the game. Its track record is impressive. Back in the 70s, while we were working with typewriters and carbon paper, Darpa was developing the internet. In the 90s, while we pored over maps, Darpa invented satellite navigation that many of us now have in our cars. "We ask the top people what keeps them awake at night," said its enthusiastic and forthright director Dr Tony Tether, "what problems they see long after they have left their posts." "And what are they?" I asked. He paused, hand on chin. "I'd prefer not to say. It's classified." "All right then, can you say what you're actually working on now." "Oh, language," he answered enthusiastically, clasping his fingers together. "Unless we're going to train every American citizen and soldier in 16 different languages we have to develop a technology that allows them to understand - whatever country they are in - what's going on around them. "I hope in the future we'll be able to have conversations, if say you're speaking in French and I'm speaking in English, and it will be natural." "And the computer will do the translation?"
"Yep. All by computer," he said. "And this idea about a total surveillance society," I asked. "Is that science fiction?" "No, that's not science fiction. We're developing an unmanned airplane - a UAV - which may be able to stay up five years with cameras on it, constantly being cued to look here and there. This is done today to a limited amount in Baghdad. But it's the way to go."
Smarter technology Interestingly, we, the public, don't seem to mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance. Some American cities like New York and Chicago are thinking of taking a lead from Britain where our movements are monitored round the clock by four million CCTV cameras. So far there is no gadget that can actually see inside our houses, but even that's about to change. Ian Kitajima flew to Washington from his laboratories in Hawaii to show me sense-through-the-wall technology. "Each individual has a characteristic profile," explained Ian, holding a green rectangular box that looked like a TV remote control. Using radio waves, you point it a wall and it tells you if anyone is on the other side. His company, Oceanit, is due to test it with the Hawaiian National Guard in Iraq next year, and it turns out that the human body gives off such sensitive radio signals, that it can even pick up breathing and heart rates. "First, you can tell whether someone is dead or alive on the battlefield," said Ian. "But it will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking." He glanced at me quizzically, noticing my apprehension. "Yeah, I know," he said. "It sounds very Star Trekkish, but that's what's ahead." |
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The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web. Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation. Sir Tim spoke prior to the unveiling of a Foundation he has co-created that aims to make the web truly worldwide. It will also look at ways to help people decide if sites are trustworthy and reliable sources of information. Future proof Sir Tim talked to the BBC in the week in which Cern, where he did his pioneering work on the web, turned on the Large Hadron Collider for the first time. The use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth particularly concerned him, he said. In a similar vein was the spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine given to children in Britain was harmful. Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources. "On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he said. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging." Sir Tim and colleagues at the World Wide Web consortium had looked at simple ways of branding websites - but concluded that a whole variety of different mechanisms was needed.
"I'm not a fan of giving a website a simple number like an IQ rating because like people they can vary in all kinds of different ways," he said. "So I'd be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways". Sir Tim spoke to the BBC to publicise the launch of his World Wide Web Foundation which aims to improve the web's accessibility. Alongside this role it will aim to make it easier for people to get online. Currently only 20% of the world's population have access to the web "Has it been designed by the West for the West?" asked Sir Tim. "Has it been designed for the executive and the teenager in the modern city with a smart phone in their pocket? If you are in a rural community do you need a different kind of web with different kinds of facilities?" Creative medium The Web Foundation will also explore ways to make the web more mobile-phone friendly. That would increase its use in Africa and other poor parts of the world where there are few computers but plenty of handsets. The Foundation will also look at how the benefits of the web can be taken to those who cannot read or write. "We're talking about the evolution of the web," he said. "Perhaps by using gestures or pointing. When something is such a creative medium as the web, the limits to it are our imagination". The Foundation will also look at concerns that the web has become less democratic, and its use influenced too much by large corporations and vested interests. "I think that question is very important and may be settled in the next few years," said Sir Tim. "One of the things I always remain concerned about is that that medium remains neutral," he said. "It's not just where I go to decide where to buy my shoes which is the commercial incentive - it's where I go to decide who I'm going to trust to vote," he said. "It's where I go maybe to decide what sort of religion I'm going to belong to or not belong to; it's where I go to decide what is actual scientific truth - what I'm actually going to go along with and what is bunkum". |






The US has proposed new rules that would require internet firms to respect the principle of "network neutrality".
The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that "all web traffic should be treated equally".
The new rules are intended to prevent firms throttling bandwidth-sapping web traffic such as streaming video.
Networks on both sides of the Atlantic have long argued for a two-tier system, where those that can pay are given priority over those that cannot.
"There are few goals more essential in the communications landscape than preserving and maintaining an open and robust internet," FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
"It is vital that the internet continue to be an engine of innovation, economic growth, competition and democratic engagement."
It is the first time that the Chairman has spoken out on the issue since being appointed in June.
'Extraordinary platform'
He proposed two new rules to guide the FCC's approach to network neutrality.
The first would prevent internet service providers (ISPs) from discriminating against bandwidth-intensive web-content and applications by slowing or blocking it.
"They cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favouring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers' homes," he said.
"Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider."
The second would mean that ISPs would have to be more transparent about how they manage network traffic.
The two new rules join four previous guiding principles of the FCC, which state that all consumers must be able to access "lawful" content, applications, and services, and attach non-harmful devices to the network.
"I believe the FCC must be a smart cop on the beat preserving a free and open internet," Mr Genachowski said.
"This is not about government regulation of the internet," he added. "It's about fair rules of the road for companies that control access to the internet."
President Barack Obama backed the concept of network neutrality in the presidential race. It also has the support of large companies such as Google, eBay and Amazon.
However, telecommunications firms on both sides of the Atlantic argue that carrying high-bandwidth content, such as video, puts an extra burden on their networks and costs them money.
They argue the cost should, in part, be borne by the websites or the consumers.
The new rules will be formally proposed at a meeting in October.






