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Nancy Scola.

Last week on the PdF Network call Nancy Scola guided us through an in-depth tour of the key challenges facing the internet today:

-Whither net neutrality, i.e. whether the people who control the networks should be able to discriminate or privilege the content that flows across those networks. The FCC is still working on its fairly weak rules aiming at protecting net neutrality for content moving through wires and taking a hands-off approach to the wireless space. And even that is being opposed by many Members of Congress.

-The ongoing 'intellectual property' fights, where you have, in particular, groups like the recording industry and the movie industry pushing for government regulators and companies to figure out innovative ways to police who might be trading a music file or movie file online. As Nancy pointed out, this is a big one. In the U.S., the latest attempt to get Congress to secure the ‘net for the big content creators has been going after the domain name system, that part of the

Internet that translates numeric IP address into names, like Google.com or MoveOn.org. The move is to force the groups that make the trains run on the Internet, like the domain registrars, to shut down websites that might somehow be infringing upon copyright. The threat there is that you’re calling into battle a naming system that makes the Internet work.

-Who controls the data? There’s an enormous amount of data that we transmit about ourselves as we use these digital technologies. The web tracks what we look at. And it's a very serious question who gets to do what with all that information.

-The power of big platform sites, like Facebook, YouTube, the iTunes store, and even Google. So much of our online conversation happens through third-party sites that look like the public square but aren’t. As Nancy asked, are we comfortable with Apple deciding what goes and what stays in the iTunes store? Are we comfortable with Amazon kicking Wikileaks off of its cloud servers?

-Last but not least is access to the Internet. We all know that the U.S. lags behind when it comes to providing good, affordable Internet. The Obama administration tried with the introduction of a National Broadband Plan that it released last March, but that didn’t say much and hasn’t really gone much of anywhere. The trends in wireless aren’t that encouraging. So many people in the U.S. and around the world get online using a cell phone or other mobile device, so we have to pay particular attention to that entry point to the Internet. In the U.S. one thing to keep a real eye on is AT&T’s plan to buy T-Mobile, which would shrink the number of competitors who provide cell phone service in the United States.

If you missed the call you can listen to it in its entirety below.

Podcast for: The Internet's Future- Will it be Free?

-download podcast here

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