February 27, 2015 archive

Feb 27

TDYR 226 – Changing My Role At The Internet Society

My role is changing at the Internet Society... more info here: http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2015/02/changing-my-role-at-the-internet-society-content-strategy-across-all-areas.html

Feb 27

Changing My Role At The Internet Society – Content Strategy Across All Areas

Internet Society LogoMonday will represent a big change for me at the Internet Society. Effective on that day I will be moving out of the Technology area into the Communications team with a broader charter to help in the creation of content - and a strategy for that content - across all the areas in which the Internet Society works. I'll still be doing a great bit of writing about technology topics, but I'll now be doing more related to public policy, development (of Internet access) and other topics.

I'm excited about the new role!

It's only 3.5 years ago that I joined the Internet Society in September 2011. To understand why I joined "ISOC", as it is know by some, you need to go back and read my post about the big change then, but essentially, it came down to this:

I believe we are at a critical point where we have before us a choice of futures for the Internet - and we as a society need to understand those choices... and choose wisely!

3.5 years later I believe that even MORE firmly than I did then.

We need to fight for the open Internet! We need to make the right choices that will allow our children to have the "Internet of opportunity" that we've had the privilege of having... and we've got quite a struggle ahead!

Over the past 3.5 years my focus within the Internet Society has been primarily on the Deploy360 Programme, our project to accelerate the deployment and usage of critical Internet technologies such as IPv6, DNSSEC, TLS, and more. It's been an awesome opportunity. I built out the Deploy360 website ... set up all the WordPress-based systems so that we could rapidly create and distribute content... wrote probably 1,000 pieces of content... recorded videos and audio segments... spoke at our ION conferences all over the world... attended IETF and ICANN meetings... and met some of the most amazing and passionate people I've ever encountered!

Along the way, I've wound up doing a great bit of work with DNSSEC, aiming to help make the Domain Name System (DNS) more secure - and I'll actually be continuing all of this "DNSSEC coordination" work on into my new role.

As part of the Deployment and Operationalization (DO) Team, we've been out there telling the story of how these technologies and standards can make the Internet work better, be faster and be more secure. It's hard to know exactly how much impact we've had... but we've received a good number of messages from people thanking us for helping them. It's been great to see!

And it's been great to wake up each morning working for an organization with a very clear mission.

Along the way we've had a lot of conversations internally about how the Internet Society needs to tell its story better. We're a large organization with over 60,000 member and over 100 chapters spread out around the world. We don't have a huge staff (about 90 people globally) but we have a large community and ecosystem of volunteers and members. We have a lot of different parts and pieces (and hey, you can join, too)... and we've been working on a great number of activities around the world.

In 2015, we're aiming to focus a bit more - and to get better as an organization at telling our story and helping people understand the work we do and the challenges that we as a society and world face.

As part of that, we have a new head of our communications team, James Wood, to whom I'll now be reporting, and we have a great bit of other changes underway. It's an exciting time!

Effectively what I'll be doing is expanding my content creation beyond just the technology side of Internet Society work to also write about topics such as public policy - in fact I've already started that with posts such as my one about the fundamental tension between security and privacy and the series of posts I wrote from ICANN 52.

More than just writing, though, I'll be working with authors across our organization to have a better strategy so that we are consistently creating quality content and maximizing the distribution. We produce a lot of content... so this will be a challenging, but interesting, role!

I'll also be working on ensuring we as the Internet Society have on voice on new and emerging topics... being a bit more "forward-looking" than we've been in the past. (Which ties in nicely with my whole "view of the crow's nest" orientation).

And, as I mentioned, I'll still be focused around accelerating DNSSEC deployment around the world... so I'll still have a foot deep in the technology realm!

Content strategy, technology, writing, forward-looking thinking... all in the service of ensuring the Internet remains open for innovation and opportunity!

It's really a dream for me... the opportunity to be even more of a voice for the open Internet... and I'm looking forward to making it happen!

That's the news from here... and I do have to end with thanking my current manager of the DO Team, Chris Grundemann, and also Olaf Kolkmann, our Chief Internet Technology Officer (CITO), both of whom have been incredibly supportive of me moving into this new role. It's been great working for them - and now the good news is that I'll still be working with them!

P.S. And in truth, while the role officially starts on Monday, I'm actually going to be preparing for and then speaking at the NTEN conference in Austin, TX, next week (about our choice of Internet futures!)... and so the new role really won't get underway until the following week!

An audio commentary is also available at:

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Feb 27

Net Neutrality: Did We "Win" A Battle, Only To Possibly Lose The War?

FCC logo

Friends don't understand why I'm not jumping for joy after the FCC's "Network Neutrality" decision yesterday.  After all, they've been hearing me passionately argue for years about how we need to wake up and pay attention to the choices we have to make for the future of the Internet.  They've heard me rail against the Internet access providers here in the US who seek to be the new gatekeepers and require people to ask permission or pay to get new services online.  They've heard me strongly say that "The Internet Way" is for services to be "decentralized and distributed".  They've seen me write about "permissionless innovation" and the dangers we could face.  In fact, I'll be in Austin, TX, next week speaking at the NTEN conference about "Our Choice of Internet Futures". 

They know that I joined the Internet Society in 2011 specifically to fight for the open Internet - and that a large goal in my life is to be one of the voices helping advocate for the open Internet and ensuring that my children have the same "Internet of opportunity" that I've been able to have.  Friends could hear in the closing words of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler many of the same phrases and words that I have been so passionately advocating about over many years.  
 
Why, then, am I not dancing in the streets?
 
Two reasons.
 
1. What Is In The FCC Order? - Seemingly lost in all the media euphoria yesterday was a basic fact:
WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FCC ACTUALLY VOTED ON!
No one outside the FCC Commissioners and their staffs have seen the actual "Order" that the FCC voted on yesterday.  Sure, we've heard all the lofty rhetoric and seen the summaries... but the rumors are that the actual document is over 300 pages and full of details.
 
Perhaps I’m just cynical, but the telecommunications industry in the United States employs hundreds of lawyers in Washington, DC, to influence and shape legislation and regulations in ways that benefit the telecom industry - and they've been doing so for over 100 years.  And so while some of the companies may line up to file lawsuits against this FCC Order, odds are very good that their lobbyists and specialists have been hard at work attempting to shape these new regulations. I know some people at the FCC who are strong open Internet advocates and who I'm sure are trying to do the right thing... but I also know that 300+ pages has a whole lot of room for things to slip in.
 
My greatest fear is that when we actually see the full text, we may find that while there are some provisions we like, there are many others we don't - and there may be loopholes big enough to drive an entire residential network through.  

CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince captured this well in his thoughtful blog post:
    
"The other problem with rules is that they are brittle. Teams of lawyers will comb through whatever the FCC finally publishes and find any loopholes. There will be defined bright lines going forward and, make no mistake, ISPs will now get as close to those lines as they can. Whatever the Internet's rough consensus of "acceptable" was before, it's about to be thrown out in favor of a set of rules written by lawyers. Ironically, that may end up resulting in a regulated network that is less neutral than what we have today."
 
2. The Internet Is Not (or WAS Not) The Telephone Network - For so many years (in fact, decades for some people), we who are advocates of the open Internet have said at every chance we could one simple fact:
The Internet is NOT the telephone network.  The Internet is NOT the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).
 
And therefore the Internet should NOT be regulated like the traditional telecom network.  The Internet should not fall under traditional telecom legislation and regulation.  The Internet should not be regulated by the traditional telecom authorities and telecom regulators.  
 
You cannot apply the old rules of telecom to the new world of the Internet.
 
The Internet is something new.  The Internet is NOT telecom.   Again and again and again and again we've all said this.  Going back many, many years.
 
If you remember back to 2012 and the whole World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) where so many were concerned that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) was going to try to assert authority over the Internet, millions of us around the world rallied together to encourage our advocates in governments and organizations to say at WCIT that: 

The Internet is NOT telecom.  You cannot apply the old rules of telecom to the new world of the Internet.
 
And the outcome of WCIT was that the Internet was left alone and was recognized as being outside the scope of a treaty focused on telecommunications/telephony.
 
We all within the Internet have been saying this consisistently again and again:
The Internet is NOT telecom.  Those are old rules - we are living in a new medium.
 
But guess what?  
 
Yesterday's ruling by the FCC says (as best we understand it) - the Internet does fall under telecommunication regulations.  Internet service providers should be classified under Title II just like all the other telecommunications service providers.
 
The FCC has effectively said: 
The Internet IS telecom.  The old rules DO apply.
I am not sure that is something to celebrate.
 
Many countries around the world have followed the lead of the US in treating the Internet lightly - but now that the FCC is effectively declaring the Internet to be like the telephone network, what is to stop those countries from doing the same?  Indeed what is to prevent the ITU from now using this action to justify a larger role for it in regulating the Internet?  After all, it's just telecom now.
 
I would have personally been far happier if the U.S. Congress had come up with new legislation that enshrined the principles of the open Internet in a new form  of legislation that didn't carry with it all the legacy baggage of 100 years of telecom regulation. Yes, the legions of lawyers might have made it a hard fight, but it would have at least been something new - and at least we would have known more of what was actually being voted on. But that didn't happen - and so here we are today.
 
The "devil is in the details", as they say... and now we have to wait to see what exactly the FCC actually did yesterday.  I'd like to be wrong and just be cynical and jaded.  I fear that I am right.
 
I applaud FCC Chairman Wheeler for the lofty language he and the other commissioners used yesterday.  It is a huge victory to have the heads of the FCC saying publicly so many of the things that so many of us have been advocating about for so many years.  It is also a huge victory to have so many millions of people, not just in the US but all around the world, rise up and pay attention to these issues as a result of this whole issue here in the U.S. That is HUGE.  We've needed something like this to wake people up to the choices we have to make.
 
But I do worry that in "winning" this victory yesterday, we may in fact be setting ourselves up to lose the larger war to keep the Internet open.

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Feb 27

WordPress iOS App Now Has WYSIWIG Visual Editor

Writing blog posts for a WordPress site on an iPad or iPhone just got a whole lot easier! Or... at least, a whole lot prettier! With the new version 4.8 out this week, Automattic included a new visual editor that can give the "what you see is what you get (WYSIWIG)" experience:

Wordpress 4 8 wysiwig

Here is what it looked like before the change on my iPad - basically, it was just a raw HTML editor:

WordPress ios app before upgrade

There was a preview mode that would let you see what it was going to look like, but all the writing was in HTML. No big deal if you are a long-time HTML coder like me... but probably not the most fun for newer writers - and the HTML markup is also distracting.

Here is what the new post-upgrade view is:

WP iOS app after upgrade

A much nicer view - and also some of the commonly-used features are more accessible. There's also the "HTML" button for those who want to get into the actual HTML code.

The WordPress.com blog post about the new iOS version gets into a few of the other features that the new app has. I do like the updates to the navigation. I haven't yet worked with the new image settings, but look forward to doing so.

Anyway, if you haven't yet upgraded the WordPress app on your iOS device, you may want to do so... and if you haven't tried the app in a while you may want to give it a new try.

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Feb 27

Speaking At NTEN 15NTC Conference In Austin About Our Choice Of Internet Futures

I'm delighted to be speaking next Wednesday, March 4, 2015, at the 2015 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in Austin, Texas, on the topic of "A Choice Of Internet Futures - Will Nonprofits Be Stuck In the Slow Lane?"  The event, sponsored by the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) will bring together over 2,000 people involved with nonprofit organizations around the world to learn and share information.

Dan York

Feb 27

Main IETF Website Returns To Being DNSSEC Signed Via CloudFlare

Good news this week for DNSSEC and content-distribution-networks (CDNs)! Last year the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) decided to move the main IETF web site over to a CDN to speed up access to IETF web pages for people trying to reach them all over the world.   While this sped up access to the IETF’s content, it unfortunately meant that the main IETF website had to lose its DNSSEC signature because the CDN vendor, CloudFlare, did not yet support DNSSEC.  (I’d note that this was only the main IETF web site – other IETF web sites such as the datatracker and tools sites continued to be DNSSEC-signed.)

Those of us advocating for DNSSEC were naturally disappointed by this move last year, but we understood the need and also understood that CloudFlare was committed to bringing DNSSEC to their customers – and indeed we’ve been writing about CloudFlare’s journey towards DNSSEC.

So this week we were very pleased to see this announcement by IETF Chair Jari Arkko:

Some time ago we moved the static parts of the IETF web page to a CDN service. While this provided a significant improvements for page load times and retained our ability to serve the pages over IPv6, we were unable to provide DNSSEC for the web pages that were being served by the CDN.

Our CDN vendor, Cloudfare, however, has worked in the background to enable DNSSEC for their customers. They have now come back with a system that we have enabled for the IETF web pages. (Thank you Cloudfare, this was important!)

We plan to keep the new arrangement on at http://dnssec.ietf.org for a while before finally moving to this arrangement on http://www.ietf.org. Testing the new arrangement on dnssec.ietf.org would be appreciated!

Jari Arkko, IETF Chair

As noted, the main IETF website is NOT yet DNSSEC-signed at the regular “www.ietf.org” but is instead available with a DNSSEC signature at http://dnssec.ietf.org while everything is tested out.

Regardless, this is great news for DNSSEC, for the IETF … and also as a demonstration that CloudFlare’s implementation is obviously getting that much closer to being available!

Please do check out http://dnssec.ietf.org and give it any kind of DNSSEC-related tests that you can!

IETF web site

And if you haven’t gotten started with DNSSEC yet, please visit our Start Here page to find out how you can begin!