December 13, 2011 archive

Dec 13

Video Recording Now Available of FCC Dec 6th Workshop on PSTN Transition (Featured Blog)

If you missed attending or listening to the live stream of the US Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) workshop on the transition of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to new technologies that was held last week on December 6th, the FCC has very nicely made a video recording available from their website for viewing... FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski also appeared briefly to provide a few comments. More...

Dec 13

Internet Society Joins Chorus of Those Opposing SOPA

IsoclogoYesterday the Internet Society formally joined the opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (a.k.a. "SOPA" - background info available) with a statement from the Internet Society Board of Trustees:

http://isoc.org/wp/newsletter/?p=4932

The statement says in part:

The Internet Society Board of Trustees has expressed concern with a number of U.S. legislative proposals that would mandate DNS blocking and filtering by ISPs to protect the interests of copyright holders. While the Internet Society agrees that combating illicit online activity is an important public policy objective, these critical issues must be addressed in ways that do not undermine the viability of the Internet as a platform for innovation across all industries by compromising its global architecture. The Internet Society Board of Trustees does not believe that the Protect-IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are consistent with these basic principles.

Specifically, the Internet Society is concerned with provisions in both bills regarding Domain Name System (DNS) filtering. DNS filtering is often proposed as a way to block illegal content consumption by end users. Yet policies to mandate DNS filtering will be ineffective for that purpose and will interfere with cross-border data flows and services undermining innovation and social development across the globe.

The statement goes on in further detail to outline the organization's concerns.

The opposition of the Internet Society to SOPA is not a surprise given that the organization issued a white paper on the perils of DNS Filtering back in the spring of 2011 in response to the U.S. Senate's version of the bill, the Protect-IP Act (a.k.a. "PIPA"). Still, a formal statement of opposition is very welcome to add to the many other voices indicating that SOPA and PIPA specify the wrong solutions to the problem.

Great to see!

[Full Disclosure: I am employed by the Internet Society but NOT in the public policy section and so all opinions expressed here are entirely my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the organization.]

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Dec 13

New WordPress 3.3 Available With Much Simpler User Interface, Uploading

The folks over at Automattic announced last night that WordPress 3.3 is now out and, as per usual, provided a spiffy little video to highlight the new changes:

I've already updated one of my sites and am indeed impressed by the simpler and cleaner UI. Just as one very simple example, it was always annoying in earlier versions of WordPress that you had to click on the down arrow in the left navigation admin menu to get to the menu choices. The new fly-out menus are a whole lot easier! Similarly, the simplification of the upload process to a single button is a nice step.

There are a veritable TON of other changes and fixes for those interested in the gory details:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.3

All in all it looks like quite a solid release. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works on my other sites!

P.S. WordPress 3.3 is available for immediate download, although if you are running any recent version of WordPress you can simply "update" your site (after backing it up!) through the admin menus.

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