Dan York

Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...

Author's posts

Nov 22

3 Whitepapers You Need To Read To Understand How SOPA Could Damage DNS And Decrease Security

US Capital
How exactly will the proposed "Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA)" impact the DNS infrastructure of the Internet? What are the technical and engineering problems caused by the proposed bill? How will the bill actually DECREASE our national cybersecurity?

I covered the basics of SOPA (HR.3261) and its companion bill in the Senate, S.968, the "PROTECT-IP Act", last week and and in the time since I wrote that post the public opposition to SOPA has mounted dramatically as people have come to understand what exactly these bills will do. Like many, I applaud the intent of these bills to protect intellectual property, but am concerned that the mandated mechanism of "DNS filtering" proposed by these bills will have serious negative consequences.

If you want to understand the technical issues with the proposed mechanism, there are three whitepapers I would recommend for reading - and for sharing with your legislators. (I've sent the links in to my representatives.) I'd note that the first two documents were prepared back in the spring of 2011 to address the U.S. Senate's version, the PROTECT-IP Act, but the mechanism proposed in SOPA is essentially the same.

  • Internet Society Perspectives on Domain Name System (DNS) Filtering (direct link to English PDF)
    In this easy-to-read paper, the Internet Society explains why DNS filtering is not a solution, how the mechanism can be easily circumvented and how it will "not solve the problem, interfere with cross-border data flows and services, and undermine the Internet as a single, unified, global communications network." The document discusses the issues of "collateral damage" of website blockage, explains some of the non-technical issues and provides links to further resources.
  • Security and Other Technical Concerns Raised by the DNS Filtering Requirements in the PROTECT IP Bill (PDF)
    This whitepaper was written by 5 of the leading DNS designers, operators and researchers and dives into significant technical depth. In particular, it looks at how the proposed DNS filtering mechanism would break the implementation of DNSSEC, a newer method being deployed to help secure the DNS infrastructure. The paper, too, addresses how easily DNS filtering can be bypassed (and provides very simple examples demonstrating this) and the security issues that come with that circumvention. It also looks at the "collateral damage" issue, the impact to content delivery networks (CDNs) and the overall impact that DNS filtering would have to the Internet.
  • Cybersecurity in the Balance: Weighing the Risks of the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act
    This recent paper from Allan A. Friedman, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution, frames the SOPA/PROTECT-IP debate in terms of the impact to national cybersecurity. It again covers the issues with DNS filtering, impacts to DNSSEC, unintended consequences, etc., but does so from the point-of-view of how this will affect the cybersecurity position of the U.S., both domestically and at an international level.

All three of these papers are good to read (and share) to understand the technical weaknesses of the proposed solutions in SOPA/PROTECT-IP.

Please do pass them along so that people can understand the technical issues with these proposed solutions.

Image credit: jasonippolito on Flickr

Please note that this blog post represents my personal opinion and has no connection whatsoever to any employers or other organizations, either past or present.

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Nov 22

How The NFL Loses With Its Copyright Takedown Notices On Video Clips

I'm not a regular football fan. Sure, I enjoy watching a game if it's on somewhere and I might watch the playoffs or Super Bowl... but watching football is not part of my daily/weekly routine.

Still, when I saw an tweet about the video of an amazing touchdown run, I went to go look because such feats are often great to watch.

But... after pressing the "play" icon, here's what greeted me:

Nflcopyrightclaim

Yep, the NFL apparently issued a copyright claim to YouTube to have this clip taken down.

IT WAS A 43 SECOND VIDEO CLIP!

43 seconds.

My initial thoughts, of course, were extremely negative to the NFL ("What a bunch of losers!").

My second thought was... oh, well, there are a ton of other interesting sports and other video clips to see.

NFL Loss #1: Any Potential Interest I Might Have Had

Right then, the NFL had a moment to engage with me and remind me again of how exciting the game can be!

Maybe I might have said to myself that I should watch games some more and perhaps take up my brother-in-law on his invite to come over and watch the Patriots play. Maybe I might have read up more about what was going on within football. Maybe I might have looked for some other football video clips.

Regardless, I would have been more positive about football and the NFL.

Instead it just leaves me with a negative attitude toward the NFL and no further interest in looking for more football info.

I'm even less a fan now.

NFL Loss #2: Viral Sharing

Note the "Share This Story" part of the screenshot above:

Nflcopyrightclaim sharing

Consider those stats:

  • 831 people liked this page, with the result being that the link to this page went out in the new Facebook Ticker to be potentially seen by their friends. How many people might have seen that? hundreds? thousands?

  • 293 people specifically shared this post out into their Facebook NewsFeed, meaning that their friends would see it in their feeds. Once in Facebook it can be shared out again by others. Again, how many people? hundreds? thousands?

  • 8 people clicked the "tweet" button on this page. Countless others could have tweeted it out through other tools, or retweeted those tweets.

  • 25 people emailed it using this interface.

  • 4 people "+1"'d it.

And this only shows the numbers of people who shared the story using this widget. The story may have been shared many other times via other routes. The link to the video on YouTube may have been shared out through many other ways, too. (And YouTube no longer shows the stats for the video, so we have no idea how many people actually watched it.)

So how many people saw the link to this story? hundreds? thousands? more? fewer? Hard to say... but some number saw it and did what I did - clicked over to see what sounded like an interesting video to watch.

And all of them got the same message... that the NFL had a copyright claim on this particular video.

And odds are that they won't blame the news story or the Huffington Post for linking to the video... instead they'll mentally blame the NFL for asserting a copyright claim.

And there will be no further re-sharing...

43 Seconds

Now I completely "get" that the NFL needs to defend the copyright it has on it's content. I create my own content and have done so for many years both for myself and my various employers. I fully understand the need for protecting intellectual property.

But a 43 second video clip?

Granted, it might have been the most exciting 43 seconds of that entire game... I don't know, since I didn't watch it.

But would it have killed the NFL to make that short clip available?

It would really be "marketing" for the sport of football. It might have gotten more people talking about the sport ("Wow, did you see that amazing touchdown run?"). It would have spread virally as people shared it even more with others.

I know, I know... it's a "slippery slope" and if the NFL doesn't assert it's copyright where it can then it opens the doors for many others to post videos. And I don't know the rest of the story. Maybe this particular YouTube user has repeatedly posted copyrighted video clips. Maybe there's an "official" video clip that the NFL wants people to use... maybe... maybe... maybe...

But still, 43 seconds?

P.S. And a quick google search shows that the clip is still available on other sites...

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Nov 21

An Interesting Historical Timeline of Canadian Telecommunications

Canadian Flag

Last week I was up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for the Internet Society's ION conference that was a part of the larger Canadian ISP Summit. This was only the first Canadian ISP Summit, but I've heard only excellent reports on the 3-day session and indeed we were extremely pleased by the attendance and engagement in our ION session on Monday. I was unfortunately unable to stay for the rest of the summit, but I saw this link tweeted out and had to check it out:

Historical Timeline of Canadian Telecommunications Achievements (PDF)

It turns out to be a document created for a presentation at the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly back in 2000 (hence, why the history only goes up to 1999 ;-). I'm assuming someone at the CA ISP Summit referenced this document... thus generating the tweets.

Regardless of the lack of recent info, it's an interesting history of telecom in Canada... and gives an intriguing view into the wiring of a large country. Worth a read for those interested in the history of telecom.

Image credit: dr_opulentfish on Flickr

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Nov 21

Must Read Piece from SEOmoz: "Duplicate Content in a Post-Panda World"

Duplicatecontent seomoz

What is the impact of "duplicate content" on the search engine ranking of your web content? What are the different ways you can wind up with duplicate content? And perhaps most importunely, how can you correct the issue?

Over at the SEOmoz "Daily SEO Blog", Dr. Pete has written a truly MUST-READ piece for anyone working with web content:

Duplicate Content in a Post-Panda World

It is a LONG, comprehensive piece that explains how Google's recent "Panda" update impacts scoring of "duplicate content" and what you can do about it. He covers:

  1. What is Duplicate Content?
  2. Why Do Duplicates Matter?
  3. Three Kinds of Duplicates
  4. Tools for Fixing Duplicates
  5. Examples of Duplicate Content
  6. Which URL is Canonical?
  7. Tools for Diagnosing Duplicates

The article has a great series of examples and links out to all sorts of resources to learn more. Although SEO has been part of what I've done for many years, I definitely learned a few new things from this piece. It's definitely worth a read!

Kudos to "Dr. Pete" for writing - and sharing - such a useful piece.

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Nov 18

OMG! Skype Simultaneously Releases (Almost) The Same Version on Windows and Mac OS X

when pigs fly

Yesterday I sat in such utter shock that I had to look out my window to see if, in fact, we were witnessing porcine aviation. My brain was having a hard time processing something I had just read online. I literally was speechless, which, if you know anything about me, is a very hard state for me to attain. :-)

What created this cognitive dissonance?

You see...

Skype just announced the simultaneous release of new versions of Skype for BOTH Windows and Mac OS X.

Even more, the two versions almost have feature parity.

Yes, indeed, you can now get the Skype 5.7 beta for Windows and the Skype 5.4 beta for Mac OS X, both of which introduce a "Facebook video calling" feature, and both of which bring the two releases closer to "feature parity".

Why is this a big deal?

If you have been reading this site for any length of time, you have probably seen some of these posts:

I - and others - have continually asked the question for years now of why Skype couldn't release its product simultaneously on at least Windows and Mac OS X. The answers always given were the lame corporate-speak about "delivering the best experience on each platform", blah, blah, blah...

But the truth is that the siloed development of each platform meant that Windows users would get some features, then Mac users would get some features, then Windows users some more, then Mac users some more... and the net result was that whenever a new feature was released, you couldn't try it with people who were on the other platform.

Meanwhile, many other products from web browsers even to softphones (from Counterpath) were all able to come out with a simultaneous product release across multiple operating systems.

I admit that I had come to expect that we'd probably see a full deployment of IPv6 on the public Internet before we'd see a simultaneous product release out of Skype...

Kudos to Skype for finally getting it (almost) right with this release, even if it is still a "beta" release!

(And with apologies to the users of Skype on Linux who pretty much have to accept at this point that their chance of getting feature parity with Windows and Mac OSX are right up there with the odds of the Pope converting to Judaism.)

The (Almost) Caveat

Of course, you'll notice that I keep using "almost" here... the fact is that this is NOT the same product brought out on two different operating systems, but rather the coordination of the release of two different products.

Remote-Control Flying Pig

As Jim Courtney notes in his own post on these new releases the user interfaces are still different in ways that make it challenging to explain to someone on the other platform how to do something in Skype. There are still terminology differences ('categories' versus 'tags'). On the Mac version I still can't pop a chat out into a separate window as I'm told you can do in the Windows version (and we used to be able to do with Skype 2.8 for the Mac). Even in these announcements, the 5.7 beta for Windows mentions a "Push to Talk" feature which I don't see in the 5.4 beta for Mac. (Indeed I can't find any way to set "hot keys" on my Mac, which actually could be useful.)

Not that I personally really want the "Push to Talk" feature... but it's an example of the continued fragmentation of the two products.

So I celebrate the fact that Skype finally delivered a new feature simultaneously across both platforms - great work to all involved!

And yes, now I naturally want the rest of the parity between platforms... ;-)

Image credits: kiss kiss bang bang and eric_liu76 on Flickr

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Nov 16

Google+ Expands Chat/IM To Your Circles – And Across All Google Services

Gplusicon
Google announced a few minutes ago that they are rolling out new capabilities to the chat services inside of Google+. When the expanded gets out to all users over the next 48 hours, you will be able to chat with someone as long as you both have each other in a "circle".[1] What I found more intriguing was this note:
When you and your contacts have each other in Circles, you'll be able to chat with them across Google properties such as Gmail, Google Plus, iGoogle, Orkut, and the Google Talk Client.

So your Google+ contacts will now be integrated very tightly with your Gmail and other contacts and you will be able to chat with them from whichever service you are in at the moment. Multiple interviews with folks at Google have said that Google+ was the path to further tie together the various Google services... and now we're seeing that in action.

More info here:

[1] i.e. you have added them to a circle and they have added you to a circle - it won't work if only one of you has added the other to a circle.

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Nov 11

The US Congress, PROTECT IP, SOPA, E-PARASITES… and the War For the Open Internet

US Capital
If you are a U.S. citizen and have NOT been paying attention to the madness going on in the US Congress right now with regard to the Internet, you really NEED to take a look...

If you have a website, you need to be paying attention...

If you own a domain name, you need to be paying attention...

Backed by the traditional media industries (and all their lobbying $$$) the U.S. Senate and House are considering legislation that would seriously break the Internet as we know it. Rather than the DMCA "takedown notices" that have been used to date, these new bills would require ISPs to disable access to websites.

Basically it would give corporations the ability to manipulate (through ISPs) the DNS system to block access to content that they feel is objectionable or violates their copyrights, etc.

I think we all can generally agree that stopping online piracy and illegal activities is a good goal. As well as being a consumer of online content, I am also a creator of online content, and sure, I don't want my content pirated and mis-used by others...

but a "simple" technical solution is NOT the answer!

On a purely technical point-of-view, the Internet Society has issued a DNS Filtering White Paper on why this type of filtering is not a solution to combating illegal activities... and the danger such filtering has to the fabric of the Internet and to users themselves.

In the US Senate, the bill is S.968, the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP)" Act (also known as "PIPA") while over in the house it was first known as the "E-PARASITE bill (the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act)" and now has been introduced as H.3261, the "Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)".

There has been a great amount of online content generated around this issue. Some of the articles I found useful include:

PopVox has an interesting comparison of the organizations supporting and opposing S.968 and HR.3261. Look at the "Organizations Supporting" and "Organizations Opposing" tabs, although I believe there are more opposing orgs than simply those listed... still, it gives a view of the players involved.

The battle is going on right now with one of the latest updates being that tech industry reps were denied a seat at next week's House hearings and that now the 4 presenters to the committee will all be pro-SOPA entities.

Please... take a moment to read these links above... read even more... educate yourself on what the issues are - and let your opinion be known to your representatives in the U.S. House and Senate. Please spread the word online, too, as we who are users of the Internet need to let our voices be heard...

Image credit: jasonippolito on Flickr

UPDATE #1: Alex Howard has a great collection of SOPA/PIPA-related links, including a video of Senator Ron Wyden (the senator currently putting a "hold" on the PROTECT IP bill in the Senate).

UPDATE #2: While I began this post "If you are a U.S. citizen", Neville Hobson correctly pointed out that those outside the U.S. need to be concerned, too, as this type of government intervention in the Internet by the US government, if successful, will certainly spread to other governments. Plus, any issues affecting DNS will naturally have impacts outside the USA.

Please note that this blog post represents my personal opinion and has no connection whatsoever to any employers or other organizations, either past or present.

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Nov 11

The Google vs Amazon Platform Rant – A Must-Read From Steve Yegge

Google logo

What does Amazon.com do so much better than Google? And why does Amazon do everything “wrong” while Google does everything “right”… yet offer a better platform? How should you construct a “platform” so that everyone can use it?

If you are a developer, IT manager, product manager, system architect, product marketer, CTO or even a CEO, you really need to take a bit to read this “Mother of all Reply-All failures” that was written by Googler Steve Yegge and accidentally posted publicly back on October 12th. Steve pulled down his own posting of the rant, but it was re-posted to Google+ by Rip Rowan and also posted over to Hacker News. The long rant – and the comments on both sites – are worth a read:

It’s a LONG piece that gives some fascinating insight into both Amazon and Google as companies, but also into what it takes to be a “platform”.

A bit later, on October 21st, Steve Yegge posted an update indicating that he did not get fired and in fact people actually listened within Google. He also dove a bit more into Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos. And just this week he wrote a lengthy piece describing how amazing it is to work at Google, explaining a bit more about what he meant in his rant about how Google “does everything right”.

The original platform rant, though, should definitely be on a “must-read” list for people thinking about how their services could really be a “platform”…

P.S. Are we connected on Google+? If not, you can find my Google+ profile and add me to a circle…

Nov 10

Sweet! Apple iOS 5.0.1 Is Available Over-The-Air (OTA) – Faster and No iTunes Required!

For those of use with iOS devices, news of today's iOS 5.0.1 that fixes battery issues was welcome... and along with it the news that this update is available "over-the-air" (OTA). NO iTUNES SYNC REQUIRED!

Just go into Settings, then General, then Software Update. Per this article on Mashable, your device needs to either be plugged in or have over 50% battery.

Here's what it looked like on my iPad:

Ios501 ota

The Mashable piece said that the OTA update was faster and I can personally attest to that. I started the process to update my iPhone 4S via iTunes and the first step was to download the update from Apple. Several minutes later I decided to do the OTA process on my iPad2. The iPad2 finished the update process before iTunes had even finished downloading the update!

So yes, the OTA process is definitely faster!

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Nov 10

IETF Journal for October 2011 Digs into DNSSEC, Port Control Protocol, Internet Evolution

Ietfjournal oct2011
Want to learn more about what is happening with regard to standards in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)?  Want to understand the details about new proposals to offer another way to secure domains using DNSSEC? Never heard of the "Port Control Protocol" before and wonder how it may (or may not) help you? Want to understand some of the latest thoughts from Internet leaders about where the Internet is evolving?

The October 2011 edition of the IETF Journal gets into all of that and more. Here's the Table of Contents  (a PDF is also available for printing or ebook reading):

The IETF Journal is published three times a year and past (and future) versions can be found at:

http://isoc.org/wp/ietfjournal/

If you would like to be alerted to future editions - or would like to contribute articles - more information can be found on that page.
 

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