November 2006

HEAVY INCOMING ON AT&T/BELLSOUTH MERGER
[SOURCE: Lasar's Letter on the FCC 11/24, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
The Federal Communications Commission may be deadlocked 2-2 on AT&T's proposed buyout of BellSouth, but nobody is taking any chances. Interested networking companies, non-profits, trade associations, and city governments kept the ears of the agency's Commissioners and staff busy on the matter close to the eve of Thanksgiving.
http://www.lasarletter.net/drupal/node/242

A LONE SPONSOR FOR A LONGER 'NIGHTLY NEWS'
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Stuart Elliott]

NETWORK NEUTRALITY COULD HOBBLE INITIATIVE
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Brent Wilkes, League of United Latin American Citizens]

WEB TOOL SAID TO OFFER WAY PAST GOVERNMENT CENSOR
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Christopher Mason]
A look at what some say is the most advanced tool yet in allowing Internet users to circumvent government censorship of the Web. The program, called psiphon (pronounced "SY-fon"), will be released on Dec. 1 in response to growing Internet censorship that is pushing citizens in restrictive countries to pursue more elaborate and sophisticated programs to gain access to Western news sites, blogs and other censored material. Psiphon is downloaded by a person in an uncensored country (psiphon.civisec.org), turning that person's computer into an access point. Someone in a restricted-access country can then log into that computer through an encrypted connection and using it as a proxy, gain access to censored sites. The program's designers say there is no evidence on the user's computer of having viewed censored material once they erase their Internet history after each use. The software is part of a broader effort to live up to the initial hopes human rights activists had that the Internet would provide unprecedented freedom of expression for those living in restrictive countries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/technology/27censorship.html
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