ISOC-NY will host a public forum this coming Wednesday on the topic ‘Connecting.nyc’. Tom Lowenhaupt will give a briefing on the longstanding campaign to bring about a .nyc top-level domain which finally, with Paris and Berlin also on similar paths, looks to be a practical reality.

This is an important and vital issue for New York City’s global identity. As Tom goes off to make his case at the ICANN meet in Paris next month let’s show him that he has the people’s support!

Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Time: 6.30pm - 8pm
Location: Jefferson Market Library, 425 6th Ave (@9th St) New York NY

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced legislation that addresses Network Neutrality’s fair trade aspects by labeling it an antitrust matter. Conyers’ H.R. 5994 would ban discriminatory network management practices by amending the Clayton Act.

The bill, labeled the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act, would require carriers to promote competition and allow people to use any device they want to on the carriers’ networks. The bill makes exceptions for emergencies, criminal investigations, parental controls, marketing, and improvements to quality of service.

A story in yesterday’s BoingBoing blog details Worldwide Lexicon - a community translation system that enables a website’s readers to translate to the languages they speak.

ICANN has published a transcript of the morning session of the GNSO New gTLD meetings in Los Angeles on 10-11April. There is also a slideshow of a presentation by ICANN staff member Kurt Pritz, and a flowchart of the proposed application process. mp3 recordings of both morning and afternoon sessions are available.

The United States House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet is today holding a hearing to discuss Network Neutrality legislation (HR 5353) introduced by subcommittee chairman Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA).

Update: Archived video is available from CSPAN. (RealVideo)

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal notes that NY Governor David Paterson has revived former Gov. Spitzer’s controversial plan to collect sales tax from out of state online retailers. The provision, included in the current budget, is expected to raise $70m.

Thanks to Graham Webster of CNET’s Sinobyte, we have audio of Tim Berners-Lee’s press conference at the WWW2008 conference in Beijing last week.

New Orleans is about to lose its municipal Wi-Fi network as EarthLink plans to halt its participation in the citywide project on May 18, an EarthLink spokesman said Friday.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is opening a comment period on the Public Interest Registry’s (PIR) proposed implementation of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) in .ORG. The Public Interest Registry (PIR) is a not-for-profit corporation created by the Internet Society (ISOC) and is a major source of funding.The Internet Society of New York is a Chapter of ISOC.

DNSSEC digitally signs DNS records but doesn’t encrypt DNS traffic. DNS responses are validated as legitimate and not hacked or tampered with. This ensures users don’t get sent to phishing sites when requesting a legitimate website. DNS security has increasingly become a concern, with DNS being prone to this type of attack, as well as being vulnerable to distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks such as the one that temporarily crippled two of the Internet’s 13 DNS root servers last year.

Who Owns This Image?

Art, Access, and the Public Domain after Bridgeman v. Corel

When:
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
6:30 – 8:00 pm

Where:
New York City Bar Association
42 W. 44th Street, New York City
The Great Hall

This program is free and open to the public; no reservation required. Seating is limited.

Students from the Space Systems Engineering program at the University of Michigan have worked on designing a low-cost system for internet connectivity in developing countries. This presentation focuses on their proposed solution to delivering such capabilities to the rural populations of Africa. In addition, upcoming technologies are discussed that will impact similar missions in the future.

Copyright Clearance Center’s OnCopyright 2008 symposium will be held Thursday, May 1st at the Union League Club, 38 East 37th St., New York.

OnCopyright 2008 will bring together thought leaders and change agents to exchange ideas about where copyright is headed and what those changes mean for the future of written works, music, movies and other types of intellectual property. Registration is $395.

Here is video of last week’s colloquium at NYU.

View: flash | mp4 | wmv | real | 3gp | stills | youtube | mp3
Download: divx | ipod | wmv | real | phone | mp3

A US court has ruled that users have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their internet surfing records and that police must obtain warrants from higher than usual courts in order to force ISPs to hand over records. However there was no requirement to inform the subject of such a request that it had been carried out.

The Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey said that information about a person’s use of the internet was so private that police there cannot order ISPs to release surfing details of suspects with a municipal court subpoena. They must receive a grand jury subpoena, it said.

ROFLcon, which takes place today and tomorrow, is a conference dedicated to Internet popular culture. Viral memes, from lolcats to rickrolling, will be exhaustively, if not mirthlessly, explored. A video feed and a twitter stream will be available. A *mystery event* is scheduled for 3pm Saturday.