Posts by: Andres

Lessons to be learned from the social media patent war

By On April 8, 2012 · 2 Comments

By now there is growing evidence that software patents do not benefit anyone. Really, software developers, software experts, venture capitalists, and industry insiders, everyone who is actually involved in producing software knows that software patents are a blight to the industry. The only [...]

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Council of Europe adopts human rights framework for social media and search engines

By On April 5, 2012 · 4 Comments

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has announced that it will adopt two sets of recommendations that favour human rights approaches for search engines and social media platforms.

In Recommendation CM/Rec(2012)3, the Committee has adopted a series of impressive-sounding policies that recognise the growing importance of [...]

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April’s Fools update

By On April 1, 2012 · Leave a Comment

It’s time for this year’s April’s Fools update. One of my favourite days in the tech calendar, as geeks don their silly hats and allow their imaginations to run loose.

Down in New Zealand, TPP Watch were the first off the start blocks with the news that the text for the secretive [...]

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Is the UN trying to take over the Internet?

By On March 27, 2012 · 2 Comments

For some weeks now I have been seeing an article from the Wall Street Journal popping up practically everywhere in my collective social media timeline, from Twitter to Google Reader, from Facebook to mailing lists, there is growing concern that the Internet is about to suffer such an attack that will make [...]

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El ocaso del puntocom

By On March 20, 2012 · Leave a Comment

El 19 de enero del 2012 quedará grabado en la corta historia del Internet como el día en que se cerró el popular locker digital Megaupload, con el consecuente arresto de su dueño y de varios socios. Muy probablemente esta fecha se vaya a recordar también como el inicio del fin de la popularidad de [...]

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Letters from the Internet governance front

By On March 18, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Last week Yours Truly attended the 43rd ICANN meeting in Costa Rica. The gathering had a heavy agenda with more than 200 sessions, and the discussion was centred towards the issue of the new generic top level domains (gTLDs), which will allow the open [...]

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Council of Europe releases strong user-centred document on Internet governance

By On March 15, 2012 · Leave a Comment

I’ve received an interesting press release from the Council of Europe about a new strategic document on Internet governance. This is a very strong document with interesting comments on privacy, human rights and cyber-security. Here is the press release:

“Strasbourg, 15.03.2012 – The 47 Council of Europe member states have adopted an [...]

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More on Pinterest and copyright

By On March 12, 2012 · 8 Comments

Source: google.ca via Andres on Pinterest

It seems like the Pinterest copyright meme refuses to die. Some days [...]

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ICANN 43

By On March 11, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Next week Yours Truly will be attending ICANN 43 in Costa Rica. As an Internet regulation geek I have always been interested in ICANN, how a vast Internet governance edifice has been built, how it is maintained, and the politics that seem to run deep all around me. There have already been some meetings here [...]

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What has the Internet ever done for us?

By On March 8, 2012 · 4 Comments

People who have met me in real life know that most of the time I’m a patient and easy-going kind of guy (despite rumours to the contrary, I do exist outside of the virtual realms). My usually mild disposition is only broken by few things in life: inappropriate use of apostrophes, cruelty to cats, lawmakers [...]

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