Europe’s moves to rein in Google -- including a court ruling this month ordering the search giant to give people a say in what pops up when someone searches their name -- may be seen in Brussels as striking a blow for the little guy. But across the Atlantic, the idea that users should be able to edit Google search results in the name of privacy is being slammed as weird and difficult to enforce at best and a crackdown on free speech at worst.
Trans-Atlantic war over Google
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Tagged With: Agenda, Associated Press, benton, Digital Content, Headlines, Internet/Broadband, Media Ownership, reporting, Stories from Abroad
Michelle Obama says Internet access should be ‘universal right’
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Michelle Obama declared that access to the Internet should be a universal right, in a rare and controversial foray into the world of international politics during a cultural visit to China.
Why do governments keep banning social media when it never works out for them?
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
You'd think world leaders would know better. Shut down the Internet (or some services that it hosts), and the users will come after you.
Mobile phones are now as crucial as food and water in emergency aid
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Foreign aid is streaming into the Philippines from around the world as the news of the devastation wrought Super Typhoon Haiyan spreads, but it’s no longer just food, water and shelter.
Tagged With: benton, Emergency Communications, Headlines, Heather Timmons, Internet, Quartz, reporting, Satellite, Stories from Abroad
ITU: Mobile Broadband is Moving Up
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
The latest figures from the International Telecommunications Union buttress the Obama Administration's focus on wireless broadband deployment, with the number of worldwide mobile broadband subscriptions approaching 2 billion.
Australia election threatens shape of $34 billion broadband plan
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
The future of an ambitious project to connect almost all Australia's far-flung inhabitants to high-speed internet, the largest infrastructure enterprise in the country's history, is hanging on the outcome of an upcoming federal election.
Group finalizes treaty to expand book access for world’s blind community
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Negotiators at the World Intellectual Property Organization have finalized terms on a copyright treaty that would provide more book access to the world’s blind and visually impaired.
Ad Blocking Raises Alarm Among Firms Like Google
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Xavier Niel, the French technology entrepreneur, has made a career of disrupting the status quo. Now, he has dared to take on Google and other online advertisers in a battle that puts the Web companies under pressure to use the wealth generated by the ads to help pay for the network pipelines that deliver the content.
Tagged With: Advertising, benton, David Jolly, Headlines, Internet/Broadband, New York Times, reporting, Stories from Abroad
The superhighway of information has a toll
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Newspapers and other news publishers are increasingly targeting smaller, more affluent audiences, impelled not by governments, but by their own economics. For years, digital news conformed to one section of the 1984 prophecy of the technology guru Stewart Brand – that “information wants to be free because the cost of getting it out is getting lower.” Now, it is relying on his other, lesser-known maxim – that “information wants to be expensive because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life.”