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(MENAFN - Khaleej Times) The Internet stands at a crossroads. Built from the bottom up, powered by the people, it has become a powerful economic engine and a positive social force.
But its success has generated a worrying backlash. Around the world, repressive regimes are putting in place or proposing measures that restrict free expression and affect fundamental rights. The number of governments that censor Internet content has grown to 40 today from about four in 2002. And this number is still growing, threatening to take away the Internet as you and I have known it.
Some of these steps are in reaction to the various harms that can be and are being propagated through the network. Like almost every major infrastructure, the Internet can be abused and its users harmed. We must, however, take great care that the cure for these ills does not do more harm than good. The benefits of the open and accessible Internet are nearly incalculable and their loss would wreak significant social and economic damage.
Against this background, a new front in the battle for the Internet is opening at the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations organisation that counts 193 countries as its members. It is conducting a review of the international agreements governing telecommunications and aims to expand its regulatory authority to the Internet at a summit scheduled for December in Dubai.
Such a move holds potentially profound - and I believe potentially hazardous - implications for the future of the Internet and all of its users. At present, the ITU focuses on telecommunication networks and on radio frequency allocations rather than the Internet per se. Some members are aiming to expand the agency's treaty scope to include Internet regulation. Each of the 193 members gets a vote, no matter its record on fundamental rights - and a simple majority suffices to effect change. Negotiations are held largely among governments, with very limited access for civil society or other observers. When I helped to develop the open standards that computers use to communicate with one another across the Net, I hoped for but could not predict how it would blossom and how much human ingenuity it would unleash. What secret sauce powered its success?
The Net prospered precisely because governments - for the most part - allowed the Internet to grow organically, with civil society, academia, private sector and voluntary standards bodies collaborating on development, operation and governance. In contrast, the ITU creates significant barriers to civil society participation. A specialised agency of the United Nations, it grew out of the International Telegraph Union, which was established in 1865. The treaty governing the agency, last amended in 1988, established practices that left the Internet largely unaffected.
While many governments are committed to maintaining flexible regimes for fast-moving Internet technologies, some others have been quite explicit about their desire to put a single UN or other intergovernmental body in control of the Net.
Last June, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated the goal of Russia and its allies as ''establishing international control over the Internet'' through the ITU. Such proposals raise the prospect of policies that enable government controls but greatly diminish the ''permissionless innovation'' that underlies extraordinary Internet-based economic growth to say nothing of trampling human rights. Some countries have expressed sympathy for these proposals. They are concerned about the outsized role they perceive that the United States plays in the direction and development of Internet policy. Some believe the status quo favours the interests of large, global Internet companies. Others believe the ITU can help speed Internet access in the developing world.
I encourage you to take action now: Insist that the debate about Internet governance be transparent and open to all stakeholders.
Vinton Cerf is Google's chief Internet evangelist. He is widely recognised as one of the ''fathers of the Internet,'' sharing this title with the American computer scientist Bob Kahn
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Keep the Internet an open forum
NEW YORK, May 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue:
As internet retailing matures as a channel in developed markets, sales growth rates will slow. This will make emerging markets increasingly attractive to retailers and manufacturers looking to benefit from the long-term strong rates of sales growth that they are expected to provide. However, whilst the rewards are enticing, there are several pitfalls that lie ahead for companies hoping to profit from internet retailing in the BRIC and other emerging markets in the short to medium term.
Euromonitor International's Internet Retailing in Emerging Markets: Long-Term Growth Opportunities in BRIC Countries global briefing offers an insight into the size and shape of the retailing industry, highlights emerging trends, their effects on retailing in markets around the world, on the development of channels and consumers' shopping patterns. It identifies the leading companies and brands, offers strategic analysis of key factors influencing the market be they the developments of new store types, the importance of non-store retailing, economic/lifestyle influences, private label or pricing issues. Forecasts illustrate how the market is set to change and criteria for success.
Product coverage: Non-Store Retailing, Store-based Retailing.
Data coverage: market sizes (historic and forecasts), company shares, brand shares and distribution data.
Why buy this report?
* Get a detailed picture of the Retailing market;
* Pinpoint growth sectors and identify factors driving change;
* Understand the competitive environment, the market's major players and leading brands;
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Internet Retailing in Emerging Markets: Long-Term Growth Opportunities in BRIC Countries
By Kate Holton and Guy Faulconbridge
LONDON (Reuters) - Tony Blair said on Monday he decided to court the media in Britain rather than risk the wrath of powerful media tycoons during his decade as prime minister.
Blair, the most powerful British prime minister since Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, said that even he was not willing to risk offending the major media groups.
"If you're a political leader and you've got very powerful media groups and you fall out with one of those groups, the consequences is such that you... are effectively blocked from getting across your message," Blair told the inquiry under oath at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
"I'm being open about the fact that frankly I decided as a political leader, and this was a strategic decision, that I was going to manage that and not confront it. And we can get on to whether that was right or wrong at a later stage, but that was the decision I took," he said.
Blair's relationship with the press, and Rupert Murdoch in particular, came under scrutiny at the inquiry which has broadened out to examine the close ties between politicians, the press and police after initially looking at a phone hacking scandal at a mass-selling tabloid.
Blair said the close relationship between politicians and the media was inevitable but that it became unhealthy when media groups tried to use their newspapers as instruments of political power.
The inquiry has so far focused on the conduct of the media and the close ties between Murdoch's empire and serving ministers, helping the opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband consolidate his position with attacks on the current British Prime Minister David Cameron.
But the grilling of Blair, who was renowned for trying to control the media agenda by "spinning" the news to gain the most favourable coverage, could undermine Miliband's attempt to portray Labour under his leadership as a party above courting media tycoons.
LABOUR AND MURDOCH
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Blair says feared provoking British media wrath
The market for enterprise social media and Web 2.0 tools is growing by over 20 per cent a year and will top $126m (80m) by 2017 as firms look for better ways to collaborate and manage content across Asia Pacific, according to a new report from Frost & Sullivan.
The analysts Enterprise Social Media and Web 2.0 Market 2010 report describes the region as the fastest growing in the world when it comes to consumer social networking pointing to countries such as the Philippines and Malaysia where some services are used by 85 per cent of the population.
That fondness for public social networks will drive adoption of enterprise social networking and collaboration platforms from vendors such as Microsoft, Novell, IBM, Huddle, Yammer and Socialtext, the report says.
The need for intranet, file storage, project management and email integration capabilities will foster take-up of Web 2.0 tools while enterprise content management products will increasingly be made available online, again bolstering adoption of enterprise social media, the report predicted.
However, Frost & Sullivan warned that its still early days and many firms are reluctant to invest in technologies that could take a long time to deliver a return on investment. The fact that few concrete examples of successful deployments are to be found is another potential retardent.
Easily measurable KPIs will help decision makers to justify the investment in enterprise social media applications, said Research Analyst Jessie Yu.
A KPI that can be easily measured is the increase in intercompany communication and knowledge sharing, which is a clear indicator of the breakdown of information silos in a company.
While smaller firms will plump for free versions of tools such as DropBox and FileShare or Google Apps, their larger counterparts will need to invest in enterprise social networking and collaboration products to get the functionality they need to manage large numbers of geographically dispersed staff, said F&S.
Originally posted here:
Biz social networking set for take-off