On Opting Out of Copyright
Wednesday, 18 September 2024
The EU AI Act and emerging practice flip copyright’s default opt-in regime to an opt-out one. What effects is this likely to have on the balance of power between rights holders and reuse?What RSS Needs
Sunday, 25 August 2024
Web feeds could be so much more if we put some effort into them. This post explores some ideas of how to start.Are Internet Standards Competitive or Collaborative?
Tuesday, 16 July 2024
It's often assumed that standards work is inherently competitive. This post examines why Internet standards are often more collaborative than competitive, and outlines some implications of this approach.Openness in Internet Standards: Necessary, but Insufficient
Friday, 5 July 2024
The phrase 'Open Standards' is widely used but not well-understood. Let's take a look at what openness in standards is, with a focus on whether and how it helps to legitimise the design and maintenance of the Internet.Consensus in Internet Standards
Friday, 24 May 2024
It’s common for voluntary technical standards developing organisations (SDOs such as the IETF and W3C) to make decisions by consensus, rather than (for example) voting. This post explores why we use consensus, what it is, how it works in Internet standards and when its use can become problematic.Modularity: Enabling Interoperability and Competition
Friday, 10 May 2024
Mandated interoperability is often highlighted as a way to improve competition on the Internet. However, most of the interoperability we see there today was established voluntarily: mandating it is relatively uncharted territory, with many potential pitfalls.No One Should Have That Much Power
Monday, 29 April 2024
It’s a common spy thriller trope. There’s a special key that can unlock something critical – business records, bank vaults, government secrets, nuclear weapons, maybe all of the above, worldwide.Considerations for AI Opt-Out
Sunday, 21 April 2024
Creating a Large Language Model (LLM) requires a lot of content – as implied by the name, LLMs need voluminous input data to be able to function well. Much of that content comes from the Internet, and early models have been seeded by crawling the whole Web.There Are No Standards Police
Wednesday, 13 March 2024
No one requires tech companies or open source projects to use most Internet standards, and no one requires people to use them either. This post explains why the voluntary nature of its standards are critical to the Internet's health.RFC 9518 - What Can Internet Standards Do About Centralisation?
Tuesday, 19 December 2023
RFC 9518: Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards has been published after more than two years of review, discussion, and revision.