Friday, Nov. 12 —
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has told governments worldwide that it won’t do the bidding of spy and law-enforcement agencies as it writes new standards for moving data around the Net. But don’t assume this fight is over. It’s just beginning.
The FBI and other organizations want wiretapping to be as much a part of the next-generation Internet as e-mail itself. A 1994 U.S. law requires telecommunications companies to build wiretapping capabilities into their systems, but the IETF decided not to create features in upcoming Internet protocols that had no other purpose.
For more information:
CNET: IETF’s decision
ZDNET: Still a Threat
China’s Jerry Yang?
Friday, Nov. 12 —
Say hello to William Ding, CEO of a Chinese company called NetEase. It’s one of many China Internet portals scrambling to make waves in a market that everyone expects will someday be huge.
Ding and several of his associates flew to Hong Kong yesterday from Beijing for a series of meetings, including one with me. I don’t have enough of a feel yet for the China portal market to know if they’re going to be one of the companies that makes it. But before I leave here, I hope to have learned enough to at least tell you more about how this ultra-competitive arena is shaping up.
So stay tuned…