cyber law

Vox reports on three significant changes pending this summer that could change the media and the Internet forever:

One, will the U.S. Supreme Court let Aereo stream free broadcast television over the Internet?

Two, can Comcast buy Time Warner Cable?

Three, will the Federal Communications Commission vote to approve Internet "fast lanes" for companies that pay more?

"It is entirely possible that 2014 will end with the traditional cable bundle broken, a fundamental change to the free and open internet, and the emergence of Comcast as a telecom behemoth more powerful than the old AT&T even dared to dream. It is also possible the complete opposite of those things will happen," Vox's Nilay Patel writes.

Along with the development this week that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called off a state dinner in Washington over the National Security Agency's alleged spying on her and a Brazilian energy company, Brazil also is considering new Internet laws, the Wall Street Journal's Digits Blog reports. One of the proposals would require Internet firms to store data about Brazilians in Brazil, the blog reports, to give "the Brazilian government more control over Internet data, and Brazilian courts would more easily be able to issue orders for access to information about Brazilian users of services from foreign companies." Iit would be very difficult to enforce such a law in the globalized world in which people cross borders almost as easily as data does.