Internet

The D.C. Circuit, 2-1, has struck down the FCC's rules imposing net neutrality, Gigaom reports. The majority said the FCC has the authority to regulate in the area of Internet traffic, but it can't impose requirements that "'contravene express statutory mandates,"' Gigaom reports.

"The upshot of Tuesday’s ruling is that it could open the door for internet giants like Verizon and Time Warner to cut deals with large content providers — say Disney or Netflix — to ensure that their web content was delivered faster and more reliably than other sites," Gigaom further reports.

Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and writing in The Huffington Post, asked whether distributed denial of service attacks are a legitimate form of protest --- such as when Anonymous hackers targeted Paypal for refusing to send donations to Wikileaks. Fourteen criminal defendants facing federal charges for the Paypal DDOS attacks are due in court this week.

On one hand, "a denial of service attack is damaging and costly. Many of PayPal's customers rely on PayPal for their livelihood," Omidyar says. On the other hand, Omidyar writes "I can understand that the protesters were upset by PayPal's actions and felt that they were simply participating in an online demonstration of their frustration. That is their right, and I support freedom of expression, even when it's my own company that is the target."

However, Omidyar concludes such attacks are not the same as other forms of free expression because one protestor's computer is turned over to a central controller and has a magnified impact of making "hundreds of web page requests per second."

The Federal Trade Commission is set to regulate connected devices that share consumer data. Or as GigaOm more pithily says it: the Internet of Things. Why does this matter? GigaOm reports: "There are two issues at play here, one being the privacy of consumer data and the other being the security of the networks delivering that data. The privacy issue, however, also contains a security dimension since the devices can share things that affect a person’s safety — such as where they live and whether or not they are home."

Moreover," EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argues that the privacy implications of connectivity start with the devices, which could allow a person to be tracked continuously across a variety of networks," GigaOm also reports.

GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham argues for a middle ground between stifling a new industry and consumer privacy.

The Illinois Supreme Court has become the first court in the country to find a federal law preempts a state law requiring sales taxes be paid on Internet sales, USA Today reports. The paper also reports: "the court determined that Illinois' 2011 'Main Street Fairness Act' was superseded by the federal law, which prohibits imposing a tax on 'electronic commerce' and obligates collection that's not required of transactions by other means, such as print or television." The issue might be primed for the U.S. Supreme Court as New York upheld its Internet sales tax-law and Amazon is appealing.