February 17th, 2006
Global Online Freedom Act, commercial open source, the end of passwords and more on this week's podcast
In this latest episode of the Dan & David Show, we discuss the proposed legislation–the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006–controlling how U.S. Internet companies deal with foreign governments that practice censorship, such as China. It’s great to have this public dialog, but legislative grand standing is a slippery slope and creating more federal bureaucracy and stopping router exports to countries facilitating Internet censorship is not going to stamp out censorship. The Internet industry itself should come up with a code of conduct, as the EFF suggested.
David weighs in on Bill Gates’ prediction of end of passwords, and we talk about efforts by the U.S. government and the private sector to fight cybercrime. At the RSA Conference, FBI Director Robert Mueller says progress is being made, but it’s slow and consumers are mostly in the dark when it comes to cybersecurity. We also have a recap of the major themes from the Open Source Business Conference, and I give kudos to Salesforce.com for its public facing system status page and David reports on his recent Wikipedia experience. Despite his ailing back, David will be at Mashup Camp next week, and we’ll cover that next week among other topics. The podcast can be delivered directly to your desktop or MP3 player if you’re subscribed to our podcasts (See ZDNet’s podcasts: How to tune in). For more the topics covered during the show, search our blog.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
