L’Ethereum et les mineurs coupables de tous les maux ( d’après les fabricants et Elon Musk)

Sur son blog officiel, la fondation vient documenter ce qui va entraîner des changements importants dans le fonctionnement de l’une des crypto-monnaies les plus détestées par les joueurs en ce moment.

Actuellement, Ethereum utilise une preuve de travail. La preuve de travail (PoW) nécessite beaucoup de puissance de calcul pour fonctionner, tout comme le Bitcoin. Cependant, le Bitcoin est très majoritairement exploité par des composants spécifiques dédiés (ASIC). Ethereum lui est quasi exclusivement miné par un composant PC qui nous perturbe tous en ce moment : la carte graphique. Mais au delà des cartes graphiques, ce qui préoccupe les défenseurs de la crypto ces derniers temps c’est la pollution ( et donc la consommation électrique démesurée qui serait engendrée par le minage ).

La fin du minage par GPU…Pour l’Ether

D’après la Fondation Ethereum elle même, l’utilisation du Proof-of-Work (PoW) consomme actuellement l’équivalent énergétique d’un pays de taille moyenne. L’enjeu écologique et les déclarations d’Elon Musk (si si) ont donc rendu le sujet extrêmement pressant dans l’objectif d’imposer plusieurs cryptos pour l’avenir.

La mise en œuvre du PoS est donc une préoccupation majeure pour la communauté  Ethereum puisqu’elle permettrait de réduire la consommation d’énergie de 95,95%, passant des 44,49 TWh actuellement consommés ( avec le système Proof of Work) aux 2,62 mégawatts estimés ( après le passage au Proof of Stake ).

Sans rentrer dans les détails techniques du fonctionnement de cette crypto, vous l’aurez bien compris, le passage au Proof-of-Stake doit réduire considérablement le besoin de miner avec des GPU. La vraie nouveauté c’est que le discours est maintenant clairement assumé et que l’issue semble inéluctable : “Plusieurs équipes d’ingénieurs font des heures supplémentaires pour s’assurer que The Merge arrive le plus tôt possible, et sans compromettre la sécurité (…) Les jours gourmands en énergie d’Ethereum sont comptés, et j’espère que c’est également vrai pour le reste de l’industrie.”

Il est donc maintenant acquis que le minage de l’Ether par GPU va perdre sa raison d’être dans les prochains mois. Certains se retourneront sans doute vers d’autres cryptos pour finir de rentabiliser leurs investissements. Dans le milieu on fonde beaucoup d’espoirs sur “Ethereum classic” pour prendre le relai. Mais il semble que les achats massifs de GPU liés aux cryptos soient rapidement des histoires du passé.

Il faudra ensuite voir comment se manifeste ce changement sur le marché des cartes graphiques. Si on écoute les fabricants, les mineurs sont coupables de tous les maux…La situation devrait donc se rétablir avec une rapidité spectaculaire non ?

Over the past 7 years, our movement has grown exponentially as people have chosen ProtonMail, ProtonVPN, and other Proton products to protect their privacy. Back in 2014, ProtonMail was received as a niche product because an internet that puts privacy first was treated like a wild idea, but today it seems like common sense. This privacy shift is something that will change the world for the better, and we’re proud that the Proton community has been leading this fight. 

In a very literal way, Proton is for the people, by the people. We exist today thanks to an incredible crowdfunding campaign and your continued support over the past 7 years. This has allowed Proton to grow and develop new privacy-focused services, including ProtonVPN, Proton Calendar, and Proton Drive. Together, we have been active in the greater privacy debate, advocating for privacy-focused alternatives, challenging Big Tech and government surveillance, and demanding better data protection laws. 

Together, we can create another internet, one where you can choose what information you share and who can see it.

Our work continues

Today, the fact that over 50 million people have signed up for Proton services illustrates just how far privacy is reaching into the mainstream. Without the Proton community acting as champions for privacy, none of this would have been possible.

However, on balance, we still have much to do. There are still billions of people using an internet that exploits their data for profit and does not have their best interests at heart. Our mission continues to be to create more trusted ways for people to be secure online and in control of their information at all times.  

Moving forward as an organization, we will be putting a much stronger emphasis on delivering better and better user experiences. After all, building the most private service in the world is not useful if it is too difficult for anybody to use. Our relentless focus on product will, as always, be driven by our community. As Proton only exists because of our community, we exist to serve you, and we only build products according to your needs. 

Over the course of 2021, we will be releasing brand new versions of ProtonMail on all platforms, starting with web. We will also be bringing Proton Calendar and Proton Drive to all users on all platforms. These enhancements will lead to a more easy-to-use and complete Proton ecosystem, one that can protect your privacy in many more ways and reach more people.

The challenges ahead also require Proton to do more than writing software. While it is clear that people want more privacy and freedom online, there are also strong forces determined to prevent this at all costs. The success of anti-encryption movements in Australia and the UK has also shown us that we must always remain vigilant and that progress is not always constant. Big Tech companies are also increasingly leveraging their market dominance to ensure that alternatives do not thrive and threaten their monopolies. Such anti-competitive behavior is now subject to antitrust investigations in both the US and the EU. 

In the years to come, you can also expect us to engage more with policymakers on these issues as we work to ensure that the internet of the future is one that puts your interests first. 

Thank you for your support

Together, we have achieved incredible things over the past 7 years. With your help, Proton has gone from an idea of how the internet could be better to the forefront of the global privacy wave. So today, on our 7th birthday, we want to thank every member of the Proton community. Your support has enabled our work. Your choices have driven this movement. We look forward to what we can achieve together in the coming years.

«La mode du bitcoin, y compris ses manipulations du marché, est principalement favorisée par le fait qu'elle n'est pratiquement pas régulée. Un Far West dans lequel prospèrent les spéculateurs comme les criminels. ... Pas étonnant que l'on s'attèle de toutes parts à élaborer des régulations. La Chine a déjà interdit les transactions avec les cryptomonnaies non étatiques, tandis que l'UE travaille à une régulation stricte et que les Etats-Unis devraient eux aussi redoubler d'efforts dans le domaine. ... Les cryptodevises ne disparaîtront en aucun cas ; elles continueront à exister, mais vraisemblablement sous la forme de devises étatiques, ou du moins fortement régulées.»

Japanese lucky cats. Credits

There are plenty of ways to monetize a channel in Telegram.

We conducted our own research and collected the most popular and interesting channel monetization models in Telegram. Here’s what we discovered!

It’s a very popular option, especially in Russia. Ads can be sold to:

other channels for cross-promotion
companies and brands

Usually, ads are sold p2p (channel admins make a contact and then settle an agreement), but there are also some automated ad exchanges.

The most popular model for paid subscription service in Telegram has two main parts:

public channel with large follower base
private channel (or a supergroup) with premium content (available for paid subscribers only)

In this model, the public channel is promoted (with ads, cross-promotions, content marketing and other strategies), while the private channel is what actually generates the profit.

Telegram doesn’t have a built-in paywall, so you have to use a third-party service to monetize: InviteMember — membership bot platform for paid Telegram channels and groups.

As a content producer, you can monetize through selling ads, paid subscriptions, or… donations.

In this model, you allow your followers to either tip you after each publication, or set up a recurring donation through Patreon.

Tipping is already very popular in WeChat and is gaining momentum in Telegram as we speak.

Paid subscriptions are not the only thing you can sell through your channel.

Basically, you can sell almost any product or service. Here are a couple of examples to showcase this in action:

a freelance designer can run a popular Telegram channel with design tips (and monetize the channel by selling gigs)
a SaaS company with a CRM product can run an educational Telegram channel about customer relations (and monetize the channel by selling SaaS subscriptions)
a toy brand can run a Telegram channel with toy-related content (videos, reviews, unboxing, etc.) and monetize by selling the toys

Similar to running a public page in social media, there are a variety of options available to marketers and brand owners.

This is very similar to the previous model. But in this case, you sell third-party products or services.

For example, there are some Telegram channels with sneaker deals.

They monitor online sneaker shops (this part can be automated) and if a price goes down significantly , they make a post in the channel. With an affiliate link, of course.

There is a guy from Canada who made an interesting experiment. He announced a pool of TON (Telegram Open Network) investors in his tech channel and raised $1.5M (in a form of applications, not real money transfers) in about 1.5 hours.

Then he made a post that there was no pool — he just wanted to check if he could raise money.

The experiment was quite successful! It’s amazing what you can do through technology and social interactions today.

It’s like selling ads, but in this case almost 100% of your posts are paid.

How can that be possible? A good example is niche job boards. Such job boards exist in a form of Telegram channels, allowing you to pay a fixed fee for a job post.

Such job boards can start with posting jobs from other websites (to have content while growing their audience). But then HR-managers will find them by themselves.

Overall, as you can see, there are a variety of monetization options available at your fingertips through Telegram. With the right strategy and a little patience, you can make an income right from your laptop anytime, anywhere.

One of the most popular tech solutions that many online entrepreneurs use for membership business is WordPress, used in conjunction with a specialized membership plugin, allowing businesses to charge users for access to a closed members-only website area.

In 2018, the year that the world officially became mobile-first, this approach doesn’t seem as ideal as it once may have been. In the new era of messaging, we are undergoing a transition from traditional blogs, email newsletters, and forums to channels and group chats in messaging apps. These new options are simply faster, easier to use, appear native on mobile devices and provide many other benefits.

Telegram offers a unique combination of features allowing it to serve as the foundation upon which businesses can build their membership business.

In this article, we’ll discuss exactly what makes Telegram awesome for membership business and how can you build your own membership business in Telegram.

Channels

Telegram channels allow you to broadcast your messages to large audiences.

Channels are one-to-many communication tools similar to blogs and mailing lists. Here are some important features of Telegram channels:

Channels can have an unlimited number of subscribers
Channels can be public with a permanent URL
Channels can be private, accessible by invite link only

These features make Telegram channels great for content delivery of almost any kind, including text publications, images, videos, podcasts.

Publishers can use private Telegram channels to deliver their newsletters — without building a site or sticking to a platform. They simply post to the channel — and subscribers will see these posts right in the Telegram.

Group Chats

Telegram groups are used to build online communities.

As opposed to channels, group chats provide many-to-many communication — everybody can post in the group and everybody else will see it.

Here are Telegram group features:

Group chats can have up to 100 000 members
Group chats can be public with a permanent URL
Group chats can be private, accessible by invite link only

These features make Telegram groups awesome for building paid online communities like Nomad List, Work In Progress.

Bots

Telegram bots are third-party apps that run inside Telegram.

The possibilities of bots are almost endless. Here are just a few things of what they can do:

Integrate with other APIs
Deliver customized notifications and news
Moderate channels and groups
Accept payments
Provide customer support

Telegram bots can act as your personal membership business administrator and take care of many important operations like:

Providing users with info about plans and pricing
Processing membership fees
Providing clients with access to members-only resources (after payment)
Revoking access when the subscription ends
Reminding clients to renew their subscriptions
Providing automated customer support

These operations can take a lot of time if done by hand. With a membership bot, entrepreneurs can focus on the most important aspects of their business — producing content and building community.

Payments

Telegram bots allow accepting payments from Telegram users.

The payment interface is integrated into Telegram, so users don’t need to visit any external websites — everything is done in the app. Telegram also supports Apple Pay and Android Pay.

Telegram doesn’t process payments by itself and relies on different payment providers around the world:

With an account at one of these providers, you can accept membership fees via your membership Telegram bot automatically.

How to organize subscription business in Telegram:

Here is one of the most popular models for running subscription business in Telegram:

Public channel with free content, available for everyone
Private channel with premium content, available only for paid subscribers
Membership bot for automated administration

This model suits publishers, podcasters, analysts and everyone who sells their content on a paid subscription basis.

In this model, a public channel is promoted to attract leads. Then, entrepreneur converts them into paying customers, ultimately increasing subscribers to your paid channel.

Here is another model for subscription business, more suitable for online communities:

Public channel with info about community, available for everyone
Private group chats (one or several on different topics) for networking, available only for paid subscribers
Membership bot for automated administration

This model can be used for building online communities like Nomad List, Female Founders, and others.

Another model for a paid online course could look like this:

Public channel with info about course, available for everyone
Private channel with lessons, available only for paid subscribers
Private group chat for students networking, QA with an instructor or his assistants, available only for paid subscribers
Membership bot for automated administration

This model suits online teachers, instructors and coaches willing to run their online education (or training) courses. It could be everything from foreign language learning to fitness programs.

How to build a membership bot for Telegram

As you can see, Telegram offers fantastic opportunities for membership business and a membership bot is a crucial component of it.

A membership bot doesn’t have to be built from ground zero (which could cost a lot of money).

Thanks to InviteMember, you can create your own membership bot in minutes. It’s as simple as that:

Decide what benefits will you provide to subscribers (any number of channels and group chats)
Register your new Telegram bot
Add your logo to your newly created bot
Enter plans and pricing info
Connect to payment provider

Just a few steps and your automated membership business administrator is ready to work. The team here at InviteMember will take care of the rest: servers, software, integration, updates, and support — we cover it all.

Start your membership business in Telegram today! Write to us at @InviteMemberSupportBot.

Please let us know if you need any extra help with one of the steps described earlier.

Mars 2020 : des visuels fiables et actualisés

Mi-mars 2020, sur son compte Twitter, Guillaume Rozier, un jeune ingénieur en dernière année d’étude, commence à publier des graphiques très clairs, montrant comme la courbe épidémique française suit avec quelques jours de retard la courbe italienne. Ses informations fiables, bien présentées et régulièrement mises à jour sont rapidement suivies par de nombreux internautes. Sur un site qu’il croit éphémère, Covid Tracker, il commence en avril à présenter plusieurs courbes et indicateurs actualisés quotidiennement. Le succès est grandissant.

Update avec les données du 12 mars

La France toujours dans les pas de l’Italie #Covid19#France#Italy#Italiepic.twitter.com/KwbgYvuwnO

— GRZ (@GuillaumeRozier) March 13, 2020

Plongés dans le premier confinement, les Français ont soif d’informations fiables et bien présentées. Les approximations de la communication gouvernementale les agacent déjà. Les outils étatiques comme le site de Santé Publique France et la plateforme Geodes ne sont exploitables que par des initiés. Guillaume Rozier qui y récupère les données disponibles en « open data », les met en forme de manière bien plus claire et précise. Son site devient une référence pour les journalistes et attire plusieurs millions d’internautes chaque mois.

Humble et timide, Guillaume Rozier répète partout qu’il n’est pas spécialiste des questions de santé. Il sait ordonner et présenter des chiffres, mais prend volontiers les conseils de l'épidémiologiste Catherine Hill, rencontrée sur un plateau, pour présenter des indicateurs les plus justes possibles. Quelques geeks lui donnent un coup de main pour développer le site, qui intègre chaque semaine de nouvelles fonctionnalités. Covid Tracker fait un carton, et montre que quelques bénévoles sont capables d’accomplir ce qu'un État échoue à faire : présenter honnêtement et clairement la situation épidémique aux Français.

Décembre 2020 : les chiffres de la vaccination

En décembre, alors que la campagne de vaccination démarre laborieusement, Guillaume Rozier veut proposer un outil de suivi des injections. Problème : aucune donnée n’est publiée par le ministère de la Santé. Après quelques jours à galérer en recueillant les infos sur les personnes âgées vaccinées dans les Ehpad via la presse locale, il reçoit un coup de fil d’un certain Olivier Véran, qui lui propose de lui transmettre tous les jours les chiffres… que le ministère ne publie pas.

Félicité par le ministre de la Santé puis par Emmanuel Macron, pour lequel il ne cachait pas ses affinités en 2017, Guillaume Rozier accepte et publie pendant quelques jours des données auxquelles personne d’autre n’a accès. Face au tollé que suscite ce recours à un simple bénévole pour divulguer des informations d’utilité publique, le jeune ingénieur se ravise et annonce le 11 janvier qu’il ne publiera plus ces données tant qu’elles ne seront pas diffusées publiquement. Ce partisan de l’ « open data » fait des erreurs mais apprend vite. Ridiculisé par un garçon diplômé six mois plus tôt, le gouvernement se plie à sa demande et se met à publier les données de vaccination.

Avril 2021 : des prises de rendez-vous rapides pour la vaccination

Début avril, Guillaume Rozier et son équipe de bénévoles ont pris une autre dimension, en créant « Vite ma dose ». Ce nouvel outil regroupe tous les créneaux de vaccination disponibles sur les plateformes KelDoc, Doctolib, Maiia, Ordoclic… Il permet à des milliers de Français de trouver une dose de vaccin. Ou quand un outil bénévole permet à un État d’accélérer une campagne de vaccination à la traîne.

« Vite ma dose » devient si incontournable que le 6 mai lorsqu’Emmanuel Macron annonce que les 18 à 49 ans pourront trouver des créneaux de vaccination la veille pour le lendemain dès le 12 mai, il renvoie vers le site de Guillaume Rozier. Qui, en bon serviteur de l’État, adaptera sans broncher son outil pour inclure cette fonctionnalité. Et tant pis s’il n’a pas été contacté avant…

Aucun créneau ne doit être perdu.
À partir du 12 mai, les rendez-vous qui n’auront pas trouvé preneur 24 heures avant seront ouverts à tous les adultes volontaires, sans condition.https://t.co/H6mJCiN6iG

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) May 6, 2021

Guillaume Rozier est ainsi, il comble les lacunes de l’État depuis un an et demi sans rien demander en retour. Sommet de candeur, il félicite « les élus » et « l’Union européenne » lorsque lui-même se fait vacciner. En oubliant au passage que si la campagne vaccinale a démarré tardivement en France, c’est parce que l’UE a tardé à négocier des doses que le Royaume Uni raflait sans tergiverser.

Guillaume Rozier et les bénévoles qui l’aident à concevoir les outils oeuvrent pour l’utilité publique. Au-delà des éloges médiatiques et de la légion d’honneur que des députés aimeraient qu’il reçoive, c’est peut-être un travail au ministère de la Santé qu’il aurait été judicieux d’offrir à Guillaume Rozier. Il y aurait été plus utile qu'une flopée de conseillers de McKinsey. Mais c’est trop tard : le succès de ses outils lui a permis de signer un joli CDI, le voici parti dans le privé. Et l’État, lui, continuera de s’écrouler.

À LIRE AUSSI : Les autotests dans les lycées, nouvel échec de la stratégie anti-Covid ?

Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.

The Pentagon is carrying out warrantless surveillance of Americans, according to a new letter written by Senator Ron Wyden and obtained by Motherboard.

Senator Wyden's office asked the Department of Defense (DoD), which includes various military and intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), for detailed information about its data purchasing practices after Motherboard revealed special forces were buying location data. The responses also touched on military or intelligence use of internet browsing and other types of data, and prompted Wyden to demand more answers specifically about warrantless spying on American citizens.

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Some of the answers the DoD provided were given in a form that means Wyden's office cannot legally publish specifics on the surveillance; one answer in particular was classified. In the letter Wyden is pushing the DoD to release the information to the public. A Wyden aide told Motherboard that the Senator is unable to make the information public at this time, but believes it would meaningfully inform the debate around how the DoD is interpreting the law and its purchases of data.

"I write to urge you to release to the public information about the Department of Defense's (DoD) warrantless surveillance of Americans," the letter, addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, reads.

Do you work for any of the agencies named in this piece? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Wyden and his staff with appropriate security clearances are able to review classified responses, a Wyden aide told Motherboard. Wyden's office declined to provide Motherboard with specifics about the classified answer. But a Wyden aide said that the question related to the DoD buying internet metadata.

"Are any DoD components buying and using without a court order internet metadata, including 'netflow' and Domain Name System (DNS) records," the question read, and asked whether those records were about "domestic internet communications (where the sender and recipient are both U.S. IP addresses)" and "internet communications where one side of the communication is a U.S. IP address and the other side is located abroad."

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Netflow data creates a picture of traffic flow and volume across a network. DNS records relate to when a user looks up a particular domain, and a system then converts that text into the specific IP address for a computer to understand; essentially a form of internet browsing history.

Wyden's new letter to Austin urging the DoD to release that answer and others says "Information should only be classified if its unauthorized disclosure would cause damage to national security. The information provided by DoD in response to my questions does not meet that bar."

The questions were specifically sent to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security in February 2021, Wyden's letter adds. Beyond the NSA and DIA, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security provides oversight to a range of agencies including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). A Wyden aide said it is not clear if the answers go beyond the agencies that act under the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.

The DoD did not respond to a request for comment.

Wyden's questions came in response to Motherboard's reporting on special forces purchasing location data, a Wyden aide said. Specifically, Motherboard previously revealed that U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) bought access to a tool called Locate X that uses location data harvested from ordinary phone apps installed on peoples' phones. Motherboard also found that a National Guard unit tasked with carrying out drone strikes bought the same tool.

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A Wyden aide said the office sent its original query to SOCOM's legislative affairs section. That department then said that the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security would respond, the aide added.

As part of Wyden's office's own parallel investigation into the location data selling space, the DIA said in a memo its analysts have searched commercial databases of smartphone location data without a warrant in five investigations over the past two and a half years, The New York Times reported in January.

"Other than DIA, are any DoD components buying and using without a court order location data collected from phones located in the United States?" one of Wyden's questions reads. The answer to that is one that Wyden is urging the DoD to release.

The DIA memo said the agency believes it does not require a warrant to obtain such information. Following this, Wyden also asked the DoD which other DoD components have adopted a similar interpretation of the law. One response said that each component is itself responsible to make sure they follow the law.

Wyden is currently proposing a new piece of legislation called The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act which would force some agencies to obtain a warrant for location and other data. Current sponsors include Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, Wyden's office previously told Motherboard.

Subscribe to our cybersecurity podcast CYBER, here.

Crédits : Starlink

Comme vous le savez peut-être, l'Arcep a dit oui quant à l'arrivée de Starlink sur le sol français en février 2021. Il n'était donc plus qu'une question de temps avant de voir le réseau internet par satellite d'Elon Musk débarquer dans l'Hexagone, au grand dam d'ailleurs des députés Insoumis. C'est désormais chose faite depuis ce lundi 10 mai 2021.

En effet et comme on peut le lire sur le site officiel du service, les inscriptions à Starlink sont ouvertes en France “à un nombre limité d'utilisateurs par zone de couverture”. SpaceX, maison-mère de Starlink, affirme que “les commandes seront traitées par ordre d'arrivée, selon le principe du premier arrivé, premier servi”. 

À lire également : Starlink – l'Internet par satellite est loin d'être au point, ce test de performance le prouve

Il faudra payer le prix fort pour s'essayer à Starlink

Si vous êtes intéressé par l'offre de SpaceX, il faudra d'abord se procurer le kit Starlink comprenant le routeur Wi-Fi, l'alimentation, les câbles, la parabole et le trépied de montage. Un kit proposé à 499 € il faut le rappeler. À cette coquette somme, vous devrez rajouter 59 € de frais d'expédition et de dossier, puis souscrire à l'abonnement mensuel de 99 € par mois. Soit une enveloppe généreuse de 657 € pour votre premier mois chez Starlink.

À titre comparatif, l'offre de Neosat (une filiale d'Orange Nordnet) propose un abonnement de 60 € par mois, et un kit similaire affiché à 349 € qui comprend d'ailleurs l'intervention d'un technicien pour l'installation. Pour ce prix-là et durant la phase de bêta, Starlink promet aux utilisateurs des vitesses de transfert entre 50 et 150 Mbit/s et une latence de 20 à 40 ms “dans la plupart des lieux au cours des prochains mois à mesure que nous améliorons le système Starlink”. 

Mais, et comme il y a toujours un mais, l'entreprise prévient ses clients que de “brèves périodes sans aucune connectivité” pourront arriver. Au gré de l'activation de nouveaux satellites, de stations terrestres et d'améliorations du logiciel de mise en réseau, Starlink espère offrir une vitesse de connexion proche de la fibre optique, soit 1 Gbit/s.

Source : Starlink

It’s hard to believe now, but in the early days of the public internet, the greatest worry of some of its most high-powered advocates was that it would be empty. As the Clinton administration prepared to transition the internet from its academic and military origins to the heart of the promised “national information infrastructure” (NII), the government’s advisors fretted that the United States entertainment and information industries would have no commercial reason to switch from TV, radio, and recorded music. And without Hollywood and the record labels on board, the new digital environment would end up as a ghost mall, devoid of businesses or users.

 “All the computers, telephones, fax machines, scanners, cameras, keyboards, televisions, monitors, printers, switches, routers, wires, cables, networks and satellites in the world will not create a successful NII, if there is not content”, former Patent Office head Bruce Lehman’s notorious 1994 government green paper on intellectual property on the Net warned. The fear was that without the presence of the pre-packaged material of America’s entertainment industry, the nation would simply refuse to go online. As law professor Jessica Litman describes it, these experts’ vision of the Internet was “a collection of empty pipes, waiting to be filled with content.” 

Even as the politicians were drafting new, more punitive copyright laws intended to reassure Hollywood and the record labels (and tempt them into new, uncharted waters), the Internet’s first users were moving in and building anyway. Even with its tiny audience of technologists, first-adopters, and university students, the early net quickly filled with compelling “content,” a  free-wheeling, participatory online media that drew ever larger crowds as it evolved.

Even in the absence of music and movies, the first net users built towers of information about them anyway. In rec.arts.movies, the Usenet discussion forum devoted to all things Hollywood, posters had been compiling and sharing lists of their favourite motion picture actors, directors, and trivia since the 1980s. By the time of the Lehman report, the collective knowledge of the newsgroup had outgrown its textual FAQs, and expanded first to a collectively-managed database on Colorado University’s file site, and then onward to one of the very first database-driven websites, hosted on a spare server at Wales’ Cardiff University.

Built in the same barn-raising spirit of the early net, the public interest internet exploits the low cost of organizing online to provide stable, free repositories of user-contributed information. They have escaped an exploited fate as proprietary services owned by a handful of tech giants.

These days, you’ll know that Cardiff Movie Database by another name – the IMDb. The database that had grown out of the rec.arts.movies contributions was turned into a commercial company in 1996 and sold to Amazon in 1998 for around $55 million dollars (equivalent to $88 million today). The Cardiff volunteers, led by one of its original moderators, Col Needham, continued to run the service as salaried employees of an Amazon subsidiary.

The IMDB shows how the original assumptions of Internet growth were turned on their head. Instead of movie production companies leading the way, their own audience had successfully built and monetised the elusive “content” of the information superhighway by themselves—for themselves.  The data of the rec.arts.movie databases was used by Amazon as the seed to build an exclusive subscriptions service, IMDbpro, for movie business professionals, and to augment their Amazon Prime video streaming service with quick-access film facts. Rather than needing the movie moguls’ permission to fill the Internet, the Internet ended up supplying information that those moguls themselves happily paid a new, digital mogul for.

But what about those volunteers who gave their time and labor to the collective effort of building this database for everyone? Apart from the few who became employees and shareholders of the commercial IMDb, they didn’t get a cut of the service’s profits. They also lost access to the full fruits of that comprehensive movie database. While you can still download the updated core of the Cardiff Database for free, it only covers the most basic fields of the IMDb. It is licensed under a strictly non-commercial license, fenced off with limitations and restrictions. No matter how much you might contribute to the IMDb, you can’t profit from your labor. The deeper info that was originally built by the user-contributions  and supplemented by Amazon has been enclosed: shut away, in a proprietary paywalled property, gated off from the super-highway it rode in on.

It’s a story as old as the net is, and echoes historic stories of the enclosure of the commons. A pessimist would say that this has been the fate of much of the early net and its aspirations. Digital natives built, as volunteers, free resources for everyone. Then, struggling to keep them online in the face of the burdens of unexpected growth, they ended up selling up to commercial interests. Big Tech grew to its monopoly position by harvesting this public commons, and then locking it away.

But it’s not the only story from the early net. Everyone knows, too, the large public projects that somehow managed to steer away from this path. Wikipedia is the archetype, still updated by casual contributors and defiantly unpaid editors across the world, with the maintenance costs of its website comfortably funded by regular appeals from its attached non-profit. Less known, but just as unique, is Open Street Map (OSM), a user-built, freely-licensed alternative to Google Maps, which has compiled from public domain sources and the hard work of its volunteer cartographers one of the most comprehensive maps of the entire earth. 

These are flagships of what we at EFF call the public interest internet. They produce and constantly replenish priceless public goods, available for everyone, while remaining separate from government, those traditional maintainers of public goods. Neither are they commercial enterprises, creating private wealth and (one hopes) public benefit through the incentive of profit. Built in the same barn-raising spirit of the early net, the public interest internet exploits the low cost of organizing online to provide stable, free repositories of user-contributed information. Through careful stewardship, or unique advantages, they have somehow escaped an enclosed and exploited fate as a proprietary service owned by a handful of tech giants.

That said, while Wikipedia and OSM are easy, go-to examples of the public interest internet, they are not necessarily representative of it. Wikipedia and OSM, in their own way, are tech giants too. They run at the same global scale. They struggle with some of the same issues of accountability and market dominance. It’s hard to imagine a true competitor to Wikipedia or OSM emerging now, for instance—even though many have tried and failed. Their very uniqueness means that their influence is outsized. The remote, in-house politics at these institutions has real effects on the rest of society. Both Wikipedia and OSM have complex, often carefully negotiated, large-scale interactions with the tech giants. Google integrates Wikipedia into its searches, cementing the encyclopedia’s position. OSM is used by, and receives contributions from, Facebook and Apple. It can be hard to know how individual contributors or users can affect the governance of these mega-projects or change the course of them. And there’s a recurring fear that the tech giants have more influence than the builders of these projects.

Besides, if there’s really only a handful of popular examples of public good production by the public interest internet, is that really a healthy alternative to the rest of the net? Are these just crocodiles and alligators, a few visible survivors from a previous age of out-evolved dinosaurs, doomed to be ultimately outpaced by sprightlier commercial rivals?

At EFF, we don’t think so. We think there’s a thriving economy of smaller public interest internet projects, which have worked out their own ways to survive on the modern internet. We think they deserve a role and representation in the discussions governments are having about the future of the net. Going further, we’d say that the real dinosaurs are our current tech giants. The small, sprightly, and public-minded public interest internet has always been where the benefits of the internet have been concentrated. They’re the internet’s mammalian survivors, hiding out in the nooks of the net, waiting to take back control when the tech giants are history.

In our next installment, we take a look at one of the most notorious examples of early digital enclosure, its (somewhat) happier ending, and what it says about the survival skills of the public interest internet when a free database of compact discs outlasts the compact disc boom itself.

Governor DeSantis is expected to sign it into law, as he called for laws like this. He cited social media de-platforming Donald Trump as  examples of the political bias of what he called “oligarchs in Silicon Valley.” The law is not just about candidates, it also bans “shadow-banning” and cancels cancel culture by prohibiting censoring “journalistic enterprises,” with “censorship” including things like posting “an addendum” to the content, i.e. fact checks.

This law, like similar previous efforts, is mostly performative, as it almost certainly will be found unconstitutional. Indeed, the parallels with a nearly 50 years old compelled speech precedent are uncanny. In 1974, in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, the Supreme Court struck down another Florida statute that attempted to compel the publication of candidate speech. 

50 Years Ago, Florida's Similar "Right of Reply" Law Was Found Unconstitutional

At the time, Florida had a dusty "right of reply" law on the books, which had not really been used, giving candidates the right to demand that any newspaper who criticized them print a reply to the newspaper's charges, at no cost. The Miami Herald had criticized Florida House candidate Pat Tornillo, and refused to carry Tornillo’s reply. Tornillo sued.

Tornillo lost at the trial court, but found some solace on appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.  The Florida high court held that the law was constitutional, writing that the “statute enhances rather than abridges freedom of speech and press protected by the First Amendment,” much like the proponents of today’s new law argue. 

So off the case went to the US Supreme Court. Proponents of the right of reply raised the same arguments used today—that government action was needed to ensure fairness and accuracy, because “the 'marketplace of ideas' is today a monopoly controlled by the owners of the market.”  

Like today, the proponents argued new technology changed everything. As the Court acknowledged in 1974, “[i]n the past half century a communications revolution has seen the introduction of radio and television into our lives, the promise of a global community through the use of communications satellites, and the specter of a ‘wired’ nation by means of an expanding cable television network with two-way capabilities.”  Today, you might say that a wired nation with two-way communications had arrived in the global community, but you can’t say the Court didn’t consider this concern.

You might wonder why the Florida Legislature would pass a law doomed to failure. Politics, of course.

The Court also accepted that the consolidation of major media meant “the dominant features of a press that has become noncompetitive and enormously powerful and influential in its capacity to manipulate popular opinion and change the course of events,” and acknowledged the development of what the court called “advocacy journalism,” eerily similar to the arguments raised today. 

Paraphrasing the arguments made in favor of the law, the Court wrote “The abuses of bias and manipulative reportage are, likewise, said to be the result of the vast accumulations of unreviewable power in the modern media empires. In effect, it is claimed, the public has lost any ability to respond or to contribute in a meaningful way to the debate on issues,” just like today’s proponents of the Transparency in Technology Act.

The Court was not swayed, not because this was dismissed as an issue, but because government coercion could not be the answer. “However much validity may be found in these arguments, at each point the implementation of a remedy such as an enforceable right of access necessarily calls for some mechanism, either governmental or consensual. If it is governmental coercion, this at once brings about a confrontation with the express provisions of the First Amendment.” There is much to dislike about content moderation practices, but giving the government more control is not the answer.

Even if one should decry the lack of responsibility of the media, the Court recognized “press responsibility is not mandated by the Constitution and like many other virtues it cannot be legislated.”  Accordingly, Miami Herald v. Tornillo reversed the Florida Supreme Court, and held the Florida statute compelling publication of candidates' replies unconstitutional.

Since Tornillo, courts have consistently applied it as binding precedent, including applying Tornillo to social media and internet search engines, the very targets of the Transparency in Technology Act (unless they own a theme park). Indeed, the compelled speech doctrine has even been used to strike down other attempts to counter perceived censorship of conservative speakers. 

With the strong parallels with Tornillo, you might wonder why the Florida Legislature would pass a law doomed to failure, costing the state the time and expense of defending it in court. Politics, of course. The legislators who passed this bill probably knew it was unconstitutional, but may have seen political value in passing the base-pleasing statute, and blaming the courts when it gets struck down. 

Politics is also the reason for the much-ridiculed exception for theme park owners. It’s actually a problem for the law itself. As the Supreme Court explained in Florida Star v BJF, carve-outs like this make the bill even more susceptible to a First Amendment challenge as under-inclusive.  Theme parks are big business in Florida, and the law’s definition of social media platform would otherwise fit Comcast (which owns Universal Studios' theme parks), Disney, and even Legoland.  Performative legislation is less politically useful if it attacks a key employer and economic driver of your state. The theme park exception has also raised all sorts of amusing possibilities for the big internet companies to address this law by simply purchasing a theme park, which could easily be less expensive than compliance, even with the minimum 25 acres and 1 million visitors/year. Much as Section 230 Land would be high on my own must-visit list, striking the law down is the better solution.

The Control that Large Internet Companies Have on our Public Conversations Is An Important Policy Issue

The law is bad, and the legislature should feel bad for passing it, but this does not mean that the control that the large internet companies have on our public conversations isn’t an important policy issue. As we have explained to courts considering the broader issue, if a candidate for office is suspended or banned from social media during an election, the public needs to know why, and and the candidate needs a process to appeal the decision. And this is not just for politicians - more often it is marginalized communities that bear the brunt of bad content moderation decisions. It is critical that the social platform companies provide transparency, accountability and meaningful due process to all impacted speakers, in the US and around the globe, and ensure that the enforcement of their content guidelines is fair, unbiased, proportional, and respectful of all users’ rights. 

This is why EFF and a wide range of non-profit organizations in the internet space worked together to develop the Santa Clara Principles, which call upon social media to (1) publish the numbers of posts removed and accounts permanently or temporarily suspended due to violations of their content guidelines; (2) provide notice to each user whose content is taken down or account is suspended about the reason for the removal or suspension; and (3) provide a meaningful opportunity for timely appeal of any content removal or account suspension.