If you are at all interested in issues like Internet openness and net neutrality, then you’ll want to check out F2C: Freedom to Connect. It’s a fantastic two-day conference devoted to preserving and celebrating the essential properties of the Internet, coming up on May 21 and 22nd, in Washington, DC.

Read on to learn how to win a free pass to F2C or get a discount on your registration!

This year’s F2C conference features a very strong lineup of presenters and panelists. Confirmed keynote speakers include Vint Cerf, Michael Copps, Cory Doctorow, Benoît Felten, Rebecca MacKinnon, Eben Moglen, Mike Marcus and Aaron Swartz.

Here’s a good explanation of what F2C is all about:

Win a Free Pass, or Get 33% Off Registration

F2C meshes very nicely with our corporate ideals about how the Internet should work and how it needs to be protected and nurtured. Our mobile service Ting is a proud sponsor of the event and we have a couple of discount options for those of you who are looking to attend.

• First up, we have a free pass to give away to one person. We simply ask that you email us and give us a short explanation on why you think you should attend. Act fast – we’ll have a look at the emails and choose a winner on April 11th.
• For those who don’t get the free pass, we also have a discount code that you can use to get 33% off the registration fee. When you register, use promo code “TING33″.

The cost for the conference is $349 until April 16, after which the cost goes up a bit. That discount code will work until April 30.

For more information, and to register, visit the F2C: Freedom to Connect website.

Prologue

There is a battle going on between the Internet and those who are threatened by the Internet’s values. This includes anyone protecting old business models; incumbent telcos and cablecos, and rights collectives representing old distribution models for intellectual property. Most importantly, the greatest threat is to the power of the nation-state itself.

This struggle is marked by the Internet achieving sentience. I use sentience here to describe the deep symbiosis of the network and the people that use it and the huge quantity of emergent properties that result. The whole is vastly greater than the sum of the parts.

Introduction/tl:dr

The Internet has achieved sentience. It is some different version of Kurzweil’s singularity, but it exists today. The Internet is self-improving, it propagates its unique values and, most importantly, it has now matured to the point where it is able to protect itself from any threat.

This sentience is a fusion of network and people. Recognizing its existence is central to understanding how society will evolve with and through it and to making this symbiosis as healthy as it can be. For many, this sentience is understood on an implied level. This will be better if made express.

It constantly improves

From its inception the Internet has been on a path of continual self-improvement. We can see this in everything from the way that content delivery became more efficient (compression, local caches, CDNs) to the way languages have become more efficient (C++ to Java to Perl to Python to Ruby to JavaScript) to the way that social has become more efficient (the progression from ICQ to Facebook/Twitter and beyond).

Every element of the Internet eventually gets improved upon with huge network effects, and those network effects are just accelerating. Not only is the Internet improving with the number of people connected, it is improving the very people connected to it.

It propagates its values

The Internet has often been described as valueless. It is not. In fact strong values have emerged. The Internet stands for openness, connectedness, sharing and fairness. It facilitates these things and propagates them. Think of the generally increasing difficulty that corruption and unfairness are having, from dictators to unfriendly business practices.

The Arab Spring and Verizon removing an unfair $2 surcharge are equally good examples. A groundswell starts and does not come from any one voice, but seems to come from the collective consciousness. It seems to come from everywhere at the same time.

It responds to threats

The Internet itself now clearly responds to things that threaten it. The response is multi-faceted, coming from many different places and in many different ways.

We see responses to legislative threats like SOPA and ACTA where people all over the world have responded to specific national legislation in a way never before seen.

We see this when we see Anonymous and others attacking various parties and entities that threaten the Internet and its values, almost like mutated white blood cells in the Internet’s bloodstream. And of course there is no specific person or thing that is Anonymous. Watching those threatened take a traditional approach to stopping it approaches farce.

We see this when we see plans arise for alternatives to the present Internet in response to threats from those who fear it. As the SOPA debate kicked into high gear a Reddit discussion on “Plan B” kicked off and has not slowed down despite the immediate threat passing. This was not even close to the only dialogue of its kind. The collective consciousness of the Internet understands the threat as continual and existential and in no way limited to SOPA, PIPA or ACTA. Those threatened, on the other hand, think they have a “PR problem” and that somehow Google and Silicon Valley have fooled people.

Finally, the Internet responding to threats to its existence is happening at an increasing rate. Draw a line through Citizen Lab, EFF and others in the late 90’s, TOR and others in the late 00’s and the responses that we have seen in the last months. This trend will accelerate.

What are the implications of sentience

When we interact with the Internet, whether it is in platform design, marketing or our own personal use of social media we need to keep the concept of sentience in mind. It can change the way we approach these tasks.

When we interact with the Internet we need to not only to expect it to change and evolve but we need to actively think about our own participation in this evolution. We are each a tiny part of the sentience of the Internet.

Perhaps most importantly for this post and for the broad theme of conflict between value systems, any attempt to legislate, regulate or otherwise control the Internet ignores sentience at its peril.

Conclusion

The genie of the Internet is out of the bottle. From now on, its sentience will protect its independence, whether one likes it or not. If those threatened try and squeeze too tightly the Internet will simply get up and walk away. The nation-state can no longer control the Internet but it can do significant damage to it, and in doing so to itself.

The hope is that acknowledging and discussing the Internet as sentient will allow us to approach its relationship with the nation-state, and other interests who feel threatened by it, in a way that more smoothly eases us into the future.

One of our core values at Tucows is that the Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever seen. And we strongly believe that open source tools are central to the continued growth and health of the Internet.

You may have heard that Oracle has acquired Sun, and along with it, MySQL, which is is a central building block in the suite of open source tools.

While MySQL holds that position in the world of open source software, it is not important to the Oracle acquisition of Sun. In fact, all of the most important reasons for Oracle doing the acquisition would still be in place if Sun had no role whatsoever with MySQL.

The “cost” to Oracle of freeing MySQL is very low. The benefit to the world is extremely high.

With that in mind, please consider lending your support to the campaign. We’ve added our support by signing the petition. The Save MySQL website has lots of information about why the community feels that MySQL is important, and what you can do to ensure it stays open and freely available to the entire Internet community.

Tucows President and CEO, Elliot Noss appeared on Business News Network’s (BNN) “After Hours” program here in Canada yesterday to followup on his comments made recently on the Tucows Inc. website.

In that post, Elliot called out Canadian broadband providers as lagging behind much of the rest of the world when it comes to providing affordable, fast, and reliable broadband Internet access.

He follows up on his comments in a discussion with BNN’s Andrew Bell. Click here to view the clip at the BNN website.

In response to poor results in recent OECD tables and a number of other benchmarks, Canadian telcos and cablecos have fought back by commissioning a “study” to respond to criticisms about the (in my view abysmal) state of the Canadian broadband market. The author concludes “Canadians have access to some of the most affordable services, while also benefiting from some of the world’s fastest connection speeds for both wireline and wireless broadband services”.

Sadly, it seems only he agrees. In my role at Tucows I have the pleasure of traveling all over the world and having customers who are service providers all over the world. We are always discussing access markets. I could bore you with story after story but very few countries have slower, more expensive access offering than us in Canada. A fantastic study done for the FCC by the Berkman Center for Internet Studies at Harvard is just the most recent to confirm the sad state of broadband in Canada.

It is not that the author is incorrect, rather he is misleading and the document is more of a telco/cableco marketing document than a study. I will identify some specific criticisms.

First, and most importantly, is the definition of “broadband” which sets the benchmark from which all measurement and conclusion flows. The “study” uses 1.5mbs as its threshold. 1.5mbps! I believe this was the launch speed for Bell Canada’s dsl service in 1998. 1.5mbps as “broadband” borders on nostalgic. This, more than anything else, takes this from “study” to “attempt at persuasion”.

It is as if we were talking about hunger and debating how many Canadians are starving. I, and many others, are lamenting how hungry we are. We are complaining that in a country like Canada we should be eating MUCH better. Eating is important for health and innovation and jobs. And the telcos and cablecos have produced a “study” that assures us that we are in great shape. That in fact the whole country has access to a bowl of gruel every day. That we should be celebrating our leadership, not lamenting our laggard status. That we have healthy, competitive markets that are doing just fine thank you very much.

My second complaint is in the $/mbps analysis wherein the author concludes that we are not nearly as bad as other studies indicate. He uses as his sole basis for the analysis a Videotron service that is $80/mo for 50mbps. First, he ignores that this service is very limited in coverage and that a similar service from Rogers is $125/mo. Second, he lauds the fact that this moves us from 28th to 8th on the world tables. Never mind that this is only for OECD countries and that there are dozens of non-OECD countries who have far superior offerings. But 28th to 8th? It is like watching CBC coverage of Canadian athletes in the summer Olympics! “Just look at that top ten finish!”. Last, and most importantly, it completely ignores upstream bandwidth.

Rogers recently launched a 50mbps service to limited areas in Toronto. It is only “up to 2mbps” upstream! Quick story. My son (11) spent last weekend hard at work on a video for a charity project that his class was engaged in. After many hours and missing much of the weekend’s fun he finished his slightly over 3-minute video which naturally included some video clips that were HD. To upload that video to Vimeo took three tries and 45 minutes (and this was after failing to upload on a couple tries to youtube due to ?). Total time spent on the upload was well over two hours. AND, worst of all, after finishing we were obviously placed in to some kind of copyright-infringing bandwidth hogging penalty box at Rogers and the Internet basically crapped out and took some waiting and a number of router reboots to return to normal.

What parent wouldn’t want their son spending hours on the weekend filming, editing, doing voiceovers, poking at software to make a video FOR SCHOOL. FOR CHARITY! sadly, the current Canadian broadband market not only discourages, but punishes this behavior.

I want, and there is no reason we cannot have, at least 100mbs full symmetrical bandwidth. It is a global competitive imperative. Telcos, Cablecos, I do not want your lousy bowl of 1.5mbps gruel. Please sir, may I have some more?

(Thanks to Flickr user kainr for the photo and for releasing it under a Creative Commons license)

Andy Walker, General Manager of Butterscotch.com, founder of Little Geeks (photo by Glenn McKnight)

The 3rd annual One Web Day celebration was a great success. We were proud to be a sponsor and celebrate both at our headquarters in Toronto, and later in the day with with the larger Toronto Internet community at an evening social event.

Our computer drive for Little Geeks was quite successful as well with donations received from Tucows employees and from the local community as well. We delivered the donated computers, scanners and laptops to the Little Geeks team to be refurbished and, eventually, to be delivered to kids who need them. You can still help out by making an online cash donation to Little Geeks.

Check out some of the photo highlights:

• View photos from OneWebDay events around the world on Flickr
• See photos of Tucows employees who joined in the OWD poster wave.

Vytautas Bruzga, Database Analyst

We also asked some One Web Day questions of our staff

What types of things do you think the Internet can change?

• The way we do business
• makes the world smaller
• micro-finance
• makes politics cleaner
• makes companies honest
• enables ideas to reach remote locations
• Add yours in the comments…

What does the Internet mean to you?

• work, entertainment, learning, life, love, shopping, easy reference, banking, free stuff, selling stuff, marketing stuff, convenience, dating, fragging, add yours in the comments…

Next year, OWD Toronto’s event is expected to build on the great vibe created.  We will invite you to join us in the celebrations. Save the date: September 22, 2010.

Each year, the Coast to Coast Against Cancer Foundation puts on the Inside Ride, a fun event to raise funds for children living with cancer. Tucows was proud to participate again this year, and our parking lot was filled with people as ten teams competed against each other on stationary bikes. Prior to the event, each team raised pledges and then this past Friday, six riders from each team faced off against each other to see who could ride the farthest in a series of ten-minute sprints.

Tucows teams included people from Hover, Butterscotch, and various departments within the company. It was a great way to burn some calories on a beautiful sunny day while contributing to a worthy cause. When it was all over, we’d raised $25,000 for the charity. Thanks to all of our donors and we hope to surpass that total next year!

You can read more (and see some video and photos) at the OpenSRS blog, the Hover blog, and at Butterscotch.com.

As part of our participation in the One Web Day project, I thought it would be interesting to talk to some of our people about one of Tucows’ core values: we believe that the Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever seen. I asked around to see what the greatest change the Internet had made in the lives of our employees. Here are some of the responses:

Bill Sweetman: I apparently have an “inner teacher” so I love to share my passion and expertise, and the Internet allowed me to do that on a global scale in a highly efficient manner. Before the Internet, I could only reach people in my immediate geographical vicinity. Now I hear from people all around the world who say they have benefitted from reading my blog, listening to my podcast, or visiting one of my web sites. Bill Sweetman is the General Manager of the Tucows Domain Portfolio.


Stacy Reed: Besides the obvious benefits of having a world of knowledge at my fingertips, the biggest changes the Internet has made in my life have been personal in nature. For instance, I can thank the Internet for giving me a humbled ego that desires the knowledge of truth over the desire to always be right, as well as a greater appreciation of our global cultural differences, a bad case of carpal tunnel and a slightly larger arse. Stacy Reed is a software librarian with Tucows.


Adam Elliot: The main thing the Internet did to change my life was to give me a job! I started tech support for an ISP back around 1996 or 1997 and have worked in the Internet industry ever since. The .com bubble burst when I had a whack of stock options from a buy-out of my former ISP by a huge international ISP which afforded me my first-ever sabbatical, and now I’m working at Tucows as a Credit Card Fraud Specialist which has opened even more doors for me careerwise. I love my job, and I feel proud to be an “Internet Superhero.” It’s an immensely gratifying job. People whom I inform about credit card fraud against them often call me back weeks, even months later, to thank me again for notifying them before they found out from any other source, thus saving them even more identity theft damage. I give all my friends great Internet advice and educate them about Internet fraud so they don’t fall victim themselves. It’s been a great ride so far! Adam Elliot is a fraud control officer with DomainDirect.


Kari Dykes: I got stoked on the Internet the first time I IM’ed a friend across the country in the mid-90s, when keeping in touch was the main reason the ‘Information Superhighway’ and I got along. Almost 15 years later, I do everything online; but now and then I’m still surprised by what it can do. In 2006, I hooked up with an organization called Kiva that uses the Internet to connect micro-lenders with entrepreneurs in developing countries. Because of Kiva’s online business structure, overhead is kept to a minimum and admin fees are voluntary for lenders. The money that’s loaned to people is tracked in an online portfolio and returned to the lender through an online refund when the loan is paid back. Plus you can email the business owners to track their progress and growth. Did I mention you can also use it to shamelessly promote good causes you believe in? Kari Dykes is the Customer Success Manager for OpenSRS.


Kevin Hartmann: Yesterday, I gave one of my friends the directions to my housewarming party. I didn’t give her the directions over the phone, like I might have 20 years ago. Instead, I emailed her the invitation, along with a web link to an online map, complete with colour satellite photographs of my house. That map is so detailed that you can see the colour of the cars parked along the side of the roadway on the day the photos were taken, and all the shortcuts through the back alleys are clear and obvious. I couldn’t do that when I was young. Kevin Hartmann is a software developer with Tucows.


Sharon O’Rourke: As a part time ‘mature’ student at university and a full time executive assistant, the impact the Internet has had on my life is almost immeasurable. At work I can book travel – flights, hotel, car – the works without picking up the phone or leaving my desk. I can order office supplies, arrange offsite meetings, find answers to almost any request my boss can make – the Internet makes it all possible. On a personal level, at university the Internet is an invaluable tool – I can do research from home, find articles and books online and if they’re not online, then I can use the Internet to reserve them at the library. And I have found old friends and classmates on social networks and can now keep in touch in a way that was simply not possible ten years ago. I have to tell you, I’m a fan. I love the Internet. Sharon O’Rourke is an Executive Assistant with Tucows.


Nabil Altai: On a personal note, since 2003 I have had more chances for staying in contact with some members of my family in Baghdad through the Internet, instant messenger, email, etc. Without the Internet I would have been at the mercy of the telephone network and lines in Iraq, and pay for my phone calls. I also have family members in a few countries that I keep in touch with mainly through the Internet. Nabil Altai is a data warehouse analyst and developer with Tucows.


Jody Stocks: I’d have to say that the biggest change the internet has wrought in my life is…banking.

Consider what we used to do in a given month:

• flurry of bills arrive in the mail. I start writing cheques and noting them in my account book.
• oops – ran out of cheques. Call up (and then pick up) some more cheques.
• now, into the envelopes. Hey – I actually have enough envelopes!
• …but not enough stamps. Gotta go to the post office.
• Do I have enough in my account to do the grocery shopping? Let’s stop at an ATM and find out.
• Wow – where did the money go? Transfer some more in and we’ll do the forensics when we get the statements.
• Speaking of forensics, check out this credit card bill we got!! If I’d known we’d put THAT on credit, I’d have moved money differently.
• OK – now we have the statements and know where the money needs to go. Let’s go to the bank and make the 7 transfers we need to do to set things to right.

Ouch. I can’t imagine going back. Now, I don’t need to even do half the stuff up there and the other half takes up about 10 minutes of computer work each month, with no waiting in line or anything. Jody Stocks is the Director of Software Engineering at Tucows.

Ken Schafer: Well, I owe pretty much my entire professional career to the Internet. Over the last fifteen years I haven’t had one job that existed when I graduated from university.

But the biggest change I’ve seen has been the ability of my mother – who is now almost 88 years old – to use email and instant messaging to stay actively engaged in our lives and the lives of her grandchildren. She was born before radio, TV and even phones were common and here she is popping up on my desktop at work to see if I’m getting enough sleep and taking good care of the kids! Ken Schafer is the Vice President of Marketing and Product Management for Tucows.


Claire Lam: As any technologist would say, you can never be too rich or too thin and you should never live without the Internet. The Internet has affected my life tremendously. First of all, it’s a huge addiction of mine, and going on an Internet “fast” would be a difficult endeavor. Secondly, it’s simplified communication and truly connected the world together. I remember being 10 years old; while my friends were outside playing in the sun, I was sitting at home logged onto CompuServe through my 14.4 Global Village modem, typing on a black and white terminal and watching lines go across the screen. Today, I’m doing the same thing but on a grander scale. The online community is a phenomenon, allowing us to archive our life histories in words and pictures. The Internet has changed my view of life by giving me diverse points of view, made me find love, lose love and offer new ideas that makes the Internet media so rich today. Claire Lam is the Manager of Implementation Services for Tucows.


Heather Leson: Carleton University had Freenet when I started school. I immediately got an account and was hooked. Being a library girl, I quickly realized that my dream to have information at my fingertips was just a website away. Internet access and availability is quickly becoming an essential service. When I think about the wonderful projects out there such as OLPC or Little Geeks, I can only dream that anyone who ever wants to learn or explore can travel online much like a library. The Internet is full of opportunity and big dreams. We really are becoming Pico Iyer’s global citizens when the boundaries are only a connection away. Heather Leson is the Customer Communications Specialist for OpenSRS.


Chris Mercer: The Internet has changed the way I’m able to consume media and absorb information. Before the age of the Internet, it was difficult to get instant answers to questions and to experience different points of view on a given topic. This also includes information in the form of media and being able to send and receive music, videos, and photos all over the world. This ability has allowed us to discover potential interests that otherwise may have gone unnoticed, especially if you lived in an area where your social circle didn’t introduce you to those kinds of media. In short, the Internet has given each of us the ability to share our perspectives and interests with the world and to find others who might share our personal tastes. Long gone are the days of faxing photos and making mixtapes. Chris Mercer is a Business Development Manager with OpenSRS.

We’d love to hear some of your stories. How has the Internet changed your life? Post a comment and let us know!

In honor of One Web Day, taking place on Monday September 22nd, we spoke to Tucows President and CEO Elliot Noss about one of our company’s core values: “The Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever seen.”

And then we asked him how the Internet had changed his own life:

We’ll be featuring stories from a number of our employees on One Web Day on Monday. How has your own life changed because of the Internet? Post a comment below.

One Web Day is being celebrated on Monday September 22nd and as part of our participation, I thought I’d point to some of the great work being done by Canadians, either on issues that affect the Internet or using the Internet to do some good locally and around the world.

Fair Copyright for Canada (Ottawa) – Law professor Michael Geist has been a tireless crusader for reasonable copyright laws in this country and he’s taken his opposition to the latest proposed legislation, Bill C-61, to many places both offline and online. His Facebook group has attracted more than 90,000 people and has spawned local chapters right across Canada. His use of the the Internet to educate and inspire ordinary people about a fairly dry issue has been exemplary. By framing this legal and political issue in terms that individual citizens can understand, he’s creating a grassroots organization that will undoubtedly have a voice in whatever legislation does end up becoming law in this country.

Little Geeks (Toronto) – Andy Walker created the Little Geeks Foundation in 2006 in order to help get computers into the hands of children who would otherwise not have access to them. People can donate their old computers and Little Geeks volunteers refurbish them, deliver them and set up software and even Internet access. It’s a great way to help young people access the technology tools they’ll need to succeed.

Give Meaning (Vancouver) – Tom Williams created Give Meaning in 2004 to help non-profit organizations benefit from the incredible power of the Internet. The service hosts fundraising pages for charities, non-profits and grassroots projects. By breaking down barriers between donors and worthy causes, Give Meaning is helping organizations who may not have technical expertise or resources to engage people online.

Akoha (Montreal) – Austin Hill and Alex Eberts are long-time friends and entrepreneurs who were inspired by attending a TED conference to create a new type of game where playing could actually help make the world a better place. Using the slogan “Play it Forward,” they’re creating a system that combines the power of play and the social nature of communities in order to achieve positive social goals. The game is currently in beta and accepting new players. Learn more here.

I’m sure this is just a small sample of all the great stuff that’s happening in Canada. Do you know any other worthy Canadian examples of people using the power of the Internet to do good deeds? Post in the comments below.