The Week in Internet News: Russian Law Allows Country to Disconnect from Internet
Walking away: A Russian law that allows the country to disconnect from the outside Internet in the case of a cyberwar has gone into effect, PC Mag reports. The law allows the government there to serve up its own approved version of the Internet to residents. Some critics say the law could make the entire Internet more open to attacks.
Gone missing: The Internet has lost its soul by pushing commercial interests ahead of the public good, argues Janet Abbate, a professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech in a column at the Washington Post. “Expanding access to the Internet, combined with looser government regulations, ultimately produced a situation no one foresaw or intended,” she writes. “On today’s Internet, conspiracy theories run rampant, identities can be faked and our real-life elections are vulnerable to manipulation. A network designed for spreading truth became a profit-driven industry, a public sphere that threatens to undermine the public good.”
Into middle age: There were a lot of recent articles about an important Internet milestone in late October. Ars Technica notes that the original ARPANET had just four nodes when it launched in 1969. “The first letters transmitted, sent from UCLA to Stanford Continue reading



