Stories by: Scott Bradner

When The Guardian recently interviewed Google co-founder Sergey Brin as a teaser for its weeklong series of articles about the Battle for the Internet, the publication got a good headline out of it: "Google's Brin: threats to Web freedom 'greater then ever'"

The Associated Press in late March reported on the issue of employers asking job applicants for their Facebook passwords, citing new and old incidents. The story apparently hit a sore point because it was all over the press within a day or so and in short order politicians were posturing and reaching for the limelight by introducing legislation to ban the practice and sending letters to enforcement agencies demanding action. Based on the comments since the story broke, it is clear that the specific practice of demanding an applicant's password to a social media site is not common but that there is a common worry that it might become so.

 Why is it that companies that should know better embark on programs of customer abuse when they should stop and think like a customer, at least for a few seconds? This is a small tale of a company getting it right, then making three all-too-common mistakes. These are not the only ways a company can abuse its customers, but is an example of the kind of non-thinking that should be avoided.

It's been a hard few years for we-control-everything corporate IT departments as well as for the "Microsoft is the answer, what was your question?" approach to corporate computing. It has also been a while since corporate IT departments have had to deal with a new reality that completely changed how they interact with their users.

Out of the blue, Apple just announced Mountain Lion, the next generation of its OS X operating system. By the time Mountain Lion ships sometime next summer, Apple says it will have lots of new features, some transported from its iOS environment of the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch world. This column will examine just one of the new features, one that, while good, has not yet included all the functions of its iOS prototype.

What is it about politicians that makes them believe that they, with a few minutes' cursory review, know better than people who have studied in an area for decades? Whatever the case, it far from a rare condition. The most recent example of this attitude is the copyright protection proposals currently in front of Congress.

I ended last year with a death-of-the-Internet column, and I'm starting off the new year with a death-via-the-Internet one.

A year ago I wrote that 2011 would be a year in which the Internet would "be under a multi-pronged attack that threatens to change it irrevocably in ways that may destroy much of the Internet's potential." Well, 2011 has come and mostly gone, and it turned out that my pessimism may have been misplaced but not invalid.

The Supreme Court earlier this month heard arguments on a relatively common drug case, but there is a chance for this case to set the groundwork, for good or ill, on resolving most of the issues I discussed recently regarding the murky state of privacy protections from the government in the United States.

In September representatives from India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) got together to talk about the Internet. Their conclusion: The 'Net needed help from the United Nations in the areas of developing policies, technical standards, operation, dispute resolution and crises management.