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(Europa)
(Digitalfernsehen.de) So gut wie alle privaten Fernsehsender Deutschlands stehen unter dem Verdacht gegen das Werbeverbot für Pornografie zu verstoßen. Das teilte die Direktoren- und Gremienvorsitzendenkonferenz der Landesmedienanstalten nach einer zweitägigen Sitzung in Saarbrücken mit. Demnach habe sich der Verdacht auf Verstöße gegen das Webeverbot nach einem Zwischenbericht der Gemeinsamen Stelle Jugendschutz, Programm, Medienkompetenz und Bürgermedien (GSJP) erhärtet.
(Federal Communications Law Journal) by Hernan Galperin and François Bar. The broadcasting industry is rapidly entering the era of digitization, distributed intelligence, and interactivity.
(AP) A federal judge ruled that a Canadian computer hacker who provided authorities with diary entries and other information that led to the arrest of an Orange County judge on child pornography charges was acting as a police informant. The ruling triggers Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches and could lead to all evidence against the defendant being thrown out.
(AP) Five U.S. media organizations asked a Canadian appeals court to overturn inclusion of the Internet in a publication ban covering a preliminary hearing in Canada's worst serial killing case.
(CNET News.com) Israel's top government censor has warned Web sites in her country not to publish sensitive information about the war with Iraq. America at war. Chief Censor Rachel Dolev sent a letter to "scoop" news sites, instructing editors to seek government permission before publishing information about "materials that could pose a threat to the security of the State of Israel and its residents."
(Federal Communications Law Journal) by Sue Ann Mota. The CPPA (Child Pornography Prevention Act) was intended to protect minors from the harmful effects of virtual child pornography. The COPA (Child Online Protection Act) was intended to protect minors from pornography available commercially on the World Wide Web. However, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of both statutes. Currently, neither statute is being enforced. This Article predicts the future of COPA and recommends further congressional action to protect minors from the harmful effects of both virtual and real child pornography, and from accessing pornography on the Web.
(CENTR) CENTR is a not for profit organisation, incorporated in the UK, and with staff currently based in Oxford and Salzburg. CENTR was created and funded by country code top level domain registries (ccTLDs) in Europe and beyond. CENTR's members manage the national Internet domain name registries for names registered under their two-letter code (.fr, .uk, .de etc). CENTR provides a forum to discuss matters of policy affecting ccTLDs and acts as channel of communication to Internet governing bodies and others involved in the Internet, promoting the interests of not-for-profit ccTLDs and lobby on their behalf. We are looking to appoint a General Manager. Salary: Negotiable. Deadline for applications: 28 March 2003.
(IDG) The European Commission is consulting its 15 national member governments over a draft decision to pick a Belgian-led consortium to run the long-awaited .eu top-level domain name registry. The front runner is the Brussels-based European Registry of Internet Domains consortium, or EURID, which has been set up by DNS Belgium vzw/asbl, Istituto di Informatica e Telematica Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and the Network Information Centre Sweden AB (NIC SE).
(Sydney Morning Herald) Australia's Dr Paul Twomey has been appointed the new president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Dr Twomey will replace retiring president/CEO Stuart Lynn, who has served for the past two years, on March 27. For the three years ending November, 2002, he was the first chair of the ICANN governmental advisory committee, a global forum of governmental representatives that provides advice to the ICANN Board on public policy issues.
(ICANNWatch) ITU has released a survey by Nominum UK that queried all 243 ccTLD's name servers. It would be expected that there would be no mismatches between the root and a ccTLD over the ccTLD's name servers. In fact, 64% of the ccTLDs have mismatched delegation information between themselves and the root.
(ZDNet France) La loi sur l'économie numérique attribue au CSA la compétence pour réguler l'internet. Une compétence trop large pour l'institution, qui veut la limiter aux télévisions et aux radios en ligne. L'Autorité de régulation des télécommunications (ART), l'Association des fournisseurs d'accès et des services internet (AFA) et même le Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA) sont unanimes: l'article 1 de la loi Fontaine doit être modifié. Dans son premier article, le texte définit la «communication publique en ligne» comme un sous-ensemble de l'audiovisuel. Projet de loi pour la confiance dans l'économie numérique (Assemblée nationale).
(AFP) Le gouvernement envisage la création d'un conseil supérieur de l'internet, a annoncé la ministre déléguée à la Recherche Claudie Haigneré au cours d'un point de presse. La "société civile des internautes" serait représentée au sein de ce conseil consultatif composé de "sages", a-t-elle précisé, les contours précis de cette instance devant être arrêtés lors d'un prochain Comité interministériel pour la société de l'information. Selon Claudie Haigneré, "il faut aller au-delà du Forum des droits sur l'internet", un organisme de corégulation du net créé par le gouvernement Jospin. voir aussi ZDNet France.
(CNET News.com) A federal appeals court said that a law restricting junk faxes was constitutional, setting a precedent that favors legal attempts to restrict unsolicited e-mail. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's ruling, concluding that a 1991 federal law banning unsolicited fax advertising did not violate the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression. State of Missouri v. American Blast.
(Heise) Das Oberverwaltungsgericht Münster hat seine lang erwartete Entscheidung zu den Sperrungsverfügungen der Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf gegen rechtsradikale Websites gefällt: Die Verfügungen müssen von den Internet-Providern vorläufig befolgt werden.
(RAPID) The European Commission has adopted a recommendation that calls upon Member States to facilitate the use of Radio Local Area Networks (R-LAN) for accessing public services. The Recommendation encourages Member States to allow deployment of public R-LAN access networks without sector specific conditions and subject only to general authorisations. The Commission thereby implements the policy objective set by the European Council to foster multiple broadband access platforms in support of the Information Society. R-LANs (also referred to as W-LAN and Wi-Fi) are currently operating mainly in licence-exempt frequency bands. They are a fast-developing, innovative and promising means of implementing broadband wireless access to the Internet, and as such complement other broadband access infrastructures. Developed initially for private usage (e.g. corporate Intranets), these R-LAN platforms are now increasingly revealing their market potential for accessing the public Internet when in areas such as airports, train stations and shopping malls.
(Heise) In nur zwei Wochen tritt mit dem Staatsvertrag für den Jugendmedienschutz ein umfassendes neues System der Kontrolle von Medieninhalten im Rundfunk ebenso wie im Internet in Kraft. Was auf Medienaufsicht und Unternehmen mit dem auch Online-Medien umfassenden Jugendmedienschutz zukommt, ist allerdings noch äußerst ungewiss.
(AP) Following complaints from activists, Internet auction giant eBay will caution sellers against describing items using a racial slur. When a seller uses the n-word in an item description, a new box will automatically pop up on the computer screen. It will tell the seller that the listing contains a word which may be "highly offensive to many in the eBay community" and could violate the company's policy against racially offensive items.
(Wired) The University of Toronto's Internet Censorship Explorer permits anyone with a Web browser to test the limits of certain national and organizational Internet-blocking schemes. Users simply enter a target URL and a country into a search field on the Censorship Explorer's website. The software then scans the ports of available servers in that country, looking for open ones. By using the foreign computer as a proxy server, ICE then attempts to visit the target URL from behind that country's firewall. Either the visible website or a "page blocked" message is then returned to the user.
(Seth Finkelstein) This report describes the system by which results in the Google search engine are suppressed. Google is arguably the world's most popular search engine. However, contrary perhaps to a naive impression, in some cases the results of a search are affected by various government-related factors. That is, search results which may otherwise be shown, are deliberately excluded. The suppression may be local to a country, or global to all Google results.
(eTesting Labs) The U.S. Department of Justice commissioned eTesting Labs to use our standard test methodology to compare the effectiveness of five Web content filtering applications in blocking material based on specific criteria. Study published in Oct 2001.
(Australian IT) The federal Government's internet advisory group NetAlert will start winding-up its operations in two weeks if it does not receive additional funding. The group was set up three years ago at the height of the dotcom boom to assist parents in blocking their kids' access to internet porn and other inappropriate material.
(Europa) Study on the assessment of the Member States measures aimed at fulfilling certain general interest objectives linked to broadcasting, imposed on providers of electronic communications networks and services, in the context of the new regulatory framework, prepared by Eurostrategies. Executive summary, [EN *.pdf, 168KB] Final report [EN *.pdf, 1,96MB] Country profiles [EN *.pdf, 1,34MB] see also 2003-04-25 EU, Brussels Workshop on final report of Eurostrategies Study
(Reuters) Internet traffic surged as Web users sought out news on the U.S.-led attacks on Iraq, others vented outrage on the war and still others sought tips to protect themselves. Internet usage spiked two to three times higher than normal, according to representatives for major U.S. and Chinese websites, as the war got underway with bombing raids on Baghdad, and Iraq responded with Scud missile attacks on positions in Kuwait. see also Iraq conflict hits websites hard (BBC), Reporters' Log: At war in Iraq (BBC) and Iraq war could herald a new age of Web-based news coverage (USA Today).
(CNET News.com) In a new study of spamming tactics, Why Am I Getting All This Spam? the policy group Center for Democracy and Technology found the most successful methods of avoiding unwanted messages involved obscuring e-mail addresses or hiding them altogether.
(AP) Yahoo! launched a subscription service that features video and audio from the NCAA basketball tournament, "American Idol," The Weather Channel and other sources in an effort to boost revenues and attract more broadband users. The company said the multimedia features will be available to both dial-up and high-speed users, though broadband customers who have fast cable or Digital Subscriber Line Internet connections will see the most benefit. The cost of Yahoo Platinum will be $9.95 a month.
(Guardian) Britain's appetite for digital television is growing so quickly the medium will overtake the internet in terms of penetration by the end of this year, according to the independent television commission. The ITC said more than 10 million homes - 40% of the population - had digital TV at the end of last year. In comparison, 11 million homes were connected to the internet. ITC multichannel quarterly - Q4 2002.
(Corporation for Public Broadcasting) American children regardless of their age, income, or ethnicity, greatly increased their use of the Internet from home, school, or library over the past two years. Yet even with these growth trends, children from under-served populations still significantly lag behind more advantaged children both in home and school access. This report from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting examines both the trends and the implications of children connecting to the Internet.
(Ipsos) Downloaders believe their actions are not hurting artists, according to Ipsos, the global marketing research firm. Despite recent efforts to educate the public on the need to respect copyrights and intellectual property in the era of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, only one-in-five downloaders age 12 and older agree that free downloading and peer to peer file-trading hurts artists. New findings show that nearly half (48%) of 12-to-17 year olds and 42% of 18-to-24 year olds report they have downloaded music or MP3 files.
(Mercury News) Child pornography and other sexually explicit videos and images are the most sought-after content on online file-swapping networks, surpassing even the brisk unauthorized music and movie trade. A new study reveals that pornography accounts for more than 40 percent of the traffic on the Gnutella network, which connects such file-sharing services as Morpheus, LimeWire and BearShare. Child porn constitutes a small yet disturbingly measurable percentage of all searches: about 6 percent.
(EUROPA) In January, the European Commission adopted a work programme with a view to a possible review of the 1989 "Television without Frontiers" Directive. The questions raised in this work programme are to be the subject of an extensive public consultation. The Commission will publish a communication based on the results of this public consultation at the end of 2003 or beginning of 2004 on the future of audio-visual policy. All interested parties are invited to participate in the public debate by responding to the questions specified in the discussion papers and transmitting their written contributions by 15 July 2003. It will include public hearings in April and June. The documents which will be used as the basis for the debate are now available. The first series of hearings: 2, 3 April 2003 Protection of general interest in television advertising, sponsorship, teleshopping and self-promotion, 4 April 2003 Access to events of major importance to society, Brief extracts of events.
(Europa) Workshop on final report of Eurostrategies Study on assessment of the Member States measures aimed at fulfilling certain general interest objectives linked to broadcasting, in the context of the new regulatory framework. 25 April 2003 from 10:00- 13:30 in Brussels.
(CRID) The CRID is organising this Conference in the context of the CTOSE project (EU funded, IST programme). The purpose of this Conference is to address the legal issues involved in handling electronic traces. A background of technical aspects for "non-technicians" will be presented. The event will focus on the legal admissibility of the electronic evidence, as well as on procedural aspects foreseen in the Cybercrime Convention of the Council of Europe and the Proposal Framework decision on attacks against information systems. Then, controversial issues related to the subject matter will be discussed, like the case of traffic data retention. Last but not least, the different interested parties will present their point of view with regard to e-evidence gathering. The event will take place in the Faculty of Law of the University of Namur from 14.00 on 8 May until 15.45 on 9 May 2003. The fee for participants is of 150 Euro.
(Europa) 23, 24, 25 June 2003 (provisional) Promotion of cultural diversity and of competitiveness of the European programme industry, Protection of minors and public order - The right to reply, Application (determination of the competent authority, role of the National Regulatory Authorities, etc.)
(CDT) The Center for Democracy and Technology has released a compendium of papers that examine key issues in the consumer privacy debate. The resource contains 23 papers by a balanced array of industry representatives, privacy experts and consumer advocates.
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