Legal and regulatory issues

Audiovisual

• EU - Informal Council of Audiovisual Ministries, Siracusa 12-14 September 2003  +/-

  (Italian Presidency) The 1998 Recommendation on protection of minors and human dignity supplements the regulations contained in the Television without Frontiers Directive and represents the first legal community instrument on all electronic mass media including the Internet. It seems to have played a useful role in orientating domestic legislations also for the development of domestic self-regulation, thus fostering an atmopsphere of confidence that goes to the advantage of the development of the industry of information audiovisual services. Hence it should be implemented by seeking the best forms of cooperation at the Community level aimed, for instance at harmonising the systems for classifying the various audiovisual products, leaving it up to each Member State to have competence over the evaluation of the contents. The ultimate aim is that of producing a quality television, but also that of exercising closer control on the use of the Internet that may enhance the advantages of this important modern communication instrument and may limit the risks and dangers of children using the network without control. A harmonised approach to these problems could be beneficial for the audiovisual policy of the European Union.

Competition

• UK - Media call for BBC internet curbs  +/-

  (Observer) Commercial media companies are to ask the Government for tough restrictions to be placed on the BBC's internet activities, including a cost ceiling on its internet budget and a demand that it provide links to the news services of its competitors. Major media bodies including News International, IPC Media, the Commercial Radio Companies Association, Associated Newspapers and Guardian Newspapers, are to submit a response to Philip Graf, who is heading the Government's probe into the BBC's internet activities, within the next few weeks. Under the umbrella of the British Internet Providers Association, the groups are seeking to mount a response to a BBC-commissioned report by KPMG, which argued that the corporation was not damaging its rivals' internet services. Proposals sought by the companies include that BBC Online should be scaled back to being a 'news portal' and that it should release its internet source codes to commercial organisations.

Computer crime

• DE - Germany Seeks Tougher Punishment for Child Porn  +/-

  (Reuters) German officials called for tougher sentences for consumers of child pornography after police cracked a huge global child porn network involving some 26,500 Internet users in 166 countries. 'The latest investigation successes have shown once again what sort of disgusting acts people are capable of,' Fritz Rudolf Koerper, junior interior minister, told Welt am Sonntag newspaper. 'We must deal with them severely. I propose a coordinated increase of sentences Europe-wide,' Koerper said, adding he wanted more international cooperation on fighting the ways such material was spread on the Internet.

• UK - Chatroom teenager 'had near miss'  +/-

  (Press Association) A teenager who went missing after arranging to visit people he met on the internet had a 'near miss', police said. The disappearance of Darren Freeman, 15, from his college campus sparked a nationwide hunt amid fears that he had been abducted. The teenager returned home voluntarily last night after spending five days with a 17-year-old youth and a 21-year-old man he had met in a chatroom.

Copyright, trademarks and patents

• US - Music Industry Will Talk Before Suing  +/-

  (Washington Post) The music industry, criticized for its recent wave of lawsuits aimed at stopping song swapping on the Internet, agreed to contact future defendants before they are sued and give them a chance to pay a cash settlement or argue that they have been mistakenly accused of copyright infringement.

Data Protection (privacy)

• UK - Draft Retention of Communications Data (Code of Practice) Order 2003  +/-

  (HMSO) Brings into force the Code of Practice prepared under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 relating to the retention by communications providers of communications data obtained by or held by them. HMSO also published the Draft Retention of Communications Data (Extension of Initial Period) Order 2003.

Domain names

• ICANN - VeriSign Ignores Request To Suspend New Service  +/-

  (Washington Post) A long-simmering debate over who controls the Internet boiled over this week as VeriSign defied a request from ICANN to suspend a new service it launched to make money off the typos of Web surfers.

e-Government

• EU - Commission presents 18 actions to speed up eGovernment  +/-

  (EurActiv.com) In its Communication The Role of eGovernment for Europe's future, the Commission presents an overview of the current state of play in eGovernment (Sweden and Ireland leading and Germany and Belgium as serious laggards). The Communication also lists 18 possible actions to speed up the further development of eGovernment. Key actions proposed: access to public services for all via multiple platforms (PC, TV, mobile terminals); new services via broadband development; trust and confidence building measures; swift adoption and transposition of directive on re-use of public sector documents; three-year action plan on electronic public procurement by 2004; development of pan-European services; interoperability framework to be adopted by end of 2003; new approaches to benchmarking needed; one-stop shop for eGovernment related activities of the EU.

• FR - 'Quel avenir pour le vote électronique en France?' Recommandation du Forum des droits sur l'internet  +/- Translate

  (Forum des droits sur l'internet) Publiée le 26 septembre 2003, cette recommandation est le fruit de 7 mois de travaux de concertation de son groupe de travail composé d’experts (sociologues, juristes, techniciens) et de représentants de ministères (ministères de l’intérieur et des affaires sociales), de la CNIL et de syndicats. Elle est destinée aux pouvoirs publics et aux acteurs et a pour objectif de déterminer les conditions de mise en place du vote électronique en France. voir aussi Intervention de Monsieur Nicolas SARKOZY Ministre de l'Intérieur, de la Sécurité Intérieure et des Libertés locales lors du 4ème Forum Mondial iDémocratie (Ministère de l'intérieur) et notamment ses développements sur une carte électronique d'identité.

Hotlines

• Inhope tip leads to break-up of largest global child porn ring  +/-

  (Press Release) Following from a tip received from the INHOPE (Association of Internet Hotlines) member hotline in Germany (ECO's ICTF hotline) in July 2002, on Friday 26th September 2003 the German Police in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and prosecutors in the city of Halle cracked one of the largest global child pornography networks involving some 26,500 Internet users in 166 countries! The suspects were traced using computer files seized last year from a man in the city of Magdeburg. These contained a huge e-mail distribution list that suspected paedophiles used to swap pornographic images of children, some as young as four months of age. There were 26,500 suspects worldwide including individuals in the United States, Australia and Switzerland. In Germany alone Operation Marcy involved some 1,500 police officers, hundreds of raids were conducted and police seized 745 computers, at least 35,500 CDs, 8,300 diskettes and 5,800 videos.see also Single tip smashes child porn ring (Electric News)

Information society and Internet policy

• DE - Kontrolle des Internet  +/- Translate

  (Telepolis) Natürlich war es Zufall, dass die Tagung 'Das Internet, ein rechtsfreier Raum?' ausgerechnet am selben Tag begann, an dem der große Coup in Sachen Kinderpornografie bekannt wurde. Trotzdem hätte man den Zeitpunkt kaum besser wählen können.

• WSIS - Preparatory Conference fails to agree  +/-

  (Register) by Monika Ermert. Geneva Prepcom-III was supposed to be the final preparatory conference for the UN's World Summit of The Information Society (WSIS) which takes place in December 10-12 in Geneva. Now organisers have hastily reconvened another meeting for November aimed at breaking the deadlock over the drafting of two key documents. Neither of the two core documents, the Declaration of Principles and the Action Plan could be finalised after two weeks of lengthy discussions

Interception

• UK - Draft Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Communications Data) Order 2003  +/-

  (HMSO) Specifies additional public authorities that are entitled to acquire communications data under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. See also Explanatory Memorandum.

Junk mail (spam)

• AU - EFA Analysis of Australian Spam Bills 2003  +/-

  (Electronic Frontiers Australia) Proposed laws, claimed to be 'anti-spam' laws, were introduced into Australian Parliament on 18 September 2003. However, close scrutiny of the proposed legislation reveals that it is not anti-spam. While it would prohibit the sending of some spam, it would also legitimise and authorise the sending of other spam (unsolicited bulk commercial electronic messages). It would also prohibit the sending of some single messages to a particular person that few, if any, people would consider to be spam.

• Confessions of a Spam King  +/-

  (New York Times) How Richard Colbert mastered the art of bombarding people with unwanted e-mail, and why Congress almost certainly won't do anything to stop him.

Protection of minors

• DE - Verordnung zur Durchführung des Jugendschutzgesetzes  +/- Translate

  (Artikel5) Verordnung zur Durchführung des Jugendschutzgesetzes (DVO-JuSchG) vom 9. September 2003. Verfahrensregeln für die Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien.

Racism and xenophobia

• CA - Bell removes anti-Semitic Web site  +/-

  (Canadian Jewish News) Bell Canada has removed a Web site hosted by its Sympatico Internet service that allegedly violated the Canadian Human Rights Act by exposing Jews to hatred and contempt. The move came about one month after Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman complained about the site to Sympatico’s customer service department. Though Sympatico representatives initially agreed the material was unacceptable, it was not removed until Warman filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC).

• CH - Zweiter Freispruch im Verfahren wegen "rassistischer Links"  +/- Translate

  (Heise) Das Obergericht Zürich hat den ehemaligen ETH-Assistenzprofessoren Thomas Stricker vom Vorwurf der Rassendiskriminierung freigesprochen. Um auf die Problematik unterschiedlicher Standards im Internet aufmerksam zu machen, hatte der Informatiker Stricker auf seiner persönlichen ETH-Homepage einen Link auf eine Unterseite der anti-rassistischen Homepage stop-the-hate.org gelegt. Dort befindet sich eine kommentierte Auflistung mit Verweisen auf rassistische, anti-semitische und neonazistische Angebote. Mit dieser Aktion übte Stricker Kritik an hochschulinternen Weisungen betreffend der Internet-Nutzung.

Safer Internet awareness

• AU - Australian Students Learn how to Go Online Safely  +/-

  (FindLaw) Young people in Australia can discover how to use the internet safely through an innovative program launched yesterday by the Australian Broadcasting Authority and the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Net Detectives, an online interactive program developed in the United Kingdom by Childnet International, is being brought to Australian schools by the Australian Broadcasting Authority, uses online technology to link young people with experts from outside agencies to solve real-life problems with the use of a fictional but realistic scenario.

• Cliques, Clicks, Bullies And Blogs  +/-

  (Washington Post) by Rachel Simmons. The Internet has transformed the landscape of children's social lives, moving cliques from lunchrooms and lockers to live chats and online bulletin boards, and intensifying their reach and power. When conflicts arise today, children use their expertise with interactive technologies to humiliate and bully their peers, and avoid reprimand from adults or foes. As parents plead technological ignorance and many schools decline to discipline "off-campus" behavior, the Internet has become a free-for-all where bullying and cruelty are rampant.

• UK - NI paedophile fears over internet predators  +/-

  (Press Association) Police fear paedophiles could launch an intense three-month internet campaign targeting children in Northern Ireland. With computer giant Microsoft set to shut down all its chatrooms amid growing fears of online predators, senior officers in Belfast today spoke of their concerns at a new bid to lure youngsters. Flash messages warning parents and teenagers are set to be posted on a Police Service of Northern Ireland website specially designed for teenagers.

Security and encryption

• The e-spy who loves you could be a felon  +/-

  (Reuters) A company calling itself Lover Spy has begun offering a way for jealous lovers--or anyone else--to spy on the computer activity of their mates by sending an e-greeting, the equivalent of a 'thinking of you' card that doubles as a bugging device. Computer security experts said the Lover Spy service and software appeared to violate U.S. law but also said the surveillance program pointed to an increasingly common way for hackers to seize control of computers. Marketed as a way to 'catch a cheating lover,' the Lover Spy company offers to send an e-mail greeting card to lure the victim to a Web site that will download onto the victim's computer a Trojan program to be used for spying.

Self-regulation / codes of conduct

• US - P2P body draws up users' code of conduct  +/-

  (vnunet.com) Developers of peer-to-peer (P2P) software have formed a trade association and drawn up a code of conduct for users of file-swapping sites, in the hope of helping to mollify the US music industry.

Standards

• EU-China Regulatory Co-operation  +/-

  (RAPID) Mr Erkki Liikanen Member of the European Commission, responsible for Enterprise and the Information Society. Introductory Speech at Joint EU-China WTO Conference on Chinese Compulsory Certificate System and International Practice on Certification, Beijing, 17 September 2003.

Market & Technology

Electronic commerce

• UK - National roll-out for chip cards  +/-

  (BBC) Credit and debit cards that do not require a signature when purchases are made are to be rolled out nationwide in Britain. The new cards require consumers to input a four-digit code when making a purchase rather than sign a slip. One in five credit card users are expected to have the new cards by the end of the year and more than half of all cardholders are likely to have them several months after that.

Internet access and use

• Grid - Huge computing power goes online  +/-

  (BBC) The first phase of an ambitious computing network designed to handle huge amounts of data has been launched. The network, dubbed the Grid, has been set up by the Cern labs in Geneva to tap into the processing power of computers in 12 countries. The aim of the project is to handle data from an experiment on how the Universe began. Cern believes the Grid could eventually provide people access to a vast pool of processing power from their desktops.

Mobile and wireless

• European operators form 'mobile alliance'  +/-

  (ITU) The Financial Times reports that second and third-tier mobile operators across Europe have announced a pan- European mobile alliance in an attempt to rival the purchasing power for handsets and infrastructure of leading operators such as Vodafone. The alliance includes MMO2, BT Group's former mobile arm, Amena, the Spanish mobile operator, One in Austria, Pannon GSM in Hungary, Swiss operator Sunrise, Telenor Mobil of Norway and Wind in Italy. Between them the companies cover more than 40m mobile subscribers.

• Mobile games to 'tempt women'  +/-

  (BBC) Mobile gaming is set to become big business in the next year and the industry is hoping it will attract a different breed of gamers, women. While the games industry is churning out better, brighter games, mobile makers are coming out with more colour-screened handsets on which to play them. Both sides of the industry are hoping mobiles will drive more women to gaming because they are easy to use. But games makers still have to break some of the stereotypical ideas about which games will appeal to men and women, say experts.

• NL - 3G masts 'cause health problems'  +/-

  (BBC) Phone masts for the high-tech third generation mobile phones cause headaches and nausea, researchers have claimed. Dutch government scientists looked at the signals transmitted by base stations for the new phones. They operate at a higher frequency than those for traditional mobiles.

• UK - Mobile firm steps up price pressure  +/-

  (BBC) 3 UK, the third-generation mobile network owned by Hutchison Whampoa, is introducing a new low price tariff as it seeks to poach customers from its rivals. The new price package will offer 100 voice minutes a month to any network for a monthly fee of £15.

Rating and filtering

• UK - Mobile filtering tool blocks adult content  +/-

  (vnunet.com) UK company launches parental control filter. Interactive mobile content specialist Bango.net has launched new filter technology designed to stop children from accessing adult content on mobile phones. Bango.net's technology relies on the company's provision for rating the content it hosts for third-party providers, such as ringtone and logo websites, as well as adult entertainment (the second largest content supplier for the company).

• UK - Text blocking aid fights bullies  +/-

  (BBC) Children who get threatening and unwanted text messages could soon have a way of fighting back. SMS and e-mail bullying has become increasingly common as more children have computers and their own mobiles. Research by children's charity NCH suggested 16% of 11 to 19 year-olds had received threatening text messages. But a new service for mobile phone operators could give young people the power to stop the unwanted messages getting to their mobiles from others. The service, Intelligent SMS Centre (iSMSC), means children who get bullying texts will be able to log the mobile number of the sender with their mobile operator. Any future messages from that number will then be stopped before it reaches the child's phone.

Standards

• ETSI publishes its work on mobile signatures  +/-

  (Press Release) Mobile commerce has taken a major step forward with the completion of an important project on mobile signatures by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Electronic signatures are used to authenticate the identity of a person doing business over the Internet in the same way that a written signature guarantees the identity of a person signing a written contract. Electronic signatures created for use on a mobile telephone have become known as 'Mobile Signatures'. ETSI's work on m-Signatures has just been published as two Technical Specifications (TSs): TS 102 204 on a web service interface and TS 102 207 on roaming in m-Signature services; and an ETSI Technical Report on security requirements for m-Signatures (TR 102 206).

Statistics

• Europe - Children fuel internet explosion  +/-

  (BBC) Children are leading the way when it comes to venturing into cyberspace, surfing the net for music and games. The number of children online in Europe has jumped by a third in a year, analysts Nielsen/NetRatings have found. There are now just over 13 million teens regularly using the internet, with the UK having more children online than any other European country.

Technology

• EU - One Billion Euro for the success of Information and Communication Technologies in Europe  +/-

  (RAPID) The Union's priority for R&D in Information Society Technologies (IST) aims to bring technologies closer to people, ensuring that all Europe's citizens and businesses can, and actually do benefit from technological advance. As a result of the first IST Call for Proposals under the sixth Framework Programme, the Commission's Information Society Directorate-General will be launching 236 new IST projects to the tune of 1 billion Euro of Community funding. This represents the largest award of its kind in the history of the Framework Programme.

Forthcoming events

• 2003-10-13 NO, Oslo - OECD Global Forum on Information Systems and Network Security  +/-

  (OECD) The OECD Global Forum on Information Systems and Network Security: Towards a Global Culture of Security will be held on 13-14 October 2003 in Oslo, Norway. A large number of non-member economies will be invited. To reinforce the agreement made in Honolulu to increase co-operation between the OECD and APEC, many APEC member countries will also be present.

• 2003-10-22 DE, München - Transparenz im Netz  +/- Translate

  (Medientage München) ICM Mittwoch, 22.10.03, 14:00 Uhr Bertelsmann Stiftung Transparenz im Netz: Suchmaschinen, Verbraucherschutz und Internetpolitik mit Carsten Welp, Projektmanager Demokratie & Bürgergesellschaft, Bertelsmann Stiftung, Stefan Fischerländer, Geschäftsführer certo it solutions & training, Dr. Hansjörg Kuch, Ministerialrat, Leiter Medienpolitik und Medienwirtschaft, Bayerische Staatskanzlei, Dr. Manfred Stegger, Vorstandsvorsitzender allesklar.com, Verena Weigand, Leiterin des Referats Jugendschutz und Medienpädagogik der Bayerischen Landeszentrale für neue Medien (BLM). Moderation: Prof. Dr. Marcel Machill, Berater der Bertelsmann Stiftung, Universität Leipzig.

• 2003-10-29 US, Washington - Marketing violent entertainment to children  +/-

  (FTC) On October 29, 2003, the Federal Trade Commission will host a one-day public workshop to examine issues relating to the marketing of violent entertainment to children. The workshop will provide a forum for discussing the state of self-regulation in the entertainment industry and, in particular, children?s access to products that have been rated as potentially inappropriate for them or have been labeled with a parental advisory. The workshop will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on October 29, 2003 at the FTC Conference Center located at 601 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. It is open to the public and there is no attendance fee.

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