Legal and regulatory issues

Audiovisual

• EU - Contribution of wide-screen and high definition to global roll-out of digital television  +/-

  (Europa) The Commission Staff Working Paper on the contribution of wide-screen and high definition to the global roll-out of digital television, promised in the Commissions' recent Switchover Communication, argues that the wide-screen (16:9) format can help accelerate the transition to digital television. Broadcasters can use wide-screen to differentiate the quality of digital television from analogue TV, with its traditional "old movie" screen format using the 4:3 ratio. The document also notes that the time is ripe for a revival of high definition television (HDTV) in Europe.

Competition

• EU - Commission launches sector inquiry into sale of sports rights to Internet and 3G mobile operators  +/-

  (RAPID) The European Commission has decided to launch a broad investigation regarding the sale of sports rights to Internet companies and to providers of the third generation (3G) of mobile phone services. The purpose of the inquiry is to have as clear and wide a view as possible of the availability of audiovisual sports rights in the European Union. Sports rights and notably football rights are powerful drivers for the sale of pay-TV subscriptions but also for the roll-out of new media markets, such as enhanced Internet and UMTS services. In the interest of entrepreneurship, consumer choice and innovation, the Commission wants to make sure that access to this key premium content is not unduly restricted.

Computer crime

• P2P gives mobile operators a growing headache  +/-

  (Total Telecom) Peer-to-peer networking could be as sticky a problem for mobile network operators as it has been for fixed telecoms operators. Operators at the TOTAL TELECOM conference on Delivering Mobile Adult Content Responsibly say the main source of pornographic material appearing on their networks is not private commercial content providers but the operators' own subscribers. This week police in Ireland are investigating how a pornographic image of a schoolgirl came to be circulated amongst hundreds of secondary school children with camera phones. see also UK - Phone firms wrestle with porn dilemma

Content regulation

• CN - Chinese activists evade web controls  +/-

  (BBC) In China, the communist authorities have tightened controls on access to the web and imprisoned growing numbers of people for setting up websites or exchanging emails on sensitive topics, Amnesty International reported. But despite the help of several major international corporations and the use of the most sophisticated equipment, the Chinese government is finding the worldwide web much harder to censor than traditional media"

• IN - Bombay plans cyber cafe controls  +/-

  (BBC) Internet cafe owners in India's commercial and entertainment capital, Bombay, are angry at plans to regulate the city's cyber centres. They object to plans which would force them to keep records of people using their internet facilities. The proposals will be put to the state legislature next month. Police say they need new powers to prevent the misuse of the web by what they call terrorists, hackers, paedophiles and users of adult sites.

Copyright, trademarks and patents

• EU - EP Report on collecting societies for authors' rights  +/-

  (Europarl) Report on a Community framework for collecting societies for authors’ rights A5-0478/2003. Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market Rapporteur: Raina A. Mercedes Echerer

• NL - Microsoft wins Lindows fight in the Netherlands  +/-

  (The Register) Rsellers of the Linux distribution Lindows in the Netherlands were ordered to stop selling the product. Amsterdam judge Rullmann agreed with Microsoft that in many ways Lindows is 'profiting from the success of Windows' by infringing Microsoft trademarks.

• US - Diebold v. the Bloggers  +/-

  (Berkman Briefings) The first Berkman Briefing about a case that throws up interesting issues about the tension between copyight and free speech, particulalry since the company seeking to revent publication of source code and embarrassing internal memoranda supplies machinery for electronic voting for 37 states in the US.

• US - Porn publisher sues credit card companies  +/-

  (Reuters) A California publisher of a pornographic magazine and website has sued Visa, MasterCard and other financial institutions in a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, saying they facilitated the illegal sale of pirated sex images flooding the Internet. Perfect 10 based the case on claims other websites were stealing their sexual imagery to make money, often through duplicitous advertising.

• US - The Tyranny of Copyright?  +/-

  (New York Times) by Robert S. Boynton. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.), designed to protect copyrighted material on the Web, the act makes it possible for an Internet service provider to be liable for the material posted by its users - an extraordinary burden that providers of phone service, by contrast, do not share. Under the law, if an aggrieved party threatens to sue an Internet service provider over the content of a subscriber's Web site, the provider can avoid liability simply by removing the offending material. Since the mere threat of a lawsuit is usually enough to scare most providers into submission, the law effectively gives private parties veto power over much of the information published online.

Data Protection (privacy)

• EU - Documents adopted by the Data Protection Working Party  +/-

  (Europa) Recent documents adopted by the Art.29 Data Protection Working Party include Working document on biometrics, Opinion 7/2003 on the re-use of public sector information and the protection of personal data, Opinion 8/2003 on the draft standard contractual clauses submitted by the International Chamber of Commerce and other business associations and Working Document on Trusted Computing Platforms and in particular on the work done by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG group).

Domain names

• EU - Schwere Geburt: kompliziertes Start-Verfahren für .eu  +/- Translate

  (Heise) 10 Euro soll sie für EU-Bürger und Unternehmen kosten, sie ist auch mit registrierfähigen Second-Level-Domains verfügbar (etwa wie in Großbritannien mit .co.uk) und sie wird mit einer komplizierten Vorläufer-Phase Anfang nächsten Jahres eingeläutet: die erste per Verordnung eingeführte Domain .eu. Der Direktor der designierten Registry EUrid, Marc van Wesemael, hat aber die Erwartungen an einen Start noch in diesem Jahr wieder gedämpft.

e-Government

• US - Bipartisan Request Seeks Halt to Internet Voting  +/-

  (Washington Post) In a highly unusual pairing, the Republican and Democratic party organizations for citizens living abroad have banded together against the Pentagon's Internet voting program for the presidential election. Concerns about the security of the online ballots could cast the entire election under a cloud of suspicion, they said in a joint letter urging a halt in the program. The letter is being sent to several congressional committees.

Information society and Internet policy

• WSIS - Conference Hype or Lasting Change?  +/-

  (Berkman Briefings) This report analyzes the two formal documents adopted at the World Summit on the Information Society - the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action. The briefing asks whether the rhetoric of the documents will have any impact on the future of ICTs internationally.

Junk mail (spam)

• DK - Spammer receives record fine  +/-

  (Out-law.com) A Danish telecoms equipment firm has been fined a record £37,000 for sending unsolicited commercial e-mails - otherwise known as spam. The conviction is one of the first in Europe to use the anti-spam provisions of a recent Directive. The 2002 Directive set out new rules to deal with unsolicited commercial e-mail, cookies and other privacy issues in electronic communications and was due to be implemented throughout the EU by 31st October 2003. Denmark and the UK are two of only six member states to have put appropriate measures into place to implement the EU law.

• EU - Commission calls for further action to combat spam  +/-

  (RAPID) A series of actions to help enforce the EU 'ban on spam' were presented by Enterprise and Information Society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen. While the Commission will support these efforts as much as possible, it will primarily be for EU Member States and competent authorities, industry, and consumers and users of the Internet and electronic communications services to play their role, both at the national and international level. These actions focus on effective enforcement by Member States and public authorities, technical and self-regulatory solutions by industry, consumer awareness, and international cooperation. Examples include providing competent authorities with the required investigation and enforcement powers to trace and prosecute 'spammers', adapting marketing practices to the opt-in regime, and explaining to users how to avoid spam and what filtering and security can do for them. Communication on unsolicited commercial communications or 'spam' COM(2004) 28.

• US - FTC announces labels for pornographic spam  +/-

  (Reuters) Pornographic "spam" e-mail will have to be clearly labeled by mid-June to allow Internet users to easily filter it out, the Federal Trade Commission announced. Unsolicited pornography will have to bear a label reading "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT-CONTENT:" in the subject line and the messages themselves will not be allowed to contain graphic material. Public comments on the proposal are sought by February 17.

Mobile and wireless

• UK - Wireless security getting better in London  +/-

  (out-law.com) The number of wireless networks across London has grown rapidly, with a 235% increase in the past year. Security is also improving, with the total number of vulnerable access points falling significantly over the same period, according to a new war-driving study. With a laptop computer and free software available from the internet, researchers were able to pick up information from company wireless networks by simply driving around the streets of London - the practice known as war-driving.

Protection of minors

• UK - Phone firms wrestle with porn dilemma  +/-

  (BBC) Pornography and other adult services are creating big problems for many mobile phone firms. Operators are struggling to find ways to stop children and others accidentally stumbling across adult content but they also want to make it easy for those that want to pay for porn to get at it. Phone firms, industry analysts and mobile content creators are meeting at a conference in London to debate the ways in which operators can strike this balance. see Delivering Mobile Adult Content Responsibly. see also UK code of practice for the self-regulation of new forms of content on mobiles, UK Carriers Tackle Content (Unstrung) Finding a Balance on Adult Content (The Feature);

Rating and filtering

• EU - European Commission to benchmark content filtering technologies  +/-

  (Total Telecom) The European Commission is to attempt to set up a benchmarking scheme for content filtering technologies used in telecoms operators' networks. Richard Swetenham, head of sector for the EC Safer Internet programme, says his unit plans to fund a benchmarking study into the effectiveness of filtering technologies. Vendors and operators would be invited to enter their systems for comparative testing, in an effort to encourage cooperation across the industry. Delegates at the conference heard the first speakers say that co-regulation, or self-regulation within the law, was still the preferred scheme at the European level for regulating erotic, gaming and gambling services on mobile networks. But differences in national law and regulatory provisions have made it difficult for operators introducing new services to manage public concern about them.

Security and encryption

• US - Microsoft Offers Reward For Worm Authors  +/-

  (Washington Post) Microsoft has pledged a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the author of a newly emerged e-mail worm that directs infected computers to attack the Microsoft Web site and prevents them from gaining access to anti-virus Web sites. The Microsoft reward will draw from a $5 million fund that the company established in hopes of luring people to come forward with information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of the authors of viruses, worms and other online threats.

Market & Technology

Statistics

• UK - Why online retailing is booming so fast  +/-

  (Economist) Size for size, Britain has overtaken America as an online retail market. And - though the Swiss are coming up fast - it is ahead of any other west European country: just in front of Germany, but miles ahead of the other big three, Spain, Italy and France. So says Forrester Research, an American-based technology consultancy. This year, by his firm's estimates, 5.8% of total British retail sales will happen online, compared with 5.7% of America's; and the American figures, unlike the European ones, include auctions and travel.

Who's who

• FR - La Cnil continuera sans son président  +/- Translate

  (Le Monde Informatique) Le mandat de membre de la Cnil de Michel Gentot n'a pas été renouvelé lors du Conseil des ministres du 28 janvier dernier. Ce conseiller d'Etat honoraire ne pourra donc pas être réélu président de cette institution créée en 1978. Le sénateur UMP du Nord Alex Türk est généralement considéré comme son successeur le plus probable. L'élection est prévue le 3 février prochain. Autre personnalité écartée par le gouvernement : la consultante Cécile Alvergnat. Le gouvernement a nommé deux nouveaux membres pour remplacer les éconduits : la présidente du Forum des Droits sur l'Internet, la conseillère d'Etat Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, et Jean-Marie Cotteret, professeur en sciences politiques à l'université Paris I.

• UK - Microsoft creator to be knighted  +/-

  (BBC) The king of computer software Bill Gates is to receive an honorary knighthood from the Queen for his contribution to enterprise in the UK. Mr Gates, the world's wealthiest man, is also being honoured for his work on poverty reduction around the world, said the Foreign Office. As an American citizen he cannot use the title 'Sir' but will be entitled to put the letters KBE after his name.

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