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(RAPID) The European Commission has cleared the proposed acquisition of French cable operator Noos by UPC, itself a cable company ultimately owned by Liberty Media.
(RAPID) The European Commission closed its State aid investigation into the State financed Danish public broadcaster TV2/DANMARK, ordering TV2 to reimburse approximately ? 84.4 million plus interest of State aid. The formal investigation showed that this amount of aid that TV2/DANMARK received exceeded the cost of fulfilling its public service mission.
(Reuters) Nordic police have staged their biggest regional crackdown on suspected child pornography, rounding up scores of suspects in co-ordinated raids across four nations. Swedish police said they questioned more than 100 suspects while Danish police made 43 raids on Tuesday. The numbers of raids or suspects held in Norway and Finland were not immediately available.
(Reuters) Police are heading back to the classroom as a new breed of criminals turns to the Internet to prey on unsuspecting victims.
(ZDNet UK) Law enforcement agencies require a bigger pool of skilled investigators and digital forensic experts, not more money or legislation, according to a study. A large number of criminals connect to the Internet, which has led to the transfer of traditional crimes to the online world. Although cybercrimes are becoming more common, members of the police force and specialist computer crime units lack many of the basic skills required to trace and analyse computer-based crimes. Although there are 140,000 police officers in the UK, only around 1,000 of them have received any specialist cybercrime training and only 250 are in specialist computer-crime units.
(out-law.com) The UK watchdog for premium rate phone numbers yesterday imposed a record collective fine of £450,000 on six overseas companies that had sent spam and scam text messages encouraging consumers to call premium rate numbers.
(AP) Stepping up a public morality campaign aimed at Chinese youths, the government will require official approval of all online and mobile game products before they are sold. More than 80 percent of the nearly 140 online games available in China are imported. Some have content deemed violent, sexually explicit or harmful to national security, the official Xinhua News Agency said in a report on its Web site.
(rediff.com) Key Internet service providers in India have blocked access to a web site, www.hinduunity.org. The web site is run by a Hindu activist from the US, Rohit Vyasmaan, and logs about 17,000 hits a day. The site has been blocked on the basis of a request from the Mumbai police commissioner's office in a letter sent out to ISPs on April 28. Sources at the Mumbai police commissioner's office said the directive was issued because the web site published inflammatory material against Islam.
(RAPID) The Competitiveness Council has reached a political agreement on the proposed Directive on computer-implemented inventions. The Commission supports the text adopted by Council, which it believes restores the overall balance between the interests of the rights holders and other parties (competitors and consumers) struck by the original Commission proposal. However, there are still differences between the positions of the Council and European Parliament and, under the 'co-decision' procedure, both institutions must agree before the measure can become EU law. see most recent publcly available text.
(BBC) Leaders of the movie industry in Cannes have appealed to directors and actors to sign up to their anti-piracy message before piracy wrecks the film business. Executives from Hollywood, France, India, China, and Russia held an 'unprecedented' meeting on Sunday. They said directors should be involved in the campaign because 'they are the major victims' of piracy. The meeting involved criticism of 'members of the showbusiness community who profess to be pirates and seem proud of it'.
(Juriscom.net) par Sandrine Rouja. Commentaire de l'ordonnance du Tribunal de grande instance de Paris du 6 avril 2004, Microsoft c/ E Nov Developpement. L´ordonnance rendue le 6 avril dernier par le Tribunal de grande instance de Paris, statuant en la forme des référés, est une illustration de la lutte engagée par le leader mondial du logiciel, Microsoft, contre le spamming.
(DMEurope) A court in the Dutch city of Haarlem has cleared Techno Design, the operator of music search-engine portal, Zoekmp3.nl, of copyright violation. The charge had been brought by BREIN, the Dutch entertainment industry's anti-piracy association. The court ruled that providing links to an MP3 file did not constitute disclosure or publication of contents according to Dutch copyright law.
(Guardian) The government would have to be 'pretty brave' to demand open access publishing for all publicly funded scientific research journals, a government adviser said. Professor Sir Keith O'Nions, the director-general of the Research Councils, yesterday said that it would be 'unwise' for ministers to demand that government-funded journals should be available without charge over the internet.
(Reuters) A U.S. music industry group says it has sued 493 more people for copyright infringement as part of its campaign to stop consumers from copying music over the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America has now sued nearly 3,000 individuals since last September in an attempt to discourage people from copying songs through peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa and LimeWire.
(BBC) The investigator known only as Mr X has the job of 'cleaning the internet of some of the filth out there'. It may sound like the synopsis for the latest Hollywood spy thriller but Mr X has a much more down-to-earth name in real life and works for the British Software Alliance.
(RAPID) The European Commission has adopted a formal Decision that the Commission considers that the data on air passengers transferred to the US authorities enjoys the 'adequate protection' required under the EU's data protection Directive for data sent to countries outside the EU. The Decision will enter into force once the US has signed its undertakings and once the international agreement that will complement the adequacy Decision has been signed by the Council and the US. see also Inadequate Adequacy (Privacy International).
(BBC) The government could face a public backlash to its proposals on ID cards a new survey has found. Up to 5 million people (28%) would demonstrate against ID cards, the survey conducted by online research firm YouGov found. One million would be prepared to go to prison rather than register for a card. The most vehement opposition to the ID card proposals is from people who voted Conservative at the last election.
(Guardian) Sebastian Coe's failure to stop Sunday newspapers publishing details of a secret affair showed that judges were not carving out a new privacy law. In the first notable privacy case since the House of Lords ruled in Naomi Campbell's favour against a Daily Mirror story about her drug problem earlier this month, Lord Coe, chairman of London's Olympic bid, went to court in a last-minute attempt to halt publication of an interview with his former lover Vanessa Lander.
(BBC) US politicians have taken the first steps towards imposing restrictions on Google's Gmail service. Citing privacy worries, Californian senators have approved a bill that limits Google's plans to scan messages and include ads based on what it finds. Google said it was working with law-makers on a way to both answer privacy concerns and run a viable service. Before becoming law the bill will go to California's Assembly for further discussion and possible amendment.
(Industry Canada) As our use of public electronic networks continues to evolve, from searching the Internet for information to exchanging information and money online, we need greater assurance that these messages and transactions are secure and that our privacy is protected. Authentication of electronic communications can make a significant contribution to meeting this need and to building user confidence
(Reuters) A new batch of proposed Internet domains could make it easier to fight spam and filter out smut, but the head of the regulatory body that will usher them sees even broader possibilities. Independent evaluators will assess a variety of factors, from the perceived need the domain will fill to whether sponsoring organizations have the technical ability to run a registry that could contain millions of names.
(W3C) by Tim Berners-Lee. In 2004 there were proposals to create new top-level domains which included .mobi and .xxx. There are major problems with these proposals. There are costs in general to creating any new top level domain. There are specific ways in which the '.mobi' breaks the Web architecture of links, and attacks the universality of the Web. At their 14 May 2004 face-to-face meeting, the W3C Technical Advisory Group resolved to support this document.
(Europa) A portal specifically devoted to catering for the needs of young people is launched by the European Commission on 26th May 2004 with access to more than 10.000 websites in the 20 EU languages. The portal has been developed by young Europeans for young Europeans and contains everything you need and want to know about Europe which is relevant to young people from travel, to study to working in another EU country.
(BBC) The impact of e-government is under the spotlight on both sides of the Atlantic as studies question how much citizens interact with government websites. A report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project thinktank found that US citizens prefer to pick up the phone when dealing with officials. In the UK, there are doubts about whether the government's flagship website can attract visitors.
(BBC) A student who admits down-loading material from the internet for his degree plans to sue his university for negligence. Michael Gunn claims his university should have warned him his actions were against the regulations.
(RAPID) The Competitiveness Council has reached a political agreement on the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. The directive provides for full harmonisation: as soon as traders comply with the provisions of the directive they do so not just in their own national context but on EU-level. There is no need for mutual recognition, the same rules apply in all EU Member States. The Directive lays down rules for determining whether a commercial practice is unfair and defines a limited range of "sharp practices" which are prohibited EU-wide. See also Ministers scrap "country of origin" from unfair trading law (out-law.com). EU Trade Ministers have scrapped the "country of origin" principle in a proposed Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices, a move that could leave European traders liable to comply with consumer protection laws of all 25 Member States, rather than just one.
(RAPID) The Competitiveness Council has endorsed legislation that will create an EU-wide network of national enforcement authorities capable of taking co-ordinated action against rogue traders who abuse the freedom of the EU's Internal Market in order to run cross border scams. The regulation will require each Member State to designate a public enforcement authority to be part of a mutual assistance network. Each of these competent authorities will then be able to call on other members of the network for assistance in investigating a possible breach of consumer laws, finding information or, ultimately, ensuring a rogue trader is stopped. In return for receiving these rights, each competent authority will, in turn, be obliged to provide assistance to its counterparts in other Member States.
(Guardian) In what looks like the first major blurring between telecommunications companies, credit card networks and banks, a conglomerate of mobile networks is launching a system that may take on credit cards as a way of paying for things, online and off.
(IRIS) Dans un mémoire commun adressé au Conseil constitutionnel le 24 mai 2004, l'association Imaginons un réseau Internet solidaire (IRIS) et la Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH) soulèvent plusieurs points d'inconstitutionnalité de la loi pour la confiance dans l'économie numérique (LEN). Sans reprendre les trois points soulevés dans le texte de la saisine des parlementaires socialistes et communistes, l'argumentaire des deux associations entend compléter le texte du recours déposé par les sénateurs et députés de l'opposition le 18 mai 2004. voir aussi Première manif' organisée par les associations de défense des libertés sur le net (ZDNet France) .
(ITU) A global ITU survey shows overwhelming support for the belief that if the information society is to be one in which all citizens throughout the world can equally access and use information resources for sustainable economic and social development, that cyberspace should be declared a resource to be shared by all for the global public good. This opinion was held by more than 94% of survey respondents. And these results were consistent across all the regions surveyed.
(ZDNet Australia) Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock has introduced amendments to federal parliament that would ease police access in the country to stored voice mails, e-mails and text messages. Ruddock said the Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment (Stored Communications) Bill would allow police to gain access to stored communications without a telecommunications interception warrant, as well as allowing access under 'other forms of lawful authority such as a search warrant.' see also NEWS.com.au | Ruddock tries snooping law again (News.com.au).
(Guardian) The decision by BT to accelerate delivery of broadband to almost all rural areas should have been met with applause. Instead, it has left some communities furious.
(CNET News.com) Microsoft is lobbying to combine its technical proposal for authenticating e-mail, Caller ID for E-mail, with a competing process, SPF, or Sender Policy Framework, backed by America Online. Microsoft has submitted the proposal to industry standards body Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for consideration as a standard. Yahoo has also submitted its own e-mail authentication proposal, DomainKeys, to the IETF. See also Antispam framework scores Microsoft endorsement (CNET News.com).
(BBC) Junk mail now accounts for nearly 70% of e-mails worldwide, according to filtering firm MessageLabs. Despite efforts in the US to cut down on the sending of unsolicited messages, new laws seem to be having the opposite effect. Spammers are simply adapting rather than shutting up shop. 'The law goes part way to legitimise spam rather than outlaw it,' said Natasha Staley, information security analyst at MessageLabs.
(CNET News.com) by Declan McCullagh. Spammers flooding the Internet with pornographic solicitations apparently are not abiding by a new federal rule that took effect last week. Not only did illegal sexually-explicit spam fail to slow down after the regulations took effect May 19, but pornographic e-mail measured by one antispam company jumped from around 2 million messages in a 40-hour period last week to around 2.5 million during the same period this week. Brightmail, an antispam company in San Francisco, said that it measured 2 billion junk e-mail messages in the 40-hour period last week after the FTC rule took effect. Of the 2 million that were pornographic, 40 percent had some sort of label that resembled what the FTC mandated. see Spam Statistics.
(Juriscom.net) par Bruno Cinelli & Julien Bruchet. Alors que l'Union européenne s´est dotée d'une directive sur le commerce électronique afin de définir la responsabilité des prestataires techniques sur Internet quant à la diffusion du contenu illicite, la Confédération helvétique fait une nouvelle fois figure d'exception. Elle laisse place à un terrain vague et à des développements doctrinaux contradictoires. La problématique de la responsabilité sera principalement étudiée au regard des fournisseurs d´accès Internet (FAI) et des fournisseurs d´hébergement.
(Juriscom.net) par Lionel Thoumyre. A l'occasion de l'adoption définitive par le Parlement du projet de loi pour la Confiance dans l'économie numérique, Juriscom.net vous offre un dossier complet sur la 'Responsabilité des acteurs de l'Internet en France'. Principalement constitué d'hyperliens, ce dossier vous permet de retrouver les principales sources d'étude et de documentation liées à ce sujet : les lois et projets traitant de la responsabilité des acteurs, les avis et les rapports sur la LCEN ainsi que les principales décisions de justice concernant la responsabilité des auteurs, des éditeurs, des hébergeurs, des fournisseurs d'accès, des créateurs de liens, des organisateurs de forums de discussion et des employeurs.
(ISPA UK) Unlawful content is not just limited to material such as child pornography. Child pornography is illegal "full stop", both in the UK and throughout the world. It is almost always perfectly clear whether the material is illegal or not so it can be removed relatively easily. However unlawful content also includes other less obvious material such as instances of defamation, infringement of copyright and other intellectual property rights, criminally racist or sexist content. Assessing the legal status or otherwise of such content is very difficult for the Internet industry. UK E-Commerce Regulations stopped short of introducing clear and effective procedures for removing unlawful content, known in the industry as "notice and takedown". Formal procedures governing the removal of unlawful material need to be developed to further clarify the rights and responsibilities of service providers who currently operate a self-regulatory notice and takedown procedure. The Government should assist the UK Internet industry to create a universal procedure for establishing the illegality of material, and the notification of such content to ISPs by a designated authority. see also Content Liability.
(Guardian) by Damian Tambini. Although ISPs are involved in regulating content, they do not dedicate enough resources to performing this role to conform to the most minimal standards of transparency, accountability and appeal that would be observed in other media sectors.
(FindLaw) by Julie Hilden. Search sites are, in effect, immune from much of the liability risk a traditional publisher of news and other factual information faces. search sites such as Google, in particular, are immune from defamation liability despite the fact that they widely disseminate information and news. The author considers what the liability difference may mean for the future.
(BBC) It's reported that Google, whose motto is Do No Evil, has an ethics committee to debate its impact on the world - something that will doubtless grow as the company floats. So what sort of things might it discuss?
(Heise) Die Gesamtzahl der von Deutschen betriebenen rechtsextremistischen Homepages ist im vergangenen Jahr von 1000 aus dem Jahr 2002 auf etwa 950 zurückgegangen. Das geht aus dem Verfassungsschutzbericht (PDF) für 2003 hervor, den Bundesinnenminister Otto Schily heute vorgelegt hat. Etwa 10 bis 15 Prozent weisen nach deutschem Recht strafbare Inhalte auf. Die Mehrzahl dieser Internet-Seiten werde anonym über das Ausland, vornehmlich über die USA, ins Netz gestellt.
(Safeteens.com) by Larry Magid. It's hard to get teens to pay attention to safety material. And that's a shame, because teens are actually more vulnerable to Internet related problems than younger kids. But there is a new site that teens might actually enjoy visiting. Microsoft Network (MSN) in the UK along with several UK-based non-profits has created what I think is the first good online safety web site that speaks directly to teens. The new UK venture, WebSafeCrackerz.com is compelling for its target audience of 12 to 16.
(Observer) Children choose to stay indoors watching TV and playing computer games because they are terrified of the world outside, fresh research reveals. In a high-profile launch this week, Education Secretary Charles Clarke will announce the findings which disclose that young children carry a daily expectation of being kidnapped by a stranger, sexually abused by a paedophile or becoming a victim of terrorism.
(ZDNet UK) Phishing activity has been growing at the rate of 75 percent a month since December, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group. Phishing is an Internet scam where official-looking emails attempt to fool users into disclosing online passwords, user names and other personal information. Victims are usually persuaded to click on a link in an email that directs them to a doctored version of an organisation's Web site. It is estimated that up to 5 percent of phishing emails persuade users to perform an action, such as clicking on a link, that could result in credit card fraud, identity theft or some other financial loss."
(Daily Telegraph) A big shake-up of advertising regulation is on its way. Out goes a confused system - part of it self-regulated, the other subject to statutory control. At present, those who use print, cinema or the internet are regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) while the Independent Television Commission has a statutory role over commercial TV. Now Ofcom, the regulator, wants the policing carried out by a single watchdog, a beefed-up ASA. Its staff will leap from about 80 to 170 and its annual budget from £4.8m to £8m.
(Guardian) The Press Complaints Commission has overhauled its code of conduct and tightened up the rules on payments to criminals in an effort to counter accusations it has failed to curb the worst excesses of the print media.
(Europea) Study on conditions and options in introducing secondary trading of radio spectrum in the European Community The final report by the consortium (Analysys Consulting, DotEcon, Hogan & Hartson) tasked by the EC with this investigation is now available.In this context, a public workshop is scheduled to take place on 15 July 2004 in Brussels, to present and discuss the final results of the study (registration).
(Guardian) BT faces a fresh challenge to its share of the residential phone market with the launch of a new company, which makes use of the internet to offer cut-price local, national, international and mobile calls for no monthly line rental.
(Ofcom) Ofcom is undertaking a range of work relating to regulatory policy for Voice over IP and Voice over Broadband services. This page contains links to the material Ofcom has published on this subject. see also Questions and Answers.
(Guardian) The BBC's new media chief has voiced fears that the corporation's online coverage of the Olympics could cause the internet to grind to a halt this summer if it proves too popular. But the BBC is already working with internet service providers to try to find a solution to the problem by "multicasting" the events.
(BBC) A service for deaf and disabled people that simulates SMS texting, but at a fraction of the cost, has been launched by a British company. Anyone with a GPRS mobile handset or PDA can download the Chatterbox software and can then give free copies to up to 50 friends.
(PC Magazine) Web filtering is possibly the most controversial category of products we review here at PC magazine. No other topic so quickly suggests thoughts of an Orwellian Big Brother or so starkly divides employees and managers. You may consider blocking and monitoring Web access appropriate for children at home or school, but does it have any place at work? We tested four software products and three appliances that block and monitor access to various categories of Web sites. All the filtering products we looked at use block lists that most of the companies update daily, so expect to pay a high yearly subscription fee (half or more of the up-front cost). Some also use algorithmic techniques to determine whether content falls into a blocked category, but it turns out that plain old block lists are the most effective.
(EurACtiv) The latest telecoms industry scorecard (ZIP) shows high variations in regulatory regimes across the EU. Least attractive to investors are those where state ownership of the incumbent operator is still substantial. The latest industry scorecard shows that the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark are the most favoured destination countries for investors in the telecoms sector while France, Belgium and Germany bring up the rear. The survey, conducted by the European telecoms association ECTA, also included Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain.
(CNET News.com) In Europe, small countries are racing ahead in broadband development, as larger markets are stymied by a lack of competition, according to a study by Strategy Analytics. At the end of 2003, broadband in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom reached only 13 percent to 15 percent of homes--half the level of smaller markets like Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, the market research company said.
(Pew Internet Project) More than one quarter of all Americans use devices ? either laptop computers with wireless modems or cell phones ? that enable them to go online to surf the Web or check email. According to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 28% of Americans ? and fully 41% of all Internet users ? have within the past month used a laptop that can connect wirelessly to the Internet or a cell phone that lets them send and receive email. This means that 56 million American adults are "wireless ready". That is, they have used devices that allow them to connect to the Internet by wireless means. On a typical day, approximately 5 million Americans with wireless ready devices go online from some place other than home or work.
(Pew Internet Project) Adoption of high-speed Internet connections in the home grew strongly in the United States in the first several months of 2004, with home broadband penetration standing at 39% among American Internet users by the end of February. Overall, 48 million American adults had high-speed connections in the home in February 2004. This represents a growth of 60% since March 2003. 55% of adult internet users have broadband at home or work.
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