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(RAPID) The European Commission adopted ambitious proposals for the new generation of programmes in the education, youth, culture and audiovisual fields. These will succeed the current programmes for the period 2007-2013.
(RAPID) Speech by Mario Monti, European Commissioner for Competition Policy. Workshop on access to quality audiovisual contents and development of New Media. Hotel Hilton, Brussels, 8 July 2004. see also EU - New media firms seek help for content rights (Reuters). Mobile phone operators and suppliers of video on demand have asked the European Commission to help them gain access to the rights to sell consumers the latest movies, music and soccer content. Company executives told Competition Commissioner Mario Monti hat movie producers and other content providers have little interest in doing business with the new media, while video stores and TV networks have no interest in making way for new rivals.
(CNET News.com) Microsoft has paid the $600 million fine handed down by the European Commission in its antitrust ruling against the company. Microsoft deposited the payment in an escrow account while the company's appeal is taking place. While Microsoft had the option of submitting a promissory note in place of such a payout until proceedings are complete, the company dipped into its massive cash reserves, estimated at $50 billion, to cover the largest antitrust fine ever levied against a company by the European Union. see also Microsoft wants EU to learn from its U.S. victory (Reuters).
(BBC) The BBC has just under four months to redefine the remit for its online services, the government has said. The Graf Report, commissioned by the government, also said at least 25% of the BBC's online content should be externally supplied by the end of 2006. BBC Online should prioritise its coverage of news, current affairs and education, the report concluded. see also BBC review may shut more websites and Graf's report pleases almost all.
(Guardian) A former crown court judge, found to have 75 pornographic images of boys on his laptop computer, was yesterday sentenced to a 12-month community rehabilitation order.
(BBC) Two students from Oxford University are facing disciplinary action after hacking into the university's computer. They could be fined £500 or be suspended after infiltrating the system and publishing their story in a student newspaper.
(BBC) Constant vigilance is needed to tackle paedophiles who ruin young lives with their activities on the internet, Tory leader Michael Howard said. The Tory leader invited police and experts on the internet to his party's London HQ to discuss ways of tackling the web's 'darker' side.
(EurActiv) Mmbers of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) have been invited to make recommendations for the establishment of a barrier-free transatlantic market to US President George Bush and Commission's President Romano Prodi at the EU-US summit on 26 June. But consumers' organisations said they will boycott the summit because they have bee denied such an opportunity to present their views. The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), which represents consumer interest in the Transatlantic Economic Partnership trade policy discussions, had planned to present recommendations on reducing childhood obesity, protecting air travellers? privacy and regulating chemicals. see Establishing a Barrier-Free Transatlantic Market: Principles and Recommendations TransAtlantic Business Dialogue Report to the US-EU Summit in Ireland, June 26, 2004 and TACD Summit Statement.
(Out-law.com) The UK watchdog for premium rate phone numbers has announced that every company wanting to run premium rate services using internet dialler software must first get the regulator's prior permission. The announcement comes in the wake of a public outcry over rogue diallers - software that installs a default dial-up number onto an unwitting person's computer to call a premium rate number, resulting in an unexpectedly expensive call every time the computer connects to the internet. see also Clampdown on rogue diallers is imminent (ZDNet UK).and Regulator demands more powers to fight rogue diallers (ZDNet UK) .
(BBC) China is expanding its censorship controls to cover text messages sent using mobile phones. New regulations have been issued to allow mobile phone service providers to police and filter messages for pornographic or fraudulent content. But analysts fear the real targets are political dissidents.
(Wired) Thanks to the federal government's crackdown on obscenity, commercial radio stations have been clamoring for technology that delays broadcast feeds for up to 40 seconds, giving hosts and producers a chance to bleep out naughty words. Long a staple of political-minded talk shows at large stations, delay systems are now being put to work 24 hours a day, even during the weekly gardening hour and the afternoon stock market report. see also You Can't Do That on Television (New York Times). Six months after the Super Bowl, writers, producers and network executives are in a state of confusion about what they are allowed to say and show on television.
(CNN) The video game industry seems to delight in pushing the envelope - and the bounds of good taste -with ever-gorier content. That has put it under renewed attack from legislators and activists who claim some titles must be kept out of kids' hands, though courts have repeatedly granted games First Amendment protections.
(CNET News.com) A divided U.S. Supreme Court suggested that a federal law designed to restrict Internet pornography violated Americans' rights to freedom of speech, but the court stopped short of a definitive ruling striking down the law as unconstitutional. The 5-4 ruling upheld an injunction barring prosecutors from filing criminal cases under the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, until a full trial takes place. COPA restricts the use of sexually explicit material deemed 'harmful to minors' on commercial Web sites. Violation of the law can result in civil fines and prison terms. In its decision Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, the high court said that a full trial in Philadelphia would permit the case to reflect the 'current technological reality' about the state of porn-filtering applications. Supreme Court Justices Uphold Block of Web Porn Law but Send Case Back and Internet Filters Are: [Good] [Bad] [Both] (New York Times), Washington Post transcripts COPA Supporter Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel, Concerned Women for America, COPA Opponent Ann Beeson Associate Litigation Director, American Civil Liberties Union.
(CNN) A federal judge has struck down Washington state's ban on selling some violent video games to minors, calling it a violation of free speech. U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik wrote that depictions of violence have been used throughout the country's history to convey important social messages, and that the Supreme Court has never upheld bans on violent depictions under obscenity laws. The state's ban sought to prevent minors from buying or renting games that portray "realistic or photographic-like depictions of aggressive conflict" in which the players kill or injure law enforcement officers. The law included a provision to fine retailers $500 for violations.
(Cory Doctorow) This talk was originally given to Microsoft's Research Group and other interested parties from within the company at their Redmond offices on June 17, 2004. The author argues 1. That DRM systems don't work 2. That DRM systems are bad for society 3. That DRM systems are bad for business 4. That DRM systems are bad for artists 5. That DRM is a bad business-move for Microsoft.
(Heise) Der Streit zwischen dem Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels und dem in Berlin ansässigen wissenschaftlichen Dokumentenlieferdienst subito eskaliert: Die Buchhandelslobby hat einerseits gemeinsam mit Stichting STM, dem internationalen Verband der Verleger im Bereich Science, Technology und Medizin, eine Klage (PDF) gegen den Kopienversand der Bibliotheken beim Landgericht München I eingereicht. In einem Musterverfahren wollen die Verleger subito den "weltweiten" Artikelversand untersagen. Darüber hinaus haben die beiden Verbände aber auch eine Beschwerde bei der EU-Kommission eingelegt. Die Verlage fühlen sich demnach durch die Versanddienste der Bibliotheken, die sie als "ruinöse Wettbewerbshandlungen" bezeichnen, "rechtswidrig geschädigt".
(Guardian) Software patents are back on the European agenda and the stakes are high. Are they necessary for innovation or do they impede it? Ben Hammersley investigates.
(InfoWorld) Researchers at three French government-funded research organizations have revealed a new license compatible with the Free Software Foundation Inc.'s GNU General Public License (GPL). Plenty of free software licenses exist already, but they are mostly written in English, from the point of view of the U.S. legal system, which can pose a problem in countries where the legal system is based on different assumptions. The new license, known as CeCILL, is intended to make free software more compatible with French law in two areas where it differs significantly from U.S. law: copyright and product liability. See English version of the license.
(vnunet.com) The Federation Against Software Theft (Fast) has welcomed government moves to clamp down on copyright piracy. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has established the Creative Industries IPR Forum to provide a national strategy for dealing with intellectual property (IP) crime. The DTI's strategy, to be unveiled later in the summer, is expected to set out priorities, combine the activities of various agencies and improve the processing of information to support enforcement processes. A copyright strategy group, to be chaired by the science minister Lord Sainsbury and arts minister Estelle Morris is also to be established.
(Digital-Lifestyles.info) "Piracy is a Crime" is the new £1.5 million (?2.25 million) campaign from the UK film industry. Film makers have grouped together with retailers like Asda and HMV to form the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness, and have predicted an annual loss of about £1 billion (?1.5 billion) to the film industry in 2007. To combat this, the new campaign has a tough new message for the public. A new trailer seeks to educate the public that film piracy has links to organised crime and funds terrorist activities. By issuing posters featuring a gunman, the ITIPA is hoping to capitalise on the public's fear of terrorism to discourage the public from buying dodgy DVDs down the market. The majority of public opinion seems to be that piracy is a "soft crime" with no real victims, whereas low risks and high returns are making it an attractive option for criminal gangs ? raids to premises involved in piracy have also unearthed drugs, pornography and weapons. see also Introducing Del-Qaida (Guardian) Comment by Duncan Campbell. Worried about losing money, the entertainment business is peddling false links between DVD pirates and terror cells.
(LawMeme) by James Grimmelmann. Ernie Miller has been blogging up an incredible storm about S. 2560, the Act Formerly Known as the INDUCE Act, now called the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act. ('Infringement' is singular, but 'Copyrights' is plural. Go figure.) His coverage matters to lawyers, techies, copyfighters, and consumers. That is, everyone. Ignore it at your peril. The IICA is one of the most dangerously misguided and malicious pieces of technology legislation to rear its ugly head in the last decade. Ernie's obsessively detailed articles are a powerful indictment of a bad idea. I have only one thing to add to what Ernie is saying: an index.
(CNN) The Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to strike down a top 10 list of patents which the online civil liberties group considers as unwarranted and harmful to innovation. Only 614 of the nearly 7 million existing patents have been revoked, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Some 3,927 patents have been narrowed since the agency began conducting re-examinations in 1981. The hardest part for challengers is qualifying for a re-exam at all. A challenger must find written evidence, called "prior art" in patent parlance, showing others developed the technology before the patent application was filed -- a formidable task that consumes a cottage industry of patent researchers and lawyers.
(out-law.com) The European Commission has called upon the UK Government to justify its approach to data protection law ? because it fears that it does not comply with the European Data Protection Directive. The concerns are believed to focus on a court's definition of what constitutes "personal data" in Michael Durant's landmark case against the UK's Financial Services Authority and subsequent guidance on the case from the UK's Information Commissioner.
(CDT) CDT has released a report calling for continued reform at the Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The report calls on ICANN to focus on its limited mission and bottom-up, consensus-based approach, which remains the best model for managing core Internet naming and numbering functions. ICANN is meeting July 19-23 in Kuala Lumpur.
(Internetnews) Seventy-five registrars from around the world have banded together to protest the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number's (ICANN) proposed 2004-2005 budget, which significantly raises the yearly fee for registrars regardless of size.
(International Herald Tribune) Some academics who closely monitor Icann have been pushing for auctions as a fairer way to determine who should control so-called generic top level domains like .com or .net that help users find their way around the Internet. A report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has given its endorsement for auctions.
(Europa) Access to Celex menu search is free of charge from 1 July 2004. Nevertheless the use of a login and a password is temporarily required. Please use the login enlu0000 and the password europe.
(Heise) "Wer sich auf seiner persönlichen Homepage im Internet präsentiert, ist nicht automatisch auch selbstbewusst", schreiben Psychologen der Technischen Universität Chemnitz. Mit anderen Worten: Besitzer privater Webseiten im Internet sind offenbar introvertierter als ihre Zeitgenossen ohne eigenen Internetauftritt.
(RAPID) The European Commission's view on how to translate principles agreed by UN Member States in Geneva in December 2003 into action to create a worldwide information society are set out in a Commission Communication. This Communication outlines priorities and proposes actions for the second phase of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), which will flesh out a plan of action agreed in Geneva and is to culminate in a WSIS summit meeting in Tunis from 16 to 18 November 2005. Future WSIS work should focus on creating the right policy environment for information society technology applications to flourish, accelerating the take-up of proven applications, e.g. for e-government, e-health, and e-learning, and promoting research in this area. Unfinished work from Geneva on internet governance and financing measures to bridge the digital divide must also be completed.
(IRIS) After the conclusion of the first preparatory committee (PrepCom1) of the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which took place in Hammamet (Tunisia) from 24 to 26 June, 2004, the Human Rights Caucus is pleased with the noteworthy advances which the starting of the Tunis phase has finally shown, despite unacceptable practices of a number of agent provocateurs who attempted to disrupt the work of civil society organizations and to discredit the Caucus and its members.
(Internetnews.com) A new study has confirmed what many a cubicle dweller has long suspected: Many companies, maybe even yours, are monitoring outgoing e-mails. According to a new survey conducted by Forrester Consulting and sponsored by Proofpoint Inc., a company that makes anti-spam and filtering software, more than 43 percent of corporations with more than 20,000 employees employ staff to monitor and read outbound e-mail. The survey of 140 corporate decision-makers found that companies' concern about employees leaking sensitive information via e-mail ranked as the biggest reason behind the snooping policy.
(BBC) UK mobile users have more protection from premium rate spam text messages thanks to a new consumer protection scheme. Firms providing premium rate text services and content have teamed up with networks to let users cancel the services by sending a single text. Providers of new or existing services will have to be able to recognise the keyword 'STOP' by 1 August 2004. The scheme, launched by the Mobile Data Association (MDA), should give people more control over what is sent to them.
(ITU) Participants at the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Countering Spam, which took place 7 - 9 July 2004, agreed on a series of actions (press release) intended to curb spam involving legislation, technical solutions, industry initiatives, consumer education and international cooperation. The final annotated agenda, presentations, contributions and background resources for the meeting as well as the Chairman's Report (PDF) are now available. See also Archived audiocasts of the meeting sessions. see also ITU - Report from UN Spam Meeting in Geneva (CircleID)
by William Drake.
(Heise) Die Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (KJM) hat eine erste, seit längerem angekündigte Bilanz über die Zahl beanstandeter Webseiten im Internet veröffentlicht. Bei 250 von 275 geprüften Webseiten stellten die 60 Prüfgruppen der KJM Verstöße gegen den im April 2003 in Kraft getretenen neuen Jugendmedienschutzstaatsvertrag fest.
(BBC) A coalition of children's charities has urged the UK government to set strict controls on services that let parents track their children by their mobiles. The Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety (Chis) presented their case outlining their concerns to MPs. Chis' John Carr said it was vital that mobile companies were legally bound to confirm who signed up to the services. The coalition is worried that as more firms offer the services a lack of legal safeguards could mean tracking facilities get into the wrong hands. 'It is a classic example of a technology-led solution where it should have been child safety-led,' John Carr, NCH's technology advisor and Chis spokesperson told BBC News Online.
(AFP) Un gendarme de la section de recherche de Bordeaux est devenu la bête noire des internautes pédophiles après avoir mis au point, avec une équipe de développeurs privés, deux logiciels, Log-IRC et Log-P2P, pour traquer les diffuseurs d'images pédophiles, qui ont débouché sur 280 interpellations en quelques mois. Le gendarme a aussi mis au point, avec deux autres bénévoles, un logiciel gratuit (www.logprotect.net) permettant d'éviter que les enfants ne communiquent leur adresse sur les forums de discussion, souvent fréquentés par les pédophiles.
(The Register) Vodafone's new mobile content filtering system, designed to stop children accessing Web nasties with their mobiles, raises more questions than it answers. In January, the major UK operators agreed to implement a content filtering system, with an independent body in place to rate content, by the end of the year. Vodafone has launched its filtering system five months early, presumably hoping to steal a media victory from under the noses of its rivals. Child protection groups have welcomed the Voda's decision to begin content filtering before the December deadline, but early indications are that the operator has bitten off more than it can chew.
(out-law.com) It's probably the hottest sector in the security field today. Yet the biometrics industry, which produces human-based identification systems, is weighed down with claims and counterclaims, fallacies and myths. Two years ago, OUT-LAW ran a story about the vulnerability of biometric products. Last month, we ran a report by a volunteer for the UK's trial of a biometric passport scheme. Today we present an article that was contributed to OUT-LAW by Russ Davis of ISL Biometrics, arguing against some of the criticisms faced by the technology.
(Europa) On 24 June, the European Commission invited leading associations of Internet Service providers and industry players to an exploratory meeting in Luxembourg to discuss the scope for a European Code of Conduct for Internet service providers, particularly in the field of protection of minors. Such a code would build on, rather than replace, existing national codes of conduct. The Commission suggested that this work might be done in stages, identifying areas of greatest consensus and others where more work might be needed. Industry should take the initiative in drafting the Code but other interested parties including user/consumer/child welfare representatives and regulators would need to be consulted before it is finalised. Industry participants gave a positive reception to the idea. EuroISPA (European Internet Service Providers Association) agreed to consult its membership on the setting up of an industry Working Group co-ordinated by EuroISPA and on the timetable for drawing up a first draft of a Code, and to give a rapid response to the Commission. see Safer Internet programme.
(SSRN) by David Johnson, New York Law School, Susan Crawford, Cardozo School of Law and John Palfrey, Harvard University - Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Three problems of online life - spam, informational privacy, and network security - lend themselves to the peer production of governance. This emerging order could lead to an accountable internet without an offsetting loss of those aspects of online life that we have found most attractive.
(Heise) Die Sicherheitsbehörden von Bund und Ländern sollen bei der Bekämpfung des islamistischen Terrorismus und Extremismus noch enger zusammenarbeiten. Die Innenministerkonferenz hat heute in Kiel beschlossen, dass alle nationalen und internationalen Erkenntnisse über islamische Terroristen und Extremisten zentral ausgewertet werden können, um terroristische Anschläge besser verhindern zu können. Erforderlich sei die Prüfung der Voraussetzungen für die Einrichtung gemeinsamer Dateien von Polizei und Verfassungsschutz, insbesondere einer Indexdatei. Außerdem soll unter anderem die Zusammenarbeit weiter verbessert werden.
(Internationak Herald Tribune) As a concept BPL, for broadband over power lines, or HomePlug has been around for a long time. What is new in the past two years is a series of technical breakthroughs, mainly in chips designed by Intellon, a small company based in Ocala, Florida. These chips have made power-line transmission fast enough, cheap enough and reliable enough to merit serious attention. A standards-setting group called the HomePlug alliance has also played an important role.
(Economist) Wireless networking: Few people have a kind word to say about telecoms regulators. But the success of Wi-Fi shows what can be achieved when regulators and technologists work together.
(BBC) With mobiles starting to dominate our daily lives, there is growing interest in the idea of TV on the phone.
(Guardian) For the first time Internet Explorer has lost a tiny bit of market share. Ben Hammersley believes this small change may signify large challenges ahead for Microsoft.
(CNET News.com) A malicious program that installs itself through a pop-up can read keystrokes and steal passwords when victims visit any of nearly 50 targeted banking sites, security researchers warned. The program is part of a larger trend, as malicious hackers increasingly focus not on random acts of destruction but on stealing money.
(BBC) Europe is experiencing excellent broadband growth, but nearly 30% of broadband users in Europe have slow connections, says a report. Analysts Jupiter Research said there was a great disparity between the quality of service different people are experiencing.
(BBC) File-sharing is booming, with people downloading millions of files despite efforts by the entertainment industry to stop the practice, say experts. Films and other files larger than 100MB are becoming the most requested downloads on networks around the world, said UK net analysts CacheLogic. It measures peer-to-peer traffic on the networks of internet service providers. It estimates that at least 10 million people are logged on to a peer-to-peer (P2P) network at any time.
(Register) Germany is the Web host with the most - at least in terms of pornography. The .de TLD boasts 10,030,200 pages of smut, beating the UK's 8,506,800 pages into the runners-up spot. That's according to Secure Computing, which has just carried out a study of the global distribution of pornographic web pages by the top 100 individual country domains - excluding US domains.
(OECD) Peer-to-peer (or P2P) networks are used to download music, movies, images, games and software from the Internet. The number of people logged on simultaneously to popular file sharing networks approached close to 10 million in April 2004, a rise of 30% from the same period a year earlier, according to a pre-released section of the OECD Information Technology Outlook 2004. The included country-specific data for all 30 OECD countries reveals that users in the U.S. make up over half the total number of people using file-sharing networks, followed by Germany (10.2%), Canada (8.0%) and France (7.8%). The report also shows that usage of P2P networks is growing fastest in Europe and Canada. Whereas the share of P2P users from the United States as part of all OECD users is falling, the share of Germany, France and Canada is on the rise.
(CNET News.com) Offers of drugs, particularly Viagra, accounted for about one-third of global spam messages sent in the first half of 2004, according to a study by Commtouch, a company that sells antispam products. Commtouch said about 55 percent of spam messages originated in the United States, while slightly more than 73 percent of them referred recipients to Web sites hosted in China. China, South Korea, the United States, Russia and Brazil host more than 99 percent of all Web sites mentioned in spam, according to Commtouch. Pitches for drugs and medicines made up about 30 percent of spam e-mails. Mortgage/refinancing and 'organ enlargement' ranked second and third with 9 percent and 7 percent respectively.
(CNET News.com) One in four people online has illegally downloaded a feature film -- and it's cutting into box-office and DVD sales, the Motion Picture Association of America said. A survey of 3,600 Internet users in eight countries, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, showed that as many as 50 percent had downloaded copyrighted content in the last year. Of those people who have downloaded films, 17 percent said they are going to the movies less often, and 26 percent said they bought fewer DVDs, according to online researcher OTX, which conducted the study in partnership with the MPAA.
(DDM) 16 septembre 2004. De 9h à 13h à la Direction du développement des médias, 69 rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris. Appuyé sur l'avancement des travaux du groupe de travail consacré aux plaintes et sanctions piloté par la CNIL et des retours d'expérience, ce thème contribuera à clarifier les conditions nécessaires au dépôt de plaintes par les utilisateurs, à la lumière du nouveau paysage législatif français. Il apportera en outre des éléments d'information techniques relatifs au mode d'identification des "spammeurs" par les utilisateurs et par les autorités en charge de leur poursuite. voir aussi cycle de conférences-débats
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