Legal and regulatory issues

Audiovisual

• UK - BBC shuts websites to assist charter renewal pitch  +/-

  (Guardian) The BBC is closing a string of successful websites, in order to reinvest the money in projects that have a clearer public service focus. It will announce today that its network of sites, which are hugely successful but continually provoke complaints from commercial rivals, will be slimmed down to help make the case for charter renewal.

Competition

• EU - Microsoft loses fight to delay EU sanctions  +/-

  (out-law.com) The European Court of First Instance has rejected Microsoft's request that sanctions imposed on the software company following an antitrust ruling by the Commission be suspended until an appeal of the antitrust decision is completed. Microsoft is obliged to implement the sanctions immediately, even if it decides to appeal the Court of First Instance?s decision. This means that Microsoft will now have to disclose to any undertaking wishing to develop and distribute work group server operating systems the interfaces required for their products to be able to "talk" with the ubiquitous Windows operating system. Microsoft will also have to offer for sale in Europe a version of Windows without Windows Media Player, although it may also market the operating system with Windows Media Player.

Computer crime

• UK - Man arrested in tsunami death e-mail hoax  +/-

  (Reuters) British police have arrested a man after a hoaxer posing as a government official e-mailed relatives of people missing since the Asian tsunami, saying their loved ones had been confirmed dead. The hoaxer, claiming to be from the 'Foreign Office Bureau' in Thailand, targeted people who had placed appeals for information about relatives and friends on the Web site of TV station Sky News.

Consumer protection

• UK - Regulator clamps down on premium rate scams  +/-

  (Guardian) A clampdown on misleading and fraudulent premium rate phone services was announced by the telecoms regulator Ofcom after a surge in complaints about internet 'rogue dialler' swindles and other costly scams ripping off phone and computer users. Ofcom said action was needed to rein in the excesses of the burgeoning premium rate services industry. See Press Release and The Regulation of Premium Rate Services An Ofcom Report for DTI.

Content regulation

• FR - Tribune Libre : "OPA sur l'adult business ! "  +/- Translate

  (NetEconomie) Loïc HENRI présente "Child Web Protect", une initiative visant à pousser les professionnels du net à limiter l'accès des mineurs aux contenus pornographiques.

Copyright, trademarks and patents

• Austrian and German courts protect identity of file-sharers  +/-

  (EDRI-gram) The music industry has suffered a severe setback by two verdicts by courts in Munich and Vienna. Both courts ruled that internet service providers did not have to hand-over data about customers.

• EU - Patents Directive stalls once again  +/-

  (out-law.com) The Polish Government disrupted plans to push through the draft Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions when it requested and received a surprise delay in a crucial vote on the proposals. The draft, better known as the controversial software patents Directive, was widely expected to be rubber-stamped by the Council at a meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Commission, the last Council meeting before the end of the year and the end of the Dutch EU Presidency.

• US - Hollywood campaign hits websites  +/-

  (BBc) Movie studio efforts to stop pirated films being shared on peer-to-peer networks have claimed a high-profile victim. The campaign of legal action is thought to be behind the closure of the widely used Suprnova.org website. The site was the most popular place for people swapping and sharing links for the BitTorrent network. A recent study showed that more than half of the peer-to-peer traffic was for the BitTorrent system.

Employment and social issues

• Web helps collect aid donations  +/-

  (BBC) The web is helping aid agencies gather resources to help cope with the aftermath of the tsunami disaster. Many people are making donations via websites or going online to see how they can get involved with aid efforts. High-profile web portals such as Google, Yahoo, Ebay and Amazon are gathering links that lead people to aid and relief organisations. So many were visiting some aid-related sites that some webpages were struggling to cope with the traffic.

Information society and Internet policy

• CoE - New committee on human rights and internet  +/-

  (EDRI-gram) The Council of Europe has set up an ad-hoc committee of experts on the information society to work on a new declaration or recommendation on human rights and internet.The long list of topics to be covered by the committee ranges from freedom of expression to privacy, mandatory retention of traffic data, e-voting, the prohibition of racism and xenophobic speech on the internet and "the protection of intellectual property in cyberspace." See Terms of reference.

• OSCE - Media Freedom Internet Cookbook  +/-

  (OSCE) The Representative on Freedom of the Media of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has published the Media Freedom Internet Cookbook (PDF 646 K). Edited by Christian Möller and Arnaud Amouroux. Results of the 2nd Amsterdam Internet Conference in August 2004. The book combines concrete recommendations - the Recipes - with background papers, grouped in six different chapters: Legislation & Jurisdiction; Self-regulation, Co-regulation, State Regulation; Hate Speech on the Internet; Education & Developing Internet Literacy; Access to Networks and to Information; Future Challenges of the Information Society.

Junk mail (spam)

• NL - First fines for Dutch spammers  +/-

  (EDRI-gram) For the first time since the spam-ban went into force in the Netherlands, the Dutch regulatory authority OPTA has fined Dutch spammers. One spammer now faces a fine of 42.500 euro. OPTA has also fined an SMS-spammer with 20.000 euro in total, for sending unsolicited SMS's costing the recipient 1,10 euro per message, without providing any unsubscribe options. Currently, in the Netherlands only natural persons are protected against unsolicited commercial, idealistic or charitable e-mail messages. The minister of Economical Affairs has promised additional legislation to protect all recipients against spam. Companies that wish to receive unsolicited mail will have to create a special new e-mail address and make it publicly available.

• U.S. leads the dirty dozen spammers  +/-

  (CNET News.com) The United States is in a league of its own when it comes to sending junk mail to e-mail users. Researchers at security software company Sophos found that 42 percent of all spam sent this year came from the United States, based on a scan by its researchers of a global network of honey pots--computers designed to attract spam e-mails and viruses.

Liability, jurisdiction and applicable law

• IN - Delhi schoolboy sparks global porn row  +/-

  (Guardian) To the Indian schoolboy, it must have seemed like an ingenious if indelicate use of new technology. But when the 17-year-old used his mobile phone camera to record his girlfriend giving him oral sex he could have had little idea of the far-reaching global consequences. His act had provoked a scandal that was dominating every Indian newspaper, the chief executive of a major company had been jailed, and a major diplomatic row was brewing between India and America, with Condoleezza Rice reported to be at the fore. The trouble started a few days after the teenager made the recording, when someone tried to sell a video clip of him and his 16-year-old girlfriend on the Indian online auction site Baazee.com. The firm is a subsidiary of the US auction giant eBay. On Friday detectives arrested Baazee.com's chief executive, Avnish Bajaj, a US citizen and Harvard graduate. On Saturday a court bundled him off to jail for a week. Yesterday the police arrested the 17-year-old boy as well.

Mobile and wireless

• Israel to restrict porn on cell phones  +/-

  (ZDNet) Israel's Communications Ministry has amended licenses for mobile phone operators to restrict access to pornographic services following complaints that too many children were exposed to erotic material. The ministry will restrict the transmission of porn through video clips and movies on cell phones that use high-speed third-generation networks. Adults would still be allowed to access the services by entering a code and only after being identified as an adult.

Multilingual content and software

• Collins launches online dictionary to debate new words  +/-

  (Guardian) Collins Dictionaries has launched an online Living Dictionary, in which netheads can suggest new words and argue over whether they should be added to the print version of the dictionary.

Self-regulation / codes of conduct

• NL - Dutch Internet Service Providers Association no longer represents industry  +/-

  (Bits of Freedom) (Original article in Dutch) The Dutch Internet Service Providers Association (NLIP) will no longer act as industry representative in discussions with the authorities. Providers have been critical about the associaton's success in lobbying. XS4ALL and BIT recenly resigned and announced that they were setting up a new platform, ispo.nl. see NLIP Press Release.

Standards

• Toshiba signals DVD format war  +/-

  (Guardian) Sony, the Japanese electronics and entertainment group, has approached arch-rival Toshiba in an attempt to prevent a damaging format war over their next-generation DVDs. Toshiba, which is preparing to launch its own high-definition DVD player as soon as next Christmas, rebuffed the offer to work together, however, setting in train a worldwide battle for consumers.

Technology

• Heroes of the internet frontier  +/-

  (FT) by Eli Noam. Music companies have been trying to suppress 'peer-to-peer' (P2P) practices in the courts, legislatures and by spreading deliberately defective copies of songs. They view P2P users as thieves who must be prosecuted. But traditional media companies should perhaps see P2P as to their long-term advantage because it helps create new markets and forms of distribution.

Market & Technology

Market

• XXX, on a small screen near you  +/-

  (CNET News.com) Playboy Enterprises has targeted the iPod Photo music player as a distribution channel for its soft-porn empire. The publisher has released iBod, a free download for iPod Photo users. The company billed it as the first wedge in a campaign to court mobile audiences, who increasingly tote photo-ready cell phones, MP3 players and other devices. However, the latest push for mobility promises to broach potentially incendiary issues over viewing titillating content in public.

Security and encryption

• No-go zone for Passport  +/-

  (CNET News.com) Microsoft's Passport authentication technology lost a prominent partner when eBay announced that it would stop supporting customer logins through Microsoft's Passport and .Net services. The online auctioneer decided to stop supporting the service after Microsoft made an 'architectural change' to its online authentication service.

Statistics

• UK - Digital TV scores over Christmas  +/-

  (CommsWatch) Figures show that, for the first time, this Christmas more people watched non-terrestrial television than BBC1 or ITV1. Digital, satellite and cable stations won 29.1% of viewers, while BBC1 attracted 27.2% and ITV1 had 22.0%. The combined total of the BBC1 and ITV1 audiences, 49.2%, compares to 73.3% a decade ago. These figures illustrate very clearly how the British television audience is fragmenting fast and putting pressure on station bosses and advertisers.

• US - Internet use cutting into TV viewing and socializing  +/-

  (New York Times) The average Internet user in the United States spends three hours a day online, with much of that time devoted to work and more than half of it to communications, according to a survey by the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, a research group that has been exploring the social consequences of the Internet. The survey found that use of the Internet has displaced television watching and a range of other activities. Internet users watch television for one hour and 42 minutes a day, compared with the national average of two hours.

Technology

• The BitTorrent Effect  +/-

  (Wired) Movie studios hate it. File-swappers love it. Bram Cohen's blazing-fast P2P software has turned the Internet into a universal TiVo. For free video-on-demand, just click here.

• The Shadow Internet  +/-

  (Wired) They start with a single stolen file and pump out bootleg games and movies by the millions. Inside the pirate networks that are terrorizing the entertainment business. There are 30 or so topsites, underground, highly secretive servers where nearly all of the unlicensed music, movies, and videogames available on the Internet originate. Outside of a pirate elite and the Feds who track them, few know that topsites exist. Even fewer can log in.

Forthcoming events

• 2005-01-14 GR, Athens - Adding Value: commercial exploitation of Public Sector Information in Europe  +/-

  (ePSINet) Policy Conference on re-use of Public Sector Information in Europe. The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for policy makers, public content providers, re-users and international experts to discuss the prospects for adding value through commercial exploitation of public sector information. The conference will also act as a progress check on the early implementation of the European Directive on PSI re-use, published late in 2003, and discuss the future agenda.

• 2005-03-04 UK, Oxford - Bridging the Digital Divides: Best Practices and False Perceptions  +/-

  (OII) Papers are invited for a seminar to be held on 4 March 2005 at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford as part of a seminar series sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and organised by the OII, called Critical Perspectives on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS): Civil Society Participation and Issues. The meeting will focus on case studies of initiatives designed to narrow the digital divides - within developing countries and between developing and developed countries - relating to the use of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICTs). Abstracts of no more than 600 words to esrc@oii.ox.ac.uk by 1 February.

• 2005-09-08 UK, Oxford - Safety and Security in a Networked World: Balancing Cyber-Rights and Responsibilities  +/-

  (OII) Call for papers. 8-10 September 2005. The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) is organising a major conference, in collaboration with the University of Auckland, NetSafe (the New Zealand government backed Internet Safety Group), EURIM and others, to address the value choices and conflicts surrounding cybersafety in a converging world. The conference will feature leading international authorities from government, industry, NGOs and academia, including the computer sciences, humanities, law and the social sciences. It will be held between 8th and 10th September 2005 at the University of Oxford. Submission of abstracts: 11th March 2005.

QuickLinks consists of

• a free newsletter appearing approximately once a week. The newsletter is distributed by electronic mail through an "announcement only" mailing list. To be included on the mailing list, click on HTML or text and fill in your email address.
• a Web site with frequent updates, an events page, news items organised by category as well as chronologically by issue and full text search.