(RAPID) The European Commission has referred the examination under the EU Merger Regulation of the proposed acquisition of the North Rhine-Westphalian network cable operator Ish by the Hessian cable operator Iesy to the German competition authority (the Bundeskartellamt) mainly because both undertakings are exclusively active in Germany. The Bundeskartellamt will now examine whether the merger leads to competition problems in Germany.
(Guardian) The European commission will launch a formal inquiry next week into German public television and radio's use of licence fee money to fund internet and other services. The investigation could have serious consequences for other publicly funded broadcasters such as the BBC and comes after complaints from private channels two years ago that their state-owned rivals, ARD and ZDF, used illegal subsidies.
(SABC) In a grim new problem for officials tackling the nation's alarmingly high suicide rate, rising numbers of Japanese are dying each year in group suicides after meeting online in Internet chat rooms. According to police, a record 34 427 Japanese took their own lives in 2003, more than a quarter of them because of debt or economic woes.Of the total, only 34 died in Internet-linked group suicides. But the number rose to 54 in 2004 and police say the real number was probably even higher.
(Guardian) An Oregon man arrested for trying to arrange a mass Valentine's Day suicide had been preying on vulnerable women online for five years, police said. Gerald Krein, 26, was charged with solicitation to commit murder after a Canadian woman who joined a chat room called 'suicide ideology' tipped off police.
(DCITA) Review of Schedule 5 to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (the Act) investigated the effective operation of the legislation which provides for the regulation of Internet content in Australia, and of the community education initiatives and international liaison under the Online Content Co-Regulatory Scheme - which commenced on 1 January 2000. [Ed: update of a previous item - all links have changed].
(Pressemitteilung) Die KJM hat Bewertungskriterien für Rundfunk- und Telemedien-Angebote erarbeitet. Aufgrund der neuen Bestimmungen im JMStV war es notwendig geworden, den ursprünglichen „Bewertungsleitfaden für die Programmaufsicht im Rundfunk“ der Landesmedienanstalten zu überarbeiten, an die neue Rechtslage anzupassen und Bewertungskriterien für Telemedien zu formulieren. Die Kriterien sind der Orientierungsmaßstab für die Prüfung entwicklungsbeeinträchtigender und entwicklungsgefährdender Angebote (z.B. Gewalt- und Sexualdarstellungen ) bzw. unzulässiger Angebote (z.B. Verstoß gegen die Menschenwürde, Pornografie). Die KJM wird die „Kriterien für die Aufsicht im Rundfunk und in den Telemedien“ zunächst mit den Freiwilligen Selbstkontrolleinrichtungen FSF (Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Fernsehen) und FSM diskutieren.
(Legalis.ne) La conférence des présidents du Parlement européen a approuvé la motion de la commission des affaires juridiques, dite Juri, qui demande à l´exécutif bruxellois une saisine répétée des députés sur la proposition de directive relative à la brevetabilité des inventions mises en œuvre par ordinateur. Le Parlement invite ainsi la Commission européenne à présenter son texte suivant les règles de procédure de la première lecture. Dans ce dernier cas, seules les voix des représentants présents sont comptabilisées alors qu´en seconde lecture, l´ensemble des élus est pris en compte. Cette motion n´a pas de force obligatoire mais elle place la Commission sous une pression politique plus forte.
(RAPID) New rules giving the European public better access to environmental information have become binding for all European Union Member States. The new directive on public access to environmental information (Directive 2003/4/EC) replaces an earlier directive dating from 1990 (Directive 90/313/EEC). It provides that every natural or legal person, regardless of citizenship, nationality or residence, has a right of access to environmental information held or produced by public authorities.
(New York Times) Information literacy seems to be a phrase whose time has come. Last month, the Educational Testing Service announced that it had developed a test to measure students' ability to evaluate online material. That suggested an official recognition that the millions spent to wire schools and universities is of little use unless students know how to retrieve useful information from the oceans of sludge on the Web.
(Guardian) Britain's biggest bookmaker, Ladbrokes, has been barred from offering internet betting services to punters in the Netherlands by the Dutch supreme court. The ruling follows a lawsuit from the Dutch Lotto after Ladbrokes placed adverts in several Dutch newspapers during the World Cup three years ago. Ladbrokes does not hold a permit to offer bets in the Netherlands and has no shops in the country.
(Australian IT) The Australian Computer Society is backing a $900,000 research project on ethics and regulation in the technology sector with a view to creating an international model. The three-year study will be funded by the society, the federal government's Australian Research Council and the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. ACS Foundation executive director John Ridge said the study was the first to explore ethics and regulations in the technology sector around the world.
(CNET News.com) by Declan McCullagh. A wife who installed spyware on her husband's computer to secretly record evidence of an extramarital affair violated state law. The Florida Appeals Court said that it is illegal and punishable as a crime under (state law) to intercept electronic communications. It barred the wife from revealing the contents of the intercepted conversations, and said the chat records could not be introduced as evidence in the unhappy couple's divorce proceedings.
(Australian IT) The Australian Communication Authority (ACA) has endorsed the London Action Plan which encourages government and private sector agencies in 21 countries to tighten co-operation to defeat spammers.
(Australian IT) The proliferation of cameras in mobile phones is set to force all states to agree to tough national privacy safeguards. The move comes as the Queensland Government foreshadowed new child pornography laws following the furore over a Brisbane website that published hundreds of photographs of children without their permission.
(DCITA) On 15 July 2004 the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts invited stakeholders to comment on the review of the regulation of content delivered over mobile communications devices. The Australian Government is considering whether existing policy and regulatory arrangements for the management of potentially offensive or harmful content provide adequate community safeguards in view of the new and emerging services delivered to these devices. [Ed: update of a previous item]. see also Public to have say on mobile content (Australian IT).
(AP) Wireless companies are under pressure to police the services they carry amid mounting concern that today's increasingly versatile cell phones can be gateways to a lot more than football highlights and pop videos. As governments and parent groups wake up to the problems posed by an expected global boom in mobile pornography and gambling, a few operators are taking action to restrict such content to over-18s. Vodafone Group PLC, which has operations in 26 countries, backed voluntary age checks and content filtering in Britain and is urging partners and rivals to avoid heavy-handed regulation by supporting similar moves elsewhere in the world.
(RAPID) Speech by Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media. 3GSM World Congress 2005, Cannes, 14 February 2005. How do we shape a policy and regulatory environment that will ensure we can fully harness the economic and social potential of ICT generally and of mobile communications in particular? First and foremost, Europe must allow market forces to work and avoid unnecessary regulation: my approach is to regulate in order to deregulate, while finding a satisfactory balance between general interest principles and the roll-out of new services.
(Le Monde) par Jean-Noël Jeanneney. Google vient de passer accord avec cinq des bibliothèques les plus célèbres et les plus riches du monde anglo-saxon pour numériser 15 millions d'ouvrages afin de les rendre accessibles en ligne. Voici que s'affirme le risque d'une domination écrasante de l'Amérique dans la définition de l'idée que les prochaines générations se feront du monde. La production scientifique anglo-saxonne, déjà dominante dans une quantité de domaines, s'en trouvera forcément survalorisée, avec un avantage écrasant à l'anglais par rapport aux autres langues de culture, notamment européennes. La contre-attaque s'impose, avec un soutien positif à la différence. Et elle ne peut se déployer qu'à l'échelle de l'Europe. Une Europe décidée à n'être pas seulement un marché, mais un centre de culture rayonnante et d'influence politique sans pareille autour de la planète. Un plan pluriannuel pourrait être défini et adopté dès cette année à Bruxelles. Un budget généreux devrait être assuré.
(ZDNet France) La Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) va entamer la numérisation d'une partie de la presse française. Ce grand chantier vise à rendre accessible sur l'internet les archives de 22 titres de presse publiés entre le début du XIXe siècle et 1944, ce qui représente plus de 3,2 millions de pages. Pour des raisons de droits d'auteur, elle ne peut pas encore donner accès aux archives ultérieures.
(Pressemitteilung) Die KJM hat zu zwei Anträgen im Bereich der Jugendschutzprogramme Entscheidungen getroffen. Jugendschutzprogramme sind technische Mittel, bei deren Einsatz es Anbietern erlaubt ist, entwicklungsbeeinträchtigende Angebote im Internet zu verbreiten. Die KJM hat sowohl das System „ICRAdeutschland“ des „Konsortiums von Wirtschaftsunternehmen und –verbänden“ als auch das System „jugendschutzprogramm.de“ des Vereins Jus Prog e.V. für einen befristeten Modellversuch für die Dauer von jeweils 18 Monaten zugelassen. Im Rahmen der Modellversuche müssen die Antragsteller Tests hinsichtlich der Funktionsfähigkeit, der Filterleistung, der Handhabbarkeit und der Akzeptanz ihrer Systeme durchführen. Bestandteil jedes Modellversuchs ist eine begleitende und abschließende Evaluation, die in Abstimmung zwischen den Antragstellern und der KJM erfolgt.
(Pressemitteilung) Die KJM hat die Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Multimedia-Diensteanbieter e.V. (FSM) für den Bereich der Telemedien unter Bedingungen und Auflagen anerkannt. Einrichtungen der Freiwilligen Selbstkontrolle können nach dem Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (JMStV) für Rundfunk und Telemedien gebildet werden. Sie überprüfen die Einhaltung der Bestimmungen des JMStV bei ihren Mitgliedern. Besteht bei Angeboten der Mitglieder der FSM ein Verdacht auf einen Verstoß gegen die Jugendschutzbestimmungen, ist zunächst die FSM damit zu befassen. Deren Entscheidung ist bindend, solange sie den rechtlichen Beurteilungsspielraum nicht überschreitet.
(CNET News.com) According to the Mozilla Foundation, its Web browser Firefox has surpassed 25 million downloads in 100 days. Mozilla, which released the free 1.0 program in November, says an average of 250,000 people download Firefox every day and more than half a million Web sites feature Firefox promotions. The group promotes the program as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has become a target for computer virus writers and other security exploits.
(CNET News.com) by Stefanie Olsen. Google's browser toolbar is raising eyebrows over a feature that inserts new hyperlinks in Web pages, giving the Internet search provider a powerful tool to funnel traffic to destinations of its choice.
(New York Times) With the resignation of a top news executive from CNN, bloggers have laid claim to a prominent media career for the second time in five months. After nearly two weeks of intensifying pressure on the Internet, Eason Jordan, the chief news executive at CNN, abruptly resigned after being besieged by the online community. Mr. Jordan, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, apparently said that he believed the United States military had aimed at journalists and killed 12 of them.
(out-law) The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has reported that the number of cases in which it took action against illegal on-line content increased in 2004; but the total number of complaints processed by its internet hotline staff dropped for the first time. According to the IWF?s 2004 Annual Report, of the 17,255 reports received in 2004, the number of reports relating to potentially illegal content where action was taken by the IWF increased to 20% of all reports, compared to 17% of in 2003. This, said the group, is a clear indication that the prevalence of child abuse images on-line remains a serious problem. In fact, according to the IWF, 50% of the sites containing potentially illegal content were Pay-Per-View sites, an indication of the high level of commercialisation of abusive images of children on the internet.
(Guardian) Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, made its most bullish ever predictions yesterday for the global growth of mobile phone use. The Finnish firm expects the total number of people using mobiles to reach 2 billion by the end of this year, having passed a billion less than two years ago. By the end of 2010 it estimates there will be 3 billion mobile-phone users across the world - or almost half of the planet's projected population.
(QL) Users of the Firefox browser can add QuickLinks to their Live Bookmarks. Go to the QuickLinks home page and click on the icon at the lower right-hand coner of your browser. If you cannot see the icon, click on Status Bar in the View menu so that a tick mark appears. Clicking on the icon and selecting an RSS feed will bring up the Add Bookmark dialog. Select 'OK' and you will see Live Bookmarks with the rest of your bookmarks.
QuickLinks consists of