Legal and regulatory issues

Audiovisual

• EU - European Charter for Film Online endorsed by major industry players  +/-

  (RAPID) At the Cannes Film Festival, major representatives of the film and content industry, of Internet service providers and of telecom operators from the EU and the U.S. endorsed the European Film Online Charter that they had jointly developed under the auspices of the European Commission. This Charter - the first of its kind in the world - identifies the preconditions for enabling content and infrastructure providers to make film online services a commercial success. The Charter will serve as reference for future commercial agreements as well as for a broader Content Online policy of the European Commission.

• EU - Europe's free-to-air content and advertising: not one without the other  +/-

  (RAPID) Speech by Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media, World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) Conference Paris, 15 May 2006.

• EU - Television without frontiers  +/-

  (Press Release) Education, Youth And Culture Council meeting - Brussels, 18-19 May 2006. Pending the European Parliament's first reading opinion, the Council took note of a progress report and held a debate on the proposal for a directive amending the Directive on the pursuit of television broadcasting activities. The debate covered, in particular, the following issues in relation with the proposed directive: the appropriateness and the sustainability of the distinction between linear and non-linear services; the common rules applying to both categories of services; the extent of the modernisation and simplification of the television advertising and teleshopping rules.

Content regulation

• CN - Chinese Internet writer sentenced to 12 years  +/-

  (Reuters) Yang Tianshui, a Chinese Internet writer was sentenced to jail for 12 years for 'subversion of state power' after backing a movement by exiled dissidents to hold free elections. It was one of the heaviest prison terms meted out in recent years to an Internet writer.

• EU regulation attacked as censorship  +/-

  (Register UK) EU commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding was forced to defend herself against accusations of censorship during a press conference in Brussels, where a meeting of European Union culture ministers had given broad agreement to the commission proposal, the Audio-Visual Media Services Without Frontiers Directive. The proposals had 'nothing to do with free speech', she said. The aim was to protect children and prevent the incitement of hatred.

Copyright, trademarks and patents

• Microsoft: Open source 'not reliable or dependable'  +/-

  (ZDNet Uk) A senior Microsoft executive told a BBC documentary that people should use commercial software if they're looking for stability. 'I don't think (open source) is anti-Microsoft in the sense that it's giving people choices in the technologies that they use,' Jonathan Murray, the vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft Europe, told BBC World in the first part of the documentary 'The Code Breakers,' which aired this week.

• UK - Beatles to appeal after losing trademark battle with Apple Computer  +/-

  (Guardian) The Beatles were beaten by the power of the iPod in the high court when a judge ruled that Apple Computer had not violated an agreement restricting the use of its apple logo in the music business. But the 25-year dispute over how the US computer giant can deploy its trademark apple with a bite taken out will continue as lawyers for Apple Corps, the record label still owned by Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, vowed to appeal against the "curious" verdict. Apple Computer's lawyers told the court that "even a moron in a hurry" could tell the difference between iTunes and the Beatles' Apple Corps. Apple Corps Limited v. Apple Computer, Inc per Mann J [2006] EWHC 996 (Ch) (BAILII) and 1991 Trademark Agreement (FindLaw).

• US - Technology groups win patent lawsuit  +/-

  (FT) A ruling by the US Supreme Court, which involved the online auction giant Ebay, could profoundly change the balance of power between companies that use patents primarily for litigation and high tech companies that make products based on thousands of different bits of patented technology. Courts almost always issue an injunction to force companies to change the design of their products once they are found to have infringed a patent. The justices ruled unanimously that there should be another option: courts should have discretion on whether to allow companies to continue making their product and compensate for the infringement with monetary damages rather than forcing them always to stop using the infringed technology.

Data Protection (privacy)

• EU - RFID tags provoke privacy concerns  +/-

  (International Herald Tribune) Radio frequency identification tags are postage-stamp-size chips that are revolutionizing the marketing and inventory businesses. But the revolution is also igniting debate in Europe over what some fear could be a new threat to personal privacy. Reflecting concern among consumer groups, the European Commission, led by Viviane Reding, the commissioner for information society and media, is holding a series of hearings and public forums on RFID tags.

Digital content

• Scan This Book!  +/-

  (New York Times) When Google announced in December 2004 that it would digitally scan the books of five major research libraries to make their contents searchable, the promise of a universal library was resurrected.

• Scientific papers on internet making impact: study  +/-

  (SABCNews) Scientific papers freely available on the internet make a bigger impact than many people realise, according to a new study available on the online Science and Development Network. The findings will strengthen calls for more online scientific journals to switch to the open-access model and make research freely available. The author of the study, Gunther Eysenbach, a health policy specialist at the University of Toronto in Canada, and editor of the open-access Journal of Medical Internet Research, concludes that "open-access is likely to benefit science by accelerating dissemination and uptake of research findings".

Domain names

• ICANN - A low point  +/-

  (Susan Crawford) The decision by ICANN's board, which voted 9-5 to reject the XXX contract, represents a low point for ICANN. I am a member of ICANN's board, and I voted in favor of the agreement. Policies as to the use of domain names, as opposed to the registration of domain names, are not appropriate subjects for ICANN decisionmaking. By keeping such a short leash on ICM's development of its policy organization, which will in turn make decisions about the use of names at the second level, ICANN may be getting into dangerous territory. We should not run the risk of turning ICANN into a convenient chokepoint for the content-related limitations desired by particular governments around the world. see also .XXX and Conservative Groups by Patrick Vande Walle.

• ICANN - Appeal and lawsuit over .xxx rejection  +/-

  (out-law.com) The company that called for a .xxx domain on the internet has asked ICANN to reconsider its decision to reject the bid. ICM Registry is also suing the US Government for access to documents that it hopes will prove political interference. ICANN's board rejected ICM's proposal by nine votes to five on 10th May. But ICM filed a request for reconsideration, arguing that the decision was 'based on inaccurate information about the written statements of various governments concerning .xxx'.

• ICANN - US Renews Contract for Oversight Of Internet  +/-

  (Washington Post) The Bush administration plans to renew its exclusive contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the U.S.-based nonprofit group that oversees key technical matters governing how computers communicate over the Internet.

• ICANN approves .tel domain  +/-

  (ZDNet UK) Internet regulator ICANN has approved the creation of the .tel domain, the company that proposed the domain announced. Telnic, which proposed .tel to ICANN in 2000, said the domain will give individuals and businesses a naming and navigation structure for the Internet communications space.

Information society and Internet policy

• EU - ICT for growth and jobs: most Member States need to be more ambitious,  +/-

  (RAPID) To get the full benefits from information and communication technologies (ICT), EU Member States need more ambitious plans to exploit them, says the Commission in its first annual progress report on i2010; To help get growth back on track, Member States need to step up their efforts to improve access to broadband internet connections, facilitate the EU-wide circulation of digital content, free up radio spectrum for new applications, integrate research and innovation and modernise public services.

• How could we regulate the Internet?  +/-

  (CommsWatch) Roger Darlington put forward ideas on the subject of the regulation of the Internet that he has been developing as a result of his experience at the Internet Watch Foundation and the Ofcom Consumer Panel.

• WSIS - Internet Governance Forum Advisory Group appointed  +/-

  (UN Press Release) United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has established an Advisory Group to assist him in convening the Internet Governance Forum, a new forum for a multi-stakeholder dialogue on Internet governance. The Group includes 47 members from Government, the private sector and civil society, including the academic and technical communities, who represent all regions of the world. It is chaired by Nitin Desai, the Secretary-General?s Special Adviser for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), who may also select special advisers to assist him. see also Kofi Annan benennt neue Beratergruppe für Internet Governance Forum (Heise - Monika Emert).

• WSIS- Regierungsvertreter bringen ihre Themenvorschläge für Internet Governance Forum ein  +/-

  (Heise) Das Thema "Internet Governance" dürfe beim ersten "Internet Governance Forum" (IGF) im Herbst in Athen nicht unter den Tisch fallen. Das forderte der brasilianische Regierungsvertreter José Marcos Nogueira Viana in Genf zu Beginn des Vorbereitungstreffens der Beratergruppe für das neue UN-Forum. Vertreter anderer Länder, darunter auch die EU, favorisieren Spam und Sicherheitsfragen als Hauptthemen für das erste IGF-Treffen. Russland nannte Cyberterrorismus und Cyberwarfare vordringlich.

Internet access and use

• Will video break the Internet?  +/-

  (AP) If people start watching streaming video like they watch TV - for hours at a time - that puts a strain on the Internet that it was not designed for, ISPs say, and beefing up the Internet's capacity to prevent that will be expensive. To offset that cost, ISPs want to start charging content providers to ensure delivery of large video files, for example. Internet activists and consumer groups are vehemently against those plans, saying they amount to tilting the Internet's level playing field, one of the things that encourages innovation. They want legislation to guarantee a "neutral" Internet, but prospects appear slim.

Protection of minors

• EU - Protection of minors and human dignity  +/-

  (Press Release) Education, Youth And Culture Council meeting - Brussels, 18-19 May 2006. The Council reached political agreement on a draft recommendation on the protection of minors and human dignity and on the right of reply in the European audiovisual and online information services industry. It builds upon the Council Recommendation 98/560/EC of 24 September 19981, which remains valid. It responds to the new challenges both in quantitative (more "illegal" content) and qualitative terms (new platforms, new products) that technological developments bring in this field. The draft recommendation addresses the following questions: media literacy; rating or classification of audiovisual content; portrayal of the sexes in the media and advertising; right of reply.

Racism and xenophobia

• US - Report: Hate groups favor U.S. Internet servers to spread bile  +/-

  (AP) Hate groups around the world, including Islamic militants, often use Internet servers based in the United States to send propaganda and instructions to followers, according to a report released by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In its eighth annual report on Internet hate speech, the Wiesenthal Center said it had logged some 6,000 Web sites in the past year used by racists and bigots to incite violence.

Rating and filtering

• UK - Government sets target for ISP blocking  +/-

  (Internet Watch Foundation) We are setting a target that by the end of 2007, all ISPs offering broadband internet connectivity to the UK general public put in place technical measures that prevent their customers accessing websites containing illegal images of child abuse identified by the IWF.

Safer Internet awareness

• DE - Thema Handy: Brochüre für Eltern  +/-

  (Heise) Welche Risiken das Handy im Einzelnen für Kinder und Jugendliche birgt und wie Eltern oder Erzieher reagieren sollten, darüber informiert die neue MPFS-Brochüre "Handy und Co".

Security and encryption

• ITU Announces Cybersecurity Survey and Launches Cybersecurity Gateway  +/-

  (Press Release) ITU announced a global opinion survey to assess trust of online transactions and awareness of cybersecurity measures. The survey was conducted by ITU in conjunction with World Telecommunication Day, celebrated on 17 May to commemorate the founding of ITU in 1865. The theme chosen this year - Promoting Global Cybersecurity - aims to highlight the serious challenges of ensuring the safety and security of networked information and communication systems.

Telecommunications

• EU Threatens Legal Action Against Germany Over Broadband  +/-

  (Deutsche Welle) Germany appears determined to pass a new telecommunications law that critics say would give Deutsche Telekom a monopoly over broadband connections. The EU has threatened legal action. Shortly after Germany's cabinet agreed on the new telecommunications law, Viviane Reding, the European Union commissioner for information society and media warned that she would not accept the legislation. If passed by the Bundestag, the legislation would exempt Deutsche Telekom's planned €3 billion ($3.9 billion) broadband network from price regulation. Competitors would not be allowed to use the network for years.

Voice over IP

• UK - Regulating VoIP: industry responds  +/-

  (out-law) A trade body for the UK's internet telephony market has urged Ofcom to resist imposing excessive regulation on the fledgling industry. If regulations are imposed, they must be enforceable on overseas rivals, says the group. The comments, from the Internet Telephony Service Providers' Association (ITSPA), were made in response to the telecoms watchdog's February consultation on regulating the market for Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, services, in the UK.

Market & Technology

Junk mail (spam)

• The Fight Against V1@gra (and Other Spam)  +/-

  (New York Times) Advances in e-mail filtering techniques mean that most computer users no longer face a paralyzing crush of junk messages, but spammers have hardly given up.

Portals, browsers and search engines

• Firefox continues to gain ground  +/-

  (ZDNet UK) The Firefox and Safari Web browsers are gradually becoming more popular, while Internet Explorer (IE) may be starting to lose some of its lead.

Statistics

• Google (service name here) isn't that popular  +/-

  (ZDNet) posted by Garett Rogers. Google does a poor job of cross-marketing their services. There are so many of them that it's hard for anybody to keep up. New statistics from hitwise suggest that the only service Google can call a 'huge success' is Google Search which has, according to them, a 79.98% market share. The runner up is Google Image Search with 9.54%, and from there the market share for the rest rapidly shrink.

• US - Internet Use Involves Both Pros and Cons For Children And Adolescents,  +/-

  (APA) Between 75 and 90 percent of teenagers in the United States use the Internet to email, instant message (IM), visit chat rooms and explore other sites on the World Wide Web. According to the latest research published by the American Psychological Association (APA), spending a lot of time on the Web can have both negative and positive effects on young people, i.e., the sharing of self-injury practices by some and the improvement of academic performance and health awareness by others. Full texts of the articles are online.

• US - Online socializing: Latest data  +/-

  (Net Family News) The Top 10 social-networking sites now reach a whopping 45% of active Web users, according to Nielsen/NetRatings' latest figures. Together, the ten sites have grown 47% in the past year (from 46.8 million unique visitors in April 2005 to 68.8 million last month). Nielsen's Top 10 are: MySpace, Blogger, Classmates Online, YouTube, MSN Groups, AOL Hometown, Yahoo! Groups, MSN Spaces, SixApart, TypePad, and Xanga.

Useful addresses

• Handy Dandy - New Podcasting Legal Guide  +/-

  (Cairns Blog) The Podcasting Legal Guide is up on the Creative Commons Wiki. The Guide is described as follows: 'The purpose of this Guide is to provide you with a general roadmap of some of the legal issues specific to podcasting. EFF has produced a very practical and helpful guide for issues related to blogging generally.

• ITU launches new series of 'World Information Society Reports'  +/-

  (ITU) On 17 May, World Information Society Day, ITU together with other partners (including UNCTAD and the KADO) launched a new series of reports entitled 'World Information Society Report'. It is intended to be an annual report, tracking progress in implementing the outcomes from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The reports will include a new benchmarking tool, the Digital Opportunity Index, which is a composite index for measurement of the information society, endorsed by the Tunis Phase of the WSIS. The summary of the report is available on the website at www.itu.int/wisr. The report itself will be published in June 2006.

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