Home page| Extended HTML version
(ZDNet UK) Commissioner Viviane Reding says the Television Without Frontiers directive will help businesses, but many big Internet players are wary of regulation. The European Commission (EC) has defended its proposal to revise the Television Without Frontiers (TVWF) Directive, saying that Internet businesses would benefit from the legislation.
(RAPID) Speech by Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media. Freedom of the media, effective co-regulation and media literacy: cornerstones for an efficient protection of minors in the European Union. ICRA Roundtable Brussels 'Mission Impossible', Brussels, 14 June 2006.
(Progress & Freedom Foundation) by Adam Thierer. I traveled to Brussels and, along with my friends at the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), co-hosted an interesting roundtable discussion entitled 'Mission Impossible: Protecting Children and Free Expression in Our New, Digital Content World.' The focus of the day's discussion was the same as previous ICRA roundtables that I have participated in and written about here before: What steps can we take to shield children from potentially objectionable media content without repressing freedom of speech / expression?
(CommsWatch) The UK public consultation on the European Commission's proposals to amend the Television without Frontiers Directive - now to be known as the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS) - has opened. The consultation documents and full details on how to respond are available on the DCMS website.
(RAPID) The European Commission has ordered the Dutch authorities to recover €76.3 million plus interest from NOS, the umbrella organisation of public broadcasters in the Netherlands, following an investigation under EC Treaty state aid rules into ad hoc payments from the Dutch State to the public broadcasters between 1994 and 2005. The investigation has shown that the payments went beyond the financial needs of broadcasters for public service purposes and resulted in NOS building up financial reserves.
(SSRN) by Fulda, Joseph S. This paper considers a jurisprudential issue that has heretofore not received much attention: Do Internet Stings Directed at Pedophiles Create Offenders or Capture Offenders?
(SSRN) by Kerr, Ian R. and Gilbert, Daphne. Examines the new role internet service providers (ISPs) will play in the fight against cybercrime. Examining the legislative model that is being considered in various jurisdictions around the world, the authors argue that adopting this approach will lower the threshold of privacy protection. Moreover, it will drastically alter the relationship between ISPs and the individuals who have come to depend on them to properly manage their personal information and private communications.
(BBC) The Home Office has rejected claims by a top police officer that policy on paedophiles is being driven by a tabloid newspaper campaign. Dyfed-Powys Chief Constable Terry Grange said he was extremely concerned the Home Office had 'surrendered' power over policy to the News of the World.
(BBC) A sex offender who was caught through an anti-paedophile website has been given a nine-year jail term for sexual grooming and pornography offences. He was the first to be caught in a police internet operation called the Virtual Global Taskforce.
(out-law.com) Apple may be fined for operating iTunes in Norway, Sweden and Denmark in the aftermath of a Norwegian Ombudsman ruling that says Apple is doing business illegally. The Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman has just ruled that the terms and conditions for iTunes are unlawful and has given the service until 21st June to amend them. After that date it will be fined unless it changes its practices. Parallel cases in Sweden and Denmark could lead to fines across Scandinavia not only for Apple's iTunes but also for Microsoft's MSN.
(Press Release) Ofcom today published research which reveals the importance of effective industry self-regulation and consumer empowerment in addressing consumer protection issues on the internet. The report examines the broad range of processes used in the UK and other countries to address a number of consumer protection issues online, including illegal or harmful internet content.
(Wired) The French organization Reporters Without Borders has condemned the Chinese government for its increasing censorship of the internet. RWB claims that the Chinese government has expanded its efforts to block Chinese citizens from accessing Google, Google News and Google Mail, and that software programs like Dynapass, Freegate and Ultrasurf, which were designed to allow users to bypass China's censorship methods, have been "neutralized". see also Google.com accessible again inside China (RSF).
(Reuters) Google is committed to doing business in China despite criticism the company has faced for abiding by Chinese government censorship restrictions.
(Wired) Yahoo is stricter than any other search engine in China when enforcing censorship, said a journalism-advocacy group. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said their tests showed that Yahoo.cn blocked a higher percentage of politically sensitive results than Google.cn or the beta version of msn.cn.
(out-law) The UK film censor wants to control and classify films on the internet. The British Board of Film Classification has said that it would like to give web-delivered films certificates in the same manner as it does for cinema and DVD releases. Web-delivered films do not have to be passed by the censor either for cutting or for classification in the UK, which the BBFC believes could lead to consumers being misled.
(BBC) The publishers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas have settled a dispute with the Federal Trade Commission in the US over secret sex scenes in the game. Take-Two agreed to clearly disclose relevant content on the game's packaging and not to misrepresent rating or content descriptions.
(BBC) ITV programmes will be available to watch on the internet and on mobile phones for up to a month after they have been shown on TV under a new deal. The broadcaster has followed Channel 4 and BBC in signing a new media rights deal with producers' trade body Pact.
(Michael Geist) The hyperlink is one of the Internet's most basic yet important features. While most sites welcome links, a few do not. What if a website does not want others to link to it? Further, what if a website only wants supportive links, while maintaining the right to block critical links? Permission is not needed to link on the Internet.
(Le Monde) Certains textes de loi voient le jour dans la douleur. Celui relatif au droit d'auteur et aux droits voisins dans la société de l'information (DAVDSI), qui transpose en droit français une directive européenne de 2001, en est un bel exemple. La commission mixte paritaire (CMP), qui réunissait, jeudi 22 juin au matin, sept sénateurs et sept députés de la majorité et de l'opposition, est parvenue à un compromis dans une ambiance survoltée. Ce texte doit encore faire l'objet d'une adoption définitive le 30 juin par le Parlement.
(BBC) The record industry has welcomed a Dutch court ruling against a website that provided links to MP3 music files. The Zoekmp3.nl site, run by Techno Design, was shut down after the decision by the Dutch Court of Appeal. It ruled that the site was breaking the law by providing links to illegal MP3 files on the internet, even though it did not host the content itself.
(FT) In one of the most significant threats to the iPod phenomenon to have arisen since the iconic digital music player was launched, the Norwegian Consumer Council concluded that Apple's iTunes service breaches Norwegian law because it prevents users from playing music they have downloaded on any player apart from Apple's own iPod. In association with its sister organisations in Sweden and Denmark, the NCC has taken action that could eventually force courts to make downloaded songs on iTunes usable on all digital music players.
(BBC) Internet firm Tiscali has suspended its music sharing Juke Box and accused the European recording industry of being 'virtually impossible to work with'. It took the move after it was told to remove the service's search by artist. Tiscali said services in the US offered that facility, and European music fans were being discriminated against.
(AP) Ten Swedish IT companies whose servers were confiscated in a police crackdown on a prominent file-sharing Web site are now asking the government for damages for loss of business. Police raided the Web hosting company PRQ on May 31, in a crackdown on illegal file swapping that temporarily shut down The Pirate Bay Web site, but they also confiscated about 200 servers belonging to companies not affiliated with the file-sharing site, the nonprofit organization Center for Justice said.
(CNET News.com) Google has again clashed with publishers over its controversial program to scan, digitize and make searchable the collections of libraries in the U.S. and the U.K. Publishers hit out at Google over the plan, and the effect it will have on copyright, at the launch of a report on digital rights management from the All Party Internet Group, an independent British parliamentary organization.
(BBC) Consumers should be told exactly what they can and cannot do with songs and films they buy online, says an influential group of MPs in the UK. The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group report on digital rights management looked at how copy protection systems restrict the way digital movies and music can be enjoyed.
(CNET News.com) A Colorado-based dating Web site has sued Yahoo and three other companies for allegedly paying to have their ads come up when its name "lovecity" is typed into the Google search page.
(FT) by James Boyle. A very bad proposal is being debated in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The proposal was to extend the length of an existing set of intellectual property rights for broadcasters, and even apply them to webcasting.With remarkably little public attention, the Broadcasting Treaty train is chugging ahead strongly, with states providing new draft proposals over the next two months for a possible decision in September.
(RAPID) The European Commission has adopted two initiatives to put a legally sound framework in place for the transfer of PNR data to the United States. These initiatives are the first European answers to correct the legal basis for the Agreement with the US that was struck down by the European Court of Justice on 30 May 2006. The Court ruled that the Article 95 EC-Treaty was not an appropriate legal basis for the transfer of PNR data which are essentially aiming to ensure public security and activities by public authorities in areas of criminal law. As the Agreement with the United-States remains in force under international law for a period of 90 days after it is denounced by either Party, the Commission recommends to the Council to terminate the Agreement with the US before the end of this month. At the same time the Commission asks the Council for an authorisation to open negotiations for an Agreement with the United States of America on the use of PNR data to prevent and combat terrorism and transnational crime, including organised crime.
(New Scientist) Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
(ZDNet) L'Institut géographique national ouvre son service Geoportail, qui permet aux internautes de visionner des photos aériennes du territoire français avec une précision de 50 centimètres. Un rival de Google Earth à l'échelle française, riche de quelque 400.000 clichés aériens, qui lui servent tous les cinq ans à réaliser «la photographie de la France», et de 3.688 cartes topographiques. Pour le moment en 2D, la navigation devrait passer en 3D d'ici à la fin de l'année.
(New York Times) Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that 'anyone can edit.' Unless you want to edit the entries on Albert Einstein, human rights in China or Christina Aguilera. Wikipedia's come-one, come-all invitation to write and edit articles, and the surprisingly successful results, have captured the public imagination. But it is not the experiment in freewheeling collective creativity it might seem to be, because maintaining so much openness inevitably involves some tradeoffs.
(Observer) Social networking is a new internet revolution being joined by hundreds of thousands every day. It has sparked an explosion of sites like Bebo and Facebook where users generate the content - creating their own space online.
(CommsWatch) A pan-European drive to use information and communication technologies to help people to overcome economic, social, educational, territorial or disability-related disadvantages has just been endorsed by ministers of 34 European countries in Riga (Latvia). "e-Inclusion" targets include halving the gap in Internet usage by groups at risk of exclusion, boosting broadband coverage in Europe to at least 90%, and making all public web sites accessible by 2010. See Commission Press Release and FAQ.
(Reuters) La France, sixième nation en terme d'administration électronique en 2005, est le pays le plus réceptif et le plus demandeur vis-à-vis du développement des services administratifs en ligne, selon le dernier baromètre du cabinet Accenture. D'après l'étude menée auprès d'une cinquantaine de responsables gouvernementaux des onze pays leaders de l'e-administration et auprès de 8.600 citoyens de 21 pays, les Français (74%) se disent les plus séduits par la facilité d'utilisation d'internet au détriment des canaux traditionnels tels que l'accueil physique ou le courrier.
(01net) Le ministre délégué à l'Industrie, François Loos, a exposé - à l'occasion du Conseil télécommunications - la vision de la France pour faciliter l'émergence et le développement d'une « Europe numérique ». Ce document sera transmis au début de l'été aux homologues européens du ministre. De la « réduction de la fracture numérique » à la diversité culturelle en passant par la 3G, l'Internet du futur, la bibliothèque numérique, le commerce électronique et la lutte contre la piraterie, tous les thèmes marquants propres à la révolution numérique sont évoqués.
(MIT Press) Book edited by Rikke Frank Jørgensen. The contributors examine the links between information technology and human rights from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Scholars, human rights activists, and practitioners discuss such topics as freedom of expression, access to information, privacy, discrimination, gender equality, intellectual property, political participation, and freedom of assembly in the context of the revolution in information and communication technology, exploring the ways in which the information society can either advance human rights around the world or threaten them.
(Heise) 50 Forscher aus 30 Ländern haben am vergangenen Wochenende im sächsischen Rathen das GigaNet gegründet, das sich als Plattform für Forschung rund um das Thema 'Internet Governance' versteht.
(Lawrence Lessig) One clue to this Net Neutrality debate is to watch what kind of souls are on each side of the debate. The pro-NN contingent is filled with the people who actually built the Net - from Vint Cerf to Google to eBay - and those who profit from the competition enabled by the Net - e.g., Microsoft. The anti-NN contingent is filled with the entities that either never got the Net, or fought like hell to control it ? telecom, and cable companies. see also Tim Berners-Lee blog.
(Heise) The Intermediate Court of Appeals in Dusseldorf has ruledthat forum operators are only obligated to delete illegal comments made by their users if they know about them. The operators cannot be expected to actively look for breaches of the law or to monitor all postings. However, they must be able to demonstrate that they 'immediately' reviewed and, if necessary, blocked or deleted comments about which complaints were filed.
(Legalis.net) La cour d´appel de Paris vient de jeter un trouble chez les hébergeurs de pages personnelles qui proposent aux annonceurs d´y placer des publicités payantes. Pour la cour, Tiscali qui offre ce type d´hébergement possède en fait la qualité d´éditeur. En conséquence, il doit être considéré comme responsable des reproductions illicites des bandes dessinées sur le site www.chez.com/bdz dont l´auteur n´a pas pu être identifié. Tiscali est condamné à verser 10 000 euros de dommages-intérêts aux éditeurs des bandes dessinées.
(out-law) A Texas woman has filed a $30m lawsuit against MySpace.com after her 14-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted by someone she met through the site. The suit alleges that MySpace does not do enough to protect its under-age users, according to a report in the Austin American Statesman, and includes news reports of other sexual assaults that took place after people met on the MySpace network.
(ITU) An international experts workshop under the ITU New Initiatives Programme on the "The Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services" was held from 21-23 June 2006 in Mainz, Germany. The workshop was hosted by Germany’s Federal Network Agency for Electricity, Gas, Telecommunications, Post and Railway (BNetzA). See issues paper: The regulatory environment for future mobile multimedia services: Issues Paper [Ed: Highly recommended]
(BBC) Mobile phone firms have reacted angrily to new ideas put forward by the European Commission to cut costs for consumers making calls on trips abroad. They are concerned that plans to put a cap on foreign call charges will distort competition within the market, and stifle innovation. Brussels has consciously provoked a heated public debate on the issue of roaming charges. People currently pay much higher charges abroad than for domestic calls.
(BBC) Social networking website MySpace.com plans to introduce restrictions on how adults contact teenagers on the site. The changes aim to make it more difficult for users more than 18 years old to befriend 14 and 15 year olds that they did not previously know.
(RAPID) Speech by Vice-President Franco Frattini, European Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security, Seminar on Racism and xenophobia, Vienna, 22 June 2006.
(CNET News.com) The Australian government plans to spend about $86 million to provide all the country's families with free Internet pornography-blocking software. see also Free Internet filter 'half-baked solution' (ABC).
(EDRI) A number of betting websites are officially blocked for Italian Internet users by the Amministrazione Autonoma dei Monopoli di Stato (AAMS or Autonomous Administration of State Monopolies, a part of the Ministry of Economy and Finances).
(Dark Reading) Good intentions that fall woefully short: That's the quickest summation of a proposed U.K. law intended to get pedophiles offline. The British government wants domestic ISPs to voluntarily introduce content filtering software to stop people from viewing child pornography by the end of 2007. Net and personal security experts, however, say that software only stops accidental viewing of such sites; and that the approach doesn't prevent content delivery over encrypted connections, email, instant messaging, or seemingly innocent P2P sites.
(CNET News.com) Operators of commercial Web sites with sexually explicit content would have to post warning labels on each offending page or face imprisonment under a new proposal in the U.S. Senate. Caving to earlier demands from the U.S. Department of Justice, the 24-page proposed law focuses on a medley of new penalties related to child pornography and other sexual content on the Internet. For instance, Internet service providers that fail to report to authorities any sightings of child pornography on their networks would have to cough up fines that are triple those written into current law: $150,000 for the first violation and $300,000 thereafter.
(La Dernière Heure) Les enfants et ados disposent désormais d'un site d'information: il s'intitule web4me.be. La plate-forme Safer Internet a décidé de mettre en ligne un site d'informations reprenant tout ce qu'il faut savoir en cas de pépin virtuel.
(Heise) Wenige Tage nach dem Handy-Verbot an bayerischen Schulen präsentiert sich der Bonner Mobilnetzbetreiber T-Mobile mit einem Bekenntnis zum Jugendschutz der Öffentlichkeit. Auf den Handys von Schülern in Bayern waren in der letzten Zeit gewaltverherrlichende und pornografische Videos gefunden worden. Der Netzbetreiber zeigt sich besorgt darüber, dass Kids solche Inhalte geradezu "spielerisch" weiterverbreiten können. Die T-Mobile-Hotline zum Thema jugendgefährdende Videos und Bilder auf dem Handy ist ab sofort täglich zwischen 8 und 20 Uhr unter der Rufnummer 08 00/3 38 87 76 erreichbar. Die Anrufe sind kostenlos. Besorgte Eltern und Pädagoden sollen sich in Kürze auch auf einer Website informieren können.
(FDIM) The Danish Association of Internet Media, FDIM, has been asked by the Danish Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Helge Sander, to spearhead the development of a labelling scheme for chat rooms. The association is to draft ethical guidelines with the aim to make Danish chat rooms safer for users. In the development of these guidelines, FDIM will draw on the experiences of, amongst others, Save the Children Denmark and the Danish Crime Prevention Council. [Ed: Information from Dieter Carstensen. Link to FDIM Press Release in Danish.]
(RAPDI) In the EU251, in 2005, 37% of people aged between 16 and 74 had no basic computer skills. This percentage was slightly higher for women (39%) than for men (34%). Among Member States for which data are available, the survey showed notable differences between countries. Large differences also existed between age groups and between different education levels. These figures are published by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities. How skilled are Europeans in using computers and the Internet ? - Issue number 17/2006.
(PCINpact) L'institut Médiamétrie a réalisé une étude retraçant les 10 dernières années d'internet en France. Objectif : mesurer l'évolution de l'arrivée du net dans les foyers. De 1997 à 2006, le nombre de foyers connectés a été multiplié par 100. 95 000 foyers début 1996, contre 9,9 millions en 2006. Cette mise en place s'est faite selon trois phases : de 1997 à 2002, c'est l'arrivée du net, avec d'abord son introduction sur le marché puis avec une croissance exponentielle. En 99, 1,4 million de foyers disposent d'une connexion, fin 2000, 3,1 millions. L'année 2000 sera marquée par l'avènement de l'ADSL en France, qui aura un effet catalyseur.En 2002, 6,2 millions de foyers sont équipés soit 1 foyer sur 4.
(CNET News.com) The majority of spam servers are physically located in Taiwan, according to CipherTrust. The e-mail security company found that 64 percent of machines sending out junk mail were in that country. Next was the United States with 23 percent and third China, with 3 percent. CipherTrust also determined that unwanted e-mail traffic went up as much as 20 percent worldwide in May. The company attributed the spam rise to two factors: the demise of antispam efforts by Blue Security, and growing use by spammers of image-only e-mails to defeat filters.
(BBC) The BBC Sport website is the most popular online source for World Cup news in the UK, according to a study. More than 1.3 million football fans visited the site in the first week of the tournament.
(Net Family News) Where their kids' use of the Internet's concerned, parents' greatest fear is sexual predators, a new study by CommonSenseMedia.org found. 'Still, they perceive other dangers to be more likely to occur: 80% are concerned about sexual predators online; 39% think that they are likely to happen to their kids, according to the study press release. Among media in general, the Internet is seen as the most risky - 85% of parents thinks so, vs. 13% for TV.
QuickLinks consists of
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.