- AU - Australia could soon have the most restrictive internet regime in the Western world +/-
(Sydney Morning Herald) Senator Stephen Conroy's consultation paper on mandating the filtering of internet sites by Australian internet service providers suggests that Australia could soon have the most restrictive internet regime in the Western world. The incorporation of international lists of overseas-hosted child sexual abuse material would be sufficient to align mandatory Australian practices with the voluntary practices of most liberal democracies. Indeed, the implication is that it might total the sum of all other jurisdictions' voluntary filter lists. However, the commitment to add other content that is only prohibited in Australia will mean that the scope of the content to be captured will be much more extensively drawn than in equivalent nation.
- CN - China Closes Down The Internet +/-
(Forbes) China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has released regulations, dated Dec. 15, requiring the registration of all Web sites. MIIT's justification was the need to eliminate sexual content. As a Ministry spokesman stated, "This is about mobile pornography, it's not referring to any other issue." The explanation, however comforting it sounds, is disingenuous. The wording of the rules is broad enough to cover all sites, domestic and foreign, whether or not they carry sex-themed material. "Domain names that have not registered will not be resolved or transferred," the regulations state. In other words, unregistered sites will become unavailable to users in China. see also Blacklist, White List? China's Internet Censors Spawn Confusion (WSJ) by Loretta Chao.
- CN - China says 5,394 arrested in Internet porn crackdown +/-
(Reuters) Chinese police said the crackdown on Internet pornography had brought 5,394 arrests and 4,186 criminal case investigations in 2009 - a fourfold increase in the number of such cases compared with 2008. The announcement said the drive would deepen in 2010.
- CN - Google: A new approach to China +/-
(Official Google Blog) In mid-December, Google detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident was something quite different. First, this attack was not just on Google. Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information, rather than the content of emails themselves. Third, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers. These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered - combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web - have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. See also Hillary Clinton calls on China to probe Google attack (BBC) and China Rebuffs Clinton on Internet Warning (New York Times).
- CN - Timeline: China and net censorship +/-
(BBC) As Google considers withdrawing from China, the BBC looks at the highs and lows of internet access and freedom in the most populous country in the world.
- IN - Yahoo, Flickr and Microsoft introduce access filters +/-
(Guardian) A Guardian investigation has discovered that several internet companies have quietly introduced filters to prevent Indian users from accessing sexual content. The Yahoo search engine and Flickr photo-sharing site (owned by Yahoo) altered their sites earlier this month to prevent users in India from switching off the safe-search facility. The block also applies to users in Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea. Microsoft has also barred Indian users of its Bing search engine from searching for sexual content. Users who do try to search for sexual material receive a notice informing them that "your country or region requires a strict Bing SafeSearch setting, which filters out results that might return adult content". The clampdown is understood to be in response to recent changes to India's Information Technology Act of 2000, which bans the publication of pornographic material.
- Big sign of increasingly mobile Web +/-
(Net Family News) If anyone had any doubts about how big the mobile Web will be, Google's release of its Nexus One phone should erase them. It's part of Google's "careful plan to try to do what few other technology companies have done before: retain its leadership as computing shifts from one generation to the next," the New York Times reports. And this shift is computing, shopping, gaming, info-gathering, communicating, photo-sharing, learning, teaching, producing, etc. on smart phones. According to Nielsen, about 18% of mobile phones were smartphones last year (up from 13% the year before, and a projected 40-50% of mobile phones sold this year will be smart phones.
- Google's biggest announcement was not a phone, but a URL +/-
(Ars Technica) The real news at Google's event wasn't a phone at all, but a URL: http://google.com/phone. An online storefront that, if successful, could knock one of the major pillars out the current, much-reviled US carrier model and result in faster, cheaper, more flexible service for mobile users. Here's how it works. In short, what Google announced wasn't just the Nexus One, but America's America's first carrier-independent smartphone store; the Google store is now the only smartphone store in the US where, for every phone on offer, you first pick which phone you want, and then you pick a network and a plan on that network.
- Read-e for the masses - The growing popularity of electronic books +/-
(Economist) E-reader sales have been gathering momentum since Amazon launched the Kindle in 2007. In 2009 falling prices, combined with a flurry of deals, announcements and technical upgrades, primed the market for a vast expansion. There are about 5m e-readers in circulation worldwide and double that amount will be sold in 2010, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm.
- US - If your kids are awake, they're probably online +/-
(New York Times) The average young American now spends practically every waking minute - except for the time in school - using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones. And because so many of them are multitasking - say, surfing the Internet while listening to music - they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours. The study's findings shocked its authors, who had concluded in 2005 that use could not possibly grow further, and confirmed the fears of many parents whose children are constantly tethered to media devices. It found, moreover, that heavy media use is associated with several negatives, including behavior problems and lower grades.
- US - Teens and Sexting +/-
(Pew Internet) As texting has become a centerpiece in teen social life, parents, educators and advocates have grown increasingly concerned about the role of cell phones in the sexual lives of teens and young adults. A new survey from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that 4% of cell-owning teens ages 12-17 say they have sent sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images or videos of themselves to someone else via text messaging, a practice also known as "sexting"; 15% say they have received such images of someone they know via text message.
- 2010-02-01 ES, Madrid La Televisión por Internet (TVIP y VOD) - Compartir, Comunicar, Educar +/-
(e-Televisión) En estas Jornadas analizaremos las tendencias y oportunidades de las INTERNET TV (tanto la TVIP como el Video on Demand –VOD-) para Universidades, Centros de Investigación y Formación, Empresas orientadas a las TICs, así como para colegios e institutos, dedicando algunas sesiones a los profesores como docentes y "prescriptores" de las tecnologías en las aulas. Fecha: en Madrid del 1 - 3 de febrero de 2010. Dirige: Dra. Loreto Corredoira, loretoc@ccinf.ucm.es. Organiza: e-Televisión, spin off de la Complutense y el Grupo Complutense IPTV.
- 2010-03-23 CoE, Strasbourg - Octopus Interface on Cooperation against Cybercrime +/-
(CoE) The next Octopus Interface on Cooperation against Cybercrime will take place in Strasbourg on 23-25 March 2010. It will gather cybercrime experts from public and private sectors; international and non-governmental organisations to discuss the issues of security and the protection of fundamentals rights on the Internet as well as to share good practices in implementing the Convention on Cybercrime and its Protocol. The Conference will also focus on the following topics: Effective measures against the sexual exploitation and abuse of children on the internet; The Convention on Cybercrime as a global framework; Cybercrime training for judges and prosecutors;aw enforcement responsibilities: the role of high-tech crime units, CERTs/CSIRTs, registries and registrars; Mapping networks against cybercrime; Technical cooperation against cybercrime. See first outline of the Conference.
- 2010-04-29 ES, Madrid - EuroDIG 2010 +/-
(EuroDIG) European Dialogue on Internet Governance EuroDIG 2010 will take place at the 29/30 April 2010 in Madrid. We invite herewith all interested stakeholders to a joint preparatory meeting in Madrid on 19 January 2010 at 11:00 am CET.
- 2010-05-05 AT, Krems - EDem10 - 4th international Conference on E-Democracy +/-
(Danube University Krems) EDem10 will take place at Danube University Krems, Austria, on 6th and 7th of May 2010. EDem is the leading E-Democracy conference in Europe and the keynote speakers will ensure an interesting event. On primary aim is to bring together researchers and practitioners. Deadline for Extended Call for Papers 1 March.
- 2010-05-26 BE, Antwerp - Cyberbullying +/-
(University of Antwerp) COST action IS0801 is pleased to announce the organisation of an international workshop on legal issues regarding cyberbullying amongst youngsters (peer-to-peer and student-versus-authority). This workshop will be held on Wednesday May 26th 2010, in Antwerp (Belgium). It will be followed by the "E-youth: Opportunities and risks" conference on May 27th-28th 2010, organised by UCSIA and the University of Antwerp.
- 2010-05-27 BE, Antwerp e-Youth: balancing between opportunities & risks? +/-
(UCSIA) 27-28 May 2010 - Antwerp - Belgium. UCSIA and the University of Antwerp are pleased to announce the organisation of a two-day international, multidisciplinary conference on children, adolescents & ICT. The conference will focus on national and international research dealing with social, cultural, economic, legal, psychological and ethical issues regarding young people's uses of various internet applications and mobile telephony. Confirmed keynotes so far are: Jos de Haan, Sonia Livingstone, Yves Poullet, Peter Smith, Patti M Valkenburg, Seounmi Youn.