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(Europa) The Commission has published an ex ante advertising for a negotiated procedure for a contract of a total value below €60.000 for "Coordinator for the second assessment of the implementation of the Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU " We look for one researcher to assist the Commission with carrying out a second assessment of the implementation of the Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU. The main tasks to be carried out would include: develop a methodology for the second assessment of the implementation of the Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU; adapt the methodology to the different types of social networking platforms signatories to the Principles; coordinate a team of national researchers who will implement the methodology and ensure quality control of their work; write a report on the main findings of the second assessment of the implementation of the Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU. The contract is for work up to 100 days to be carried out over a period of 12 months, with a maximum total value of 50.000 €. Deadline for submission of expression of interest: 7 May 2010.
(Europa) The call for proposals under the Safer Internet programme has been launched. The call announcement was published in the Official Journal C 48 on 26.02.2010. The call has a fixed deadline of 27 May 2010. See call text in Official Journal of the European Union.
(RAPID) The European Commission has proposed new rules obliging EU countries to impose more severe punishment on those who sexually abuse children. The proposal also calls for criminal prosecution of activities like 'grooming' (befriending children with the intention of sexually abusing them) and "sex tourism", even if the child abuse has taken place outside the EU. The Commission also wants more to be done to prevent these offences and to protect the victims. It particularly wants to make sure that offenders can get tailor-made treatment so that they don't abuse again. Member States will be obliged to ensure that access to websites containing child pornography can be blocked, as they are very difficult to take down at the source, especially if the site is outside the EU. The proposal will leave it to Member States to decide exactly how the blocking should be implemented but legal safeguards will always apply. See MEMO. Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, repealing Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA COM(2010)94 final.
(EDRI-gram) A civil court in Barcelona has recently ruled against SGAE (the Spanish collective society of authors and editors) in a case brought against Jesus Guerra who was administrating a site with links to P2P content. SGAE accused Guerra of infringing copyrights by having reproduced and communicated to the public works owned by their constituency. The defendant argued that his website was a non-profit site only providing links that could be used by users only through eMule, a P2P application, to connect to other Internet users. No content was actually hosted on that specific website. The judge ruled in favour of the defendant arguing that linking "does not suppose distributing, reproducing or making publicly available copyrighted works." In the judge's opinion, the creation of an index of links is not an infringing practice as linking is an integrant part of the Internet.
(Michael Geist) Late last year, a draft of the European Union proposal for the intellectual property chapter of the Canada - EU Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement leaked online. The leak revealed that the EU was seeking some significant changes to Canadian IP laws. Negotiations have continued and I have now received an updated copy of the draft chapter, complete with proposals from both the EU and Canada. The breadth of the demands are stunning - the EU is demanding nothing less than a complete overhaul of Canadian IP laws including copyright, trademark, databases, patent, geographic indications, and even plant variety rights.
(Surprisingly Free) Podcast by Michael Geist, Law Professor and Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, discusses the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, better known as ACTA. The discussion also turns to secrecy and transparency issues with ACTA and recent efforts to shed light on the text of the treaty.
(BBC) Net pirates could be cut off from the net under a new law Anti-piracy firm DigiProtect, which has teamed up with UK law firm ACS:Law to send thousands of letters to alleged net pirates, has defended its actions. It follows widespread condemnation of their methods, which involves mass-mailing alleged file-sharers asking them to pay a fine or face court. UK consumer magazine Which? has received complaints from people saying they have been wrongly accused.
(OUT-LAW News) A company which indexes and sorts postings to Usenet groups is liable for the copyright infringement of its users when they download films, software and television programmes, the High Court has said. Newzbin is a company that charged users 30p per week for access to its indexing and collation of media files posted to discussion groups on the Usenet system. It claimed that it did no more than a search engine such as Google and should not be liable for its users' actions but the Court heard that it told volunteer editors to carry out collating and reporting tasks to make it easier to download material and told them to focus their activity on films. Because of its knowledge of the infringements and its editorial involvement in making that infringement easier it shares liability for the downloading, the Court said. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation v Newzbin [2010] EWHC 608(Ch). See also Why the Newzbin ruling helps web hosts.
(OFCOm) The Digital Economy Act has created new responsibilities for Ofcom to adopt measures aimed at significantly reducing levels of unlawful file sharing via peer-to-peer online networks. The Act has set out two initial obligations on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in order to secure a coordinated approach, involving both copyright owners and ISPs. Should those initial measures fail to significantly reduce levels of unlawful file sharing the Secretary of State may require that ISPs implement technical measures against serious repeat infringers.
(Times) by Struan Robertson. The Digital Economy Act should never have been passed. Regardless of your view on whether copyright infringing websites should be blocked or infringing users cut off from the internet, this was no way to pass such a controversial and sweeping piece of legislation. It deserved proper debate and proper scrutiny but it received neither. see Digital Economy Bill passed by House of Commons (OUT-Law news) and blog post by Lilian Edwards.
(Washington Post) by Jack Goldsmith and Lawrence Lessig. The much-criticized cloak of secrecy that has surrounded the Obama administration's negotiation of the multilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was broken. The leaked draft of ACTA belies the U.S. trade representative's assertions that the agreement would not alter U.S. intellectual property law. And it raises the stakes on the constitutionally dubious method by which the administration proposes to make the agreement binding on the United States. The goal of the trade pact is to tighten enforcement of global intellectual property rules. The leaked draft, though incomplete in many respects, makes clear that negotiators are considering ideas and principles not reflected in U.S. law. ACTA could, for example, pressure Internet service providers -- such as Comcast and Verizon -- to kick users offline when they (or their children) have been accused of repeated copyright infringement because of content uploaded to sites such as YouTube. It also might oblige the United States to impose criminal liability on those who "incite" copyright violation. The draft more generally addresses "IP infringement" and thus could extend some of its rules to trademark and possibly patent law in ways that, after inevitable international compromises, will depart from U.S. law. It also contemplates creating an international "oversight council" to supervise (and possibly amend) aspects of the agreement. See also The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement by Margot Kaminski. See leaked text of ACTA dated 18 January 2010 (PDF) and in text format .
(New York Times) When Apple gave a preview of the next version of the iPhone operating system, OS 4, it was great to hear about the new features that could help consumers cope with the privacy and security issues involving location-based services. To make it clearer just how often approved apps are collecting data about users’ physical whereabouts, Apple will display an arrow in the status bar at the top of the screen, right next to the battery-life indicator, whenever a user’s location is being tracked. Mr. Forstall said users would also get “fine-grained settings,” akin to those provided for choosing how notifications are delivered, that will let you disable or enable location data-gathering on an app-by-app basis.
(Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada) A discussion document. The term "cloud computing" is seemingly omnipresent these days – it appears in media reports, in business literature, in technology literature. At the same time, the term is so nebulous that many consumers may not be fully aware of what cloud computing actually is.
(TechCrunch Europe) German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has written an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, expressing her concerns about Facebook's plans to further relax data protection regulations on the social networking site. She refers to the recent tweaks the company made to its privacy policy. Should Facebook not be willing to alter its business policy and eliminate the glaring shortcomings, the minister writes that she will feel obliged to terminate her membership. See Facebook's Plan To Automatically Share Your Data With Sites You Never Signed Up For and Sharpen The Pitchforks. It's Almost Time For Facebook’s Privacy Wake-Up Call. See also David and Goliath (Economist).
(Mashable) Google has released a new video aimed at teens about making Google Buzz a safer experience. The video was released in conjunction with the new Buzz privacy reset. This new focus on privacy and privacy options comes amidst class-action lawsuits and a request for FTC investigation regarding the service’s launch and explanation to consumers. Although aimed at teens, the tips are good for anyone using Buzz to keep in mind.
(BBC) Canada's Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has sent an open letter to Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. The letter raises concerns about privacy issues surrounding social network tool Google Buzz and Google Street View. It calls for Google to adhere to a set of "fundamental privacy principles" when creating new services in future. Ms Stoddart's counterparts in nine other countries, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the UK., have signed it too.
(BBC) Google has said that it will begin to roll out a privacy reset for its controversial social network Buzz. The search giant will ask all its users to confirm or change their privacy settings, starting on 5 April. The firm was forced to make a series of changes to Buzz just days after launch, following a backlash from users worried about privacy intrusions. The latest tweaks will also show every aspect of a user's profile, from public settings to the websites users are connected to, and who they are following or being followed by.
(Schneier on Security) In January, Facebook Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, declared the age of privacy to be over. A month earlier, Google Chief Eric Schmidt expressed a similar sentiment. Add Scott McNealy's and Larry Ellison's comments from a few years earlier, and you've got a whole lot of tech CEOs proclaiming the death of privacy - especially when it comes to young people. It's just not true. People, including the younger generation, still care about privacy.
(TechCrunch Europe) There are concerns that Facebook, by default, now opts you in to allowing third party sites like Yelp to ‘personalise’ your experience, and there are questions about how much information is given away. The result is that lots of geeks are considering leaving Facebook, and perhaps even more interestingly, veritable droves of Google software engineers are among them. see also How to Opt-Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization (New York Times).
(FTC) the Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comment on the costs and benefits of an FTC rule designed to protect children online. The FTC's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule became effective on April 21, 2000. COPPA imposes requirements on operators of Web sites or online services that are aimed at children under 13 years of age, or that knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Among other things, the Rule requires that online operators notify parents and get their permission before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children. It also requires that the operators keep the information they collect from children secure, and prohibits them from requiring children to turn over any more personal information than is reasonably necessary to participate in activities on their Web sites. In 2005, the FTC initiated a congressionally required review of the Rule, and after considering extensive public comment decided to retain it without change. However, the Commission believes that changes to the online environment over the past five years, including children's increasing use of mobile technology to access the Internet, warrant reexamining the Rule.
(EU Law Blog) There's a new publication of the consolidated version of the Treaties in the OJ, 2010 C 83, p. 1. You can download the complete version here. Here's the link to the full collection which includes the Treaty on the European Union, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Protocols, Annexes, and Declarations. There's also the all important and useful Table of Equivalences showing the correspondence between the old and new article numbering. This publication also includes the Charter of Fundamental Rights which now has legal force.
(BBC) Mapping agency Ordnance Survey has launched a new service offering free and unrestricted access to most of its map data. After months of public consultation, OS OpenData is being launched by Communities Secretary John Denham. He said he hoped it would attract "a new wave of entrepreneurs" to reuse the data in innovative ways. Previous data sharing scheme OS OpenSpace was available for free but operated with limitations. In the past people have used it to create safe cycling and rambling routes, as well as maps detailing local post and phone boxes. OS OpenData has been funded by the government and is the result of the "Making Public Data Public" initiative announced by PM Gordon Brown in November 2009.
(Guardian) The Guardian proudly presents a three-way interactive swingometer. After a time, the BBC have now caught up.
(NetFamilyNews) Two leading new-media thinkers – Sonia Livingstone of the London School of Economics and Henry Jenkins at the University of Southern California – both have concerns about the phrase "digital native". Dr. Livingstone said in a keynote at a University of California, San Diego, conference that all the hype around "digital natives" suggests that new media "brought into being a whole new species, a youth transformed, qualitatively distinct from anything that has gone before, an alien form whose habits it is our task to understand," when what we need to do is think about and work with children in the context of their full life – home, school, friends, media and cultural environments, etc. – in order "to understand what young people do online," not the other way around.
(BBC) Germany has called for stronger action to combat images of child sex abuse online, saying material should be deleted rather than blocked. Justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said Germany "rejected" the idea of stopping people getting access to images by blocking. Her comments came after the unveiling of European Commission plans to block child sex abuse sites outside Europe. The blocking plan is part of proposed new laws on child exploitation.
(Guardian) Google has hit out at state attempts to clamp down on the internet by revealing governments' requests to remove data from the web and get information about users. Tonight it released a web page with a map showing country by country where it has had government requests or court orders to remove content from the YouTube video service or its search results, or to provide details about users of its services. See Google blog. see also Which country leads censorship requests to Google by population - or internet users?.
(Google) Our recent decision to stop censoring search on Google.cn has raised new questions about when we remove content, and how we respond to censorship demands by governments. So we figured it was time for a refresher. Google products - from search and Blogger to YouTube and Google Docs - have been blocked in 25 of the 100 countries where we offer our services. In addition, we regularly receive government requests to restrict or remove content from our properties. When we receive those requests, we examine them to closely to ensure they comply with the law, and if we think they’re overly broad, we attempt to narrow them down. Where possible, we are also transparent with our users about what content we have been required to block or remove so they understand that they may not be getting the full picture.
(Guardian) Facebook has developed sophisticated algorithms to monitor its users and detect inappropriate and predatory behaviour, bolstering its latest raft of initiatives to improve the safety of its users. Having launched an education campaign, an improved reporting procedure and a 24/7 police hotline, Facebook told the Guardian that it has introduced a number of algorithms that track the behaviour of its users and flag up suspicious activity, including members with a significant number of declined friend requests and those with a high proportion of contacts of one gender.
(Press Association) Facebook has not passed a single complaint about suspected paedophiles grooming vulnerable child users to police in Britain, according to Jim Gamble, who heads the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) Britain's response to safeguarding youngsters online. He challenged the company to reveal the evidence that its staff are working to disrupt devious criminals and bullies who lurk online. Mr Gamble said investigators received 252 complaints about sexual grooming, bullying and hacking from Facebook users in the first three months of this year. But the former National Crime Squad deputy director said none of these were provided by the company itself and some were passed through rival services. His comments were the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter feud over Facebook's refusal to add a "panic" button to its site's most popular pages. CEOP wants the button, which enables users to report abuse, to be given prominent use. Mr Gamble, is heading to a crunch meeting with Facebook bosses in Washington DC on Monday where he will call for them to break the deadlock.
(Daily Telegraph) Facebook has opted against adding a safety button on each user's profile page, despite calls from a leading UK child protection agency, as it doesn't believe it is an effective way to encourage children to report abuse. It did announce a raft of new safety measures which it believes will be more effective in protecting children's safety online. Instead of the button, UK users under the age of 19 will now be able to click on the "Report abuse" link on each page and have the option to report the abuse directly to CEOP as well as to Facebook employees. The reason Facebook had not reported any abuse to CEOP direct was because it is a US based business and all UK abuse reports go straight to CEOP's US counterpart, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Facebook also announced the creation of a new global 24-hour police hotline – which will be manned by Facebook and agency staff. Facebook also announced a five million pound investment in education and awareness relating to child safety online. It has also redesigned its Safety Centre adding additional resources for parents, teachers, teens and police to explain Facebook's tools for using the service safely. See also Facebook has launched a new £5m online campaign (Utalkmarketing.com).
(RAPID) Neelie Kroes Vice President of the European Commission Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. Address at the ARCEP Conference, Paris, 13th April 2010. I can announce my intention to launch a public consultation before the summer, in order to progress Europe's net neutrality debate. More specifically I will respect the following principles: 1. Freedom of expression is fundamental. 2. Transparency is non-negotiable. 3. We need investment in efficient and open networks. 4. Fair competition. Every player on the value chain should be free to fairly position themselves to offer the best possible service to their customers or end users. Any commercial or traffic management practice that does not follow objective and even-handed criteria, applicable to all comparable services, is potentially discriminatory in character. Discrimination against undesired competitors (for instance, those providing Voice over the Internet services) should not be allowed. 5. Support for innovation. See also Allocution de Mme KOSCIUSKO-MORIZET, secrétaire d'État à la prospective et au développement de l'économie numérique. Neutralité des réseaux : ce que je retiens du colloque de l'ARCEP.
(CNET News.com) The Federal Communications Commission does not have the legal authority to impose strict Net neutrality regulations on Internet providers, a federal appeals court ruled. A three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. unanimously tossed out the FCC's August 2008 cease and desist order against Comcast, which had taken measures to slow BitTorrent transfers and had voluntarily ended them earlier in the year. Because the FCC "has failed to tie its assertion" of regulatory authority to any actual law enacted by Congress, the agency does not have the authority to regulate an Internet provider's network management practices.
(juriscom.net) Arrêtons-nous un instant sur la question de la qualification d´hébergeur soulevée par l´arrêt de la CJUE du 23 mars 2010 concernant l´affaire Google c/ LVMH, Viaticum, Luteciel et a. qui vient d´être commenté par Me Vincent Pollard. Or, les différents termes employés par la cour suprême européenne nous permettent de tirer trois enseignements sur le régime de responsabilité des prestataires d´hébergement. Le premier est tout théorique, mais il a son importance sémantique : l´usage du qualificatif « irresponsabilité » pour définir le régime des hébergeurs nous semble être inapproprié (I). Le second enseignement est que le rôle passif du prestataire constitue dorénavant un critère essentiel de la qualification d´hébergeur (II). Il découle cependant de ce critère, et cela constitue le troisième enseignement, la nécessité de prévoir une exonération de responsabilité pour ceux des prestataires qui mettent en œuvre des moyens destinés à lutter contre les contenus préjudiciables et illicites (III).
(Daily Telegraph) Action to protect children from pornography and other online threats must be accelerated to keep up with advances in technology, a Government adviser has warned. Tanya Byron called for "less talk... more action" on issues such as parental controls on mobile phones and warned youngsters could now access adult sites with "extraordinary ease". The TV child psychologist said the creation of Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) and a national safety strategy had made the UK a world leader in tackling the issue. But, in a progress report two years since she first suggested the body - a coalition of Government, charities and industry - Professor Byron said it must "speed up to stay ahead". She also criticised a lack of sufficient consultation with young people and parents and urged the Government to push through new rules on video game classification before the election.
(Net Family News) ow about the ultimate guide to parental-control technology ? Check out GetParentalControls.org's 2010 Product Guide. What you get is a tremendous service: at-a-glance comparison-shopping organized in a number of ways: e.g., by kids' ages (up to 7, 8-10, etc.); by type (filtering, monitoring, etc.); by location (at the operating-system, router, or ISP level); by activity (Web browsing, email, IM, search engines, video-sharing, virtual worlds, social networking, etc.); and by device (cellphone, game console, media player, etc.).
(Edge) Dr Tanya Byron and Microsoft executive Neil Thompson have labelled the passing of the Digital Economy Bill into law as a victory for parents and children alike. The controversial bill – which was passed by a majority of 142 in the House of Commons - makes the PEGI classification system for games legally binding, among other measures.
(Norton) by Marian Merritt. One area I've been concerned about, especially now that I see how appealing the device is for children, is parental control of the content. I know that Apple's management diligently screens the content available in the App Store but there are still loads out there that I wouldn't want my younger children viewing. When used as a web device or web entertainment portal, the iPad really shines but we all know there's a lot of objectionable material on the Internet. Until we have a solution for the iPad, I've tried to think of some tips and work arounds to keep matters in hand.
(New York Times) For the 140 computer network specialists, law enforcement agents and diplomats from eight countries who met in this German ski resort for a Russian-sponsored conference on Internet security, the biggest challenge was finding a common ground to discuss their differences. The barrier was not the variety of native languages but deep differences in how governments view cyberspace. Americans speak about computer security and cyberwarfare; the Russians have a different emphasis, describing cyberspace in a broader framework they refer to as information security. What has changed, however, is the Obama administration’s decision this year to begin actively discussing these differences with the Russians. The two nations, according to Russian officials, have agreed to renew bilateral discussions that began last November in Washington. But see also Cyber-crime Ne'er the twain (Economist).
(Socialmedia.biz) The guidelines were issued to Reuters’ news staffers in March 2010. You can find them in the Reuters online handbook.
(NetFamilyNews) The Facebook news in the US was its new expanded Safety Center. The news in Britain was that Facebook "STILL refuses to install [a] 'panic button'" on its pages. However, Facebook also announced that its UK users will "now be able to report unwanted or suspicious contact directly to CEOP [the UK's Child Exploitation & Online Protection Center] and other leading safety and child protection organizations via its own reporting system," so CEOP has come very close to getting its wish. But this "panic button" concept is really problematic – and not just because of the word "panic," which suggests brains in crisis mode, with all rational thought switched off. Here's why it's problematic: A single reporting mechanism doesn't cut it. If you consider the really negative behavior that might lead to an abuse report, research shows that it's bullying, not predation, that would get reported far more often. Is law enforcement designed to deal with noncriminal but bad adolescent behavior? Fortunately, the new system Facebook put in place sends only reports of criminal behavior to CEOP. see also Facebook rejects suggested 'Panic Button' for pages (CNET) by Larry Magid and Police tell Facebook: your efforts to combat paedophiles are not enough (Independent).
(Europa) Further to the adoption of the EU electronic communications reform package in November 2009 the Commission produced a collection of relevant texts concerning the new rules. This collection of texts is now available online and could be a useful resource for those concerned with the application of law in the electronic communications sector. The booklet includes a consolidated version of the electronic communications framework as amended in 2009, as well as other applicable rules, such as those related to frequency policy.
(Time) by Stephen Fry. for me, my iPad is like a gun lobbyist's rifle: the only way you will take it from me is to prise it from my cold, dead hands. See also reviews by David Pogue (New York Times) and Walter Mossberg (Wall Street Journal) and Steven Levy (Wired). On BoingBoing, Apple's iPad is a touch of genius by Xeni Jardin and Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either) by Cory Doctorow. Nicholas G. Carr disagrees with Doctorow (and Zittrain) in The iPad Luddites. In Slate, Tim Wu is anti while Farhad Manjoo is pro. See also Ars Technica reviews the iPad (detailed review) and Why the iPad is the Future of Education (and Porn) (Huffington Post) by Stephen Balkam.
(Register) Vodafone has been working with Opera to customise Opera Mini for use on its networks in the developing world, pushing the mobile internet to those unfamiliar with the fixed alternative. The project will roll out in India, South Africa, Turkey, Tanzania and Egypt, and involves providing the Java-based Opera Mini along with customised home pages in local languages. "With this product, we can transform even basic handsets into very capable internet browsing devices, enabling millions of people to enjoy the social and economic aspects of the internet" says the statement from Vodafone's Head of Emerging Markets.
(BBC) Internet company AOL has announced plans to sell or shut down the social networking site Bebo. The company said it was unable to provide the "significant investment" Bebo needed to compete with its social networking rivals. see Bebo faces closure or sale by AOL as members log off (Guardian).
(BBC) Facebook set out its stall to unseat Google and be at the heart of the web experience as it becomes more social. The world's largest social network unveiled a series of products at its developer conference F8 aimed at helping the company achieve that goal. These tools will make it easier for users to take their friends with them as they browse the web. The most significant was an open graph protocol to let publishers tag their content by type along with a "Like" button that partner sites put on their webpage. This allows users to indicate what they like on a website, be it from photographs to news items and from clothes to music. That information will then be stored by Facebook the way it already stores connections between people. At the same time any website will be able to take those individual preferences and use them to tailor a more "personalised online experience" for the user and their friends. See also Facebook Open Graph: The Definitive Guide For Publishers, Users and Competitors (ReadWriteWeb).
(Silicon Republic) Once it was pretty clear. Bebo was for the teens. Facebook was for the 20 or 30 somethings and LinkedIn was for the professional types. But now seems Facebook has inherited many of the teen-related problems that dogged Bebo in its heyday.
(Mashable) A new study from OpenID company JanRain shows that users heavily prefer to use their Google and Facebook logins on websites that offer third party sign-in options. In many segments, such as media, retail and technology, Facebook outstrips other authentication services by a sizable margin. Still, for JanRain's entire client base of 170,000, Googlee remains the most popular login service overall, commanding about 38% of all user authentications.
(OECD) This report is Part I of the larger project on Internet intermediaries. It develops a common definition and understanding of what Internet intermediaries are, of their economic function and economic models, of recent market developments, and discusses the economic and social uses that these actors satisfy. The overall goal of the horizontal report of the Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy (ICCP) is to obtain a comprehensive view of Internet intermediaries, their economic and social function, development and prospects, benefits and costs, and responsibilities. This report was prepared by Ms. Karine Perset of the OECD‘s Directorate for Science Technology and Industry.
(OFCOM) A quarter of children aged 8-12 who use the internet at home say they have a profile on Facebook, Bebo or MySpace, new Ofcom research revealed today. These sites have a minimum user age of 13. But 83 per cent of these children have their profile set so that it can only be seen by friends, and 4 per cent have a profile that can't be seen. Nine in ten parents of these children who are aware that their child visits social networking sites (93 per cent) also say that they check what their child is doing on these types of sites. However one in six (17 per cent) parents of this group are not aware that their child visits social networking sites. See report on UK children's media literacy.
(Pew Internet) Daily text messaging among American teens has shot up in the past 18 months, from 38% of teens texting friends daily in February of 2008 to 54% of teens texting daily in September 2009. And it's not just frequency – teens are sending enormous quantities of text messages a day. Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month. Older teen girls ages 14-17 lead the charge on text messaging, averaging 100 messages a day for the entire cohort. The youngest teen boys are the most resistant to texting – averaging 20 messages per day.
(Bruce Schenier) There's a lot out there on this topic. I've already linked to danah boyd's excellent SXSW talk (and her work in general), my essay on privacy and control, and my talk - "Security, Privacy, and the Generation Gap". Two new papers have been published on the topic. Youth, Privacy, and Reputation is a literature review published by Harvard's Berkman Center. How Different Are Young Adults from Older Adults When it Comes to Information Privacy Attitudes & Policy? from the University of California Berkeley, describes the results of a broad survey on privacy attitutes.
(Berkman Center) Authored by Alice E. Marwick, Diego Murgia Diaz, John Palfrey, Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative. The scope of this literature review is to map out what is currently understood about the intersections of youth, reputation, and privacy online, focusing on youth attitudes and practices. We summarize both key empirical studies from quantitative and qualitative perspectives and the legal issues involved in regulating privacy and reputation. This project includes studies of children, teenagers, and younger college students. Due to language issues, the majority of this literature covers the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Canada.
(Tim O'Reilly) I've been talking for years about "the internet operating system", but I realized I've never written an extended post to define what I think it is, where it is going, and the choices we face. This is that missing post.
(eNACSO) The conference on Protecting Children Online will take place on Thursday 6 May in Brussels. The conference will mark the launch of our 'Agenda for Action', this is our recommendations to governments, industry and other relevant stakeholders. The conference will provide a platform for children's rights organisations to come together with senior EU policy-makers, industry representatives, and others to discuss some of the most pressing issues on child safety online, including: Children and the new breed of location services; The EU challenges of protecting children online; Children and the EU's Digital Agenda. Download the conference agenda.
(FOSI) Putting the Pieces Together: Building a Comprehensive Online Safety Plan Venue: Telefonica, Auditorio Distrito C, Ronda de la Comunicacion S/N, Madrid. Date: May 27, 2010 Topics to be covered include: Online Responsibility and Safer ICT Use - Does the Self Regulatory Framework Promote 21st Century Citizenship? Taking Control of Your Data - Staying Safe while Social Networking, Micro-blogging & Photo Sharing TechTalk as aids to safety: What's Coming Down the Track? The Collaborative Efforts of Law Enforcement, Industry and Government in Online Child Protection. How can we Better Promote the Safer Use of ICTs in Latin American Countries? Can Parents and Carers Supervise Everything Kids do Online? The New Breed of Location Services - Privacy and Safety Concerns for children and young people. Future Dialogue - Alliances and Partnerships to help Families Stay Safer.
(RAPID) The European Commission has decided to appoint Mr Robert Madelin as Director-General of the DG for Information Society and Media, to replace Mr Fabio Colasanti, who will retire on 1 April. The Commission also appointed Ms Paola Testori Coggi to replace Mr Madelin as Director-General of the DG for Health and Consumers. Both decisions will take effect on 1 April. Mr Madelin, a British national, has been Director-General for Health and Consumer Affairs since January 2004. Between 1997 and 2003, he was a Director in the DG for Trade, for a range of international economic topics, including biotechnology, standards, intellectual property, sustainable development, governance and bilateral trade relations with Asia. Prior to this, he was Deputy Head of Cabinet to Sir Leon Brittan, European Commission Vice President responsible for trade. Robert Madelin joined the Commission in 1993 after a career in the British civil service.
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