general internet news - September 27 - legal, policy, spam, use,wsis, music

[David Goldstein <goldstein_david@yahoo.com.au>]

***************************************************
Sponsored by the Singapore Internet Research Centre
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

http://www.ntu.edu.sg/sci/sirc/
Internet in Asia blog: sirc.blogspot.com
***************************************************

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LEGAL AND SECURITY
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Web in a tangle over court case
MORE than 50 international media organisations have
joined The Washington Post in a bid to overturn a
decision by an Ontario court to adopt Australian law
in a Canadian defamation case.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10847430%255E7582,00.html

ie: Modem fraud forces Irish call ban
Direct dial phone calls from Ireland to 13 other
countries are to be blocked because of an internet
fraud.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3679556.stm
http://wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,65069,00.html

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/9744057.htm

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10863864%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html

http://news.com.com/Ireland+launches+phone+fraud+crackdown/2100-1036_3-5377387.html

http://reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=6308210

ck: Cooks to stop Ireland banning calls
Cook Islands Telecom says it is in talks to stop
Ireland from banning telephone calls between the two
countries.

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_world_story_skin/449493%3fformat=html

Scottish internet defamation claim settles out of
court
IP and IT Law report of a defamation action brought by
Lord Robertson against a local newspaper and a message
board run by them - settlement has occurred out of
court.

http://ipandit.practicallaw.com/jsp/article.jsp?item=44072

np: Landmark Cyber law is silent about online media
The Electronic Transaction and Digital Signature
Act-2004, also known as cyber law, has failed to
address the problems of online media, the operators
say.
 http://asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=14934

Modem fraud forces Irish call ban
Direct dial phone calls from Ireland to 13 other
countries are to be blocked because of an internet
fraud.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3679556.stm

US cracks down on 'peeping-Toms'
THE US House of Representatives has moved to crack
down on video voyeurism by adopting a bill that makes
secret production and distribution of pictures of
people caught in their "private moments" punishable by
fines and up to a year in jail.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10853265%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html

Internet has become the most vulnerable ever
A threat of terrorism on the Internet appeared to be
more serious than it was expected to be; displays of
terrorism unbelievably extended because of the global
distribution of the Internet. Dale Watson says, the
threat lies not only in breaks into closed information
systems of state authorities to access data bases or
secret information due to special services that quite
successfully counteract to similar attempts.
 http://crime-research.org/news/22.09.2004/644/

Ivory easy to get on-line
Despite global ban on sales, more than 1,000 ivory
items are advertised each week on eBay and other
auction sites

http://globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040924.gtivory0924/BNStory/Technology

us: Man arrested over GPS 'stalking'
A Californian man has been arrested for allegedly
using global positioning system technology to stalk a
former girlfriend.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,2763,1297893,00.html

us: Website sued over illegal film downloads
The Motion Picture Association of America says it has
sued a company that sells Internet downloads of
current movies like "I, Robot" and "Spider-Man 2"
without permission.

http://reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=6309224

British police arrest suspect in Cisco code theft
British authorities have arrested a man suspected of
stealing source code from Cisco Systems in May, a
spokeswoman for Scotland Yard confirmed Friday.
 http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-5371807.html

******
POLICY
******
Public 'left out' as governments plot Internet
regulation
Individual Internet users are being frozen out of a
key debate on the future governance of the Internet,
Web visionary Esther Dyson warned on Friday.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39167851,00.htm
 http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040924/152/f39vh.html

eu: Sign the Cybercrime Convention, urge secureocrats
Politicians, police and representatives from business
are gathering in Strasburg this week to push forward
international efforts to combat cybercime.

http://www.theregister.com/2004/09/17/euro_cybercrime_conference/

Most South African Websites Break Law Every Day
A "DISGRACEFUL" 81% of local websites fail to comply
with legal conditions designed to protect consumers.
 http://allafrica.com/stories/200409230249.html

us: House drops plans to move cybersecurity role to
White House
House Republican leaders backed away Thursday from a
proposal to move important cybersecurity functions
from the Homeland Security Department to the White
House budget office.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/9743443.htm

http://technologyreview.com/articles/04/09/ap_092304.asp

ca: A balanced approach to reforming copyright law by
Michael Geist
Copyright reform is contentious and polarizing, but
that doesn’t mean Canadian legislators can’t find a
balanced solution

http://www.universityaffairs.ca/issues/2004/october/copyright_law_01.html

us: Spyware bill moves to Senate
A key Senate committee approved a modified version of
an anti-spyware bill on Wednesday, a move that
forwards the legislation to the full Senate for a vote
expected by the end of the year. The revised Spy Block
Act prohibits companies from surreptitiously
installing software, requires that software provide a
reasonably straightforward uninstall option, and bans
software that leaks information about users unless
they know about it in advance.
 http://news.com.com/2110-1032_3-5377997.html

Germany Amends Eavesdropping Law After Privacy Rights
Ruling
German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries amended
eavesdropping laws to comply with a ruling by the
country's highest constitutional court that part of
the legislation violates privacy rights.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000100&sid=aWNocZgQe56w

Mobiles to let parents keep a track on children
Parents worried about where their children are will be
able to check up on them using technology that can
locate their mobile phones, under new industry
guidelines released yesterday.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,2763,1312580,00.html

*****
SPAM
*****
OECD Launches Anti-Spam Toolkit and Invites Public
Contributions  	
The OECD has launched an Anti-Spam “Toolkit” as the
first step in a broader initiative to help policy
makers, regulators and industry restore trust in the
Internet and e-mail.

http://www.oecd.org/document/50/0,2340,en_2649_37409_33732274_1_1_1_37409,00.html

Talking Spam
It might be a nightmare that few of us want to
imagine. But as more people abandon traditional phone
lines and start placing calls over the Internet, an
explosion of voice-mail spam is a real possibility,
telecommunications experts say. To contain that
explosion, engineers at Qovia, a
voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) management company
in Frederick, MD, have developed a technology that may
shut up voice spam before it gets started.

http://technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/innovation41004.asp

Microsoft Takes Stands Against Spam, Sanctions
No matter what one thinks of Microsoft Corp., the
company's reach is so expansive that it nearly always
makes news, even when there's little or no media
attention at the time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41592-2004Sep22.html

Microsoft sues Web hoster over spam
Microsoft has filed nine new lawsuits against those it
says are responsible for spam, including a Web-hosting
company that caters to people who send unsolicited
e-mail, the software giant said Thursday.
 http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-5380485.html

************
INTERNET USE
************
Active Internet Users by Country, August 2004
Nielsen//NetRatings found that the overall at-home
global active Internet universe for 12 selected
countries barely changed from July 2004 to August
2004. Roughly 157,000 active users dropped off the
Internet over the month, representing a decline of
just half of one percent.

http://clickz.com/stats/big_picture/geographics/article.php/3410261

au: Net gains: over half have it
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported yesterday
that 53 per cent of homes were connected to the
internet in 2003, up seven percentage points from
2002.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10851033%255E601,00.html

Household Use of Information Technology, Australia
(news release)
Statistics on access to computers and the Internet in
private households in Australia.
 http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs%40.nsf/mf/8146.0

au: Household use of Information Technology (news
release)
The number of Australian households with access to the
Internet continues to increase, with over half (53%)
of households having access in 2003, according to
figures released today by the Australian Bureau of
Statistics (ABS).

http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs%40.nsf/1.2.4/Household%20use%20of%20Information%20Technology%20%2D%208146%2E0

Yahoo: Internet withdrawal anguishing
Tobacco companies, drug cartels and Starbucks
beware--the Internet may be giving you a run for the
money in the addiction department. According to a
study sponsored by Yahoo and advertising company OMD,
Internet detox makes people feel emotionally vacant
and lost in life. Twenty-eight participants were asked
to record their thoughts and feelings during a
two-week period of no Net usage. From studying the
subjects' video and written diaries, researchers
noticed that two weeks of Internet deprivation
affected social lives and left many feeling bored.

http://news.com.com/Yahoo+Internet+withdrawal+anguishing/2100-1025_3-5377867.html

 http://dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=3393

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10864193%255E29677,00.html

Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, but he
had something bigger in mind all along. He tells TR
how his 15 years of work on the "Semantic Web" are
finally paying off.

http://technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/frauenfelder1004.asp

1 million Web users click to see beheading
There are many reasons to be profoundly disturbed
about the beheading videos streaming out of Iraq --
yet people around the world are eager to watch.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/22/MNGBF8SPNN1.DTL

Internet Emerges As Potent Terrorist Tool
The images coming out of the latest hostage crisis in
Iraq - capped by dramatic video of British captive
Kenneth Bigley begging for his life - have transfixed
Britons, left governments looking helpless, and
revived a classic dilemma about whether to negotiate
with terrorists.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TERRORISM_INTERNET?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
 	 	

Information-Clot Crisis And Governance Part 11
FIRST, when a global change sets in, the development
equilibrium registers a crack along a dividing line!
This crack is an early warning of the shape of things
to come. It is a sign of the impending divide. The I.T
development crack has started its long journey. This
crack will undoubtedly create 'a digital divide.' Poor
national telephone density can negatively accelerate
the process of a digital divide for a nation like
Nigeria.
 http://allafrica.com/stories/200409220584.html

au: Internet taking over as children's playground (sub
req'd)
Forget playing in the street after school. These days
kids log on to the internet when they get home.

http://afr.com/premium/articles/2004/09/22/1095651394642.html

uk: Fax of life
Thirty years ago tomorrow, Ceefax was accidentally
discovered by BBC engineers. But in the age of the
internet, why do 20 million people a week still use
it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1310126,00.html
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3681174.stm

Cambodian children get cyber savvy
It may be holiday time, but students still hang out at
a handful of schools in impoverished Cambodia, lured
by free internet kiosks aimed at getting more people
au fait with cyberspace.

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_technology_story_skin/449067%3fformat=html

uk: Dating website for canines (and possibly their
owners)
Poochie from West Midlands likes to lick people, his
favourite treat is pig feet, and he is among the first
40 recruits on a dog dating website which began two
weeks ago. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1312371,00.html

German football: fans to benefit from broadcasting
deal
Following an agreement between the European Commission
and the Bundesliga, football fans are set to enjoy
more access to football via the internet and mobile
phones.

http://www.euractiv.com/cgi-bin/cgint.exe/1?204&OIDN=1508236&-tt=
Deutscher Fußball: Übertragungsrecht-Einigung kommt
Fans zugute

http://www.euractiv.com/cgi-bin/cgint.exe/1?204&OIDN=1508236&-tt=&1001=71

*****
WSIS
*****
Internet Governance Has Become a Non-Issue
It's funny, but I recall the battle cry that the WWW
was "free" back in its early days. When contributing
game concept to the early and great gaming pioneers
like Infocom, there was such a great esprit-du-corps
amongst our team regarding the fun as well as utility
that the WWW offerred. In retrospect, we were so
naive. I recall the days when guys like Bill Gates
prided themselves on being such a great "hackers" - it
was a noble term back then.
 http://www.circleid.com/article/768_0_1_0_C/

UN ICT Task Force Series 5 - Internet Governance: A
Grand Collaboration
Realizing the World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS) vision of constructing Internet governance
arrangements that are multilateral, transparent and
democratic with the full involvement of all
stakeholders is a noble challenge. Meeting it will
require goodwill among all parties, as well as good
information on which to base decisions. The papers
contributed to the United Nations Information and
Communication Technologies Task Force (ICT TF) Global
Forum on Internet Governance contain a lot of useful
information on how many different organizations are
already governing the Internet and its effects on
society. At the same time the papers suggest that a
number of important issues are not being addressed
effectively, and that in some areas there is an urgent
need to put in place new arrangements to counter real
and present threats to the stability and utility of
the Internet. These contributions helped participants
in the Forum begin the process of building a global
consensus on Internet governance – a process that
hopefully will continue beyond the second phase of the
WSIS. As a result of these contributions, the vision
of a “grand collaboration” on Internet governance is a
step closer to reality.
 http://unicttaskforce.org/perl/documents.pl?id=1392

Gobiernos de todo el mundo se plantean el futuro de
Internet
Más de 250 representantes de países de todo el mundo
se han reunido en Ginebra (Suiza) durante los dos
últimos días para conformar un grupo de trabajo de
Naciones Unidas sobre el Gobierno de Internet, una de
las premisas surgidas de la Primera Fase de la Cumbre
Mundial de la Sociedad de la Información (WSIS), que
tuvo lugar en la ciudad helvética en diciembre de
2003.

http://www.vnunet.es/Actualidad/Noticias/Comunicaciones/Internet/20040923009

http://www.clminnovacion.com/actualidad/noticias/articulo.htm?REG=2680

http://hispamp3.com/noticias/noticia.php?noticia=20040923090355

Zivilgesellschaft will den Chef für UN-Arbeitsgruppe
Netzverwaltung stellen
Der Vorsitzende der UN-Arbeitsgruppe zur Zukunft der
globalen Netzverwaltung (Working Group on Internet
Governance, WGIG) soll aus dem Kreis der
Zivilgesellschaft, also der Gruppen jenseits von
staatlichen Organisationen, Parteien und
Lobbyverbänden, oder aber aus der Privatwirtschaft
kommen. Diesen Vorschlag unterbreitete die Berliner
Sozialwissenschaftlerin Jeanette Hofmann bei den
Vorbereitungstreffen für die WGIG in Genf Kofi Annans
Informationsgesellschafts-Berater Nitin Desai und dem
Schweizer Diplomaten und WGIG-Sekretär Markus Kummer.
 http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/51331

Beim Weltgipfel zur Informationsgesellschaft geht es
um die Kronjuwelen des Internet
250 Internet-Experten aus aller Welt saßen vergangene
Woche wieder einmal in Genf zusammen, um über den
Start der "Working Group on Internet Governance" zu
diskutieren, die vom jüngsten Weltgipfel zur
Informationsgesellschaft (WSIS) beschlossen worden
war. Zwar geht es nun voran, aber langsam.
 http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/te/18411/1.html

******************
ONLINE MUSIC & P2P
******************
us: Jail time for California file swappers?
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law
Tuesday establishing fines and potential jail time for
anonymous file swappers. The new law says that any
California resident who sends copyrighted works
without permission to at least 10 other people must
include his or her e-mail address and the title of the
work. Swappers who do not include this information
will face fines of up to $2,500 and up to one year in
prison.
 http://news.com.com/2110-1025_3-5379410.html

us: Conservative group savages anti-P2P bill
The nation's oldest conservative group has become the
latest and most vocal critic of an anti-file-swapping
bill that foes say could target products like Apple
Computer's iPod.
 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5381593.html

************************
COMMENT, MICROSOFT & DEVELOPMENTS
************************
Web tool may banish broken links
Students have developed a tool which could mean broken
weblinks are history.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3666660.stm

eBay boomers
Why are we so addicted to bidding for second-hand
goods?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1312670,00.html

us: CONFERENCE: Internet & Politics: What do you want
to know?
The Berkman Center is planning its third Internet and
Society conference, Votes, Bits & Bytes, to take a
skeptical look at whether the Internet has really
changed politics. On December 10, 2004, we'll bring
activists, politicians, and entrepreneurs to Cambridge
to consider this topic from a local and international
perspective. In the lead-up to that conference, we're
using the H2O discussion platform to hone the
questions that you think we ought to cover. What do
you think is the most pressing issue? Sign up for H2O
and join the discussion.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/home?wid=10&func=viewSubmission&sid=574

de: Firm justifies job for virus writer
A German computer security firm has defended its
decision to hire the self-confessed teenage author of
the Sasser and Netsky worms.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3677774.stm

How Google works
Internet searching: With all the fuss over Google's
IPO, it is easy to overlook its broader social
significance. For many people, Google made the
internet truly useful. How did it do it?

http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=3171440

How PageRank works
1. Google’s PageRank algorithm is a mathematical
recipe that uses the structure of the links between
web pages to assign a score to each page that reflects
its importance. In effect, each link from one page to
another is counted as a “vote” for the destination
page, and each page’s score depends on the scores of
the pages that link to it. But those pages’ scores, in
turn, depend on the scores of the pages that link to
them, and so on. As a result, calculating the scores
is a complicated business.

http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=3172188

Alive and kicking (sub req'd)
JUST when you thought you knew the web, along come new
competitors to keep things interesting. On September
15th, a new search engine called A9.com was unveiled
by Amazon, the giant internet retailer. It repackages
Google's search results, but with useful tweaks.
Searches not only call up websites and images on the
same page, but other references, such as Amazon's book
search, the Internet Movie Database, and encyclopaedia
and dictionary references. Moreover, it keeps track of
users' search histories—an important innovation as
search becomes more personalised. 

http://economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3222641

Untangling ultrawideband
Consumer electronics: Which technology will prevail in
the battle to banish the spaghetti behind your TV and
computer?

http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=3171534

Microsoft patents web link tabbing
The US Patent and Trademark Office last month granted
Microsoft a patent for the process of tabbing through
the hyperlinks on a web page – a feature that is found
on most web browsers and relied upon by many people
with disabilities that prevent them using a mouse.

http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=microsoftpatentswe1095169603
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Sources include Quicklinks (www.qlinks.net) and BNA
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(c) David Goldstein 2004

=====
David Goldstein
 address: 2/4 Dundas Street
             COOGEE NSW 2034
             AUSTRALIA
 email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au
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