general internet news - 20 October

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

Hi all

In today's news there are a number of academic articles I
found trawling some online academic journals that may be of
interest to some.

Cheers
David

Where websites go to die
The National Library of Australia is a world leader in
tracing the evolution of the internet. But, writes Lauren
Martin, with the average life of a website now only 44
days, time and money are short.
 http://smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/16/1065917549444.html

APC Betinho Communications Prize
The Internet has not yet been converted into a giant online
shopping mall. There are thousands of projects big and
small working online around the world that prove that the
Internet can be, and is being, used as a powerful tool for
development and social justice.
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has
been working with non governmental organisations,
activists, and social movements since 1990 to facilitate
their work through the use of information and communication
technologies (ICTs). The APC Betinho Communications Prize
was launched to mark APC's tenth anniversary in 2000, and
to recognise and document outstanding examples of how the
Internet can make a real difference for the world's
communities today.
The $7,500 USD prize commemorates the inspirational life
and work of Herbet de Souza (Betinho), a visionary
Brazilian social activist.
 http://www.apc.org/english/betinho/

.uk - Sentence raised for paedophile
Men who use internet chatrooms to "groom" young girls for
sex were warned that they face long jail terms yesterday as
judges increased a sentence from three to four-and-a-half
years for a paedophile who had sex with two 13-year-old
girls.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/child/story/0,7369,1063856,00.html


http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=453799


http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=453723
  
.uk - Children are internet experts
Children are becoming the internet experts in families as
their parents leave them to it in what could be "a lasting
reversal of the generation gap", according to research
published today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1063819,00.html
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3196792.stm
 http://www.children-go-online.net

.us - Alleged Internet Porn Traffickers Indicted
Three men indicted for trafficking child pornography on the
Internet are the first to be arrested in an investigation
that could lead to charges against hundreds of people
across the country, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
 http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=5206

.no - Crackdown on sex messages to kids
Norway's Consumer Ombudsman and the Market Council is
hunting down firms that use irresponsible and illegal
telephone marketing to promote sex services. A series of
complaints from parents that children as young as seven
years of age have received SMS messages pushing tele-sex
has prompted action.

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article.jhtml?articleID=643601

America Online 'Youth Wired' Survey Finds Kids are Online
an Average of Four Days a Week; Nearly 20% Go Online Every
Day
Whether they're surfing cyberspace or getting homework
help, playing games or listening to Internet radio, today's
"wired youth" are going online more often, spending an
average of four days a week on the Internet. According to a
recent America Online/Digital Marketing Services, Inc.
online survey conducted in Opinion Place among more than
2,000 kids aged 7 - 12 years and parents of kids aged 7 -
12 years, nearly half of kids (46%) go online at least four
times a week and nearly 20% go online every day.

http://media.aoltimewarner.com/media/newmedia/cb_press_view.cfm?release_num=55253423

.US - Supreme Court weighs free speech vs porn
The US Supreme Court is deciding whether a law to protect
children from Internet porn will violate constitutional
rights.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39117158,00.htm

.us - Hatch: P2Ps Are Child Porno Central
In a twisted turn of unintended consequences, the enormous
success of the Internet as a distribution vehicle for
pornography has created competitive pressures among smut
purveyors to provide more depictions than ever of children
engaging in violent and deviate sexual conduct.
 http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/3092661

.za - Court gives child porn a resounding 'no'
Possession of child pornography - even for legitimate
research purposes - remains a criminal offence, the
Constitutional Court has ruled.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&art_id=vn20031016044301638C857053

.nz - Chatroom shutdown 'won't stop paedophiles'
New Zealand Internet service provider Xtra has shut the
door on all its Microsoft MSN chatrooms, bowing to calls to
clamp down on "spam" and sex predators.
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2693245a1896,00.html

Obscenity, Pornography, and the Law in Japan: Reconsidering
Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses
The question of whether government can regulate or censor
media portrayals of sexuality and violence involves two
fundamental issues. The first is evidentiary—whether there
is a causal relationship between exposure to media
portrayals of sexuality and violence and subsequent
behavior in society sufficient to warrant regulation of
that content in the interest of maintaining social order
and tranquility. In essence, this is a question of whether
exposure to sexual or violent behavior in the media
encourages some members of the public to believe that such
behavior is commonplace and, particularly in the case of
violence, an acceptable means of mediating social
relationships and therefore acceptable behavior. Also at
issue here is whether media portrayals of sexuality and
violence in some manner advocate or entice illegal behavior
or instruct some members of the public in how to engage in
such behaviors.
The second issue is constitutional—whether government can
regulate the sexual and violent content of media without
contravening constitutional guarantees of free expression.
In essence, this is a question of whether the expression
(sexual or violent portrayals in the media) can reasonably
be seen as creating an imminent threat to social order.
 http://www.hawaii.edu/aplpj/pdfs/v4-06-Alexander.pdf

A Comparative Study of Internet Content Regulations in the
United States and Singapore: The Invincibility of Cyberporn
In one dimly lit alley of the Internet, in an area known as
newsgroups, we find among the over twenty-three thousand
different newsgroups categorized by area of interest
newsgroups with titles such as
“alt.binaries.erotica.bestiality,”
“alt.binaries.pictures.child.erotica.male,” or
“alt.erotica.female.plumpers.”1 We also find that
capitalism lives on as a peek inside the first category
reveals a promotion for a bestiality Website2 superimposed
on an image of a human fornicating with an unidentifiable
animal. 3 A few more clicks transport us away and into one
of the more heavily traveled areas of the Internet, the
World Wide Web (Web). After searching for and retrieving
links for cyberporn, 4 we discover that by simply clicking
through various legal disclaimers in the form of hypertext
links Web pages emerge with pornographic images
interspersed with banners advertising various porn stars,
nude teens, live sex shows, and undreds of channels of
streaming 
 http://www.hawaii.edu/aplpj/pdfs/09-rodriguez.pdf

Regulating the Net in Australia: Firing Blanks or Silver
Bullets?
Many of the recent Australian regulatory initiatives
created to address perceived Internet based problems were
subject to widespread criticism at the time of their
generation and inception (in particular the censorship and
gambling controls).
 http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v9n3/chalmers93.html

Casualty of Cyberspace – Free Speech?
The explosion of Internet usage has provided users with
avenues to purchase products and services, invest monies
and explore issues as personal as sexuality, religion and
politics. This explosion has been accompanied by many
problematic issues, including whether there should be laws
restricting freedom of speech on the Internet. Of course,
how a nation views what free speech is, and whether it
should be regulated, is determined by the fundamental core
values of that society and the political framework in which
it works.
 http://www.jlis.law.utas.edu.au/v11i1free_speech.html

Protecting Children from Pornography on the Internet:
Freedom of Speech is Pitching and Congress May Strike Out
The Internet provides the First Amendment’s “freedom of
speech” with a world of opportunity. Any person with access
to the Internet may take advantage of a wide variety of
information and communication methods. This unique medium,
known to its users as cyberspace, is located in no
particular geographical location and has no centralized
control point, but is available to anyone, anywhere in the
world with access." In the past twenty years, the Internet,
a network of connected computers, has experienced
extraordinary growth.  The number of “host” computers, or
those that store information and relay communications,
increased between the years of 1981 and 1996 from three
hundred (300) to approximately 9.4 million. As of September
2001, 143 million Americans, or approximately fifty-four
percent (54%) of the population, were using the
Internet.[4]  One of the Internet’s many faces is the World
Wide Web (“Web”).  With just a click of a mouse, people can
explore various webpages containing a wide array of
information, pictures, movies, and music.  The Web is
partly the reason why children and teenagers use computers
and the Internet more than any other age group.
 http://law.richmond.edu/jolt/v9i2/note1.html

Comment: Keeping Children from the Internet’s ‘Red Light
District’: Increased Regulation or Improved Technology?
The Internet has revolutionized the world by providing
virtually unlimited access to information and by creating a
new medium for social interaction.  While extremely
advantageous, this unlimited access to information also
leads to children being exposed to potentially harmful,
sexually explicit material. With its vast number of sites,
it is estimated that the World Wide Web contains more than
one billion different Web pages. Approximately fifteen
million of these pages have pornographic content. With this
many sites, access to pornographic websites is only one
click away, whether intentional or not.  For example, if
one accidentally types ‘whitehouse.com’ instead of
‘whitehouse.gov,’ one will end up at a pornographic website
offering a free trial membership. By the year 2005,
forty-four million children under the age of eighteen are
expected to be using the Internet. As children’s access to
the Internet and the number of websites continue to grow,
there is continual debate over what, if anything, should be
done to shield children from these pornographic sites.
Congress has repeatedly and, to date, unsuccessfully tried
to regulate access to these sites by children.  The debate
centers on how best to protect children from pornography
without violating free speech rights guaranteed in the
First Amendment. In the end, the best solution may come
from market forces and new technology instead of laws,
since the unique nature of the Internet makes it extremely
difficult to regulate.
 http://www.jolt.unc.edu/vol3/Xenakis-V3I2.pdf
 http://www.jolt.unc.edu/vol3/Xenakis-V3I2.htm

Comment: Censoring Hate Speech In Cyberspace: A New Debate
in a New America
The emergence of the Internet has provided individuals with
an increased ability to access information and news
regarding a vast amount of topics. Reports suggest that
“about half of the population has access somewhere, 42% of
them in their homes, and another 10 to 15% elsewhere.” In
the United States alone, 79 million individuals use the
Internet. The Internet, with its precision and speed,
provides individuals with both access to information and
the opportunity to reach listeners they otherwise would
have been unable to reach without this medium. The Internet
provides every user with the potential to become a
publisher. This capability permits the content of this
medium to be nearly as diverse as human thought itself.
Along with this tremendous opportunity, however, comes the
threat of abuse. With the increase in the number of people
online, a significant percentage of the country’s
population is exposed to an increasing number of
expressions of bigotry and hate that are readily available
on the Internet.
 http://www.jolt.unc.edu/vol3/Burch.pdf
 http://www.jolt.unc.edu/vol3/Burch.htm

The Virtual Red Light District: Filtration Software and the
Zoning of the Internet (2001)
In this article, I argue that the zoning cases that did not
apply to the CDA do, however, lend credence to the
proposition that a form of cyber-zoning may be applied to
the Internet.  The Court correctly decided that the CDA was
in violation of the First Amendment. As the Internet has
evolved so have a new set of “secondary effects” that would
predominate any consideration of using codes to “zone”
pornographic websites into their own domain.  Moreover,
while the Internet could be characterized as not being
“invasive” at the time Reno was decided, technology has
evolved to make the case that the Internet now is a more
invasive forum.  Links and advertisements flash at the
viewer, and one window may open as another is opened. 
Also, the rise of ‘Spam’ (unsolicited e-mail) means that
one’s e-mail address is sent much unwanted material
including, and especially, links to pornographic material.
 http://www.wvu.edu/~wvjolt/Arch/Mara/Mara.htm

Matt Oetker, Personal Jurisdiction and the Internet, 47
DRAKE L. REV. 613 (1999).

http://www.law.drake.edu/students/organizations/lawReview/art2.htm

Traditional Free-Speech Law:  Does it Apply on the Internet
(2002)
 http://www.smu.edu/csr/articles/2002/spring/Harper.pdf

Free Speech on the Internet:  Regulating Student Authorship
on the Web (2000)
 http://www.smu.edu/csr/articles/2000/spring/Yen.pdf

Gregory K. Laughlin, Sex, Lies, and Library Cards: The
First Amendment Implications of the Use of Sofware Filters
to Control Access to Internet Pornography in Public
Libraries (2003)
In the mid-1990s, the Internet suddenly became a household
word. The Internet grew out of the military’s desire for a
resilient communication channel in time of war. It had been
limited to a relatively small body of users from its
creation in the 1960s through the 1980s. With the advent of
the World Wide Web, the Internet suddenly became the hot
“new” technology of the 1990s. This presented the prospect
of previously undreamt access to information for the public
as literally millions of websites dealing with every
imaginable area of human interest sprang up in a matter of
months. Naturally, as the public’s information centers,
libraries were anxious to offer their patrons access to
this vast store of information. Critics quickly objected to
publicly funded libraries providing unrestricted access to
all that was available on the Internet. Specifically, these
critics objected that providing unfiltered Internet
services in libraries would permit access to child
pornography and obscenity, risk exposing children to
material harmful to minors, and create sexually hostile
environmentsfor librarians. Local library boards acted to
require that their libraries restrict

http://www.law.drake.edu/students/organizations/lawReview/Laughlin.pdf

.in - Kings in IT, laggards in cyber law
Despite the state making steady progress in the field of
Information Technology, lawmen are lagging behind in their
pursuit of cyber crooks.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=233765

Finns prepare to track children via mobile
Finland is likely to pass a law letting parents track the
movement of their children's mobiles - an example that
other European Union countries are tipped to follow.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/wireless/0,39020348,39117213,00.htm

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=3635840

http://www.itechnology.co.za/index.php?click_id=115&art_id=ct2003101719112991F520234&set_id=1

.au - Public servant sacked over porn allegations
A Queensland Families Department officer has been sacked
after being issued with a notice to appear in court over
child pornography.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/17/1065917586521.html

.au -  Child porn epidemic
TRAFFICKING and advertising of child pornography on the Net
has exploded in the past two weeks, a child protection
agency says.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,7562066%255E11869,00.html

.nz - Tougher child porn sentences 'here by Christmas'
A maximum penalty of 10 years' jail for people caught
trading, producing or distributing child pornography will
be introduced by Christmas, Justice Minister Phil Goff
announced yesterday.
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2691709a11,00.html

.za - Zola welcomes child porn ruling
Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya on Friday
welcomed the Constitutional Court's ruling that the
possession of child pornography without a permit was a
crime.

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1431996,00.html

.uk - IT staff need audit trails to protect them from child
pornography law
Police have urged IT departments to ensure they have proper
audit systems in place when they are investigating whether
illegal obscene material may have been downloaded onto
company networks.

http://www.cw360.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=125622

UK teenager cleared of hacking
A British teenager was today cleared of crashing the
network of a busy port in Houston, Texas.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1065463,00.html

http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/news/story.jsp?story=454585

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=3637996

CONFERENCE: Who Rules the Net? Debating Internet
Jurisdiction and Governance: The Cato Institute’s Seventh
Annual Technology & Society Conference
Many people have praised the Internet for its ubiquitous
and “borderless” nature and argued that this global medium
is revolutionary. Indeed, the World Wide Web increasingly
challenges traditional concepts of jurisdiction,
governance, and sovereignty. In the universe of cyberspace
there are no passports, and geography is often treated as a
meaningless concept.
 http://www.cato.org/events/techconf03/index.html

CONFERENCE: WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and
Related Rights

http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/meetings/2003/sccr/index_10.htm

CONFERENCE: Fall 2003 Symposium - The Future of Internet
Surveillance Law - The George Washington University Law
School
Purpose: to gather advice from leading scholars and
practitioners about what Congress should do with the
statutory laws that govern internet surveillance, such as
the Wiretap Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act,
and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
 http://www.law.gwu.edu/stdg/gwlr/symposium.htm

.uk - Law lords rule there is no right to privacy
Five law lords yesterday rejected an attempt to establish
that a right exists under English law to sue for invasion
of privacy.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1064949,00.html

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200203/ldjudgmt/jd031016/wain-1.htm

.au, .uk, .nz - ACCC joins net fraud fight
AUSTRALIA signed an agreement with the United Kingdom and
New Zealand today in its continued bid to clamp down on
international internet fraud.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,7585946%5E15342%5E%5Enbv%5E15306-15319,00.html
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2695437a28,00.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/security/story/0,2000048600,20279835,00.htm

UK anti-spam delegation urges cooperation
British officials have met American counterparts to discuss
joint efforts at turning the tide of unwanted email.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39117152,00.htm

.eu - Commission hosts debate on how best to tackle spam
Two weeks before the 31 October deadline for the
introduction of a pan-European "ban on spam", the
Commission hosts a workshop on unsolicited communications
(spam) in Brussels on 16 October.

http://www.euractiv.com/cgi-bin/cgint.exe/1277088-264?204&OIDN=1506449&-tt=me

.de -  Putting the Lid on Spam
Spam has become a worldwide scourge that costs businesses
and individuals nerves as well as billions of euros each
year. A European Union ban comes into effect on Oct. 31 but
it won't do much to dam the flood.

http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1446_A_998498_1_A,00.html

Questions cloud cyber crime cases
The acquittal of a teenager over a high-profile hack attack
could dent cyber crime prosecutions, say experts.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3202116.stm

.uk - Legal threat to snooping laws
Internet privacy campaigners say new legal advice could
blow a hole in Home Office plans to snoop on people's
online and telephone activity.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3194438.stm

ISP Liability in Singapore: Lessons For Canada?
There has been much discussion in Canada over the past few
years concerning the liability of Internet Service
Providers ("ISP's") for the transmissions of their
subscribers, and much of it has highlighted the generally
opaque state of the law on this point, often citing the
lack of both domestic and otherwise consistent case law. To
this end, a relatively recent event in Singapore is
instructive.
 http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v9n1/mcdonald91.html

Survey Says Americans Support 'Do Not Spam' List
New York Sen. Charles Schumer released a poll on Wednesday
showing that many Americans support his proposal for a "do
not spam" registry, even though it has made little headway
in Washington.
 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;?storyID=3621066

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29944-2003Oct15.html
 http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=5191

Judge gives details on landmark VoIP ruling
A federal judge released an explanation Thursday of his
recent landmark ruling that Internet phone companies should
not be held to the same regulations as traditional
telephone services.
 http://news.com.com/2100-7352_3-5092545.html

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=3630799

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=239875

Combating Identity Fraud
Identity theft has been described by US law enforcement
agencies as the "crime of the century" because it is
pervasive, if not well reported in this country. ICT is
increasingly being used to abet fraudsters, but can also be
used to combat such fraud.
 http://allafrica.com/stories/200310170659.html

.au - Telstra to pay for slow-mail
TELSTRA may be forced to offer a massive cash refund to
many of its 1.2 million internet customers as its email
crisis enters its third week.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,7582066%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html

.au - Worm turns: Telstra to pay for email delay
Telstra has backed down in its face off with angry
customers over the failure of its BigPond email service,
offering $25 million in compensation for weeks of problems.
 http://afr.com/articles/2003/10/17/1066364484483.html

China's Wild Wireless Frontier
Beijing aims to have most of the country set up for service
by 2005. The hard part: Which system will satisfy many
conflicting interests?

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2003/tc20031015_9578_tc058.htm

What high tech can learn from slow-growth industries
To drive productivity, high-tech executives should focus
not just on technological innovation but also on business
process innovation.
 http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/links/8504 

SCO backs off Linux invoice plan
The SCO Group has backed off a plan to send invoices to
corporate users in order to prod them into buying licenses
for their use of Linux, an operating system the company
argues violates its Unix intellectual property.
 http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5092081.html
 http://www.silicon.com/news/500023-500001/1/6414.html

WIRELESS: The next Information Age
In the 19th century, the invention of the telegraph and the
telephone forever changed how messages moved around the
world. In the 20th century, radio, television, computers
and the Internet further revolutionized the
near-instantaneous processing and transmission of data.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/10/15/sprj.ws.overview/index.html

.us - FCC Adopts Rules for Wireless Technology (reg req'd)
U.S. regulators adopted rules to license swaths of airwaves
that would use new wireless technology to send large
amounts of data over devices being developed by
communications equipment makers.

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-rup17.9oct17,1,6744319.story

.za - Rapid growth in SA’s Black Internet users
Well known South African search engine, Ananzi, has
conducted an informal survey indicating that the number of
Black online users has grown to a healthy 30%.

http://www.sabcnews.com/sci_tech/internet/0,2172,67513,00.html

Researchers aim to improve Web searches
Group hopes Internet game that helps improve artificial
intelligence will also make Web searches more powerful.

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031017.gtweboct17/BNStory/Technology/

Handheld computers
The next big thing that wasn't—or was it?

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2143700


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