general internet news - 9 March

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

eu: Keep your hands off the Net
Granting governments full powers to set Internet policies
would be a "gigantic mistake," a European politician said
Thursday, in the European Union's strongest statement yet
in favor of preserving the medium's free-market commercial
structure.
 http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5169866.html

au: IIA moots mobile porn code
The delivery of porn and other adult content over mobile
phone networks could soon be regulated, with the Internet
Industry Association drafting a code of practice to offer
the communications regulator.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,8903227%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html

th: Thailand to Crack Down on Porn for Phones
The government has called on Thais to reject immodest
attire and premarital sex as part of its ongoing drive to
curb youth crime and restore traditional values. Now it
wants to keep them from calling up pornography - on their
mobile phones.
 http://www.bizreport.com/print.php?art_id=6385

au: Call for cybercrime vigilance
Growing reliance on computers meant the government and
private sectors should become more vigilant against cyber
crime, Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC)
chairman Brendan Butler said today.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,8902594%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html

au: Teacher guilty of downloading child abuse images
A Queensland school teacher was described as a risk to the
community after he pleaded guilty yesterday to downloading
child sex images.
 http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/05/1078378944891.html

Computer Crime & Organised Crime
The mi2g informed Thursday that correlation between
organised crime, politically and ideologically motivated
hacker attacks as well as physical militant activity
against government targets and large global businesses is
increasing with every passing month according to the mi2g
Intelligence Unit's "A Priori" project.
 http://www.crime-research.org/news/07.03.2004/120

50% of porn sites come from former USSR
Experts state that porn comes to the Internet mainly from
CIS countries (former UUSR countries). It is about 50% of
all porn websites.
 http://www.crime-research.org/news/06.03.2004/118

uk: Paedophiles could be barred from net
Paedophiles convicted of accessing child pornography over
the internet will be automatically prevented from logging
on under a new system developed by British Telecom.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1163862,00.html

uk: After the fall
When Elena Curti stumbled upon evidence of her husband's
secret addiction, it seemed to her 'the manifestation of
pure evil'. Here, she explains how the man she thought she
knew became drawn to internet child pornography - and why
she is renewing her marriage vows to him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/child/story/0,7369,1162476,00.html

uk: Blunkett to target sick website
Home Secretary David Blunkett and US Attorney General John
Ashcroft are planning a joint crackdown on violent and
sexually deviant websites.

http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/content_objectid=14023799_method=full_siteid=86024_headline=-BLUNKETT-TO-TARGET-SICK-WEBSITES-name_page.html

uk: Dead man's parents seek suicide chatroom inquiry
The parents of a 20-year-old man who discovered their son
had logged on to internet suicide chatrooms before taking
his life demanded a Home Office investigation yesterday.

http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/news/story.jsp?story=498368

us: Potential legal challenges to the application of the
Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in public
libraries: Strategies and issues by Paul T. Jaeger and
Charles R. McClure
When the United States Supreme Court upheld the
constitutionality of the Children’s Internet Protection Act
(CIPA), the ruling was limited to issues of whether the
statute, as written, was an unconstitutional limitation of
freedom of speech. In holding that the wording of the law
did not present an unconstitutional limitation on the
exercise of free speech, the Supreme Court did not address
the constitutionality of the application of the law. Two of
the Justices who concurred that CIPA was legal on its face,
in fact, suggested the possibility of future legal
challenges to CIPA as it is applied in public libraries.
This paper discusses potential problems related to the
implementation of CIPA that could affect the exercise of
free speech in public libraries. It also suggests possible
legal challenges to the application of the law that could
be made using established First Amendment jurisprudence.
The legal issues that might be used to challenge the
Court’s decision include least restrictive alternative,
vagueness, overbreadth, request policies, prior restraints,
public forum, and limitations on political speech. The
discussion of each legal issue offers an approach that
could be taken in formulating and raising a legal challenge
to the application of CIPA.
 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_2/jaeger/index.html

us: Federal program nets child abusers
Operation Predator, a federal law-enforcement program
targeting criminals who sexually abuse children, has been
an unprecedented success since it began eight months ago,
with more than 2,000 child predators and sex offenders
arrested, says a top Department of Homeland Security
official.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040304-111048-7458r.htm

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0304/05imigmolest.html

us: Distribution of Child Porn Growing And Alarming
Not only are the numbers of child abuse and neglect cases
climbing across the country, the types of people connected
to child pornography are just as shocking. It's already a
billion dollar industry and the number of people
downloading, developing and distributing kiddie porn is
growing. Who are these predators that prey on children?

http://www.teamamberalert.net/news/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=283
 http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1686847

us: Police targeting child pornographers
The FBI has started an aggressive campaign to track down
child pornographers. Local authorities say child
pornography is a big problem. An agency that works with
abused kids says they've seen about ten cases over the last
few months. The cases involve kids being videotaped and
photographed without even knowing it. It's a problem local
officials are trying to get a handle on.
 http://www.nbc-2.com/News/stories/040305-child_porn.shtml

us: Child porn probe expands rapidly nationwide
As two mid-Michigan men wait to learn their fates in a
multi-state child pornography case, federal agents across
the nation continue to round up suspects.

http://www.mlive.com/news/sanews/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1078415492298060.xml

us: Unit tracks criminals through cyberspace
When City of Poughkeepsie police executed a search warrant
last month on a city man's home and found child
pornography, they were accompanied by a specialist from the
state police Computer Crimes Unit.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/today/policecourts/stories/po030804s2.shtml

us: Judge resigns after paper publishes remarks made in
chat room
A Virginia judge has resigned after the disclosure of
racially charged remarks he wrote in an Internet chat room,
including statements suggesting that blacks have a
biological tendency toward violence.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/03/04/national1924EST0800.DTL

us: Ex-prosecutor left with nothing as he awaits prison
As he waits to go to federal prison on a child pornography
conviction, a former Okanogan County deputy prosecutor said
the criminal justice experience has been "kind of
liberating, in a way."

http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D813RDTG1.html

us: Porn ring follows drifter to Beaver Dam
He won confidence, then began abuse, police say.
 http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/mar04/212914.asp

vn: French Co-operation Minister presses case of jailed
cyberdissidents
French minister Pierre-André Wiltzer raised the cases of
two jailed cyberdissidents with the Vietnamese authorities
during a visit to the country, according to information
obtained by Reporters Without Borders.
 http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=9276
Le ministre français à la Coopération soutient les
cyberdissidents emprisonnés
 http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=9275

China bans new Internet cafes near schools
Claiming that `harmful cultural information' online was
hurting children, China said Thursday that Internet cafes
may not open within 660 feet of schools.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/8106359.htm

au: FTA forces ISP 'takedown' regime
Under the Free Trade Agreement, Australia has agreed to the
US "takedown notice" regime where copyright owners can
force an internet service provider (ISP) to remove material
such as music, video or text files by serving written
notice.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,8875049%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html

au: Sharman considers appeal over Aust court ruling
Sharman Networks is considering applying for leave to
appeal yesterday's Federal Court decision allowing the
admission of evidence obtained under a civil search order
to a music industry court action against it.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/0,2000061733,39116451,00.htm
 http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/05/1078378950713.html

us: Are your staff still swapping music?
Employees are still swapping music and other files on
peer-to-peer applications at work despite the legal threat
from the record industry, a survey released Wednesday said.

http://www.silicon.com/management/itpro/0,39024675,39118882,00.htm

A Software Program Aimed at Taming File-Sharing
A company named Audible Magic says its software can spot
copyrighted materials while they are being passed from
computer to computer and block the transfer.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/technology/08music.html

Sweden joins spam ban
Sweden has belatedly adopted a European Union ban on
unsolicited email, a Parliament official said.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,8901973%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html
 http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=6383

Brightmail reports on spam trends of 2003
Brightmail predicts that spam will continue to consume
greater portions of inboxes in 2004, reaching as much as
65% of all Internet e-mail.
 http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/business/technology/Tech2.asp

Ten years of spam
A decade has now passed since the first email, which could
be classified as spam, was sent, according to the web
services firm Netcraft.
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2838089a28,00.html
 http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/08/1078594272395.html

Gates: Buy stamps to send e-mail
Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now
suggesting that we start buying "stamps" for e-mail.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/05/spam.charge.ap/index.html

American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union Position
Paper on SPAM
AmCham EU welcomes and supports the increased political
attention being given to the issue of spam by the EC and EU
Member States. This reflects a more global concern that
will no doubt be discussed at the forthcoming Organization
for Economic Cooperation and development (OECD) conference.
Spam is a real issue for industry. For those providing
communication services it results in wasteful costs and can
even disrupt the smooth functioning of networks. For the
broader group of potential e-marketers, spam inhibits the
usefulness of the electronic medium for drawing the
attention of consumers to new offerings – in particular
those available via e-commerce.
 http://www.amchameu.be/Pops/2004archive/spam01262004.pdf

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam
In the past few days, several tech industry giants have
proposed a new schemes for tackling the growing problem of
spam.  Companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and HP are
developing proposals that include measures like email
stamps, address authentication, and modifications to the
traditional SMTP.  According to a recent article in The
Guardian, spam currently accounts for up to 70% of all
email traffic, and the numbers continue to grow.  The
Berkman Center's John Palfrey offered a different response
to the spam problem in a paper recently presented to the
ITU's Workshop on Internet Governance, "The Accountable
Net," based on previous collaboration with David Johnson
and Susan Crawford.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/home?wid=10&func=viewSubmission&sid=239

us: America's war on smut: More fun than phones
When Michael Powell became chairman of America's Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) in 2001, he turned his
expensively educated legal mind to the morass of outdated
and contradictory rules that impede the march of digital
technology through America's telecoms and media industries.
Three years later, that morass has thickened. Mr Powell's
new media rules are on hold as Congress rolls some of them
back. On March 2nd, a federal appeals court struck down the
FCC's latest telecoms rules, passed in February 2003, and
chided the FCC for failing to heed prior court rulings. Mr
Powell, who, in this instance, had voted against his own
commission's rules (they were made following a rebellion by
other commissioners), cheered the judges on.

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2486763

The Federal Framework for Internet Gambling
This paper presents no conclusions as to whether online
gaming is “good” or “bad.” Gambling, in general, and online
gaming, in particular, can be approached from a variety of
angles. There are economic, sociological and moral
arguments that have been marshaled by proponents and
opponents alike of various forms of gambling.11 These
arguments, however, are not emphasized, because they are
rarely unique to Internet gambling. As Part III will
demonstrate, Internet gaming is largely a variation on
gambling rather than a new species of it. The heart of the
analysis rests on the assumption that it is the underlying
acts of gambling that should or should not be punished,
rather than the medium through which these acts are
accomplished.
 http://law.richmond.edu/jolt/v10i3/article26.pdf

The tensions of securing cyberspace: the Internet, state
power & the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace by
Michael T. Zimmer
The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace exposes a
growing tension between the nature of the Internet and the
regulatory powers of the traditional nation–state. The
National Strategy declares, with all the strength and
authority of the United States government, the desire to
secure a space many consider, by its very nature, chaotic
and beyond the reach any organized or central control. This
paper will argue that both the structural architecture of
the Internet and the substantive values codified within it
clash with governmental efforts to "secure cyberspace."
 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_3/zimmer/index.html

Factors affecting Internet development: An Asian survey by
Hao Xiaoming and Chow Seet Kay
This study examined the relationship between the Internet
development and various social, economic and political
factors that are hypothesized to affect the Internet
growth. Using secondary data for 28 sampled Asian
countries, this study tested seven hypotheses about the
impact of various factors on Internet growth. The findings
show that the Internet penetration is related to a
country’s wealth, telecommunication infrastructure,
urbanization and stability of the government, but not
related to the literacy level, political freedom and
English proficiency.
 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_2/hao/index.html

The Christian Media Counterculture
Evangelical Christians are using the new media environment
to promote their own worldview and protect their traditions
from what they see as a secular onslaught.

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_jenkins030504.asp

An analysis of regional and demographic differences in
United States Internet usage by Alan R. Peslak
The Pew Internet and American Life Project collects data on
overall Internet usage in the United States. This study
reviews data gathered by Pew in December 2002 and tests the
overall premise that regional differences exist in Internet
usage in the U.S. today. Through Chi–square analysis this
report tests whether observed regional and demographic
differences in Internet usage are statistically
significant. The report first reviews regional and
demographic differences separately and finds significant
variation across twelve defined regions and ten separate
demographic categories. It then reviews demographic
differences within regions and tests a series of null
hypotheses proposing no significant differences between
regions based on the demographic factors. Most of these
hypotheses are rejected with noted difference. The report
explores other limited hypotheses on the data and concludes
with a call for further study to refine the impact of
regional and demographic differences in Internet usage in
U.S. society.
 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_3/peslak/index.html

Globalization of prurience: The Internet and degradation of
women and children by Indhu Rajagopal with Nis Bojin
This paper explores some key questions: How does the Web
facilitate the production and dissemination of pornographic
materials? How, and why, does pornography that depraves and
corrupts unwary children, and exploits women, go
untrammeled through the Web?

http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/rajagopal/index.html

Do Web search engines suppress controversy? by Susan L.
Gerhart
Web behavior depends upon three interlocking communities:
authors whose Web pages link to other pages; search engines
indexing and ranking those pages; and information seekers
whose queries and surfing reward authors and support search
engines. Systematic suppression of controversial topics
would indicate a flaw in the Web’s ideology of openness and
informativeness. This paper explores search engines’ bias
by asking: Is a specific well–known controversy revealed in
a simple search? Experimental topics include: distance
learning, Albert Einstein, St. John’s Wort, female
astronauts, and Belize. The experiments suggest simple
queries tend to overly present the "sunny side" of these
topics, with minimal controversy. A more "Objective Web" is
analyzed where: (a) Web page authors adopt research
citation practices; (b) search engines balance
organizational and analytic content; and, (c) searchers
practice more wary multi–searching.
 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/gerhart/index.html

NZ technology use jumps in worldwide index
Kiwis spend half as much time again on the telephone to
people overseas as Australians and have an e-commerce
infrastructure second only to the United States.
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2836823a28,00.html

ng: Speaking Out:- 419 And Progress
The internet technology, far from the modest expectations
of the US military which developed it, has totally
revolutionalized the whole world. Of course, this is a
gross understatement, but one which must be stated
nonetheless.
 http://allafrica.com/stories/200403050450.html

uk: 419 gangs sting Brits for £12m
 http://www.vnunet.com/News/1153271

us: CONFERENCE: Internet Commons Congress - University of
Maryland
The question of who owns the Internet seems in the same
category as who owns the oceans or who owns outer space.
Governments or private interests might own individual
elements of the Internet, but the power of the Internet
comes from collecting these contributions as a unified
commons. By definition, the global Internet commons belongs
equally to everyone. Each new application of the Internet
inevitably gets attacked as trespass against the
jurisdiction of some status quo interest, but movement away
from equal ownership diminishes the Internet. The Internet
Commons Congress provides a venue for users of the commons
to educate each other, discuss ways of expanding the reach
of the Internet as a commons, and organize resistence to
the tendency of public and private interests to assert
dominion over the Internet commons.
 http://www.internationalunity.org

Black star: Ghana, information technology and development
in Africa by G. Pascal Zachary
Accra, the capital of the West African country of Ghana, is
technologically marginalized by any measure. But over the
past ten years, the introduction of the Internet, wireless
technology and freer radio broadcasts have vastly expanded
communications and information. The Internet is widely
available. E–mail usage is soaring. Wireless telephony is
growing rapidly. Radio stations are proliferating. Once
mired in information poverty, the people of Accra, Ghana
now face the challenge of using information and
connectivity to their best advantage. In examining how
Accra adapts to technological change, we gain a better
understanding of how people in poor African cities use
technology and what they want from it. Debates over the
so–called "digital divide" can be enriched by close studies
of lived experience in parts of the world where the
revolution in information technology remains more prospect
than reality.
 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_3/zachary/index.html

Comparative analysis of telecommunications regulation:
pitfalls and opportunities By Mary Newcomer Williams
A review of Controlling Market Power in Telecommunications:
Antitrust vs. Sector-specific Regulation by Damien Geradin
and Michel Kerf. In this 2003 publication, the authors
comprehensively review and analyze the telecommunications
regulatory structure of five nations that have achieved
some success in promoting competition in telecommunications
markets. The authors engage in this analysis in order to
evaluate the use of telecommunications sector-specific
regulation versus more general, economywide antitrust
regulation to accomplish specific goals related to
promoting competition and efficiency in the provision of
telecommunications services. This review describes the
authors’ analysis and highlights its strengths and
limitations. It also offers a few suggestions about the
circumstances in which a comparative evaluation of
different telecommunications regulatory approaches can be
most useful.
 http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v56/no1/williams.pdf

Computers 'must become greener'
PC production needs to use less energy and fewer chemical
inputs, a report from the UN University says.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3541623.stm

http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2004/3/8/technology/7483162&sec=technology

nz: Ministry monitors schools through auto-alerts
The Education Ministry has begun using predictive computer
algorithms to analyse information supplied by New Zealand's
2700 schools and automatically alert officials if any
appear to be getting into difficulty.
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2836829a28,00.html

High earners most likely to surf the net at home
High earning, well educated New Zealanders are the most
likely to have a home internet connection, according to a
new report by Statistics New Zealand.
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2835937a28,00.html

eu: eDemocracy Seminar
On 12 and 13 February 2004, over 250 international experts
in the field of eDemocracy assembled in Brussels to discuss
the implications information technology has, and is having
upon our democracy.

http://europa.eu.int/information_society/programmes/egov_rd/events/edemocracy_seminar/text_en.htm

eu: Information society: new Member States catching up but
still long way off
The digital divide remains wide as the EU's ICT catch-up
programme for candidate countries comes to an end: 23 per
cent of the population does not know how to use a computer.

http://www.euractiv.com/cgi-bin/cgint.exe/1?204&OIDN=1507284&-tt=

uk: Church to set up 'internet parish'
Church of England creates its first 'virtual parish' and is
advertising in today's Church Times for a 'web pastor'.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1162787,00.html


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