general internet news - 25 January

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

Budapest Open Access Initiative

http://soros.org/openaccess/grants-available.shtml#countries

The North American Consumer Project on Electronic
Commerce
 http://nacpec.org/en/

au: Swoop on child porn site

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,17907202%5e15306%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html

New Yahoo Decision Raises Old Questions by Michael
Geist

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1083

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RESEARCH PAPERS
***************
Zittrain, Jonathan, "The Generative Internet" .
Harvard Law Review, 2006 
Abstract: The power and flexibility of the Internet
has ignited growth and innovation in information
technology and in associated creative endeavors, its
generativity soliciting contribution from varied
audiences. This very power and flexibility projected
across millions of mainstream users has also become a
vehicle for security threats that endanger its many
desired uses. This Article describes how the
intertwining of the highly generative personal
computer and Internet is creating an information
technology grid that will find itself in grave crisis
with no easy fix.
 http://ssrn.com/abstract=847124

us: Eleventh Circuit Holds That Congress May Not
Criminalize Possession of Intrastate Child
Pornography. ? United States v. Maxwell, 386 F.3d 1042
(11th Cir. 2004).
The article concludes: A legal presumption that
electronic images of child pornography have traveled
in interstate commerce would aid federal prosecutors
immensely without disturbing the proper balance of
federal and state power. Such a rule would acknowledge
what is now fact: child por-nography is overwhelmingly
distributed on the Internet, an instru-mentality of
interstate commerce. Of course, when a person
possesses electronic images of child pornography of
unknown origin, it is not impossible that those images
were produced, converted to electronic form, and
distributed solely within his state, without recourse
to the Internet. But it is overwhelmingly more likely
that they were in fact downloaded from the Internet.
The remote possibility of a purely in-trastate
production and distribution chain in electronic child
pornography is exactly the kind of de minimis
exception that the Court has repeatedly stated should
not be allowed to undermine a general regula-tory
scheme addressing interstate commerce.

http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/118/May05/Recent%20Cases/US_v_MaxwellFTX.pdf

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WSIS & GOVERNANCE
*********************
The WFUNA Task Force on WSIS
On February 21.-22. 2006,The WFUNA Task Force on WSIS
and The Danish Network on WSIS is hosting an
international conference on "Where to go from Tunis?
Implementation of and follow-up to the World Summit on
the Information Society and the role of Civil Society
in this process".
 http://una.dk/wsis/

******************************************
CENSORSHIP, FILTERING & CONTENT REGULATION
******************************************
us: Parents get tips on building safer Net for kids
Parents gathered at Gray Middle School on Wednesday
night to learn about the dangers their children face
on the Internet.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060123/NEWS0103/601230370/

uk: MENACE OF THE CYBER BULLIES
MOBILE phones and computers have created a generation
of cyber bullies, according to a report.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16619730&method=full&siteid=66633&headline=menace-of-the-cyber-bullies--name_page.html

us: Let parents shield children from porn
THE U.S. Supreme Court ruled nearly two years ago that
a 1998 federal law aimed a shielding children from
Internet pornography was likely unconstitutional, but
the Justice Department continues to pursue cases. In
doing so, it is asking a federal judge in California
to force Google, the Internet search engine, to
divulge millions of search queries. The porn industry
should be held accountable where it can, but the
government should honor privacy rights.

http://starbulletin.com/2006/01/23/editorial/editorial02.html

***************************
LEGAL, SECURITY AND PRIVACY
***************************
au: Swoop on child porn site
POLICE have shut down the first Australia-based child
pornography website and arrested its creator.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,17907202%5e15306%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html

http://smh.com.au/news/National/Australianbased-child-porn-site-stopped/2006/01/22/1137864806082.html

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1552723.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1553176.htm

New Yahoo Decision Raises Old Questions by Michael
Geist
Nearly six years ago, two French anti-racism groups
launched the Internet lawsuit heard round the world. 
They filed suit against Internet giant Yahoo!, seeking
a court order to compel the company to block French
residents' access to postings displaying Nazi
memorabilia.  While Yahoo! already blocked access to
content on its local French site (yahoo.fr), the
groups' suit targeted the company' s primary site
based in the United States (yahoo.com).

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1083

us: Google is right to fight
The Bush administration has gone on a fishing
expedition into Google, trying to force the company to
hand over a large amount of data that might help the
government defend a law seeking to shield minors from
Internet pornography.
 http://www.vvdailypress.com/2006/11380245859325.html

us: Survey finds people don't want Google to hand over
users' information
A weekend poll finds that a majority of those surveyed
believe Google should not release information to the
government about its users' search habits, and more
than a third said they would even stop using the
world's most popular search engine if the company did
so.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/13694821.htm

uk: A Nationwide online banking customer checks her
account over the internet 	Fear of fraud 'stemming web
growth'
The Financial Services Authority is warning banks this
week that fear of fraud has put customers off using
internet banking.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1692608,00.html

us: Website told to identify defamers
A Philadelphia court has ordered a company to identify
those who wrote defamatory comments about a US law
firm on two websites, ruling that online statements
that are clearly defamatory are not entitled to free
speech protection.
 http://www.out-law.com/page-6557

ir: Jailed blogger taken to sit university exams in
handcuffs
Blogger Mojtaba Saminejad, who has been in prison
since February last year was taken in handcuffs
(photo) to sit his exams at Tehran?s Azad University
on 21 January 2006. Reporters Without Borders welcomed
the fact that the Iranian courts have allowed him to
continue his university course but repeated its call
for his release.
 http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16242

Microsoft helps net Bulgarian phishers
Eight people who allegedly ran online scams to pilfer
personal information from Internet users worldwide
were arrested in Bulgaria last week.
 http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-6030016.html

*****
SPAM
*****
Chinese spammers ramp up the volume
China has moved up into the number two position in a
"dirty dozen" ranking of international spamming
activity and is now believed to be delivering 22.3 per
cent of the world's spam.

http://smh.com.au/news/breaking/chinese-spammers-ramp-up-the-volume/2006/01/24/1138066773401.html

American owns up to hijacking PCs
A 20-year-old American has admitted hijacking
thousands of computers and using them to send out
spam.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4642566.stm

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INTERNET & NEW TECHNOLOGY USE
*****************************
IBM Messaging Users May Link to Yahoo, AOL
Users of IBM's Lotus Sametime instant-messaging
service will be able to connect to people on the rival
AOL and Yahoo networks under a deal that underscores
the technology's transformation from a program for
chatty teenagers into a common business tool.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/23/AR2006012300582.html

http://go.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=10941006

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e98f6a5c-8c48-11da-9efb-0000779e2340.html

eu: Co-Regulation Measures in the Media Sector
(Hans-Bredow-Institut)
by the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research,
Hamburg, Germany, and the Institute of European Media
Law, Saarbrücken, Germany. This study under a European
Commission contract aims at providing a complete
picture of co-regulatory measures in the media sector
in all 25 Member States and in three non-EU-countries,
as well as of the research already done.
 http://co-reg.hans-bredow-institut.de

Fists, bombs and blood for Google
The Google Video Store offers users the chance to
download everything from basketball games to The Brady
Bunch. But some of its wares are less savoury than
others.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1692746,00.html

************************
COMMENT, MICROSOFT & DEVELOPMENTS
************************
Budapest Open Access Initiative
The International Journal of Communications Law &
Policy (IJCLP) is pleased to announce a special
(additional) call for papers supported through a grant
from the Open Society Institute (OSI), in the
framework of the Yale Information Society Project's
(ISP) Access to Knowledge (A2K) Conference taking
place on April 21-23, 2006 at Yale Law School. Authors
from countries listed as developing and transition
countries are invited to submit papers related to A2K
by May 1st, 2006. Any paper selected for publication
will receive financial support from our OSI grant.
Such support shall include a small stipend to each
author in addition to free editorial processing by the
Journal. Please note that authors who submit papers
for this specific call are also eligible for the
general call for papers and writing competition awards
announced on our web site (http://www.ijclp.org).
Submissions should be e-mailed simultaneously to the
lead editors of the IJCLP. For more information and
contacts see:

http://soros.org/openaccess/grants-available.shtml#countries

The North American Consumer Project on Electronic
Commerce
NACPEC is both an online and offline organization.
NACPEC was initially conceived to provide useful
online information sources on electronic commerce for
consumers located in North America. However, since the
scope of Internet law and policy-making is of a global
nature, NACPEC has been extended in order to cover and
provide information sources on e-commerce consumer
protection in the European Union and other leading
countries in the area. NACPEC currently serves as a
consumer advocacy organization on Internet
policy-making issues related to consumer protection in
the electronic environment in Mexico. NACPEC is
addressed to consumers, consumer organizations,
consumer protection & enforcement agencies, students
and academics located worldwide in order to help them
understand the regulatory aspects governing
cross-border transactions conducted through the
Internet. NACPEC is also addressed to government,
industry, civil society and consumer groups at the
regional and multilateral level to facilitate their
research and analysis of issues related to consumer
protection on electronic commerce.
 http://nacpec.org/en/

The Pleasures of the Text (reg may be req'd; free for
short period)
There used to be an ad on subway cars, next to the
ones for bail bondsmen and hemorrhoid creams, that
said: "if u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd job & mo pa." The
ad was promoting a kind of stenography training that
is now extinct, presumably. Who uses stenographers
anymore? But the notion that there might be value in
easily understood shorthand has proved to be
prescient. If u cn rd these days, and, just as
important, if your thumbs are nimble enough so that u
cn als snd, you can conduct your entire emotional life
just by transmitting and receiving messages on the
screen of your cellphone. You can flirt there, arrange
a date, break up and - in Malaysia at least - even get
a divorce.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/magazine/22wwln_lead.html

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ARRESTS/COURT CASES FOR CHILD PORN
**********************************
au: Jail for child-porn images
A 20-year-old student with an "unhealthy" Internet
obsession has been jailed for three months for
possessing more than 1000 child abuse images.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17923022%255E1702,00.html

au: NT Man charged over child porn possession
A 57-year-old Darwin man has been sentenced to two
years' jail for possessing thousands of images of
child pornography.
 http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1554395.htm

David Goldstein
 address: 4/3 Abbott Street
             COOGEE NSW 2034
             AUSTRALIA
 email: Goldstein_David @yahoo.com.au
 phone: +61 418 228 605 - mobile; +61 2 9665 5773 - home

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