Articles by date
04 October 2007
Japan becomes broadband paradise, but is the speed worth the cost? (International Herald Tribune)
The United States and European Union might be the largest economies, but when it comes to Internet connections at home, many of their citizens still live in the slow lane. By contrast, Japan is a broadband paradise, with the fastest and cheapest Internet connections in the world.
Spam weapon helps preserve books (BBC)
A weapon used to fight spammers is now helping university researchers preserve old books and manuscripts. Many websites use an automated test to tell computers and humans apart when signing up to an account or logging in. The test consists of typing in a few random letters in an image and is designed to fight spammers.
Stop suffocating internet freedom in Thailand (Bangkok Post)
Since the military coup of Sept 19, 2006, Thailand has almost caught up with China as a world leader in the field of internet censorship and control, particularly with regard to freedom of political expression. This is a completely unacceptable environment for the promised return to democracy at the end of this year.
Can't anyone make Internet phones pay? [Fortune] (CNN)
Skype never emerged as the cash cow eBay had hoped for when it paid a jaw-dropping $2.6 billion to acquire the Internet phone startup in 2005. Now eBay's announcement Monday that it will write off $1.4 billion in charges related to Skype has analysts and investors questioning whether the Internet phone business - known as VoIP - has any commercial potential at all. Also includes "EBay admits overpaying for the Internet phone company Skype".
03 October 2007
Radiohead's bid to revive music industry: pay what you like to download albums (The Guardian)
Their music has long been praised for blurring boundaries and breaking moulds. Now Radiohead are hoping to establish a new model for the struggling record industry by inviting music buyers to decide how much they want to pay for their new album.
Survey: Consumers Only Think They're Cyber Safe (PC World)
Most U.S. consumers believe they're protecting their computers against cyberattacks, but their actions indicate they aren't as safe as they think, according to a study released Monday.
us: Music Download Trial Starts Tuesday (The Age)
A group of record companies says Jammie Thomas illegally shared everything from Enya to Swedish death metal online. Tuesday, she will become the first of 26,000 people sued by the recording industry to take the case to trial.
EU agrees to check Internet but differs over how (Reuters)
European Union justice and interior ministers agreed on Monday they needed to do more to counter the use of the Internet by militants but could not agree on whether and how to block radical websites.
UK data retention law makes little difference to telcos, says trade body (Out-Law)
UK telecoms firms must keep phone call logs for a year under legislation which comes into force on 1 October. But an industry trade association said the new rules will make "little practical difference" to telecoms providers that already store such data for billing purposes.
Cybersquatters Threaten Consumers and Harm Businesses: INTA (International Trademark Association)
The International Trademark Association issued a warning on behalf of its members to the public, alerting them to the growing threat of domain name cybersquatters who deliberately mislead consumers and defraud online businesses.
02 October 2007
EU Launches Qualcomm Investigation (New York Times)
European Union antitrust regulators are investigating U.S. wireless technologies company Qualcomm for possible abusive business practices, European officials said Monday.
Bloggers who risked all to reveal the junta’s brutal crackdown in Burma (The Times)
Internet geeks share a common style, and Ko Latt and his four friends would not be out of place in cyber cafés across the world. They have the skinny arms and the long hair, the dark T-shirts and the jokey nicknames. But few such figures have ever taken the risks that they have in the past few weeks, or achieved so much in a noble and dangerous cause.
Burmese bloggers silenced as curbs bring internet blackout (The Guardian)
The shutdown of communications in Burma has slowed information to the outside world to a trickle, with the number of reports to one exile group cut by half and websites with the .mm Burma suffix being unavailable, campaigners said yesterday.
Advocates: Time to get .nyc domain name (AM New York)
This article from AM New York examines the possibility of a .nyc TLD. Tom Lowenhaupt, who heads the .nyc consortium says a .nyc TLD will allow New York's "small businesses to distinguish themselves in the crowded online marketplace and foster better community cohesion and social activism." Further, "The Internet is great at global things but it isn't very good at local things." Craig Schwartz, ICANN's chief TLD liaison is also interviewed saying organisers of city TLDs need to show they have the community's support. The article concludes with a quote from David Johnson, a cyberlaw professor at New York Law School who says, "Ideally, this will enable people to use the Internet more effectively and bring citizens together. ... It's an untested theory, but what's the harm in trying."
Dot-Name Becomes Cybercrime Haven (Wired)
Global Name Registry is in the news for charging access to their Whois information, "a step that security researchers say frustrates their ability to police the internet and creates a haven for hackers who run internet scams" according to Wired. The article says ICANN traditionally requires Whois information to be publicly available, however Global Name Registry "won the right to create tiered levels of Whois access, where public searches show very little information beyond what registrar sold the name and what name servers the site uses."
Getting It Right: Protecting American Critical Infrastructure in Cyberspace by Sean M. Condron (Harvard Journal of Law & Technology)
... It may thus be preferable to approach cyber security as a threat to national security rather than as a criminal matter. This change would raise at least three issues. First, it may be necessary to revisit and clarify the government's current distinction between homeland security and homeland defense as applied to cyberspace. Second, this change requires consideration of the jus ad bellum paradigm that controls a state's self-defense response against a cyber attack. Finally, the delicate balance between national security interests and civil liberties should be considered in developing a strategy for responding to cyber attacks. This Article presents a framework for addressing these issues.
Silencing The Blogosphere: A First Amendment Caution To Legislators Considering Using Blogs To Communicate Directly With Constituents by Wes Sullenger (Richmond Journal of Law & Technology)
This article considers the First Amendment implications of employing this technological growth in the political arena. Analyzing the initial experiments with direct democracy in colonial America provides a framework to explain the effect the Internet could have on the democratic system. Direct democracy started with the town meeting style of government in New England. A brief examination of the Founders’ reaction to that system, however, shows they created a representative democracy as a buffer to direct citizen control. This article will then consider the modern calls for direct democracy, including a discussion of the nature of direct democracy and modern experiments in direct democracy. This article also analyzes the societal changes forged by the Internet, as well as the belief by some that these changes justify a contemporary transformation to a direct democracy. Lastly, the evolution of the political system, in an effort to adapt to the development of the Internet, must be evaluated in order to complete the roadmap for the discussion. This examination includes a discussion of the contemporary formation of blogs and the effect of their invasion into America’s democratic system.
Bloggers who risked all to reveal the junta’s brutal crackdown in Burma (The Times)
Internet geeks share a common style, and Ko Latt and his four friends would not be out of place in cyber cafés across the world. They have the skinny arms and the long hair, the dark T-shirts and the jokey nicknames. But few such figures have ever taken the risks that they have in the past few weeks, or achieved so much in a noble and dangerous cause.
Broadband Connectivity: Intel's Big Goal in India (E-Commerce Times)
Developing countries -- virgin markets without the historical load of copper landlines -- are the perfect places for experimenting. That's why Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel, has added India to the list of more than 250 trials and commercial deployments in more than 12 countries worldwide, where he's running pilot WiMAX projects in schools and hospitals.
West is taking fight against terrorism online (International Herald Tribune)
In the name of counterterrorism, Western countries are moving to erect online security borders with aggressive proposals to block Web sites and to unleash Trojan e-mails containing spyware that would monitor jihadists. Critics warn that the security measures could lead to censorship and privacy invasion, but governments are pressing for legislation aimed at thwarting attacks and walling off Web sites that espouse illegal activities or are "likely to have the effect of facilitating" crime.
Canadian Court Opens Up eBay Data to Tax Agency (New York Times)
A Canadian court has ruled that tax collectors can demand and review data from eBay to see how much money individual sellers make on the online auction site.
NZ junk war rages on despite spam act (New Zealand Herald)
While some email marketeers were last week labelling the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act a failure, ISPs and a major security specialist have a very different take on New Zealand's spam situation.
Virtually clean: Putting a stop to online infection (The Economist)
Hacking used to be done by kids for kicks or bragging rights. Nowadays, it's big business for organised crime, often out of reach of the law, on the far side of the world. Connect an unprotected personal computer to the internet for more than 15 seconds and it will almost certainly be attacked by a virus or worse. That's how ruthlessly effective the army of malicious robots, dispatched by criminals to scour the net for vulnerable computers, has become.
CADNA Responds to ICA’s Adoption of a Member Code of Conduct (CADNA)
CADNA welcomes the Internet Commerce Association's (ICA) recently announced adoption of an eight-point member code of conduct detailing best practices designed to promote fair and ethical business conduct in the domain name industry. On behalf of the Internet community, CADNA also welcomes the potential benefits of the member code of conduct adopted by the ICA, and we are encouraged by the proactive measures their member organizations are taking to combat and deter domain name abuse.
01 October 2007
Stand up for Tila, an unlikely web warrior (The Observer)
Both a Playboy model and a Tory MP have shown the need for uncensored public spaces on the web ... Then, earlier this year, [Tila Tequila and MySpace] fell out briefly. The site's owners asked her to remove a link that let visitors buy songs from a rival music service instead of MySpace's approved partner. To idealists who hoped the net would be the common land of the 21st century, the confrontation was ominous. Cynics had predicted that big businesses would one day dominate the new medium, but didn't understand how the supremacy would be achieved.
