QuickLinks Update

Experts agree on proposed global privacy standards

2009-11-07T17:21:00.001+01:00

(AFP)
Experts from 50 nations meeting in Madrid have reached a draft agreement on international standards for the protection of privacy and personal data. Under the proposed standards, data may only be processed after obtaining the "free, unambiguous and informed consent" of the data subjects and it should be deleted when it is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was gathered. Data collectors must identify themselves, state in clear language the purpose of the data processing and the recipients of the gathered data. International transfers of personal data may only be carried out to a country which "affords, as a minimum, the level of protection provided for in the document," according to the proposed standards, agreed by representatives from privacy protection agencies.

EU - European 'internet freedom' law agreed

2009-11-06T09:45:00.002+01:00

(ZDNet UK)
Europe is set to get a major overhaul of its telecoms regulation, after the European Parliament and Council of Telecoms Ministers reached a compromise on the rights of internet users across the continent. The Telecoms Reform Package is a raft of new laws that tackle issues ranging from data-breach notification to faster number porting. Following an agreement reached on Wednesday night, the package will now become part of national legislation in every EU country, with a deadline of May 2011. see Commission Press Memo.

EU - TV spectrum to be used for mobile broadband

2009-10-30T14:37:00.002+01:00

(ZDNet UK)
The European Commission has called on member states to speed up their switchover from analogue to digital television, to free up spectrum for wireless broadband services. The Commission first announced its intention to set aside the so-called 'digital dividend' spectrum for wireless broadband in 2007. Since then, consultations and industry negotiations have taken place, leading to the proposals set out by the Commission. See also Commission Press Release.

EU - Telecoms: Commission steps up UK legal action over privacy and personal data protection

2009-10-30T14:32:00.004+01:00

(RAPID)
The Commission has moved to the second phase of an infringement proceeding over the UK to provide its citizens with the full protection of EU rules on privacy and personal data protection when using electronic communications. European laws state that EU countries must ensure the confidentiality of people's electronic communications like email or internet browsing by prohibiting their unlawful interception and surveillance without the user's consent. As these rules have not been fully put in place in the national law of the UK, the Commission will send the UK a reasoned opinion. Specifically, the Commission has identified three gaps in the existing UK rules governing the confidentiality of electronic communications: 1) There is no independent national authority to supervise interception of communications 2) The current UK law - the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) - authorises interception of communications not only where the persons concerned have consented to interception but also when the person intercepting the communications has "reasonable grounds for believing" that consent to do so has been given. These UK law provisions do not comply with EU rules defining consent as freely given, specific and informed indication of a person's wishes 3) The RIPA provisions are limited to 'intentional' interception only, whereas the EU law requires Members States to prohibit and to ensure sanctions against any unlawful interception regardless of whether committed intentionally or not.

Europe's amazing Internet-safety work

2009-10-30T14:22:00.000+01:00

(Net Family News)
Last week I had the great good fortune of participating in the Safer Internet Forum 2009 in Luxembourg. What a fantastic experience, connecting with online-safety experts representing the 27 EU member countries plus Malaysia, Brazil, and New Zealand. The Forum included teen panelists (aged 14-18) from 26 of the 27 countries. This year's focus was "Promoting Online Safety in Schools." Here are highlights ? things I heard from presenters over the four days of Forum and INSAFE meetings.

UK police smooth over rift with Internet registry

2009-10-29T16:23:00.001+01:00

(IDG News Service)
U.K. police have apologized over a recent public presentation that linked a nonprofit Internet registry with money laundering by a notorious group of Russian cybercriminal gangsters. The brouhaha started during a presentation by the U.K.'s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, at the RSA security conference on Oct. 21. The cybercriminal investigators were describing the Russian Business Network (RBN), a well-known group linked to malicious software, hacking, child pornography and spam. In 2006, RIPE allocated a block of IP addresses to a fake company registered in the U.K. that was a front for the RBN. RIPE contends it was duped and that at the time, it was impossible to tell that the front company wasn't legitimate. After repeated contact with law enforcement, RIPE eventually pulled RBN's IP allocation in May 2008.

EU history at the click of a mouse

2009-10-27T08:58:00.002+01:00

(Europa)
On 16 October, the EU bookshop launched its digital library, its online collection now containing every document published by the EU since 1952 - 110 000 publications. With the archives now included, the digital library contains no fewer than 12 million scanned pages in 50 languages. The new digital library will be linked to Europeana, a digital version of libraries and archives all over Europe.

End of an era for early websites

2009-10-26T17:27:00.000+01:00

(BBC)
A service that gave many people their first taste of building and owning a web page is set to close. Yahoo-owned GeoCities once boasted millions of users and was the third most popular destination on the web. The free site has since fallen out of fashion with users, who have switched to social networks. Yahoo, which acquired the site for $3.57bn in 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom, said sites would no longer be accessible from 26th October.

EU - Securing personal data and fighting data breaches

2009-10-26T17:05:00.002+01:00

(Europa)
Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media. see also Stakeholders discuss how to respond to data breaches at EDPS-ENISA seminar (Brussels, 23 October 2009).

AU - ACS gives conditional thumbs up to internet filtering

2009-10-25T19:26:00.003+01:00

(SC Magazine)
The Australian Computer Society has released a report that flags conditional support to ISP-based internet filtering from a technical standpoint, based on a series of boxes that need to be checked before giving the scheme the green light. Six experts from the ACS said that filtering of the internet is plausible, but suggested a number of steps that the Federal Government needs to first address. The computer society pushed for the blacklist to be "transparent." "Transparency and credibility should include an independent oversight, a system of checks and balances that incorporates a system of appeals and an independent auditing process," the report said. Blocking websites was not enough to stop illegal websites from appearing, the report said. The ACS suggested the Federal Government work with the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers (ICANN) and encourage it to reject domain name applications that were likely to contain illegal material.

AU - Technical Observations on ISP Based Filtering of the Internet

2009-10-25T19:13:00.001+01:00

(Australian Computer Society)
Report from the Filtering and E-Security Task Force.

MySpace abandons race with Facebook

2009-10-25T18:41:00.001+01:00

(FT)
The new chief executive of MySpace has told the Financial Times that the company is no longer interested in competing with Facebook, in effect conceding defeat in the race to become the largest online social network. Owen Van Natta, a former Facebook executive who replaced Chris DeWolfe as chief executive of MySpace six months ago, said the company instead aimed to become an online hub for music and entertainment. "Facebook is not our competition," he said. "We're very focused on a different space."

AU - Would-be spammers given $16m warning

2009-10-25T18:36:00.002+01:00

(ABC)
Fines totalling almost $16 million were handed down to two companies and three individuals in the Federal Court in Brisbane for breaches of the Spam Act. The scheme involved using dating sites to procure mobile phone numbers, and then sending unsolicited text messages. The landmark case brought by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is the first court action against people sending unwanted text messages.

DE - Hacker arrested for blackmailing StudiVZ social networks

2009-10-25T18:33:00.002+01:00

(Techcrunch)
Berlin police have arrested a man who tried to blackmail VZ-Netzwerke, the holding company for the successful Facebook clone StudiVZ and other German social networks. The man had used crawler software to harvest detailed user information not only only from the group's networks for adult people, StudiVZ and MeinVZ, but also from Germany's biggest social network for pupils, SchülerVZ. The 20 year old man asked for €80,000.

Google and Bing Race to Search Social Media

2009-10-25T18:22:00.001+01:00

(Business Week)
Google and Microsoft will incorporate information culled from social media sites into search pages. Microsoft said its Bing search engine will let users search for Twitter posts known as tweets and, later, for status updates posted to Facebook pages. Google will also include Twitter updates in search results and that it will begin offering a social search tool that delivers information posted by a searcher's friends on social sites.

EU - Telecoms package - a Pirate's viewpoint

2009-10-25T11:34:00.003+01:00

(Christian Engström, Pirate MEP)
The European Parliament's delegation to the Telecoms Package conciliation process had a stormy meeting last Tuesday. It then adopted a text to serve as the basis for the continued negotiations with the Council of Ministers. On Thursday, the Council replied by proposing a modified version of that text. I called their proposal "An insult to the Parliament". The Parliament's text tries to stop Member States from creating laws and institutions to shut people off en masse from the Internet, without even a proper trial before it happens. The goal is to stop things like the French Hadopi law, or similar laws that are currently being prepared in the UK. I will go through the beginning of the text and point out what the various changes that the Council insisted on actually mean, and why the difference between the two versions is the difference between a yes or a no to Hadopi laws.

Internet Blocking study

2009-10-25T11:23:00.002+01:00

(Aconite)
Government attempts to block access to the Internet are mounting throughout Europe - but look set to backfire, according to new study. The Open Society Institute funded the report which is titled "Internet Blocking: Balancing Cybercrime Responses in Democratic Societies." The study shows how efforts to block Internet content are spreading throughout democratic Europe. In Germany, Britain, Italy and Scandinavia, the measures are intended to block pages containing child pornography. The new study concludes that the measures are ineffective. Many technical ways exist to get around blocking technologies. More importantly, the blocking measures are intrusive and often abuse fundamental freedoms. These systems either over-block or under-block content and do not prevent the serious offender from gaining access.

EU - European Commission launches reflection on a Digital Single Market for Creative Content Online

2009-10-23T18:02:00.000+02:00

(RAPID)
The European Commission has published a reflection paper on the challenge of creating a European Digital Single Market for creative content like books, music, films or video games. According to Commission studies, a truly Single Market without borders for Creative Online Content could allow retail revenues of the creative content sector to quadruple if clear and consumer-friendly measures are taken by industry and public authorities. The digital availability of content thus presents great opportunities for Europe, but also a number of challenges. First of all, regulatory and territorial obstacles still stand in the way of digital distribution of cultural products and services and can impede creativity and innovation. In addition, illegal downloads on a large scale can jeopardize the development of an economically viable Single Market for digital content; there needs to be much more encouragement for legal cross-border offers. The reflection paper outlines current challenges for three groups of stakeholders ? rightholders, consumers and commercial users ? and invites everybody interested to participate in a broad debate about the possible European responses to them. Comments can be sent by 5 January 2010

EU - Europe's growing army of bloggers and social networkers can generate new services and growth

2009-10-23T17:58:00.000+02:00

(Europa)
A study says that European interactive websites like video sharing sites and blogs are growing, generating revenue for both owners and contributors. Compared with the US, which hosts the most commonly used websites for content created by users (blogs, texts, videos, music, games and virtual objects), Europe has more contributors. For example, almost 4 in 5 Italian internet users read blogs compared to 60% in the US, 41% of Spanish users write blogs but only 26% in the US, almost 60% of Czech internet users upload photos and 48% of Polish internet users subscribe to RSS feeds, all ahead of the US (see annex). To help the emergence of European Flickrs and youtubes that turn this large European creativity into growth and jobs, the Commission's report highlights the need for new and updated EU rules building a Single Market for content that can be made and shared online by anyone.

EU - Competition: Commission's Online Roundtable on Music

2009-10-23T17:51:00.000+02:00

(RAPID)
A joint statement setting out general principles that would underpin the online distribution of music in the future and so lead to improved online music opportunities for European consumers was signed by participants at the fourth meeting of the Roundtable on the Online Distribution of Music, chaired by European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes on 19 th October 2009. The participants at the Roundtable were Amazon, BEUC, EMI, iTunes, Nokia, PRS for Music, SACEM, STIM and Universal. Following the Roundtable, a number of participants announced concrete steps and commitments that should result in improved access of European consumers to music online.

EU - 60% of cross border internet shopping orders are refused, says new study

2009-10-23T15:48:00.001+02:00

(RAPID)
There are widespread problems with refusals of orders for EU consumers trying to purchase goods online in another Member state, according to a new European Commission report on cross border consumer e-commerce. An extensive independent mystery shopping exercise was carried out for the Commission where shoppers across the EU tried to purchase a list of 100 popular products ?for example cameras, CDs, books, clothes - from a cross border provider. Over 11,000 test orders were carried out. The research found that 60% of cross border transactions could not be completed by consumers because the trader did not ship the product to their country or did not offer adequate means for cross border payment.

EU - European Commission puts challenges of books digitisation for authors, libraries and consumers on EU's agenda

2009-10-19T17:32:00.002+02:00

(RAPID)
The European Commission has adopted a Communication on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy aiming to tackle the important cultural and legal challenges of mass-scale digitisation and dissemination of books, in particular of European library collections. The Communication was jointly drawn up by Commissioners Charlie McCreevy and Viviane Reding. Digital libraries such as Europeana will provide researchers and consumers across Europe with new ways to gain access to knowledge. For this, however, the EU will need to find a solution for orphan works, whose uncertain copyright status means they often cannot be digitised. Improving the distribution and availability of works for persons with disabilities, particularly the visually impaired, is another cornerstone of the Communication.

DE - Koalitionsvereinbarung: Web-Sperren weg, Vorratsdatenspeicherung eingeschr�nkt

2009-10-16T16:59:00.002+02:00

(Heise)
Die für die Innen- und Rechtspolitik zuständige Koalitionsarbeitsgruppe von FDP und Union hat überraschend schnell einen Kompromiss ausgearbeitet, wonach die geplanten reinen Blockaden kinderpornographischer Seiten faktisch passé sind. Das Bundesinnenministerium soll das Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) anweisen, international stärker auf die tatsächliche Löschung kinderpornographischer Inhalte im Internet zu drängen. Zugleich wird der Wiesbadener Polizeibehörde untersagt, Sperrlisten an die Zugangsanbieter herauszugeben. Die bislang vom noch nicht in Kraft getretenen Zugangserschwerungsgesetz sowie in Verträgen großer Provider mit dem BKA vorgesehenen Web-Sperren könnten so nicht zur Anwendung kommen. Konkret setzen die Liberalen vor allem auf die Internetwirtschaft und die Verbesserung von Hotlines zum Löschen illegaler Inhalte wie INHOPE, dass das BKA auf dem kleinen Dienstweg über eine direkte Ansprache von Providern ohne den Umweg über ausländische Polizeibehörden mehr zum Entfernen kinderpornographischer Angebote aus dem Netz beitragen könnte.

DE - Google digital library plan opposed by Angela Merkel

2009-10-13T15:44:00.001+02:00

(Observer)
German chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday waded into the row over Google's plans to build a massive digital library. The move was a remarkable intervention from a leading world politician in a growing dispute about the threat posed by the internet, and Google in particular, to publishing companies, authors and also newspapers. In her weekly video podcast, before the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair this week, Merkel appealed for more international co-operation on copyright protection and said her government opposed Google's drive to create online libraries full of scanned books.

EU - More action needed to fight spammers and protect online privacy, says Commission

2009-10-13T13:31:00.001+02:00

(RAPID)
The European Commission has repeated its call for EU countries to do more to tackle online privacy threats to the public. A Commission-funded study found that although in recent years several EU countries have taken some measures to enforce Europe's ban on spam, including fines for spammers, the number of prosecuted cases and sanctions imposed on lawbreakers vary considerably. The study confirms the need for the legislative improvements proposed under the reform of the EU's Telecoms rules: clearer and more consistent enforcement rules and dissuasive sanctions, better cross-border cooperation, and adequate resources for national authorities in charge of protecting citizens' online privacy.