InternetPolicy.net

Acacia patents on streaming digital media

Acacia Research, a little-known holding company, has assembled a group of 17 software patents that collectively cover most aspects of streaming media and video on demand. This raises the specter that, as with Eola's browser plug-in patent, which produced a $521 million judgment against Microsoft, new assertions of private property rights will force vast numbers of websites either to pay licensing fees or change their content. See a CNET article by Paul Festa for details.

California bans unsolicited commercial email

From an article in the New York Times by Saul Hansell (via CNET): "...Gov. Gray Davis of California signed a bill Tuesday that outlaws sending most commercial e-mail to or from the state [of California] that the recipient did not explicitly request. That is a far more wide-reaching law than any of the 35 other state laws meant to regulate spam or any of the proposed bills in Congress. 'We are saying that unsolicited e-mail cannot be sent and there are no loopholes,' said Kevin Murray, the Democratic state senator from Los Angeles who sponsored the bill... The law will take effect Jan. 1, 2004..."

Silenced: Censorship and Control of the Internet

Last Friday at the WSIS PrepCom-3 meeting in Geneva, Privacy International and the GreenNet Educational Fund released Silenced: An International Report on Censorship and Control of the Internet. Covering four dozen countries and 6 regions, it makes distressing reading. From the web-page where the report can be downloaded: "The September 11, 2001 attacks have given numerous governments the opportunity to promulgate restrictive policies that their citizens had previously opposed. There has been an acceleration of legal authority for additional snooping of all kinds, particularly involving the Internet, from increased email monitoring to the retention of Web logs and communications data. Simultaneously, governments have become more secretive about their own activities, reducing information that was previously available and refusing to adhere to policies on freedom of information... A wide variety of methods are used to restrict and/or regulate Internet access. These include: applying laws and licenses, content filtering, tapping and surveillance, pricing and taxation policies, telecommunication markets manipulation, hardware and software manipulation and self censorship..."

UK govt's data-retention plan "rubbish"

From the MediaGuardian, by Owen Gibson: "Internet giants including Freeserve, AOL and BT have lambasted government plans requiring them to retain every email and web page accessed by their customers for up to a year. They have warned such a move could lead to chaos and higher prices for customers, and attacked legislation for amounting to snooper's charter out of keeping with consumer rights legislation. 'The government has not satisfied the industry that the data they wish to retain is of use to law enforcement agencies,' said Jessica Hendrie-Liano, who heads...the Internet Service Providers Association, the UK trade body for the online operators... [ISPA] is recommending their members continue to refuse to co-operate... The director of civil rights group Liberty, Shami Chakrabati, said the government 'has failed to learn from its mistakes' and that the new legislation made the British public 'the most spied upon in the western world.'"

Cyber Security News

A group of Asian IT ministers has announced, after a two-day meeting in Singapore, that next year "members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) hope to put in place a cooperation framework for sharing real-time information on computer threats as well as assessments of vulnerabilities. By 2005, all of ASEAN's 10 members are expected to have put in place Computer Emergency Response Teams (Certs) to deal with attacks from hackers or viruses." [AFP quoted in Brunei Online] See also the Joint Media Statement issued by the ministers.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security is planning a National Cyber Security Summit in "late fall," according to congressional testimony by Robert Liscouski, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at DHS. A story in eWeek says that Liscouski "outlined the goals of the summit" in a statement to the House cyber-security subcommittee last Tuesday. "Officials hope to spur a standards-based system for communicating threats nationwide and develop a common threat and vulnerability reporting tool. The summit also aims to develop a 'vulnerability reduction initiative,' based on improved evaluation standards, software measures, patch deployment tools and methods, and best practices. Participants will develop a 'National Cyber Security Road Map,' outlining a timeframe for improving online safety and developing ways to measure the improvement, according to Liscouski's testimony... Liscouski [also] formally announced the appointment of Amit Yoran to head the National Cyber Security Division at DHS..." Click here for an interview with Yoran broadcast last spring on PBS's Frontline program.

Struggle for Control of ccTLDs

Regular readers of Bret Fausett's ICANN.blog will have already seen this, but in case you aren't one of them, check out Peter Yu's concise overview of the power struggles for control of the country-level top level domains.

Online coverage of WSIS PrepCom-3

Here are some tools to help you follow the work of the WSIS PrepCom-3 meeting, which is going on now in Geneva. First, the "governance" email list, hosted by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Many members of the list are civil society representatives attending PrepCom. They - and their colleagues elsewhere in the world - use this list to discuss proposed changes to the draft Declaration of Principles, relative to Internet governance. Join the list by filling out the form at https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance. Second, the Platform for Community Networks has compiled a table of websites that monitor the WSIS process and PrepCom-3. Find it at http://www.globalcn.org/en/article.ntd?id=1652&sort=1. Some sites of special interest are the WSIS PrepCom NGO News Center and the Heinrich Boll Foundation's page for PrepCom-3 reports. If you want to see real-time streaming-video coverage of the plenary speakers and selected subcommittee meetings, visit the ITU's WSIS website. They are also archiving the video, if you want to watch a session that happened earlier. Finally, here is a searchable list of the 2,164 people at PrepCom-3.

Net access tax ban approved by House

"The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to permanently extend the current temporary moratorium on Internet taxes that expires on Nov. 1. The legislation, passed on a voice vote, amends the Internet Tax Freedom Act (IFTA), which imposes a federal ban on state and local taxes on Internet access services and certain Internet-based sales transactions. Similar legislation was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee in late July but has not been scheduled for a floor vote. President Bush has said he will sign the legislation.... The Internet tax moratorium does not apply to sales taxes on Web transactions..." (from dc.internet.com)

PrepCom-3 starts in Geneva

The Third Meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the World Summit on the Information Society (PrepCom-3) began on 15 September. According to Internet Magazine, "A battle is developing over the future of global Internet governance... The main schism in opinion appears to be between those who want Internet issues – such as IP addresses, global domain name allocation, and privacy – to be managed by an inter-governmental body, and those who want them to be run by an international body. 'International by definition means everyone is involved, from governments to private sector and civil society,' the chairman of ICANN's government advisory committee, Mohamed Sharil, told Reuters in an interview. 'Inter-governmental gives an indication that only governments are involved...'" ICANN will not be taking a position on this question at PrepCom-3, according to the Reuters report cited in that article. They may feel their position has been secured by the 3-year renewal of their Memorandum of Understanding with the US Commerce Department, which was announced earlier today. Webcasts of the WSIS preparatory meetings are being streamed live and archived at the ITU website.

.COM/.NET registrar condemned

People for Internet Responsibility issued a statement yesterday condemning Verisign/Network Solutions for "arrogant and dangerous abuse of their vested, dominant, special position..." According to PFIR, "VeriSign/NSI has now clearly demonstrated their utter unsuitability for a continuing role relating to Internet domain/DNS operations." The statement, signed by Lauren Weinstein, Peter Neumann and Dave Farber, concerned the company's "recent actions to effectively 'hijack' all unused domain names in the '.COM' and '.NET' TLDs (Top Level Domains) for their 'Site Finder' service..."

The controversy over Site Finder is getting so hot that CircleID has created a webpage for special coverage of the issue.