InternetPolicy.net

"Reporting on the Information Society" award

From the ITU weblog: "The inaugural 'Reporting on the Information Society' awards, given jointly by the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) and Panos, aim to encourage and bring to international recognition thoughtful and incisive reporting on developing countries' progress to becoming iInformation Societies.'

"Four awards of $2,000 each will be made for published journalism by developing country journalists (print, radio, TV or web) that goes beyond describing projects or new investment initiatives to analyse broader questions such as the social impact of ICTs, particularly on rural or disadvantaged groups, or national and global communication policy issues.

"The winning entries will be disseminated internationally and honoured at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, December 2003. To submit a piece of work for consideration, send a clipping, audio or video tape, transcript or web reference by email to: [email protected] ; or by post to: Kitty Warnock, Panos Institute, 9 White Lion St, London N1 9PD, UK. Deadline for submissions: Oct 15th 2003."

Spammers fight back with DoS attacks

Justin Shore wrote today on CircleID about the escalating fight between spammers and spam-blockers - which the spammers seem to be winning.

Shore's essay was triggered by an announcement earlier this week that a long-time spam-fighter, Ron Guilmette, is shutting down his DNS-list of IP addresses from which spam has originated, because of "Distributed Denial of Service" attacks launched by spammers against his server. In his announcement to the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup, Guilmette said that he "rode out the first massive DDoS against my site, which lasted for 10 days...but over the past three days I have been massively DDoS'd again, and I think that the handwriting is now on the wall. I will simply not be allowed to continue fighting spam... I always knew that spammers had no principals and no ethics, but up until recently, I had no idea that they could or would...engage in quite this level of criminality. I guess that, naively, I just never thought hard enough about how much money was actually at stake (in the spamming trade) or what that might mean in terms or the determination of spammers to win at all costs. I don't know what else I can or should say at this point, other than that it is my fervent hope that people of good will and good intentions, people who believe in common values like civility, honesty, decency, and privacy, will someday be able to take back the net from the criminals who are clearly in the driver's seat at the moment...."

Guilmette is only the latest victim in a series of DDoS attacks and capitulations, according to a revealing article by Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe. But Justin Shore gets the last word: "It's truly a sad day for spam fighters everywhere... how does one go about attracting the attention of law enforcement when your network is under attack? ...Legal remedies take too long and are cost prohibitive (unless you're the [Department of Justice]). Subpoenas and civil lawsuits take months if not years. Relief is needed in days if not hours."

Fight over net governance at PrepCom-3

From a report by Rebecca Wanjiku of the Highway Africa News Agency:

"...Following more an hour of intense discussions over the wording and provisions of the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action, delegates to the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) third preparatory committee could not decide whether Internet policies should be managed by governments or by the private sector. The US delegation said that if it did not get its way on the relevant clause, its president would not attend the Summit...

"Brazil led the galaxy of nations arguing against leaving the management of the Internet with ICANN. Canada, the European Union, Mexico and Malaysia rallied behind the US and maintained that the entire management of the Internet must be placed in private hands. China, Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and the Arab nations argued that governments should determine the direction of Internet-related public policies and an intergovernmental body should be established under the UN framework...

"There is further resentment against paying the US government, through ICANN, for monitoring the use of Top Level domains. They believe the current system is unfair because sovereign states effectively become subject to the rules of one country - the USA - when using the Internet. The US delegation urged delegates to postpone its decision until 2005 when ICANN will have finalised its negotiations with International Telecommunication Union (ITU) over control of top-level domains. However, opposing governments felt that the current summit might be the right time for them to make the decision. The issue remains contentious and was referred to the main drafting committee for further deliberations."

"One Unwired Day"

Today is Intel's One Unwired Day promotion for free public hot-spots and Centrino. Their hotspot finder page lists participating hotspots in many countries.

EU Parliament limits patentability

A note just in from Darius Cuplinskas with news relating to our item about Acacia's streaming media patents: The European Parliament today voted to approve a directive on the "patentability of computer-implemented inventions" with amendments that clearly restate the non-patentability of programming and business logic. The vote on this proposal had been repeatedly delayed due to controversy surrounding the issue of patenting business processes and software logic. During the debate yesterday, EC Commissioner Bolkestein had warned that the Commission and Council would withdraw the proposed directive if the Parliament voted in favor of the amendments that it supported today. Therefore there is a chance that the directive's wording might be changed during upcoming consultations with the Council of Ministers. Unlike sessions of the European Parliament, that is not a public process. Check the website of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure for more discussion, documentation, links and updates about software patents in Europe.

Yahoo Groups blocked in India

India's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) has blocked the country's access to all Yahoo Groups because they were technically unable to block access to one online group created by a tribal movement banned as a terrorist organization in 2000. The online group known as kynhun was set up by the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council. According to an article by Andrew Orlowski on The Register, "Last year the Indian ISP Association discussed blocking sites including Yahoo! unless their owners paid the trade body a fee. The plan was never implemented."

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.'"