From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Sat Jul 1 01:40:51 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id BAA116186; Sat, 1 Jul 2000 01:40:50 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA116182 for ; Sat, 1 Jul 2000 01:40:48 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 8684 invoked by uid 60001); 30 Jun 2000 15:40:45 -0000 Message-ID: <20000630154045.8683.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Sat, 01 Jul 2000 01:40:45 EST Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2000 01:40:45 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: ZDNET - Is Free Speech 'Filtered' in Australia? To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all An article from ZDNET about the ongoing debate about the legislation down under. Cheers David Is Free Speech 'Filtered' in Australia? By Rachel Lebihan, ZDNet Australia News http://www.zdnet.com.au/zdnn/stories/zdnn_display/au0003742.html The Code of Practice that forces Internet Service Providers to filter information available on the Web, is little more than "Government endorsed privatised censorship" according Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA). It's not the first time the EFA has slammed censorship, but in this instance it is the EFA itself that has been censored - the group's Web site has been blocked by SurfWatch -- a product intended to shelter children from pornography. SurfWatch is one of the 16 filter providers the government endorsed when its Approved Code of Practice for Internet Service Providers came into effect in January. The products were assessed by the CSIRO for such things as ease of installation and ease of use. "Nobody's checked that they [the filter provider] actually do what they are supposed to do," EFA Executive Director, Irene Graham told ZDNet Australia. "We're concerned that because these filters are 'approved', people are being given the idea -- effectively by the Government -- that they can just install these products on their computer and their kids will be safe. Most of them don't even block everything they're supposed to block in the first place," Graham stressed. According to the Code, any addition or removal of a filter product from the list of 16 will only be done following the approval of the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) and the Internet Industry Association (IIA). "If the IIA and the ABA are going to state that these filters are approved they need to either have proper third party investigations done on them or the Code should link to various third party reports on the product to give a balanced view," Graham said. SurfWatch spiders the Web -- much like a search engine -- carrying out text-based analysis -- often for sexually explicit words. If a string of sexually explicit words are found in a document then the product checks links from that site to other sites and does text-based analysis on those links as well. A SurfWatch spokesperson told ZDNet Australia that an international team of surfers "lays human eyes on every single page to determine which category of filtered material the site should go into". Core categories include sexually explicit, hate speech, drugs and alcohol, violence and weapons. "The percentage of mis-categorised sites on our list is small to non existent," the spokesperson stressed. Peacefire -- an organisation which supports free speech for Internet users under 18, and a critic of blocking software, told ZDNet Australia: "From SurfWatch's point of view it may have been an honest mistake." Peacefire's Web master Bennett Haselton explained that SurfWatch actually blocks a site by its IP address, rather than its individual Web address. As many sites share IP addresses, innocent sites will be blocked alongside the sites SurfWatch intends to block. "From a programming point of view it is a lot harder to implement the blocking of sites through a host name," Bennett said. " However, it is definitely not true that SurfWatch reviews every site they block," Haselton added. An ABA spokesperson told ZDNet Australia "we do not endorse filter products". If a filter were to be removed from the Code, "The initiative would have to come from them [the IIA]. It's their code." "We're aware these products are not infallible," the spokesperson added. "I'm not aware that they [IIA] have contacted us about SurfWatch, so I don't think there's any action that's pending on them, but Peter Coroneos (executive director, IIA) may be able to throw more light on that," the spokesperson added. Asked if the list of filters had been modified since in the six months the Code has been operational, the ABA spokesperson said: "I'm not aware of what changes, if any, have been made to that list." Peter Coroneos was unavailable for this article ===== David Goldstein Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 A-5020 Salzburg Austria email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Sat Jul 1 15:43:28 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id PAA128319; Sat, 1 Jul 2000 15:43:27 +1000 (EST) Received: from armstrong.apic.net (armstrong.apic.net [203.22.101.2]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA128315 for ; Sat, 1 Jul 2000 15:43:22 +1000 (EST) Received: from boss.apic.net ([210.8.71.237]) by armstrong.apic.net (8.8.7/APIC-2.1) with SMTP id PAA07841 for ; Sat, 1 Jul 2000 15:43:19 +1000 (EST) X-Org: The Asia Pacific Internet Company Pty. Ltd. X-URL: http://www.apic.net/ Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.20000701154254.00f5b6c0@mail.apic.net> X-Sender: bala@mail.apic.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2000 15:42:54 +1000 To: apple@apnic.net From: Bala Pillai Subject: Shifty European Legislators? (fw) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by whois.apnic.net id PAA128316 Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Dear APPLers, What's the best way of saying a resounding "No" to these European legislators and its US supporters? David - any suggestions? cheers../bala Bala Pillai, Sydney New Global Cybercops http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,16532,00.html?nl=int European police are seeking broader powers to pry into computers anywhere in the world. The U.S. government is backing them. By Bruno Giussani The wording in a recent Council of Europe document may sound like boring legalese, but it could have profound implications for civil liberties around the world. It reads: "Each Party shall take such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to empower its competent authorities to search or similarly access a computer system or part of it and computer data stored therein ... for the purpose of criminal investigation or proceedings." A "Party" is any country that signs the International Convention on Crime in Cyberspace – let's call it IC3. The first draft was published for public comment in April by the Council of Europe, an independent group of 41 countries that focuses on social and legal issues. While the general content of the treaty has been widely discussed (granting police more powers and narrowing the differences in national laws), one disturbing detail has gone almost unnoticed, and it is hidden in four words of Article 14 quoted above: "search or similarly access." In other words, the IC3 could authorize law-enforcement agencies to remotely search computer hard drives by penetrating somebody's computer (or a corporate system) through the Net and other networks. This interpretation was confirmed in an interview with Peter Csonka of the Council of Europe's legal office. "The convention admits the possibility of direct online searches," he says. That opens the door for some very troubling changes. Lawful searches in most democratic countries are authorized only in certain situations: when a search warrant is obtained, when the target person is notified and so on. No such provisions are stated in the IC3 draft. Rather, the authors of the convention have implemented an insidious semantic shift from "search" to "access." The word "search" is often associated with force, typically embodied by police officers seizing any kind of potential evidence from a person, a home or an office. "Access" has a softer, more neutral connotation. Imagine authorities gaining access to your hard drive remotely, opening files, reading or copying them and leaving no trace of what they had done. Moreover, the very notion of telesearch collides with political borders and legal jurisdictions. The convention, for example, authorizes the police to extend searches "expeditiously" across networks connected to the initial computer, basically prejustifying any search by a law-enforcement agency that, bouncing from computer to router to computer, would "inadvertently access" data located in the jurisdiction of another country. Almost any cop could be a global cybercop. The IC3 will be finalized after the summer; it then is subject to an approval process expected to be completed in about 18 months. The text then will be legally binding in the countries that sign it. Canada, Japan, South Africa and the U.S. are not members of the Council of Europe, but they do participate in IC3 discussions. The U.S. Department of Justice has been very active in supporting the draft. It seems that Washington, confronted with strong privacy and consumer lobbies at home, is using the Council as a back door to expand police powers in cyberspace around the world. That, in turn, could give U.S. law-enforcement agents even more power to sneak into computers than they have now. Bruno Giussani (brunog@thestandard.com) is the European editor of The Standard. The IC3 draft can be found at conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/projects/cybercrime.htm. * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Sat Jul 1 16:03:04 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id QAA128662; Sat, 1 Jul 2000 16:03:03 +1000 (EST) Received: from armstrong.apic.net (armstrong.apic.net [203.22.101.2]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA128652 for ; Sat, 1 Jul 2000 16:03:01 +1000 (EST) Received: from boss.apic.net ([210.8.71.237]) by armstrong.apic.net (8.8.7/APIC-2.1) with SMTP id QAA08874 for ; Sat, 1 Jul 2000 16:02:57 +1000 (EST) X-Org: The Asia Pacific Internet Company Pty. Ltd. X-URL: http://www.apic.net/ Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.20000701160232.00f28fb4@mail.apic.net> X-Sender: bala@mail.apic.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2000 16:02:32 +1000 To: apple@apnic.net From: Bala Pillai Subject: Napster: Music may be only the beginning of grassroots piracy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Dear APPLers, A great animated GIF at that shows how Napster works, how it reaches beyond music and links to why the solution may come from the computer gaming industry. cheers../bala Bala Pillai, Sydney Music may be only the beginning of grassroots piracy http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-1757865-0.html?tag=st.ne.ni.rnbot.rn.sf By Evan Hansen, John Borland and Mike Yamamoto Staff, CNET News.com May 15, 2000, 4:00 a.m. PT Napster has done for piracy what America Online did for the Internet: put its technology within reach of the digital masses. But where AOL has catered to middle America, Napster has opened the door to an entirely different culture, one of evolving social values that some say encourages illegal activity. So far, the file-sharing software program and others like it have been used primarily to download digital music. However, as the Net overcomes today's size and speed barriers, these technologies could be used to trade everything from full-length movies to computer operating systems--basically, anything that can take a digital form. Moreover, opponents say Napster-like technologies are proving far more pernicious than previous forms of piracy, as underground programmers work to create diffuse networks providing safe harbor for the burgeoning trade. Industry countermeasures such as encrypted locks have touched off a virtual arms race that cannot guarantee lasting security. Already transcending music, Napster's wildfire popularity is forcing whole industries to reconsider their business models. Companies are realizing that the last shelter for the digital economy may be imaginative strategies that make use of widespread file-sharing rather than fighting it, just as most content companies abandoned online subscriptions for free Web sites years ago. Napster is fighting the record industry establishment and a pair of heavy-hitting music acts in court. In a case that has drawn international attention, the small software company is desperately trying to prove that it can keep hundreds of thousands of people from pirating rock band Metallica's songs on its service. Beyond its economic consequences, the Napster phenomenon bears profound social implications. In only a few months since capturing the public's attention, the technology has raised legal, educational and even moral questions while changing the very definition of commercial entertainment and how people use it. * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Sun Jul 2 00:15:05 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA69390; Sun, 2 Jul 2000 00:15:04 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id AAA69386 for ; Sun, 2 Jul 2000 00:15:01 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 27368 invoked by uid 60001); 1 Jul 2000 14:14:58 -0000 Message-ID: <20000701141458.27367.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Sun, 02 Jul 2000 00:14:58 EST Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2000 00:14:58 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: Re: Shifty European Legislators? (fw) To: Bala Pillai , apple@apnic.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk This is a difficult one Bala. My initial thoughts are a growth in interest in freedom of speech in European countries would help, through the development of groups in Europe such as EFF or similar civil liberties groups as they are almost unheard of over here. I know EFF has, or was supposed to have, established an office in Amsterdam, and it is something they, along with a group in England called Liberty should be interested in. That would be a start. I don't know why the US civil liberties groups aren't interested though, well, it seems not anyway. The USA and Australia seem to be rather unique in their attitudes to civil liberties. I'll send the message to another mailing list I am on down under and see what their comments are. By the way, something I found astounding here in Austria, when you live here, you have to go to the police and fill in a form to tell them where you live. The reason supposedly is so the government can allocate the correct funding for each state or city, but why the police? Why not local government? And I also thought that's why government's conducted censuses. Cheers David ===== David Goldstein Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 A-5020 Salzburg Austria email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Sun Jul 2 08:36:01 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id IAA76068; Sun, 2 Jul 2000 08:36:00 +1000 (EST) Received: from armstrong.apic.net (armstrong.apic.net [203.22.101.2]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA76064 for ; Sun, 2 Jul 2000 08:35:58 +1000 (EST) Received: from mandela.sydney.net (nas0ppp55.apic.net [203.22.103.65]) by armstrong.apic.net (8.8.7/APIC-2.1) with ESMTP id IAA07691; Sun, 2 Jul 2000 08:35:51 +1000 (EST) X-Org: The Asia Pacific Internet Company Pty. Ltd. X-URL: http://www.apic.net/ Message-Id: <4.3.0.20000702082853.0270cc90@mail.apic.net> X-Sender: bala@mail.apic.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3 Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000 08:36:55 +1000 To: David Goldstein , apple@apnic.net From: Bala Pillai Subject: Re: Shifty European Legislators? (fw) In-Reply-To: <20000701141458.27367.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk David, That's illuminating. I realised there is a chasm between desire for unfettered speech in the US and European countries but didn't realise it is as large. Going by the activities of the Internet underbelly viz anonymisers etc from Finland et al, it appears then that it is the Scandinavians + Finland plus the McLibelers who'd be best positioned to lead this in Europe? Make sense? cheers../bala At 00:14 7/2/2000 +1000, David Goldstein wrote: >This is a difficult one Bala. My initial thoughts are a growth in >interest in freedom of speech in European countries would help, >through the development of groups in Europe such as EFF or similar >civil liberties groups as they are almost unheard of over here. I >know EFF has, or was supposed to have, established an office in >Amsterdam, and it is something they, along with a group in England >called Liberty should be interested in. That would be a start. I >don't know why the US civil liberties groups aren't interested >though, well, it seems not anyway. The USA and Australia seem to be >rather unique in their attitudes to civil liberties. > >I'll send the message to another mailing list I am on down under and >see what their comments are. > >By the way, something I found astounding here in Austria, when you >live here, you have to go to the police and fill in a form to tell >them where you live. The reason supposedly is so the government can >allocate the correct funding for each state or city, but why the >police? Why not local government? And I also thought that's why >government's conducted censuses. > >Cheers >David > > >===== >David Goldstein >Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 >A-5020 Salzburg >Austria > >email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au >phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) > >_____________________________________________________________________________ >http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies >- Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies >* APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Wed Jul 5 00:55:52 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA71202; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 00:55:51 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id AAA71198 for ; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 00:55:47 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 17406 invoked by uid 60001); 4 Jul 2000 14:55:43 -0000 Message-ID: <20000704145543.17405.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Wed, 05 Jul 2000 00:55:43 EST Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 00:55:43 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: Re: Shifty European Legislators? (fw) To: Bala Pillai , APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi Bala et al I wouldn't say many Europeans object to free speech, it's just something they don't think is an issue. I think they put more trust in government. From what I've seen, I can see why they trust their governments more than Americans or Australians do too, despite Jörg Haider in Austria. Some research conducted for the Bertelsmann Foundation which should be available somewhere on their Internet Content Summit site (http://www.stiftung.bertelsmann.de/internetcontent) compares attitudes to a range of issues in this area, comparing USA, Australia, Germany and one other country, from my recollection. It showed the Americans, then Australians were least concerned with free speech issues, Germans the least. And I think you are right mentioning northern European countries as concerned about these issues, but I'm not sure. The only country I can recall having any interest is The Netherlands which is where the only free speech people came from in Europe who attended the conferences I attended last year dealing with labelling and filtering, and where EFF have, or intended to, set up their European office. Cheers David ===== David Goldstein Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 A-5020 Salzburg Austria email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Wed Jul 5 19:34:56 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id TAA92501; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 19:34:56 +1000 (EST) Received: from gateway.ntu.edu.sg ([155.69.1.127]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA92494 for ; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 19:34:47 +1000 (EST) Received: by gateway.ntu.edu.sg with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id <3JZTCH7L>; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 17:34:39 +0800 Message-ID: <1DD1B50DBE02D311909900805FA7424B014E9581@exchange5.ntu.edu.sg> From: "Ang Peng Hwa (Assoc Prof)" To: apple@apnic.net Subject: RE: Shifty European Legislators? (fw) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 17:34:40 +0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk David and Bala, The freest speech regime in Europe probably belongs to the Dutch. That's why if there is some EFF office, it makes sense to locate it in the Netherlands. As for Australia being "unique", well, it's certainly one of the freer places. Roughly, at least constitutionally, it's Australia, Brazil, Canada and USA (ABC + U) that are in the freest league. (Er, yes, Europe is not there.) I'm researching into the factors behind freer speech and one factor that I'm seeing is that history is a major determinant. From that perspective, Germany with its history of anti-Semitism, will not allow expression as free as in the USA (which did not have that history) on anti-Semitism. Is there a chasm? Well, depends on how you look at it. (Hey, I'm an academic.) I was in Germany and there were topless women in advertisements at 10 pm (Channel 29 on the TV for those interested in the citation for academic purposes). I remember an American among us talking over breakfast--can you guys believe what they have on TV here.* Regards, Ang Peng Hwa PS. I believe the entire table nodded. * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Wed Jul 5 20:22:36 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id UAA93611; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 20:22:35 +1000 (EST) Received: from mail3.ntu.edu.sg (mail3.ntu.edu.sg [155.69.1.91]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA93607 for ; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 20:22:33 +1000 (EST) Received: by mail3.ntu.edu.sg with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id <3J0A5KVC>; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 18:22:30 +0800 Message-ID: <1DD1B50DBE02D311909900805FA7424B014E9585@exchange5.ntu.edu.sg> From: "Ang Peng Hwa (Assoc Prof)" To: APPLe Subject: RE: Shifty European Legislators? (fw) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 18:22:30 +0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by whois.apnic.net id UAA93608 Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk David, The Americans *say* (or give the impression) they do not trust the government. Well, I just returned from a conference where the executive director of an Internet industry organisation based in Washington DC says there are now 2,200 bills in federal and state levels being considered for the Internet. Who passes the law? Who enforces the law? It's a point that Lawrence Lessig makes in his latest book--on the one hand, the Americans are saying "hands off the Internet". On the other hand, the reality is that the Americans are passing the most number of laws on the Internet. Regards, Ang Peng Hwa > -----Original Message----- > From: David Goldstein [mailto:goldstein_david@yahoo.com.au] > Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2000 10:56 PM > To: Bala Pillai; APPLe > Subject: Re: Shifty European Legislators? (fw) > > > Hi Bala et al > > I wouldn't say many Europeans object to free speech, it's just > something they don't think is an issue. I think they put more trust > in government. From what I've seen, I can see why they trust their > governments more than Americans or Australians do too, despite Jörg > Haider in Austria. > > Some research conducted for the Bertelsmann Foundation which should > be available somewhere on their Internet Content Summit site > (http://www.stiftung.bertelsmann.de/internetcontent) compares > attitudes to a range of issues in this area, comparing USA, > Australia, Germany and one other country, from my recollection. It > showed the Americans, then Australians were least concerned with free > speech issues, Germans the least. > > And I think you are right mentioning northern European countries as > concerned about these issues, but I'm not sure. The only country I > can recall having any interest is The Netherlands which is where the > only free speech people came from in Europe who attended the > conferences I attended last year dealing with labelling and > filtering, and where EFF have, or intended to, set up their European > office. > > Cheers > David > > > ===== > David Goldstein > Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 > A-5020 Salzburg > Austria > > email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au > phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) > > ______________________________________________________________ > _______________ > http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies > - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies > * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to > apple-request@apnic.net * > * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Thu Jul 6 03:18:07 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id DAA102136; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 03:18:06 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id DAA102130 for ; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 03:18:03 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 19578 invoked by uid 60001); 5 Jul 2000 17:18:01 -0000 Message-ID: <20000705171801.19577.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Thu, 06 Jul 2000 03:18:01 EST Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 03:18:01 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: The Age - IT firm crashes the Net language barrier To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi APPLers A story from The Age (Melbourne) about Melbourne IT registering domain names using Chinese, Arabic and Japanese characters. Cheers David IT firm crashes the Net language barrier http://www.smh.com.au/news/0007/06/national/national08.html An Australian information technology firm has snared a new market worth millions by setting up the world's first one-stop shop to register Internet domain names using Chinese, Arabic and Japanese characters. Chinese names will be the first Internet addresses to be auctioned off by Melbourne IT, starting in four weeks. Other languages such as Tamil will follow. The registration of Internet domain names in Chinese has a potential customer base in the billions and opens a gateway to the lucrative and populous non-English-speaking Internet community. Investors immediately rejoiced in Melbourne IT's foreign foray, sending the stock up by $1.30 to a high of $10.20. Melbourne IT shares eventually ended 20c stronger at $9.10. Until now, people who wanted to register Internet domain names needed a basic understanding of Roman script. But Melbourne IT has negotiated a licensing deal with the Singapore-based i-DNS Technology, which has developed a system allowing computers to read non-Roman characters. Melbourne IT will sell the new names through its Internet Names WorldWide division. The company's next goal is to offer a suite of Internet names using numerous European languages, with French, Italian and Spanish addresses to be ready in six months. Internet Names WorldWide's general manager, Mr Clive Flory, said the product would be popular with individuals and businesses who wanted Internet addresses in their native language. "The potential is huge," he said. "We are looking at the birth of the first truly international Internet community where language is no longer a barrier." Melbourne IT, an offshoot company set up by the University of Melbourne, recorded the second-biggest stag rise in the Australian Stock Exchange's history in 1999 when it floated at $8.20 - more than 270 per cent above its offer price of $2.20. During the dot-com boom last year, its shares went as high as $17. The company registered 300,000 names in the three months to March, and Mr Flory said the demand from Chinese and other non-English customers could match that. "Internet Names WordWide has a unique opportunity to be involved at the early stages of what promises to be a rapid expansion of Internet adoption by the non-English-speaking world," he said. The Age ===== David Goldstein Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 A-5020 Salzburg Austria email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Thu Jul 6 18:22:19 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA120334; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 18:22:19 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id SAA120330 for ; Thu, 6 Jul 2000 18:22:16 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 29200 invoked by uid 60001); 6 Jul 2000 08:22:14 -0000 Message-ID: <20000706082214.29199.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Thu, 06 Jul 2000 18:22:14 EST Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 18:22:14 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: Re: The Age - IT firm crashes the Net language barrier To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi APPLers Following my posting yesterday, an issue was raised with me about the ability to register web sites with non-ASCII characters such as Mandarin and others. If these characters become accepted in the country of the language, what possibilities are there for the government then to ban or make inaccessible web sites using standard ASCII characters, ie a-z, -, and 0-9? Does anybody have any ideas, or has anybody thought about this? Stories from The Age and SMH on the original story are at http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000706/A54327-2000Jul5.html and http://www.smh.com.au/news/0007/06/national/national08.html respectively. Cheers David ===== David Goldstein Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 A-5020 Salzburg Austria email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Fri Jul 7 03:01:37 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id DAA72877; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 03:01:37 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id DAA72873 for ; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 03:01:32 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 11756 invoked by uid 60001); 6 Jul 2000 17:01:28 -0000 Message-ID: <20000706170128.11755.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Fri, 07 Jul 2000 03:01:28 EST Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 03:01:28 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: Internet stories from the IHT To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all A few stories from the International Herald Tribune that may interest some on net privacy, the Internet in Syria, e-commerce in Singapore and Internet usage and e-commerce penetration in Asia. Cheers David How U.S. and EU Backed Net Privacy - The agreement between the United States and the European Union on Internet privacy standards, reached early this month, is expected to go into effect in July. An architect of the accord, David Aaron, until recently U.S. undersecretary of commerce for international trade, talked to Joseph Fitchett of the IHT about the breakthrough and about the changing nature of trade disputes between the U.S. and the EU nations. 6/20/00 The Full Story – http://www.iht.com/IHT/TECH/tek062000.html - Internet Brings Secrets And Sex to Damascus DAMASCUS - The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz is now available here, as is Amnesty International's latest report on human rights in Syria, the Central Intelligence Agency's most recent public report on the country and Eruption.com's guide to ''all nude, all man-to-man sex.'' 6/21/00 The Full Story – http://www.iht.com/IHT/TECH/tek062100.html Singapore's 'Network Economy' SINGAPORE - The Internet is playing a pivotal role to reshape all facets of our life and the way we do business. Some call it the makings of a ''new economy.'' At SilkRoute, we call it the ''network economy.'' 6/19/00 The Full Story – http://www.iht.com/IHT/TECH/tek061900d.html Asian Challenge Is to Capitalize On Explosion of Internet Usage By Peter Hamilton International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/IHT/TECH/tek061900a.html HONG KONG - Internet usage and e-commerce penetration in China can only be described as explosive. The big question - and the big opportunity - now is how to turn this new digital community into an electronic marketplace. The China Internet Network Information Center has estimated that there were around 2 million people online at the end of 1998, six months later about 4 million and by the end of 1999 nearly 9 million. Add Hong Kong and Macau, and you have a market of perhaps 11 million. Despite the phenomenal growth rate, that 11 million represents less than 1 percent of the population. Compare this with the United States, which had an Internet penetration of 23 percent at the end of 1998. The U.S. personal-computer penetration rate was 50 percent. China's was 2 percent. Of those with PCs, 46 percent in the United States were Internet subscribers, only 20 percent in China. It is not likely that the U.S. metrics will be applicable to the whole of China anytime soon. But over the next few years, the provinces that make up China's eastern seaboard and that have the highest output and foreign investment, and best-developed infrastructure, will begin to mirror the U.S. numbers. When that happens, we will be looking at a market of around 80 million subscribers out of a population of around 350 million. The story is much the same in other Asia-Pacific countries. From virtually no online community or e-commerce activity just a few years ago, Japan has, as of the end of 1999, an Internet market of over 15 million active users, with a 13 percent household-penetration rate. That compares with 14 percent in Taiwan, 16 percent in Hong Kong, and nearly 30 percent in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. It is clear that this surge in Internet and e-commerce use promises to change the economic and cultural landscape of China and the rest of Asia. Judging by the frequent government pronouncements throughout this region on the importance of high technology to their respective economies, it is also apparent that there is an appreciation of the Internet as an indispensable medium for business. With relatively little investment, the Internet can help open new markets, better exploit existing markets, streamline procurement and other business processes, lower the costs of doing business in storage, research and inventory, and increase the speed of work. On the consumer front, a thirst for knowledge and a desire to participate are major drivers, accompanied by a demonstrated willingness to accept, and more importantly pay for, high technology. Mobile-phone users in China spend an average of dollars 39 a month on their service. This is only 8 percent lower than the average monthly bill of U.S. consumers. The fear of being left behind in the race to create stronger and more prosperous societies through Internet use is not the only motivator. Many people also believe that the penalty for lagging is cultural or economic impoverishment. All of these incentives are leading participants to look for ways to accelerate this growth. Although physical infrastructure issues are still a substantial barrier to the development of the Internet in China, China's accession to the WTO, expected later this year, is likely to provide a major stimulus. With the WTO membership, it will allow increased foreign participation in telecommunications development, resulting in higher investment and greater competition and driving costs lower. WTO entry also will give manufacturers of high-technology products more opportunities to use China's manufacturing base, helping to reduce the production and distribution costs of much of the equipment that consumers will use to access the Internet. Cheaper computers, lower Internet subscription fees and lower-cost telephone services will all help to drive mass-market adoption of the Internet. Alternative access methods will also play a key role in facilitating Internet growth. For instance, a total of 350 million television households offer an attractive channel for reaching consumers. But international operators need to be aware of the vastly different parameters of television usage in China. Television-watching in China is a family affair. One television in a multigeneration household, compared with the average two to three in the United States, means that interactive or personal use of the TV will take some time to become established. In addition, the wireless-application protocol now being rolled out to mobile-phone users in Hong Kong and China will become one of the major gateways to the Internet for individual users. The growth of mobile-phone use in China demonstrates Chinese consumers' willingness to pay for the extra convenience that mobility provides. Given the relative lack of fixed-line infrastructure in China as well as the higher aggregate cost of wiring the country for Internet access, there is every reason to believe that the number of mobile subscribers in China will grow enormously from its current 43 million as mobile data services become widely available. The next step will be turning these eager users into eager spenders. Online sales in China totaled just dollars 6.6 million in 1999 but could grow 500 percent this year, according to an April report from the Center for Computer Industry Development and CCIDNet Consulting. In the rest of Asia, e-commerce revenues are already more significant; in 1999, they reached dollars 1.5 billion in Japan and dollars 720 million in South Korea, with the rest of Asia totaling dollars 180 million, according to the Boston Consulting Group. While markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan have the financial infrastructure to support e-commerce, others, including China, are still developing theirs. But it is not an insurmountable hurdle. With money as the mother of ingenuity, entrepreneurs have found alternatives, such as the use of trusted third parties (e.g., Internet café owners) as well as cash-on-delivery and post-office payment, to overcome the shortcomings of the banking system. - ONE OF the largest barriers to the development of significant e-commerce transactions will be consumer willingness to participate. More than 50 percent of the Internet population in China started using the Internet for the first time in the past six months. To consider this community an instant source of e-commerce revenues is to overstate the case dramatically. Given that one of the major concerns of consumers is potential fraud, even in countries where Internet experience is more than 5 years old, it's not surprising to find a greater reluctance to participate among neophytes. Establishing new Internet brands or transferring bricks-and-mortar brands to the Internet does much to overcome consumer concerns. But in China, establishing those brands remains in its infancy. Well-known brands will have an advantage in instilling confidence and trust in the quality and service associated with their products. But the real test of commercial success is the extent to which the consumer accepts the value and integrity of a brand that they will not be able to touch or feel. The Asian Internet market represents enormous potential for better access to information, improved prices and convenience for consumers. For businesses, lower operating costs and improvements to necessary processes. But before this widespread acceptance takes place, infrastructure and social barriers will need to be overcome. Once that happens, Asia, and China in particular, will become the largest market in the world for Internet commerce. ===== David Goldstein Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 A-5020 Salzburg Austria email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Fri Jul 7 18:49:25 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA90435; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 18:49:24 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id SAA90429 for ; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 18:49:21 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 927 invoked by uid 60001); 7 Jul 2000 08:49:18 -0000 Message-ID: <20000707084918.926.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Fri, 07 Jul 2000 18:49:18 EST Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 18:49:18 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: FT - £20m subsidy likely over e-mail bill To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk £20m subsidy likely over e-mail bill By Robert Shrimsley, Chief Political Correspondent Published: July 6 2000 21:17GMT | Last Updated: July 6 2000 21:38GMT http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3SZHJWCAC&live=true&tagid=ZZZAN4NOD0C&Collid=Any Tony Blair has told the Home Office to concede to business demands and contribute up to £20m towards its costs in implementing legislation allowing the interception of e-mails. Ministers are negotiating with business leaders after the Downing Street intervention, which followed intensive lobbying about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) bill by the Confederation of British Industry and other bodies. The £20m would fall far short of the highest estimates made by business leaders, which have reached £650m. Officials say the intercept requirements are less sweeping than feared. Ministers had previously refused to meet installation costs, promising only to pay for processing individual intercepts. Home Office officials said their ministers were already in "listening mode" because of the prospect of defeat in the House of Lords but that the growing levels of business criticism had alarmed Downing Street sufficiently for it to press for more concessions. Representatives of the CBI and the umbrella group Alliance for Electronic Industry saw Charles Clarke, the Home Office minister, on Thursday to press their case further. They had previously written to him on the issue, copying the letter to Mr Blair's Downing Street policy unit. Codes of draft practice on interception, covert surveillance, covert human intelligence sources and the use of decryption keys will be published by the Home Office in the next few days. Ministers have also agreed further changes to the bill. Police and customs officers will now need the authorisation of a chief constable to demand the encryption keys for deciphering encoded internet material, rather than a superintendent as previously envisaged. The home secretary will be given a particular duty of care for safekeeping seized material, which will be stored within the MI5 headquarters in London. A promised amendment tightening the definition of communications data - which police can obtain without a warrant from the Home Secretary - will also be published on Friday. It will clarify that this covers only internet addresses and traffic and will not include content. On Thursday Tory and Liberal Democrat peers - who together can outvote the government in the Lords - met to agree tactics for the next parliamentary stage of the bill which begins on Wednesday. _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Fri Jul 7 23:13:50 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA95346; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 23:13:49 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id XAA95335 for ; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 23:13:46 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 27484 invoked by uid 60001); 7 Jul 2000 13:13:43 -0000 Message-ID: <20000707131343.27483.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Fri, 07 Jul 2000 23:13:43 EST Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 23:13:43 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: The Times - E-mail snooping will create police state, guru warns To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all Further on email snooping in the UK, this time from The Times with comments from Esther Dyson. Cheers David E-mail snooping will create police state, guru warns BY MELISSA KITE, POLITICAL REPORTER http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/07/06/timpolpol02005.html THE world's leading Internet watchdog warned Tony Blair yesterday that his plans to give police powers to intercept private e-mails would turn Britain into a police state. Esther Dyson, who advises President Clinton and heads an international agency charged with setting policy for the Internet, urged ministers to abandon the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. The American businesswoman said the legislation was tantamount to passing a law forcing people to keep their living room curtains open. She told The Times at an Anglo-American enterprise conference in London attended by Gordon Brown, John Prescott, and Stephen Byers: "The UK is not uniquely clueless on this. This is what governments do, they control things. "But the Government needs to have the courage and the faith to leave people alone." Ms Dyson, who is chairman of the venture capitalist group EDventure Holdings, said: "You don't want a police state. Crime is crime, but that doesn't mean you can have a law making everyone keep their curtains up to help the police." The former Wall Street analyst said she was relieved that the Bill had run into opposition in the House of Lords. Ministers last week rushed out a series of amendments that water down some of the proposals after Liberal Democrat and Tory peers threatened to throw out the Bill. Concessions including tighter definitions of the information police can obtain without a warrant from the Home Secretary, and when they can demand the handover of decryption keys to allow the deciphering of encoded internet files. But the Government shows no sign of backing down from the main proposals which will give the security forces access to e-mails. All companies that provide Internet services would be forced to install expensive "black boxes" that would allow the security forces to monitor e-mail traffic. Minister say the Bill will help the police and MI5 to combat organised crime and terrorism but a powerful alliance of civil liberties groups, Internet companies and peers have protested that it would impose unfair costs on industry and risk abuse of privacy rights. MPs who believe the Bill contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights are threatening to mount a further rebellion when it returns to the Commons. Regarded in the US as the doyenne of cyberspace, Ms Dyson is chairman of Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which sets policy for the Net's core infrastructure. She is listed by Fortune Magazine as one of America's 50 most powerful women. Ms Dyson also dismissed claims that US businesses were worried about Britain joining the euro. She believed that Americans regarded it as inevitable that Britain would join eventually. "Americans take it for granted. American business is going to say 'the simpler you make it the better'. "Fundamentally it is more efficient, so long as it is on the right terms. So, on balance, go ahead and do the euro. It is cute to have the British pound, it is quaint. But Britain has more hope if it joins them and fights for what it wants: don't stand on the sidelines." _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Tue Jul 11 23:44:55 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA117033; Tue, 11 Jul 2000 23:44:54 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id XAA117029 for ; Tue, 11 Jul 2000 23:44:50 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 1920 invoked by uid 60001); 11 Jul 2000 13:44:48 -0000 Message-ID: <20000711134448.1919.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Tue, 11 Jul 2000 23:44:48 EST Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 23:44:48 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: U.S. lawyers mull commission to set Internet rules To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all A story on an American ABA, the American Bar Association, and one of their committees have released a report suggesting a multinational commission needs to be created to set global Internet rules. There’s also a story from Wired at http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,37487,00.html, but both are from Reuters. The report is available at http://www.kentlaw.edu/cyberlaw/docs/drafts/draft.rtf. The report is very long, close to 200 pages, but double line spaced. Cheers David U.S. lawyers mull commission to set Internet rules http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/070170.htm NEW YORK (Reuters) - A study of cyberspace legal issues released by an American Bar Association committee Monday suggested a multinational commission needs to be created to set global Internet rules. The two-year study, which was released at the ABA's annual meeting in New York, examined a range of topics including consumer protection, privacy, banking, securities, taxes and gaming. The report also reviewed how regulatory agencies in the United States and abroad must change to adapt to a new world of electronic commerce that is not dependent on physical location. The report's conclusions have not been adopted by the ABA. Industry leaders were expected to offer formal comments on the report on July 17 at the London session of the ABA's annual meeting. ``Anyone doing business in cyberspace needs to know what laws to obey, whether it be a question of what taxes are due and where, or what consumer protections apply to the sale of their products or services,'' Thomas Vartanian, chair of the ABA Global Cyberspace Jurisdiction Project, told a news conference. He said rules were needed to maximize the efficiency of electronic commerce and said government cannot write and approve laws fast enough to keep up with the changing technology. Vartanian said the study underscored the limited ability that any one state or nation may have in bringing greater certainty to cyberspace and thus the need for a multinational commission that could work with governments to establish rules. ``It's as if we've landed on Mars and we're constructing a commercial and business setting,'' he said. ``We have to establish new rules of engagement and we have to get people used to dealing with those new rules.'' The study offered a menu of solutions a global commission could undertake. Among the suggestions was the creation of a cybertribunal and voluntary industry councils to develop private sector methods of resolving e-commerce disputes. Another suggestion was that global industry regulatory authorities be encouraged to reach agreement about how laws will be applied to financial products and services offered in an electronic environment. _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Thu Jul 13 03:39:31 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id DAA100678; Thu, 13 Jul 2000 03:39:30 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id DAA100667 for ; Thu, 13 Jul 2000 03:39:22 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 15499 invoked by uid 60001); 12 Jul 2000 17:39:20 -0000 Message-ID: <20000712173920.15498.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Thu, 13 Jul 2000 03:39:20 EST Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 03:39:20 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: EC proposes overhaul of rules for electronic communication To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Commission proposes overhaul of rules for electronic communication The European Commission adopted today a package of legislative proposals designed to strengthen competition in the electronic communications markets in the EU for the benefit of consumers and European economy. It aims to drive forward the liberalisation of telecommunications markets by adapting regulation to the requirements of the Information Society and the digital revolution. The package puts particular emphasis on the stimulation of affordable high-speed Internet access and providing a light-touch legal framework for market players. This package of proposals represents a comprehensive reform of the regulatory framework for telecommunications in Europe and is aimed at providing the best conditions for a dynamic and competitive industry in Europe. http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=IP/00/749|0|RAPID&lg=EN The new regulatory framework will significantly simplify and clarify the existing regulatory framework, bringing the number of legal measures from 28 to 8: . Five harmonisation Directives, including a Framework Directive and four specific Directives on authorisation, access and interconnection, universal service and user rights, and data protection in telecommunications services. . A Regulation on the unbundling of the local loop. . A draft Commission Liberalisation Directive. . A Decision on Community radio spectrum policy (see IP/00/751 of today). For documents see http://europa.eu.int/comm/information_society/policy/framework/index_en.htm ===== David Goldstein Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 A-5020 Salzburg Austria email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) _____________________________________________________________________________ http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Movies - Find out what's on at the local cinema with Yahoo! Movies * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Fri Jul 14 21:21:47 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id VAA73729; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 21:21:46 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id VAA73717 for ; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 21:21:39 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 3448 invoked by uid 60001); 14 Jul 2000 11:21:53 -0000 Message-ID: <20000714112153.3447.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 21:21:53 EST Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 21:21:53 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: Bertelsmann Foundation & Self-regulation on the Internet To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all Below is an announcement about the Bertelsmann Foundation organising its third workshop on "Self-regulation on the Internet". Cheers David The Bertelsmann Foundation is organizing a third workshop in the framework of the project on "Self-regulation on the Internet". The workshop will focus on the role socially relevant groups can play in the promotion of their various ethics and values on the Internet. Specifically, there will be an introduction to the ICRA system which enables third parties (such as religious groups, political organizations, trade unions, child protection agencies etc.) to create their own rating templates for that filter system. The Bertelsmann Foundation aims at bringing together socially relevant groups from all over Europe to discuss how they can develop profiles for a filtering system like that, mirroring their set of ethical values. The overall goal is to increase safety and responsibility on the Internet. The workshop will be held on September 8th in Guetersloh, Germany. Parties interested in participating are encouraged to contact Ms. Bettina Meier, either by phone (+49 5241-81-74367) or e-mail (bettina.meier@bertelsmann.de). For further information on the Bertelsmann Foundation's self-regulation project: http://www.stiftung.bertelsmann.de/internetcontent _____________________________________________________________________________ http://invites.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Invites - Have a party with Yahoo! Invites * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Mon Jul 17 19:29:51 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id TAA67943; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:29:50 +1000 (EST) Received: from guardian.apnic.net (guardian.apnic.net [203.37.255.100]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA67929 for ; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:29:47 +1000 (EST) Received: (from mail@localhost) by guardian.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id TAA28412 for ; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:21:49 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com(128.11.23.151) by int-gw.staff.apnic.net via smap (V2.1) id xma028409; Mon, 17 Jul 00 19:21:38 +1000 Received: (qmail 12755 invoked by uid 60001); 17 Jul 2000 09:24:03 -0000 Message-ID: <20000717092403.12754.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:24:03 EST Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:24:03 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: Canada's Children In A Wired World: The Parents' View To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all More on what parents consider to be their concerns regarding online content, this time from a survey in Canada. Below is the news release from the study, or see http://www.media-awareness.ca/eng/webaware/netsurvey2000/index.htm for the study home page. Cheers David Canadian parents want collaboration to help them manage their children's Internet use http://www.media-awareness.ca/eng/webaware/pressgallery/wired.htm Whistler, BC, May 2, 2000 - Canadian parents say they would like to see a collaborative approach to managing the Internet, according to the results of a groundbreaking national survey on Internet use in Canadian families. The Media Awareness Network survey, Canada's Children In A Wired World: The Parents' View, polled 1080 Canadian families to determine parents' views and opinions about the Internet. Over 70 per cent of parents with children between 6 and 16 who have a computer indicate they have Internet access at home, and 86 per cent of these say their children use the Internet. Jan D'Arcy, Co-Director of the Media Awareness Network, released a summary of the survey's findings this afternoon at the British Columbia Internet Association (BCIA) conference in Whistler, BC. The survey was conducted by Environics Research Group and funded by the federal departments of Industry, Health and Human Resources Development. It is the first of its kind in Canada. The survey reveals that, overall, Canadian parents are optimistic about the Internet, believing that the benefits of this new medium outweigh the risks associated with it. "Canadian parents want their children to reap the benefits of the Internet, and are ready to invest in learning how to help their children be safe and informed Internet users," says Joyce Eynon, President of the Canadian Home and School Federation. However, the Federation sees other stakeholders, including schools, playing an important role. Brian McKinnon, President-elect of the Canadian Association of Principals (CAP), agrees. "CAP acknowledges that Internet education is a shared responsibility between our schools and the parents of our students," says McKinnon. The Canadian Teachers' Federation (CTF) also underscores the importance of education. "If Canadian schools are going to be connected to the Internet," says Marilies Rettig, President of the Canadian Teachers' Federation (CTF), "we need to help students develop the critical thinking skills to deal with online content." Associations such as CAP, CTF and the Canadian Library Association (CLA) have already partnered with the Media Awareness Network to raise awareness of Internet issues so that parents, educators and librarians can help young Canadians become wise and responsible Internet users. "The CLA's member libraries are committed to collaborating with parents, schools and the Media Awareness Network to educate the next generation of library users in the safe and appropriate use of the Internet," says Lorraine McQueen, President of the CLA. Parents indicate that their primary concern with their children's Internet use is inappropriate online content. When asked what they felt were effective solutions to addressing such content, parents identified measures to be taken at home, in the classroom, and by the Internet industry. Overall, parents cite "educating children" (94 per cent) and "educating parents" (91 per cent) as the most effective strategies for ensuring wise use of the Internet. "We're pleased with the high level of engagement Canadian families have with the Internet," says Jay Thomson, President of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP). "CAIP looks forward to continuing its work with other stakeholders to promote the positive use of the Internet by Canadians wherever they log on." "The results show great promise for collaboration and partnership between the public and private spheres," says D'Arcy. "The way Canada manages the challenges of the new media environment - especially for children - may well become a model for the world." The key findings of the survey are available on the Media Awareness Network's Web site at www.media-awareness.ca/eng/webaware/netsurvey2000. The Media Awareness Network (MNet) is Canada's leading national media education organization and an international leader in Web literacy initiatives. Last year, MNet launched Web Awareness: Knowing the Issues, a program designed to raise awareness of the issues facing children and young people as they go online. The program is now being rolled out across the country. For more information, visit the Web Awareness Web site at www.webawareness.org. _____________________________________________________________________________ http://invites.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Invites - Have a party with Yahoo! Invites * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Tue Jul 18 20:09:46 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id UAA74736; Tue, 18 Jul 2000 20:09:45 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id UAA74728 for ; Tue, 18 Jul 2000 20:09:41 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 22260 invoked by uid 60001); 18 Jul 2000 10:12:56 -0000 Message-ID: <20000718101256.22259.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Tue, 18 Jul 2000 20:12:56 EST Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 20:12:56 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: NY Times - Proposal Offers Surveillance Rules for the Internet To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Proposal Offers Surveillance Rules for the Internet http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/biztech/articles/18secure.html ------------------------------------------------- White House Tries to Balance Rights of Computer Users and Law Enforcement By STEPHEN LABATON with MATT RICHTEL WASHINGTON, July 17 -- The White House said today that it would propose legislation to set legal requirements for surveillance in cyberspace by law enforcement authorities similar in some ways to those for telephone wiretaps. Privacy advocates and civil liberties groups welcomed some aspects of the proposal but said they remained alarmed about a new F.B.I. computer system that searches and intercepts private e-mail and can easily capture communications of people not suspected of crimes. The legislative proposal was made as the administration also announced today that it had eased export controls on encryption technology, making it significantly easier for American companies to sell software products to the European Union and eight other trading partners that can be used to keep computer data and communications secure. Both the electronic surveillance proposal and the export control changes are part of a broader policy outlined in a speech today by John D. Podesta, the White House chief of staff. He said the policy tries to balance the privacy rights of computer users against the needs of law enforcement to be able to monitor digital communications. Congress and federal regulators have done little work in the area, even as the world has quickly come to rely heavily on communications through cyberspace. More than 1.4 billion e-mail messages change hands every day. The administration's legislative proposal on electronic surveillance tries to fix the inconsistent patchwork of laws that apply different standards to telephone, cable and other technologies with a single standard for those systems and the Internet. Prospects for the proposal in Congress are uncertain. Until now, law enforcement agencies have been able to monitor electronic communication with only modest court supervision. The proposed legislation would require that the same standards that apply to the interception of the content of telephone calls apply to the interception of e-mail messages. Specifically, it would require law enforcement agents to demonstrate that they have probable cause of a crime to obtain a court order seeking the contents of a suspect's e-mail messages. The proposal would also give federal magistrates greater authority to review requests by law enforcement authorities for so-called pen registers -- lists of the phone numbers called from a particular location and the time of the calls. The magistrates now have no authority to question the request for such lists, which are frequently used by the authorities. In the context of the Internet, existing laws are ambiguous about what standards apply for different kinds of surveillance. Many limitations imposed on law enforcement in the context of telephone wiretaps -- like the requirement that such taps be approved at the highest level of the Justice Department -- do not appear to apply to e-mail surveillance. Moreover, the Cable Act of 1984 sets a far harder burden for government agents to satisfy when trying to monitor computers using cable modems than when monitoring telephones. That has proved troublesome for law enforcement authorities as more Americans begin to use high-speed Internet service through cable networks. The Cable Act also requires that the target of the surveillance be given notice and an opportunity to challenge the request. "It's time to update and harmonize our existing laws to give all forms of technology the same legislative protections as our telephone conversations," Mr. Podesta said in a speech at the National Press Club. "Our proposed legislation would harmonize the legal standards that apply to law enforcement's access to e-mails, telephone calls and cable services." White House officials said today that they hoped the proposal would break a logjam in Congress where a variety of different measures have been introduced dealing with electronic surveillance. The administration's proposal adopts some elements of both Democratic and Republican bills. But Congressional aides said there was too little time left in the legislative session and that the matter would in all likelihood remain unresolved until after the next term begins, in 2001. Administration officials said the proposal would apply to communications that either begin or end in the United States. It would not apply to e-mail messages transmitted entirely outside the country. Privacy and civil liberties groups criticized the administration's proposal because it would continue to permit the government to use a new surveillance system that the groups say may be used far more broadly than older technologies, enabling federal agents to monitor an unlimited amount of innocent communications, including those of people who are not targets of criminal investigations. The system, used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is called Carnivore, so named, agents say, because it is able to quickly get the "meat" in huge quantities of e-mail messages, so-called instant messaging and other communications between computers. Carnivore is housed in a small black box and consists of hardware and software that trolls for information after being connected to the network of an Internet service provider. Once installed, it has the ability to monitor all of the e-mail on a network, from the list of what mail is sent to the actual content of the communications. Marcus C. Thomas, section chief of the Cyber Technology Section of the F.B.I., said the technology was developed 18 months ago by F.B.I. engineers and has been used fewer than 25 times. Mr. Thomas said that Carnivore had potentially broad capabilities and that he understood the concerns of privacy groups. "It can do a ton of things," he said. "That's why it's illegal to do so without a clear order from the court." He said that most Internet service providers had cooperated with requests to use Carnivore. Privacy groups and some Internet service providers have been deeply critical of the use of Carnivore because, once installed on a network, it permits the government to take whatever information it wants. Moreover, the government has not said what it does with the extraneous material it gathers that is not relevant to the particular surveillance. The issue does not often arise today with the monitoring of telephone conversations because when a law enforcement authority wants to see a list of telephone calls made by a suspect, the agent gets an order from a magistrate, presents the order to a telephone company, and the company then turns over the list. In at least one instance, an Internet company did not cooperate so readily with the government. In December, federal marshals approached the company with a court order permitting them to deploy a device to register time, date and source information involving e-mail messages sent to and from a specified account. Trying to establish a single standard for different technologies. Concerned the device would record broader information, the company countered with a compromise: it would provide the government with the requested information about e-mail senders and recipients, according to Robert Corn-Revere, a lawyer for the company, in recent Congressional testimony. The company was later identified as EarthLink, a service provider with 3.5 million subscribers. Mr. Corn-Revere said the government initially accepted the compromise but later became dissatisfied and wished to use its own device. EarthLink objected but was overruled by a a federal court, which ordered the device deployed. Other Internet companies have also been critical of Carnivore. William L. Schrader, chairman and chief executive of PSINet, a major commercial Internet service provider, said that the system gave the F.B.I. the ability to monitor e-mail messages of every person on a given network. He said he would refuse to permit the government to use the technology at PSINet unless agents could prove that it could only sift out the traffic from a given individual that is the target of a court order. "I object to American citizens and any citizens of the world always being subject to someone monitoring their e-mail," said Mr. Schrader, whose company serves about 100,000 businesses and more than 10 million users. "I believe it's unconstitutional and I'll wait for the Supreme Court to force me to do it." Civil liberties groups, meanwhile, said that today's policy announcement was an inadequate response to the growing controversy over the deployment of Carnivore. "Today's speech was camouflage to cover the mess that is Carnivore," said Barry Steinhardt, an associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "In light of the public and Congressional criticism of Carnivore, we had hoped and expected far more from an administration that likes to tout its sensitivity to privacy rights. Rather than glossing over Carnivore, Podesta should have announced that the administration was suspending its use." Facing growing concerns about Carnivore, Attorney General Janet Reno said on Thursday that she would review whether the system was being used in a manner consistent with privacy rights in the Constitution and in federal law. A subcommittee of the House is set to hold a hearing next week on the system. While the civil liberties and privacy groups applauded giving judges greater discretion to review certain kinds of requests for surveillance, they were critical of other aspects of the proposal. Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research organization that studies privacy issues and technology, criticized the administration for lowering the standards for surveillance of cable modems rather than raising the standards for telephone surveillance. "The Cable Act provides for one of the best privacy protections in the United States," Mr. Rotenberg said. "The question is whether to harmonize up or harmonize down. Our view is this harmonizes down." But administration officials said the Cable Act never contemplated that there would be broad use of cable modems for e-mail traffic and that the standards used for obtaining warrants for telephone surveillance should also apply to digital communications through cable networks. _____________________________________________________________________________ http://invites.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Invites - Have a party with Yahoo! Invites * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Tue Jul 25 00:53:39 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA116586; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 00:53:39 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id AAA116579 for ; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 00:53:35 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 16891 invoked by uid 60001); 24 Jul 2000 15:01:39 -0000 Message-ID: <20000724150139.16890.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 01:01:39 EST Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 01:01:39 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: AVN - SexTracker CEO Testifies TO COPA To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all A story from Adult Video News about one of the adult industries so-called more influential executives who advocates that the Internet should be allowed to do the job of keeping out the child porn by itself, to reject mandatory Net filtering in favor of allowing the Net, including the adult Net, to police itself, which he said it does very effectively, and also supported the work of the Internet Content Rating Association. Cheers David News date: 2000-07-21 AVN News SexTracker CEO Testifies TO COPA http://www.avn.com/ng/query.cgi?act=detail&template=news&event_id=2274 LOS ANGELES - Let the adult Net police itself -. it’s growing enough that it should be allowed to do the job of keeping out the child porn by itself. That’s what a federal panel on the Child Online Protection Act - currently in court-ordered limbo - heard from one of the adult Net’s more influential executives, Flying Crocodile president/CEO Andrew Edmond. Edmond testified to the panel at a Richmond, Virginia hearing July 20 - and he was the first adult industry figure to talk to the panel. He urged them to reject mandatory Net filtering in favor of allowing the Net, including the adult Net, to police itself, which he says it does very effectively. “The evident problems of filtering deal directly with the First Amendment and constitutionality of filtering in our diverse American society of ethnic, social, religious, and therefore, ethical diffusion of influences over our culture,” he told the panel. “A standard filtering system imposed by government or an oligarchy of corporate systems is inevitably unconstitutional.” Edmond proposed “an adult online community standard based upon labeling and rating systems proposed by the Internet Content Rating Association, whom (we) currently work with,” Edmond testified at the hearing. He also proposed industry-wide adoption and deployment of iQcheck, a child-porn catching program operated by a pair of Flying Crocodile subsidiaries, SexTracker and YNOT. “We are available, knowledgeable, and prepared to perform thorough investigations, research, and reports,” he continued, “use our coalitions in place and enhance the communication in the Adult Online Community to form a self regulating body on the web that adheres to the standards of the Commission and the American public to produce and apply innovative technical solutions to further combat these problems.” Edmond's invitation to testify came after the Commission found YNOT and learned about SexTracker's efforts through iQcheck. Edmond was unavailable for further comment, but SexTracker spokeswoman, Rae Grant, said, "The Commission explores all possible solutions to abolish illegal content on the Web and we presented them with iQcheck - Internet Quality Check." Grant continued, "iQcheck reports to the FBI and/or shuts down any sites on our hub that have illegal content on them. We take the problem on directly, with technology and manpower that police our sites and do iQchecking all day long." Edmond also testified directly about iQcheck to the COPA panel. “An iQcheck seal is displayed on participating Websites and links to an automated system which tracks all reports Flying Crocodile receives from the web-browsing public of abuse issues, such as copyright infringement, unsolicited bulk email (spam) and exploitation of minors,” he testified. “A visitor to an adult site who questions the content of a site, or who believes they have been spammed by a site that carries the iQcheck seal, can simply click on the seal itself to go directly to Flying Crocodile’s iQcheck home page, where they may report the perceived abuse. The user will then be notified of any action taken as a result of their complaint and can revisit the iQcheck home page to track the status of their reports.” Grant said, "The panel is open to exploring effective solutions." COPA was challenged by the ACLU on First grounds and blocked by a preliminary court injunction. It’s still awaiting a ruling from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The law included calling for a panel to look into ways to keep children from getting to porn in general and child porn in particular. Its findings are due to Congress by November. ===== David Goldstein Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 A-5020 Salzburg Austria email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) _____________________________________________________________________________ http://invites.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Invites - Have a party with Yahoo! Invites * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Tue Jul 25 08:01:32 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id IAA85007; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 08:01:32 +1000 (EST) Received: from mail.visi.com (baal.visi.com [209.98.98.3]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA84995 for ; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 08:01:29 +1000 (EST) Received: from publicus (clift.dsl.visi.com [209.98.142.42]) by mail.visi.com (8.8.8/8.7.5) with SMTP id RAA08999; Mon, 24 Jul 2000 17:00:16 -0500 (CDT) Posted-Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 17:00:16 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <200007242200.RAA08999@mail.visi.com> From: "Steven Clift" Organization: http://www.publicus.net To: digitaldivide@list.benton.org, ispo@www.ispo.cec.be, link@www.anu.edu.au, apple@apnic.net, istf-participants@lyris.isoc.org, gkd@phoenix.edc.org Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 17:06:10 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: G8 Dotforce E-mail Announcement List - Digital Opportunity Task Force Reply-to: slc@publicus.net CC: CARR-L@LISTSERV.LOUISVILLE.EDU, DEVMEDIA@LISTSERV.UOGUELPH.CA X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.11) Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk As part of Democracies Online I have created a special low volume e-mail list for those interested in the new G8 Digital Opportunity Task Force. This is a unofficial e-mail list not connected to the G8. I'll use it to let people know when their official web site and other useful materials become available online. To join the e-mail list, send a blank e-mail message to: do-dotforce-announce-subscribe@egroups.com To join the Democracies Online Newswire, visit: http://www.e-democracy.org/do For useful background information, visit the following web pages: Official G8 Materials: http://www.g8kyushu-okinawa.go.jp/e/index.html World Economic Forum: http://www.weforum.org G8 Online Summit News: http://g8.market2000.ca/summit_news.asp Yahoo Reuters: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000722/wl/group_leadall_dc_13.html BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid%5F843000/843160.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_846000/846709.stm I hope you find this information useful. Steven Clift Democracies Online Newswire http://www.e-democracy.org/do Publicus.Net http://www.publicus.net - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Steven Clift - E: clift@publicus.net T:+1.612.822.8667 Info - http://publicus.net DO - http://e-democracy.org/do Web White & Blue - http://webwhiteblue.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Tue Jul 25 20:02:32 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id UAA86908; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 20:02:31 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id UAA86896 for ; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 20:02:27 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 7143 invoked by uid 60001); 25 Jul 2000 10:11:08 -0000 Message-ID: <20000725101108.7142.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Tue, 25 Jul 2000 20:11:08 EST Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 20:11:08 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: The Domain Name Game - register to vote To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all For those interested in participating in the upcoming ICANN elections, you have until 31 July to register, and you can do so on their web site (http://www.icann.org). Cheers David The Domain Name Game By Alexis Gutzman (Internet.com) 24 July http://ecommerce.internet.com/solutions/tech_advisor/article/0,1467,9561_421681,00.html Just who owns the database that assigns domain names to IP addresses? It turns out that this is a more complex question than it appears. Some mystery has always shrouded the domain name database. It seemed that Network Solutions owned it, way back when they were called Internic, but it turns out they were just licensed to manage it exclusively by the U.S. government. Two years ago, the Clinton administration gave permission to manage the whole thorny issue of domain names to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). However, it turns out the U.S. government still owns the database. ICANN Has the Power What does ICANN do? And, more importantly, why should you care? It is the group that decides what top-level domains (TLDs) can be used. It authorizes companies like Network Solutions and others to register domain names to individuals, organizations, and companies. It's also the first level of dispute resolution for those who believe their property rights have been violated by someone "taking" their domain names. Ultimately, most of these disputes end up in court, but ICANN can transfer a domain, for example, based on a claim by one Party A against Party B, even if Party B got to it first. ICANN was the government's private sector solution to the obvious question: why should the domain name system be administered by the government? ICANN is composed of a 19-member board of directors. Nine of the directors are selected from three supporting organizations (domain-name supporting, address supporting, and protocol supporting). An additional directorship belongs to the CEO, with the other nine being elected by the at-large membership, which is anyone with a valid e-mail and postal mail address that registers by July 31. ICANN holds quarterly meetings, which are open to the public, to bring the wrath of millions of Internet users upon itself, or so it seems. Power to the People . . . Or Not The most recent wrath-inspiring event unfolded at its Yokohama, Japan meeting, which took place July 13-17. At this meeting, one of the first things proposed was a change to the bylaws to eliminate the at-large directors. Since it's a closed system already, and since this miniscule organization has the power to change the way the Web is managed, it seems like a small thing to ask that some of those on the board represent the interests of the regular Web users - academics, business owners, shoppers, etc. Fortunately, the proposal was defeated, and elections will continue as scheduled. Although as of about two weeks ago, I read that only 28,000 people had registered to be at-large members, so perhaps there simply is no public interest in being part of these decisions. New TLDs: Relevant or not? Another thing on the agenda was the creation of new TLDs such as .shop or .travel. ICANN is now accepting applications for TLD administrators for the new TLDs. Companies or non-profits that want to see a new TLD instituted and want to administer the TLD themselves simply have to complete an application and pay a $50,000 non-refundable application fee to ICANN to have their TLDs considered. Aside from the question of the feasibility of a non-refundable application fee of $50,000 for most companies or non-profits, there's the question of whether new TLDs will be relevant. Will .shop ever catch on the way .com has? Have we existed for too long in a .com-centered world for anything else ever to have the cache of .com? Will courts interpret intellectual property laws in such a way that the current owners of every .com domain pretty much get first dibs on the .shop equivalent domain? Can you imagine how Amazon.shop could possibly belong to anyone other than Amazon.com, regardless of who got in line first to register it? Reorganization of the TLD Structure Perhaps what is needed is a new domain addressingsystem. Something on the order of RealNames, where there is no .com, .org, or .shop. Whatever the future of Web site identity is, ICANN's nineteen-member board is going to be deciding it for all of us. You can have a say in who's on this board. Five at-large directors are going to be elected before the end of November. Right now, the nominating committee is deciding on a pool of candidates. By the end of July, the ICANN nominating committee will post that list. July 31 is also the deadline for registering as an at-large member. During the month of August, anyone who wants to be a candidate for the board, but isn't part of the official pool, can make his case and amass the necessary votes to be part of the pool of candidates. Each candidate will post a Web page stating his qualifications during the month of September, and elections will be held October 1-10. Get Out the Vote However, you can only influence the vote if you're registered. Registration ends July 31. The servers are already overwhelmed, so while it should take about 3 minutes to register, you may find that it takes you much longer. The home page says they're working on increasing capacity. Imagine if nineteen people could get together to decide that all postal addresses were going to be changed, wouldn't you want a say in what kind of number - or color or whatever - were written on your mailbox? Registering to vote and voting in the ICANN election is your chance to have that say. Alexis D. Gutzman is an E-commerce Technology Author and Consultant and author of The HTML 4 Bible, FrontPage 2000 Answers!, and ColdFusion 4 for Dummies. Her newest book, The E-commerce Arsenal: 12 Technologies You Need to Prevail in the Digital Arena will be out in October. She can be reached at agutzman@internet.com _____________________________________________________________________________ http://invites.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Invites - Have a party with Yahoo! Invites * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Wed Jul 26 23:35:46 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA111246; Wed, 26 Jul 2000 23:35:45 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com (web1301.mail.yahoo.com [128.11.23.151]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id XAA111220 for ; Wed, 26 Jul 2000 23:35:29 +1000 (EST) Received: (qmail 1467 invoked by uid 60001); 26 Jul 2000 13:45:01 -0000 Message-ID: <20000726134501.1466.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Wed, 26 Jul 2000 23:45:01 EST Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 23:45:01 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: CNN - The trouble with regulating hatred online To: APPLe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all A story from CNN that looks at regulating hate online. There is also another story titled ‘Germany won't block access to international Nazi sites’ at http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/07/25/germany.internet.reut/index.html. Cheers David The trouble with regulating hatred online July 25, 2000 by Keith Perine http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/07/25/regulating.hatred.idg/index.html (IDG) -- The Internet has revolutionized the business of hate. There are anywhere from hundreds to thousands of Web sites with racist or otherwise hateful content. For hate groups, the Net is a cheap and easy way to reach vast audiences under a cloak of anonymity. "The lunatic fringe might be on the fringes, but they understand the power of the Internet as well as anyone in society," says Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which tracks hate groups. The center estimates there are more than 2,300 "problematic" Web sites, including more than 500 extremist sites authored by Europeans, but hosted on American servers to avoid stringent antihate laws in Europe. HateWatch, a small East Coast group that tracks hate sites, figures there are 500 such sites on the Internet. Its research director, Brian Marcus, draws a line between methodical operations of organized groups and pages that feature racial epithets but little else. "That's not a hate site; that's graffiti on the wall," says Marcus. While some would like to see new laws to deal with these sites -- wherever they are and as many as there may be -- the U.S. constitutional right to free speech protects most of them. Some European nations, however, lack the same free-speech standards. So, like other Internet policy issues such as data privacy and encryption, Europe's standards on hate speech clash with American ones. It's another instance where there's little or no consensus on how to govern this global medium. When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City in 1995, perhaps the only hate site on the Web was Stormfront -- a white-supremacist site run by Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who picked up some computer skills while serving a federal prison sentence in the 1980s. Stormfront has since become the grandfather of dozens of sites that espouse hatred of blacks, gays, Jews and women, deny the Holocaust and rail against abortion. "A few years ago, a Klansman needed [to put out] substantial effort and money to produce and distribute a shoddy pamphlet that might reach a few hundred people," says Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which also monitors hate groups. "Today, with a $500 computer and negligible costs, that same Klansman can put up a slickly produced Web site with a potential audience in the millions." Even one hate site is one too many in countries such as Germany, which has criminalized the posting of Nazi propaganda and related materials. The German constitution, written in the aftermath of the Third Reich, contains weaker speech protections than the United States' First Amendment. Moreover, German authorities are zealous about combating more than just neo-Nazism online. In 1995, Bavarian prosecutors raided the offices of CompuServe's German subsidiary, charging the company with failing to block access to child-pornography sites. The head of the subsidiary was convicted and fined in 1998, though the conviction was reversed on appeal after the company argued that it couldn't totally block access. That key point demonstrates how the Internet's fluidity defies national norms. The Wiesenthal Center sponsored a conference last month in Berlin, where German government officials called for a set of international rules to govern online speech. The European Commission is already studying how to develop such standards, but it's not likely it will get the international cooperation it seeks, especially from the U.S. American companies so far have been willing to make small concessions. For example, Amazon.com agreed to stop selling copies of Mein Kampf to German readers after the German government objected. But the European drive to bar online Web content hasn't put a dent in the First Amendment protections those sites enjoy in the United States " nor is it likely to do so, given the American legal tradition of protecting even the most extreme ideas. To make matters worse, hate is branching out into e-commerce, with some sites selling music, clothing, jewelry and literature. The White Heritage Emporium sells jewelry, including a swastika "Good Fortune" pendant, T-shirts and Confederate flags. And while many ISPs refuse to host hate sites, Black sees a market opportunity: He now sells Web hosting services through Stormfront. Nazi regalia, such as daggers, uniforms and photographs, is regularly auctioned on eBay and Yahoo. Indeed, Yahoo has been sued in France, which has a law against exhibiting or selling objects that represent racism. Yahoo France filters out such objects, but the company has defied a court order instructing it to block French Web surfers from accessing the auctions through the portal's other sites. Its lawyers are expected to tell the French court that it's impractical for an Internet company to globally comply with the laws and standards of hundreds of different countries. And that's the heart of the dilemma. National laws used to be buttressed by geographic barriers, customs inspectors and the like. But innovation has been eroding national barriers for decades, and the Internet has eroded them even further. There's no easy solution to prevent content, from the mundane to the shocking, from reaching every Internet surfer, regardless of geography. German xenophobes, for example, can easily have their Web sites hosted from the States, which in turn can be accessed from anyplace. "If you want the Internet to come into your country, you're going to have to live with some of its openness," says Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington think tank. "You can't bureaucratize it." For now, Europe hopes to make do with a filtering system being developed by the Internet Content Rating Association, a nonprofit British group that's partnered with AOL Europe and the Bertelsmann Foundation, among others. But ICRA's system hinges on the voluntary adoption of a ratings system by content providers. It's hard to imagine hate sites agreeing to rate themselves. Yahoo's involvement with online hate doesn't end with its auction site. The company hosts dozens of online chat "clubs" devoted to neo-Nazism and other such causes, despite a clause in its user agreement that forbids "hateful or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable" content. Yahoo spokesman Mark Hull says the company investigates complaints and deletes grossly objectionable clubs. But it's done case by case. "We're trying to promote inclusiveness and a wider range of free expression," adds Hull. He points out that not all chat clubs are as objectionable as they might appear at first glance. For example, a group called "Skins on Skates" turned out to be nothing more than a klatch of skateboarders with shaved heads. Other ISPs, such as EarthLink, have a hands-off policy toward objectionable content. "We're pretty much Switzerland," says EarthLink spokeswoman Kirsten Hamling. "We don't monitor what people do, we don't watch where they go." She notes that EarthLink does police itself for obviously illegal content. Yet even if ISPs such as Yahoo and EarthLink completely purge xenophobic content, Stormfront is always waiting in the wings. The difference between protected and unprotected speech in the United States boils down to whether the speech is a direct, credible threat against a specific target, or a direct incitement to imminent illegal action. There have been prosecutions of online hate speech that appear to cross the line. However, they're usually conducted under the rubric of federal civil rights or fair housing laws. Last year, a jury awarded $107 million to plaintiffs in a case involving the Nuremberg Files, a Web page that listed names and addresses of abortionists and accused them of crimes against humanity. Three of the doctors were murdered, and their names were crossed out on the page. MindSpring shut down the site, only to be sued for breach of contract by the site's operator, who meanwhile released a CD-ROM version of it. In two federal cases, university students have been convicted of civil-rights violations for sending threatening e-mails to minority groups at their schools (thus interfering with the students' attendance at a public college). In 1998, Richard Machado was convicted of sending threatening e-mail to 60 Asian students at the University of California at Irvine. Last year, Kingman Quon, a California State University at Los Angeles student, pleaded guilty to civil-rights charges and was sentenced to two years in jail for e-mailing threatening messages to Hispanic students, professors and others across the country. And earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development settled a housing discrimination complaint against a white supremacist for allegedly using the Web to harass a fair-housing advocate who also served on a hate crimes task force. HUD is funding a national task force that will study online hate speech in a series of meetings nationwide. The SPLC's Potok and other antihate advocates contend the Net makes it easier for racists to find each other. The Web removes the need for face-to-face proselytizing and recruiting; xenophobes can now meet and spread their messages globally from the comfort of their homes. They can also reach unlikely new audiences. Black's 11-year-old son, Derek, runs Stormfront for Kids, which includes topics such as Pokemon and videogames, alongside a "history of the white race" and Confederate flag graphics. Marcus of HateWatch adds that some online hate groups resort to Internet hacking, ranging from e-mail spoofs and denial-of-service attacks to domain name "Webjacking." Some sites even offer downloadable hacking software. Yale Edeiken, a Pennsylvania historian who rebuts Holocaust deniers, says he has been harassed since 1988. In the wee hours of July 9, several state troopers visited Edeiken's home. They were investigating an online post, apparently by Edeiken, that vowed to destroy an Allentown, Pa., abortion clinic. He didn't send the message, but he has a pretty good idea who hijacked his e-mail address. He'd already launched a civil suit to stop the harassment. The police were "absolutely worthless," grumbles Edeiken, who says the cops wouldn't act on threats alone. Hatred online won't be eradicated with harsh laws, aggressive software filters or even cybersquatting, which is practiced by some antihate groups. A better method is unflinching exposure and examination. Robert Hilliard, a communications professor at Emerson College in Boston, is planning a fall seminar called "Hate.com." Hilliard says the class is already so popular that it's overbooked. _____________________________________________________________________________ http://invites.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Invites - Have a party with Yahoo! Invites * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Fri Jul 28 03:10:22 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id DAA85070; Fri, 28 Jul 2000 03:10:21 +1000 (EST) Received: from guardian.apnic.net (guardian.apnic.net [203.37.255.100]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id DAA85054 for ; Fri, 28 Jul 2000 03:10:15 +1000 (EST) Received: (from mail@localhost) by guardian.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA29273 for ; Thu, 27 Jul 2000 18:45:38 +1000 (EST) Received: from web1301.mail.yahoo.com(128.11.23.151) by int-gw.staff.apnic.net via smap (V2.1) id xma029270; Thu, 27 Jul 00 18:45:26 +1000 Received: (qmail 29359 invoked by uid 60001); 27 Jul 2000 08:55:38 -0000 Message-ID: <20000727085538.29358.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [193.83.183.204] by web1301.mail.yahoo.com; Thu, 27 Jul 2000 18:55:38 EST Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 18:55:38 +1000 (EST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Goldstein?= Subject: completed Internet History To: APPLe Cc: David.Goldstein@sbg.nic.at MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Hi all Some time ago I asked for help in compiling an Internet History. I’ve now completed it and for those who are interested, you can find it at http://www.nic.at/english/geschichte.html and there is a German version at http://www.nic.at/german/geschichte.html. The stats which I was enquiring about on the size of the Internet as many of you know are very hard to work out, there are so many figures and which one is accurate, I don’t know if anybody really knows. In my new position, I am also responsible for compiling a ‘news’ section which is focussed on domain names given that I am now working at nic.at, the domain name registry here in Austria, and on other news under ‘Internet Community’. The news can be found at http://www.nic.at/english/community.html and I am adding the latest two days news on the home page, http://www.nic.at/english/main.html in English and http://www.nic.at/german/default.htm in German. I hope some of you at least will find this useful as I am covering many of the issues that are discussed on Link in my news, and I am also open to any suggestions or news articles. I know that at the moment the page is becoming more than a bit unwieldy, but that will change and we are planning an archive of the news for items that become more than a week old. Any tips, suggestions or comments are more than welcomed, either on the pages mentioned above or on the entire web site. And thanks to those who assisted. Cheers David ===== David Goldstein Schallmooser Haupstr. 40/3 A-5020 Salzburg Austria email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au phone: +43 699 1097 6197 (mobile) _____________________________________________________________________________ http://invites.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Invites - Have a party with Yahoo! Invites * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Sat Jul 29 21:15:01 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id VAA84554; Sat, 29 Jul 2000 21:15:00 +1000 (EST) Received: from seed.pacific.net.sg (seed.pacific.net.sg [203.120.90.77]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA84546 for ; Sat, 29 Jul 2000 21:14:57 +1000 (EST) Received: from pop1.pacific.net.sg (pop1.pacific.net.sg [203.120.90.85]) by seed.pacific.net.sg with ESMTP id TAA23041; Sat, 29 Jul 2000 19:14:54 +0800 (SGT) Received: from getit ([210.24.24.175]) by pop1.pacific.net.sg with SMTP id TAA05206; Sat, 29 Jul 2000 19:14:52 +0800 (SGT) Reply-To: From: "Laina Raveendran Greene" To: "David Goldstein" , "APPLe" Subject: RE: The Domain Name Game - register to vote Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 04:12:29 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <20000725101108.7142.qmail@web1301.mail.yahoo.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk David, The website database for registration seems to be overloaded. The note comes back saying" We are sorry. The database is currently overloaded.Please try again when the system is less busy. " I wonder if they will keep the July 31st deadline given this hickup. REgards, Laina RG -----Original Message----- From: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net [mailto:owner-apple@lists.apnic.net]On Behalf Of David Goldstein Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2000 3:11 AM To: APPLe Subject: The Domain Name Game - register to vote Hi all For those interested in participating in the upcoming ICANN elections, you have until 31 July to register, and you can do so on their web site (http://www.icann.org). Cheers David The Domain Name Game By Alexis Gutzman (Internet.com) 24 July http://ecommerce.internet.com/solutions/tech_advisor/article/0,1467,9561_421 681,00.html Just who owns the database that assigns domain names to IP addresses? It turns out that this is a more complex question than it appears. Some mystery has always shrouded the domain name database. It seemed that Network Solutions owned it, way back when they were called Internic, but it turns out they were just licensed to manage it exclusively by the U.S. government. Two years ago, the Clinton administration gave permission to manage the whole thorny issue of domain names to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). However, it turns out the U.S. government still owns the database. ICANN Has the Power What does ICANN do? And, more importantly, why should you care? It is the group that decides what top-level domains (TLDs) can be used. It authorizes companies like Network Solutions and others to register domain names to individuals, organizations, and companies. It's also the first level of dispute resolution for those who believe their property rights have been violated by someone "taking" their domain names. Ultimately, most of these disputes end up in court, but ICANN can transfer a domain, for example, based on a claim by one Party A against Party B, even if Party B got to it first. ICANN was the government's private sector solution to the obvious question: why should the domain name system be administered by the government? ICANN is composed of a 19-member board of directors. Nine of the directors are selected from three supporting organizations (domain-name supporting, address supporting, and protocol supporting). An additional directorship belongs to the CEO, with the other nine being elected by the at-large membership, which is anyone with a valid e-mail and postal mail address that registers by July 31. ICANN holds quarterly meetings, which are open to the public, to bring the wrath of millions of Internet users upon itself, or so it seems. Power to the People . . . Or Not The most recent wrath-inspiring event unfolded at its Yokohama, Japan meeting, which took place July 13-17. At this meeting, one of the first things proposed was a change to the bylaws to eliminate the at-large directors. Since it's a closed system already, and since this miniscule organization has the power to change the way the Web is managed, it seems like a small thing to ask that some of those on the board represent the interests of the regular Web users - academics, business owners, shoppers, etc. Fortunately, the proposal was defeated, and elections will continue as scheduled. Although as of about two weeks ago, I read that only 28,000 people had registered to be at-large members, so perhaps there simply is no public interest in being part of these decisions. New TLDs: Relevant or not? Another thing on the agenda was the creation of new TLDs such as .shop or .travel. ICANN is now accepting applications for TLD administrators for the new TLDs. Companies or non-profits that want to see a new TLD instituted and want to administer the TLD themselves simply have to complete an application and pay a $50,000 non-refundable application fee to ICANN to have their TLDs considered. Aside from the question of the feasibility of a non-refundable application fee of $50,000 for most companies or non-profits, there's the question of whether new TLDs will be relevant. Will .shop ever catch on the way .com has? Have we existed for too long in a .com-centered world for anything else ever to have the cache of .com? Will courts interpret intellectual property laws in such a way that the current owners of every .com domain pretty much get first dibs on the .shop equivalent domain? Can you imagine how Amazon.shop could possibly belong to anyone other than Amazon.com, regardless of who got in line first to register it? Reorganization of the TLD Structure Perhaps what is needed is a new domain addressingsystem. Something on the order of RealNames, where there is no .com, .org, or .shop. Whatever the future of Web site identity is, ICANN's nineteen-member board is going to be deciding it for all of us. You can have a say in who's on this board. Five at-large directors are going to be elected before the end of November. Right now, the nominating committee is deciding on a pool of candidates. By the end of July, the ICANN nominating committee will post that list. July 31 is also the deadline for registering as an at-large member. During the month of August, anyone who wants to be a candidate for the board, but isn't part of the official pool, can make his case and amass the necessary votes to be part of the pool of candidates. Each candidate will post a Web page stating his qualifications during the month of September, and elections will be held October 1-10. Get Out the Vote However, you can only influence the vote if you're registered. Registration ends July 31. The servers are already overwhelmed, so while it should take about 3 minutes to register, you may find that it takes you much longer. The home page says they're working on increasing capacity. Imagine if nineteen people could get together to decide that all postal addresses were going to be changed, wouldn't you want a say in what kind of number - or color or whatever - were written on your mailbox? Registering to vote and voting in the ICANN election is your chance to have that say. Alexis D. Gutzman is an E-commerce Technology Author and Consultant and author of The HTML 4 Bible, FrontPage 2000 Answers!, and ColdFusion 4 for Dummies. Her newest book, The E-commerce Arsenal: 12 Technologies You Need to Prevail in the Digital Arena will be out in October. She can be reached at agutzman@internet.com ____________________________________________________________________________ _ http://invites.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Australia & NZ Invites - Have a party with Yahoo! Invites * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net * From owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Mon Jul 31 18:24:54 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA124771; Mon, 31 Jul 2000 18:24:53 +1000 (EST) Received: from smtp8.dti.ne.jp (smtp8.dti.ne.jp [202.216.228.43]) by whois.apnic.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA124760 for ; Mon, 31 Jul 2000 18:24:50 +1000 (EST) Received: from martyn (dns1.idg.co.jp [210.196.141.2]) by smtp8.dti.ne.jp (8.9.3/3.7W) with SMTP id RAA07640; Mon, 31 Jul 2000 17:24:45 +0900 (JST) Message-ID: <006a01bffac8$9ccf55a0$6c00a8c0@idg.co.jp> From: "Martyn Williams" To: , "APPLe" References: Subject: Re: The Domain Name Game - register to vote Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 17:23:31 +0900 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: owner-apple@lists.apnic.net Precedence: bulk Laina, The issue was brought up at the recent ICANN meeting in Yokohama. The concensus seemed to be to keep to the original schedule and shut down registrations today whether people could all get in or not. That seemed to be preferable to extending and extending the process and consequently putting off the elections. A group in Germany has set up an alternate site that, apparently through the magic of php3 technology, allows people to register through their site as a front end but still access into the ICANN database. I don't fully understand how is works but that is how it was explainded to me. I offer this link for people who have left it until today to register and can't get on the ICANN site: http://www.comlink.org/icann/icann.php3 cheers, Martyn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Laina Raveendran Greene" To: "David Goldstein" ; "APPLe" Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2000 20:12 Subject: RE: The Domain Name Game - register to vote > > David, > > The website database for registration seems to be overloaded. The note comes > back saying" We are sorry. The database is currently overloaded.Please try > again when the system is less busy. " > > I wonder if they will keep the July 31st deadline given this hickup. > > REgards, > Laina RG * APPLe: To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apple-request@apnic.net *