Yesterday was World Day Against Cyber-censorship [insert snarky comment about the abundance of “Days against X” here]. To celebrate (is “celebrate” the right word?), Reporters Without Borders has released a report on the state of internet control and surveillance. The report labels 12 countries as “enemies of the internet”, claiming Read more…
The Digital Britain parliamentary commission has presented its interim report, which has been met with the usual journalistic brouhaha and bombastic statements. The more progressive media has kept a distrusting tone, while the usual suspects at the Telegraph and the Mail have hailed it as going in the right direction Read more…
The large meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Paris has produced a ground-breaking overhaul to the domain name system the likes of which have not been seen before. The main step taken was to internationalise the domain name system to allow for non-Romanic characters, Read more…
The geeks are up in arms because Microsoft has won approval of its much maligned Office Open XML (OOXML) format as an open standard. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has finally allowed OOXML to become an international standard after its initial rejection last year, but the decision still can Read more…
Technology news sites have been reporting this story, but I think that its importance has been downplayed. Last Friday, Pakistan Telecom blocked access to YouTube inside the country as a measure to censor the site because it contained criticism to the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH). However, this blocking exercise went slightly Read more…
Domain name disputes against cybersquatting are at an all-time high according to data collected by WIPO. I must admit that I found this information rather surprising, as it was my understanding that after an initial period of healthy dispute settlements using ICANN’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), the Read more…
Kopimists around the world are grieving the loss of the IFPI.com domain (which stands for International Federation of Pirates Interests) in a WIPO dispute over its ownership. The owner, as such things stand, was the Pirate Bay. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry initiated a domain name dispute with Read more…
I’ve just returned from conferencing. First there was a very interesting seminar at WIPO on the subject of Rights Management Information (interesting for those who find metadata interesting of course). I believe that there is a growing push towards metadata standards and identification data to be included into works as Read more…
An Australian teenager took forty minutes to crack the pornography filter provided by the Australian government, according to news.com.au. This will hopefully blow up in John Howard’s face, as he seems keen to be seen as taking tough action against the evils of the Internet. A teenager interested in porn? Read more…
(via net.wars) The official Second Life blog has announced that it will ban gambling from the popular virtual world. The new policy bans all games of chance through random-number generators that provide a payout in Linden dollars or any real life currency. This includes all sorts of casino games (such Read more…