Information Policy

Take Back The Tech

Take Back the Tech is a campaign running from 25 November to 10 December 2006 to raise awareness of the role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play in ending violence against women.

http://www.takebackthetech.net/

EU Wants To Step Up Fight Against Spam

The European Commission said yesterday that spam continues to plague Europeans and accounts for between 50 and 80 percent of all messages sent to mail inboxes. EU Media Commissioner Viviane Reding called on EU governments to step up their fight against spam, spyware, and other illegal online activities and implement EU rules to improve Internet safety.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/16107813.htm

The telecentre.org's E-Book contest winners declared

telecentre.org and TakingITGlobal announced the winners of the From the Ground Up living e-book contest! Contestans were invited to submit their telecentre story to the living e-book From the Ground Up, and now their telecentre stories are shared with the world online, and through the CD-ROM version of the e-book. The organizers thank all the participants for their submissions and we received some really fantastic entries to the contest! It was challenging to pick out the best entries to the contest, but our judges have decided on the winners. First place: Mukunda Bogati (Nepal), Voice from Conflict, wins a video iPod. Second place: Ghada Khalifa (Egypt), The Women of Sheikh Moaaz ibn Gabal Village, wins a digital camera. Third place (tie): Shipra Sharma (India), e-Learning in the South Asian Region and Sagi Mihaly from Telecottage Temerin for the emailed submission "Bridges within the community and to the world" they both win a digital camera.

http://community.telecentre.org/en-tc/node/25471

French National Assembly will use open source desktops

A number of deputies had asked the president of the Assembly to consider the use of open source software, the statement said. The move is a concrete response to the desire of numerous deputies to see open source software used more widely in the public sector in France, it said.

http://www.infoworld.nl/idgns/bericht.phtml?id=002570DE00740E180025722F0039F4D9

Internet commerce: Truth in advertising

The problem is that many of the clicks on internet advertisements are bogus. The ability to aim such advertisements so that they pop up, for example, when a user searches for a particular word, is what makes them so valuable≈and makes fraud so lucrative. American law firms, for instance, are prepared to pay as much as $30 each time someone clicks on an advertisement after searching for "mesothelioma" he name of an obscure asbestos-related disease. It is, after all, quite an efficient way to find sufferers who might be interested in launching a money-spinning compensation lawsuit.

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8319505&fsrc=RSS