Information Policy

Sri Lanka blocks over 100 porn websites

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka has blocked over 100 porn websites that allegedly feature local men and women, the government said Thursday, in its biggest yet Internet censorship move.

The Sri Lankan Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) has been asked to prevent users in the country accessing some 107 adult websites, the government information department said.

The move followed complaints heard at Colombo's Juvenile Court that children had free access to the websites, which featured Sri Lankan men and women.

Other adult sites featuring non-Sri Lankans will remain available, however.

In July last year, the TRC blocked 12 other porn websites, including redtube.com, an adult content sharing portal.

Sri Lanka already maintains an unofficial ban on websites of dissidents by getting local Internet service providers to block access to those portals. However, users can still access those sites by using proxy servers abroad.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100826/wl_sthasia_afp/srilankatelecominternetpornographycensorship_20100826082744

The International Telecommunication Regulations: time for a revision?

The policy governing all international telecommunications services between countries rests on principles embodied in one relatively short document: the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs). They represent almost certainly the oldest regulations of their kind in existence.

Originally dating back to the days of telegraphic transmission and the formation of the ITU in 1865, the ITRs have been progressively revised. In their present form, they were last ratified in 1988 at the ITU conference on the subject in Melbourne, Australia, when separate treaties for telephony and telegraphy were essentially merged. [1]

The ITRs themselves prescribe (in 10 Articles) how international telecommunications services are defined and mediated between operators and service providers. For example, they provide for such issues as: traffic flows between operators, ensuring quality of service of international services, sufficiency of facilities, international routing, charging, accounting and billing between operators, the priorities that should be given to health and safety, and the avoidance of harm to networks and services. Many of the provisions specify the place of mutual agreement between operators in establishing communication services.

http://www.itu.int/plenipotentiary/2010/newsroom/backgrounders/itr.html

H.264 answers Google's open codec with forever free license*

* Free forever for free apps only

MPEG-LA — the organization that oversees the H.264 video codec on behalf of patent holders such as Apple and Microsoft — has made its latest move in what's shaping up to be an intriguing chess game with the likes of Google, Mozilla, and Opera.

On Thursday, the patent pool organization announced that for the H.264 license used by free web applications, it will continue to waive royalty fees through the entire life of the license. Previously, MPEG-LA said it would waive royalties for licensees only until

This means that if you use H.264 solely for free web-video applications, you will never have to pay a fee to the MPEG-LA. It does not rule out the possibility, however, that some other patent holder outside the MPEG-LA will come calling.

The move is an apparent response to Google's WebM web-media format, which was open sourced in May under its own royalty-free license. At the heart of WebM is the VP8 video codec Google that acquired when it purchased video compression outfit On2 Technologies in a deal valued at $124.6 million. Google's aim was to create a completely royalty-free alternative to H.264 for use with the fledgling HTML5 video tag, and the new WebM format was promptly embraced by Opera and Mozilla.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/26/mpegla_v_google/

News Corp. ad network to become part of MySpace

News Corp. plans to fold its digital ad network, whose president, Adam Bain, is jumping to Twitter, into MySpace. The merger of the Fox Audience Network and MySpace is meant to provide the social network with more clout as it tries to arrange deals with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and other top sites, according to this article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100824-710987.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

Google Street View faces citizens' reservation in EU

While Google intends to go on mapping localities in Europe through its Street View system, several EU countries continue to show reluctance to this service due to privacy issues.

In May 2010, Google was faced with big concerns in Germany after it had been revealed that Street View vehicles were collecting private data sent over Wi-Fi networks. Google stated it was a mistake and the data had never been used in any Google products and that anyway only fragments of payload data had been gathered.

As Google announced, it would re-launch its service in November 2010 and although the company stated it would allow Germans to opt out of Street View, thousands of Germans have requested their homes be removed from Google Street View.

Under pressure from the EU, Google accepted to allow German people from 20 cities to opt out from having their homes included in the service, but imposed a deadline 15 September 2010 until when they would receive written letters with the request for the opt-out. For the time being, Germany is the only country having this possibility.

The German government is to issue more comprehensive rules on data protection on the Internet this autumn.

In France, as Google would continue collecting 3D images of the streets in the areas yet uncovered, CNIL, the French Data Protection Authority, considered the action as premature as its investigation of this Google's service is not yet concluded and asked to examine the hard disks containing the collected Wi-Fi data.

Also Spain has joined these countries and is investigating Google for alleged privacy violations and "computer crime" of its mapping service while taking shots of the city streets in Spain. A subpoena has been issued by the Spanish court following a complaint filed in June by private internet watchdog and technology consulting agency Apedanica.

"Every citizen holds under EU law the right of appeal against Google Street View. I expect that Google respect European rules on data protection - anywhere in Europe. The best way is a citizen friendly and non-bureaucratic tool for appeals," has recently told EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding to German daily Bild, adding that the period for appeal should be at last six weeks long.

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.16/google-streetview-rejected-germany-france-spain