EU - Legal and Market Aspects of Electronic Signatures
Report of the European Commission project on legal and market
aspects of electronic signatures. This study is performed by the
K.U.Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). Project manager Jos
Dumortier, Professor at the Faculty of Law and Director of the
Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and Information Technology (ICRI).
For the legal aspects he worked together with his research fellow
Patrick Van Eecke and with Georgia Skouma of the IT Law Unit of
the law firm Landwell (Bogaert & Vandemeulebroeke, Brussels). For
market and technical issues Professor Dumortier was assisted by
Hans Nilsson and Stefan Kelm. They are well-known technical
experts in electronic signatures and related standardisation and
implementation issues.
http://www.qlinks.net/items/qlitem17047.htm
Report on the
CyberCrime Convention
Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties releases report on the CyberCrime
Convention 2001
Leeds, 01 December, 2003 - Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties,
released today an Advocacy Handbook for the Non Governmental
Organisations: The Council of Europe's Cyber-Crime Convention 2001
and the additional protocol on the criminalisation of acts of a
racist or xenophobic nature committed through computer systems,
December 2003.
The Cyber-Crime Convention 2001 and its additional protocol has
been developed by the Council of Europe, an international and well
respected organisation with a primary mission to strengthen
democracy, human rights, and the rule of law throughout its member
states. Although the Cyber-Crime Convention states in the preamble
that a proper balance needs to be ensured between the interests of
law enforcement and respect for fundamental human rights, the
balance resolutely and regrettably favours the former claimes
Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties.
While the CoE's concerns in relation to cyber-crimes and its
desire to address criminal law and mutual assistance in criminal
matters are shared by many, any co-ordinated policy initiative at
an international level should ideally aim to offer the best
protection for individual rights and liberties. Lamentably, this
has not been the case.
This advocacy handbook for the NGOs written by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz,
the director of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties provides a policy
analysis of the Cyber-Crime Convention 2001 and its first
additional protocol from a human rights perspective for policy
specialists, NGOs, and human rights activists within the 45 member
states of the Council of Europe. Compatibility problems with the
European Convention on Human Rights and implications for freedom
of expression, privacy of communications and data protection will
be the main focus of this critical analysis. The appendices
include other useful information that could be relied upon while
NGOs and policy activists lobby their individual governments in
relation to the implementation of the Cyber-Crime.
The Report is released as a pdf file and can be obtained through
http://www.cyber-rights.org/cybercrime/
For further information contact: Dr. Yaman Akdeniz
Director, Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties
email:
lawya@cyber-rights.org
Tel: +44 (0)7798 865116 Fax: +44 (0)7092199011
http://www.cyber-rights.org
/
http://www.cyber-rights.net
FR - LIABILITY FOR HYPERLINKS
The Forum on the Internet Rights released a new recommendation
relating to liability for hyperlinks. This report completes the
prior recommendation (issued by the Forum in March 2003) and
provides practical guidance to any person creating hyperlinks,
whether manually (by a website editor) or automatically (by search
engines), as well as for victims of unfair linking.
Regulation and Internet Use in Developing Countries
Policymakers are simultaneously concerned about
the consequences of a worsening "digital divide" between rich and
poor countries and hopeful that information and computing
technologies could increase economic growth in developing
countries. But very little research has explored the reasons for
the digital divide beyond noting that it is strongly correlated
with standard development indicators, and no empirical research
has explored the role of regulation.
Wallsten uses data from a unique new survey of telecommunications
regulators and other sources to measure the effects of regulation
in Internet development. He finds regulation strongly correlated
with lower Internet penetration and higher Internet access
charges. More specifically, controlling for factors such as
income, development of the telecommunications infrastructure,
ubiquity of personal computers, and time trends, countries that
require formal regulatory approval for Internet service providers
(ISPs) to begin operations have fewer Internet users and Internet
hosts than countries that do not require such approval. Moreover,
countries that regulate ISP final-user prices have higher Internet
access prices than countries that do not have such regulations.
These results suggest that developing countries' own regulatory
policies can have large impacts on the digital divide.
This paper-a product of Investment Climate, Development Research
Group-is part of a larger effort in the group to understand
regulatory and infrastructure sector reforms.
Publication of second annual report on cyberspace : "The Internet
under Surveillance - Obstacles to the free flow of information
online"
The Internet is the bane of all dictatorial regimes, but even in
democracies, new anti-terrorism laws have tightened government
control of it and undermined the principle of protecting
journalistic sources. This report is about attitudes to the
Internet by the powerful in 60 countries, between spring 2001 and
spring 2003. The preface is by Vinton G. Cerf, who is often called
the "father" of the Internet.
Google Censorship - How It
Works
This report describes the system by which
results in the Google search engine are
suppressed. Google is arguably the world's most
popular search engine. However, contrary perhaps
to a naive impression, in some cases the results
of a search are affected by various
government-related factors. That is, search
results which may otherwise be shown, are
deliberately excluded. The suppression may be
local to a country, or global to all Google
results.
Internet use in CEECs catching up with Western Europe
(EU Business: 19/02/2003)
Internet use in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) is
catching up with that of Western Europe, according to a new study
by market analysts IDC.
The percentage of the population using the Internet at least once
a month in the region is expected to reach 17 per cent in 2003 and
27 per cent in 2006. The growth is driven predominantly by use in
the workplace and schools.
Wide Band
The European Union must accelerate the changeover to broadband
services and third generation mobile communications. The report
identifies broadband and "3G" as the main drivers of the sector.
The economic and social benefits they bring make it more urgent
than ever that the availability and use of these technologies be
improved.
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