Information Policy

Lycos Europe to close portal, end Web hosting

Lycos Europe announced on Wednesday plans to shutter its portal and Web-hosting business and find a buyer for three other areas of its business. The company, which last month announced a 20 percent drop in revenue to EUR 46.9m and a net loss of EUR 17.1m, said the decision was made after reviewing its strategic options for several months. It also plans to seek a buyer for other parts of its operation: its domains, Danish portal, and shopping activities. Investors will vote on the management proposal at the company's December 12 shareholders meeting. Should the proposal receive approval, Lycos Europe will distribute EUR 50m to shareholders by year's end. The closure of Lycos Europe's portal, which includes search, online communities, and content channels, comes as it faces increased competition from Yahoo and Google and a decline in user traffic.

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/lycos_europe_to_close_portal_end_web_hosting/

Chinese Blogger Stopped from Attending DW Blog Awards

Local authorities prevent the participation of a prominent Chinese citizen journalist in Deutsche Welle's international weblog awards, The BOBs, in Berlin.

Chinese authorities are preventing Chinese blogger and citizen journalist Shuguang Zhou from leaving for Germany without providing any official justification.

Zhou, who blogs under the name Zola, was invited by Deutsche Welle to be part of the international jury for the fifth annual weblog awards, The BOBs, and decide the winners. The jury will meet on November 26 in Berlin.

On Thursday, November 27, he was supposed to announce the jury’s selection at a public event in the Communication Museum in Berlin.

According to information provided to Deutsche Welle, Zhou was stopped and detained by the police on Friday, November 21, on the border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

On Monday, November 24, the police in Changsha confirmed that it Zhou wouldn’t be allowed to leave the country – as previously stated by the security officials. According to Zhou, the local authorities gave the verbal justification that he was a “possible danger to national security”.

Deutsche Welle and the German Federal Foreign Office are in contact with the Chinese authorities to arrange Zhou’s departure – but as of Tuesday afternoon were still unsuccessful. Zhou plans to take part in the selection process online, as long as there is no interference.

Zhou is 27 years old and works as a freelance journalist in Hunan. He is recognized as one of the first and most famous citizen journalists in China. He earned notoriety from his independent reporting about the resettlement conflict in Chongqing. He uses his blog to write regularly about social injustices that the state-run media conceals. In addition, he has worked to create a network of Chinese citizen journalists.

His blog www.zuola.com/weblog was nominated for the Deutsche Welle Weblog Awards in 2007.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3820422,00.html

Cybercrime laws are not enough, there is also a need for education

'The different forms of online violence against women should be covered by criminal legislation to provide adequate protection and redress. However, laws are not enough. There is also a need for education, prevention, the development of defence mechanisms and a legal system that is capable of addressing these issues without subjecting the victims to further victimisation. Carlos Gregorio, a researcher at the Research Institute for Justice (Instituto de Investigación para la Justicia) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, shares his views on a number of issues related to cybercrime.'

http://www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?w=a&x=96159

NO: New eCitizen 2.0 report available

Web users wish to spread information from public sources through Internet communities. According to a recent report by the research institution of SINTEF, there is a risk that the government is slowing down this process.

The eCitizen 2.0 report, commissioned by the Ministry for Government and Administration Reform, recommends that the public sector to a larger extent has to regard citizens as collaborating partners rather than as passive recipients of information.

The recommendations from the researchers imply that public information should be made freely available and reusable, and that public institutions must be willing to experiment and take risks to a larger extent. The report mentions examples of innovative services from other countries, like the US and the United Kingdom.

According to Minister for Government and Administration Reform, Ms. Grande Røys, there are enormous possibilities for dialogue and distribution of information, if the government and the users of web communities are cooperating. Today’s web users expect to be able to share and edit texts, pictures and videos they find on the internet. The challenge will be to create a culture of sharing, in which public information is distributed by the citizens themselves, without losing important content or trust in the process, the Minister said.

http://www.epractice.eu/document/5230

EU 'ICT Work Programme 2009-10'

The objective of this work program is to Improve the competitiveness of European industry and enabling Europe to master and shape future developments in ICT so that the demands of its society and economy are met.

ICT is at the very core of the knowledge-based society. Activities will continue to strengthen Europe's scientific and technology base and ensure its global leadership in ICT, help drive and stimulate product, service and process innovation and creativity through ICT use and value creation in Europe, and ensure that ICT progress is rapidly transformed into benefits for Europe's citizens, businesses, industry and governments. These activities will also help reduce the digital divide and social exclusion.

ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ict/docs/ict-wp-2009-10_en.pdf

BBC To Launch 'Democracy Live' Political Webcasting Service

The BBC is to launch a political webcasting platform known as Democracy Live, Helen Boaden, Director of News at the BBC, told delegates at Headstar's E-Democracy '08 conference in London this month.

The site "will offer live and on-demand video from all the main UK institutions and the European Parliament. Users will be able to search across the video for representatives and issues that are relevant to them. They will be able to find out more about their representatives in the institutions and follow their contributions," Boaden said.

The site will also provide information on how the institutions of UK government work and what powers they have, as well as providing a resource of must know information concerning the issues in the news. "And while this will make for a compelling mix on the site, we also want it to be a shareable resource, with video and text content that users can take and place on their own sites or blogs," she said.

In her keynote speech, Boaden focused on the role of citizen journalism enabled by new technologies in a modern democratic free press.

"Today, and increasingly in the future, audiences want the news at the time they want it; on the platform most convenient to them and tailored to the subjects or agenda they find most appealing…and for audiences who want to join in, that means including them in the process of making the news."

The London tube bombings of July 2005 brought the realisation that news gathering had changed forever, she said. It introduced citizen journalism on an unprecedented scale fuelled by the use of mobile camera and video phones. Within 24 hours of the attacks, the BBC had received 1,000 stills and videos, 3,000 texts and 20,000 e-mails.

The technology also gives organisations like the BBC footage that would be difficult to obtain otherwise, for example the BBC is barred from entering Burma but when the protests erupted last year they were bombarded by emails, pictures, texts and video from citizens observing the events. The importance of user-generated content (UGC) is now reflected in the creation of the UGC Hub -"a seven-day, 24-hour operation at the heart of our newsroom".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/11/the_role_of_citizen_journalism.html

ITU launches initiative to protect children online

ITU launched a new initiative today to safeguard children, the most vulnerable users of the Internet. Addressing ITU’s high-level meeting on cybersecurity by video message, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, "We have to protect against cyberthreats, especially when they target children. I welcome the ITU’s ‘Child Online Protection’ initiative and urge all States to support it."

http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2008/33.html

Obama: may have to give up BlackBerry and use YouTube for presidential address

Before he arrives at the White House, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will probably be forced to sign off from his beloved Blackberry. In addition to concerns about keeping e-mail secure, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_10996582?nclick_check=1

President-elect Barack Obama plans to tape a weekly address not just for radio listeners, as presidents have for years, but for YouTube Internet viewers, too. The Saturday radio addresses were initiated by Reagan and have evolved into a weekly fixture of the presidency, accompanied by a response from the party out of power.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_10986135

Global broadband hits 400 million users

An analysis of the market for global broadband has found that the total number of subscribers has reached 400 million.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2230846/global-broadband-hits-400

Europeans becoming "connect-aholics"

According to a new survey conducted for the chipmaker AMD by YouGov, 77 percent of Europeans say they couldn't live without the internet.

http://in.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=93940