China to raise key Internet issues at IGF meeting
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China is seeking to put technical Internet management issues on the agenda of the next Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting, a U.N.-run forum concerning the development of the Internet.
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(InfoWorld) - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers opened a week-long meeting on Monday where it will address critical issues like new generic top level domains, internationalized domain names and the organization's efforts to become more accountable and transparent. The international public meeting, the second of three of its kind ICANN has planned for this year, will also include discussions about a major expansion of available Internet Protocol addresses, as well as about the process for accrediting registrars. Taking advantage of the meeting's venue in San Juan, Puerto Rico , the agenda also includes the first General Assembly of the Latin American and Caribbean Regional At Large Organization, formed in March. "We're very pleased to be in Puerto Rico," said Paul Twomey, ICANN's president and CEO, during a press conference at the Caribe Hilton hotel, adding that the meeting's agenda is full of significant issues and efforts. ICANN oversees the Internet's address system and as such carries the critical responsibility of ensuring the overall security and stability of the Internet. A key effort ICANN is involved with is improving the transparency of its operations and the accountability of its decisions, areas critics regularly complain about. "We must ensure we're in the leading edge of transparency and accountability," Twomey said. ICANN commissioned an independent study about its transparency and accountability in December from London's One World Trust, which reported its findings in March. It concluded that ICANN is a very transparent organization but that it can improve certain areas, including explaining better how it uses input from stakeholders when making decisions. ICANN has been taking steps to address these issues and, earlier this month, issued a response to the report. On Saturday, ICANN released for discussion at the San Juan meeting online a set of draft principles and frameworks for accountability . ICANN wants to improve making it easier for people to find the vast amount of information on its Web site, Twomey said. ICANN also wants to be faster in posting information online about its meetings and initiatives, he said. However, the transparency and accountability issue will likely remain on the table until ICANN removes its special ties to the U.S. government. Since its creation in 1998 to progressively absorb Internet management functions until then handled fully by the U.S. government, ICANN has been criticized for lacking transparency in its decision-making process and for responding disproportionately to U.S. interests. In September, the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. Commerce Department and ICANN was renewed for three additional years, a disappointment for those who had hoped for ICANN's full autonomy. Also in this week's agenda is the Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) initiative, which aims to revamp the DNS (domain name system) so that it can support domain names in a broad range of languages and alphabets that can't be represented via the ASCII character set. "You'd think this would be simple. It has turned out to be really hard, technically," said Vint Cerf, ICANN's chairman. Another initiative on deck for discussion is the drafting of a policy to introduce new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to add to the well-known ones like .com and .net. Like the IDN effort, this gTLD project has run into technical challenges. The meeting will also feature a tutorial on the IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) effort to expand significantly the amount of IP addresses, because of the expected shortage under the current IPv4, Cerf said. The San Juan meeting, ICANN's 29th International Public Meeting, ends Friday and will feature more than 30 sessions and workshops.
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News Corp.'s  MySpace.com is  in talks to bring the social-networking site to China with  Boston technology trade publisher International Data Group's  Chinese venture arm and former China Netcom Group Corp.   Chief Executive Edward Tian, the Wall Street Journal  reported on its Web site on Friday.
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An international conference opened Wednesday amid warnings that companies, governments and individuals are increasingly vulnerable to Internet attacks by terrorists, hackers and others that rob them of privacy, money, and secrets.
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China introduces tough measures against internet pornography, including possible life imprisonment.
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(InfoWorld) - The eyes of the world are looking towards Beijing for the Olympic Games that will be held here fewer than 11 months from now. But for real China watchers, an event next month will draw much greater attention and have a much greater impact on the country than 16 days of athletics. In mid-October, China's ruling Communist Party will meet for its regular five-year congress. Unlike the annual National People's Congress, the Communist Party Congress sets the nation's agenda for the next five years, and usually results in a shuffling of ministers and even military leaders. China's economy, despite major market reforms over the past 25-odd years, is still centrally planned, and operates on five-year plans with specific targets and goals that are approved during the meeting. Unlike the Olympics, for which most observers expect generallyÂ unfettered Internet accessÂ and the nation going out of its way to show that it's kinder and gentler, the party congress is a time of tension, especially in Beijing. Wikipedia's recent re-blocking in China is certainly no coincidence, and as the meeting approaches,Â more blockingsÂ and a network slowdown should be expected. A slew of new, anti-"vulgarity" policies have just come down from the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), designed to keep sex and violence off the airwaves. Offline, visitors to Beijing can expect an increased police presence, possibly including roadblocks and inspections at night. China's government representatives work full-time and for the most part are specialists, not generalists. Policy pronouncements come from the respective ministries and state administrations charged with regulating those particular areas. For example, the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) handles technology in general, meaning IT and telecommunications. Those regulatory announcements come out at other points, and therefore more specific news, likeÂ the issuance of 3G (third-generation) licenses, won't be issued during the congress. What role technology will play in China's next five years will be clearer one month from now. Although the party congress is very much a broad-strokes event, the prominent mention of various aspects of the economy sets the tone for the coming five years. During former President Jiang Zemin's reign, science and technology were at the forefront of the nation's direction. However, current leader Hu Jintao, has attempted to reduce the corruption so prevalent during Jiang's time, and has tried to make rural reform and closing the gap between rich and poor a priority. As such, agricultural technology, rather than IT, may receive more public attention during the congress.
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Efforts by countries like China to restrict the exchange of information on the Internet are ultimately doomed to failure, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told an audience of Stanford University students Tuesday.&quot;I don&#39;t see any risk in the world at large that someone will restrict free content flow on the Internet,&quot; he said. &quot;You cannot control the Internet.&quot;China has grappled with the issue of Internet censorship&#160;in recent years and Microsoft, along with several other U.S. companies, has come under fire for aiding in this effort. In late 2005,&#160;Microsoft shut down the blog of journalist Zhao Jing, also known as Michael Anti, when he blogged about a newspaper strike in the country.In the long run, however, free speech will win out, Gates said.That&#39;s because of business requirements. Restrictions on free speech will curtail business activity and so commercial forces will work against censorship, Gates said. &quot;If your country wants to have a developed economy... you basically have to open up the Internet,&quot; he said.Gates made the comments following a talk on &quot;Software, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Giving Back,&quot; which focused mainly on his two favorite topics: the future of technology and the philanthropic goals he has set for himself following his retirement from day to day work at the company he founded in 1975.Microsoft&#39;s founder will step down&#160;from his daily work at the company entirely in July, but he has set some big follow-up goals for himself: including the fight against HIV/AIDS and a campaign to eradicate polio and malaria.Another ambition is to find new ways to&#160;drive innovation that will benefit the world&#39;s poorest countries.This is a major problem, Gates said. Today, with millions still dying from malaria, 90 percent of the world&#39;s medical research relates to conditions that occur in the world&#39;s richest countries. &quot;Consider how much money should be spent on baldness versus malaria,&quot; he said.Fifty times the amount spent on researching malaria goes to finding a cure for baldness, he said.&quot;We have this disparity where, as great as our system is, if there&#39;s not a market need, it doesn&#39;t drive innovation.&quot;Gates would like to see that change.&quot;One of the things I&#39;ll be spending time on is reaching out to both universities and companies and encouraging them to get more involved in this,&quot; he said.The 52 year-old Gates seemed apprehensive about his upcoming career as a philanthropist. Stepping down from Microsoft &quot;could be traumatic for me,&quot; he said. &quot;I was 17 years old when I started working full-time on Microsoft and I&#39;ve done it basically every day of work since then. So who knows what it will be like to make the change.&quot;&#160;
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Intel Chief Technology Officer Pat Gelsinger said on Thursday, Sept. 9, that the Internet needed to be upgraded in order to deal with problems that will become real issues soon.
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China came under pressure on Saturday   to let its currency rise faster to ease imbalances in trade and   capital flows that pose one of the biggest risks to global   growth.
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China will try to nudge North Korea to resume stalled talks on ending its nuclear programmes when Pyongyang&#39;s number two leader visits on Monday, but economic issues will also be high on the agenda.
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China sought Friday to soothe concerns over a surprise interest rate rise, its first in nearly a decade and one which is expected to kick off a series of increases to cool growth in the world&#39;s seventh-biggest economy.
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At a hearing Monday, a top European regulator said that Internet Protocol addresses should be treated as personal information, something Google and other sites have resisted.
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In a digital arms race, China's Internet controls might be used for more than censorship.
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Efforts by countries like China to restrict the exchange of information on the Internet are ultimately doomed to failure, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in a speech.
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InfoWorld - The Chinese government took steps during 2006 to&#160;increase its control&#160;and monitoring of Internet access by the country&#39;s growing Internet population, the U.S. Department of State said in a human-rights report released on Tuesday.
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The Internet's rapidly evolving impact on global politics, business and everyday life will be the focus of a conference in Geneva, as decision makers seek to map out future trends and address growing concerns about online security.
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When Chinese Web surfers try to the big three U.S. search engines, they're reportedly redirected to Baidu. Recent political events, including Dalai Lama's American award, may be to blame.