Politicos to revisit crackdown on U.S. firms in 'Internet-restricting' countries
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House panel on Tuesday is expected to approve bill aimed at regulating how American companies operate in China and other foreign locales notorious for censorship.
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Experts say the move could lead to suits against the U.S. or private companies.
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AMERICA&#39;s chief communications regulator will seek broad regulatory authority for the US federal government over internet-based telephone services to avoid stifling the emerging market.
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WASHINGTON -- Moving against Internet crime, the Justice Department has launched a new crackdown on people who trade copyrighted programs over the Internet.
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Justice Department officials are revising controversial guidelines for criminal prosecutions of companies in response to pressure from business groups, civil liberties lobbyists and an influential lawmaker who is expected to introduce legislation on the issue early next week.
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The U.S. Commerce Department promised Friday to take more of a hands-off approach to the Internet as it extended for three years its oversight of a California organization that handles network-address issues.
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The growth of the Internet will bring with it public policy challenges, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt -- as well as efforts by some governments to clamp down on the spread of information.
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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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Net surfers outside the U.S. interested in U.S. President George Bush's re-election strategy aren't currently able to learn about it from his campaign Web site. Visitors from a number of international locations reported hitting "access denied" errors as they tried to reach the site on Tuesday.
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The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has barred people outside the United States from viewing its Web site following an electronic attack that took down the campaign's Internet address for six hours last week, according to computer security experts. -washingtonpost.com
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Recognizing that internet censorship is hurting its business model in the Middle East and Asia, Google lobbies U.S. trade officials to do something.
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News last week that the U.S. government would extend its oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers did little to ease international tensions over the governance body.
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(InfoWorld) - The Internet has an ever-growing role to play in allowing free expression across the globe, but only if attempts to reign it in are unsuccessful, Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt said Tuesday. Schmidt, speaking in Washington, D.C., warned his audience that the Internet will continue to create public policy challenges asÂ another billion users move online in the coming years. One reaction to a perceived loss of privacy and to new Internet users questioning repressive governments will be to clamp down on information, he said. "[That approach] appeals to people who prize order over everything else," said Schmidt, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's launch of a global think tank. "Those people exist everywhere." Schmidt acknowledged that a completely free flow of information over the Internet can be messy, but an unfettered Internet gives people the best information, he said. "The Internet has empowered people in a way we've never seen before. What we say at Google is, 'Don't bet against the Internet.'" he said In the coming years, governments will have to deal with a series of questions as more people come online, he said. The second billion Internet users will often compare the way their countries govern with other governments, he predicted. "They're going to see their government has been treating them badly," he said. "They're going to be annoyed." Some governments will struggle with how much free expression is too much, he said. Even in Western democracies, such as France and Germany, posting information about the Nazi Party is prohibited, Schmidt said, and other governments will struggle with what expression to allow. Schmidt said he hopes governments will err on the side of freedom, but free expression will continue to be a hot debate in coming years. "Have we gained more freedom than we want?" he said. "Freedom of choice may be more choice than people want." And with computers able to store more and more information, governments will struggle with the idea of privacy, Schmidt added. Many people will eventually regret rants or photos put online 20 or 30 years earlier. "What happens to personal privacy when everything that's created exists forever?" he said. "My daughter calls this 'too much sharing in your early life.'" The Internet creates paradoxes, Schmidt said. It creates a global marketplace, but it also allows people to segment themselves into tribes, he said. It allows the truth to emerge faster than with other mediums, but it also allows users to spread false information. "If you don't like a piece of information, spread some information," he said of the attitude of many Internet users. "People here wouldn't do that." When he heard groans from the Washington crowd, Schmidt amended his statement. "I should say, people in this room wouldn't do that," he said. Despite the policy questions, Schmidt encouraged the audience to work for ways to open information up to more people across the globe. "Globalization is fundamentally about universal access to information," he said. "This information revolution that's coming can be shaped."
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The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has barred people outside the United States from viewing its Web site following an electronic attack that took down the campaign's Internet address for six hours last week, according  to computer security experts.
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MONTEVIDEO, Oct 12 (IPS) - Freedom of expression worldwide has been under   threat since agents of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation  (FBI) last  week seized two Internet servers hosting websites of  the Independent Media  Centres. In Latin America, Indymedia  Brazil and Uruguay are directly affected.
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Those who illegally download movies and music could have their Internet service cut off under a forthcoming recommendation that could be used to craft legislation.
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New York state's attorney general and legislative leaders introduce legislation to protect people online.