News stories (20th - 26th June 2007)
Democracy
Sri Lanka: news agency website blocked in attack on press freedom
The Sri Lankan government has blocked access to a Tamil current affairs new site.
Culture and Education
EC threat to BBC over downloads
The Open Source Consortium has threatened to complain to the European Commission about the BBC’s decision to make downloads available only through Microsoft operating systems.
Leader of net piracy gang jailed
The US Department of Justice has sentenced a Briton, the head of a group specialising in cracking digital copyright protection, to jail for software piracy.
Drivers of Change
Two-tiered net could be coming
An analyst suggests that ‘net neutrality’ may be threatened as service providers seek to find new sources of revenue.
Domain suffixes may include foreign characters
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has scheduled talks to examine the possibilities of allowing non-English characters in domain names.
Learning from Microsoft’s error, Google builds a lobbying engine
Google is working to improve its public and political influence through advocacy.
WIPO broadcasting treaty talks sent back to committee
After nine years of discussion about the controversial WIPO Broadcasting treaty, talks have moved backwards rather than made progress as a result of members failing to agree the terms of the treaty.
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