 |
| US: U.S. Court Curbs F.C.C. Authority on Web Traffic
by Edward Wyatt, New York Times
April 6th, 2010
A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that regulators had limited power over Web traffic under current law. The decision will allow Internet service companies to block or slow specific sites and charge video sites like YouTube to deliver their content faster to users. |
| CHINA/US: Google Partners Call For Clarity on China Plans
by Reuters, New York Times
March 17th, 2010
Chinese firms selling advertising space on Google's search pages have demanded clarity about the search giant's plans in China, as speculation increases over Google's future there. The demand comes amid signs that Google Inc may soon move to close Google.cn. |
| CHINA: China Ratchets Up Web Privacy Fight
by SKY CANAVES, Wall Street Journal
January 28th, 2010
Chinese state-run media trumpeted comments by Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates that played down China's Internet restrictions, as the government continued to ratchet up its rebuttal of recent U.S. criticisms of its Web policies. |
| FRANCE: In French Inquiry, a Glimpse at Corporate Spying
by DAVID JOLLY, New York Times
August 1st, 2009
A corporate espionage case unfolding in France involves some of the biggest French companies, including Électricité de France, the world’s largest operator of nuclear power plants, and Vivendi, the media and telecommunications conglomerate. The story has the elements of a corporate thriller: a cast of characters that includes former French spies and military men, an American cycling champion, Greenpeace activists and a dogged judge. |
| US: DOJ Opens Review of Telecom Industry
by Amol Sharma, Wall Street Journal
July 6th, 2009
The Department of Justice has begun an initial review to determine whether large U.S. telecom companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. have abused the market power they've amassed in recent years. The DOJ's antitrust chief has said she wants to reassert the government's role in policing monopolistic and anti-competitive practices by powerful companies. |
| Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology
by Christopher Rhoads in New York and Loretta Chao in Beijing, Wall Street Journal
June 22nd, 2009
European telecommunications companies including Siemens AG and Nokia Corp provided deep packet inspection capability installed with the Iranian governments telecom hub allowing the Iranian government to monitor dissent. Nokia spokesperson Mr. Roome said the company "does have a choice about whether to do business in any country. We believe providing people, wherever they are, with the ability to communicate is preferable to leaving them without the choice to be heard."
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| IRAN: Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology
by Christopher Rhoads and Loretta Chao, Wall Street Journal
June 22nd, 2009
The Iranian regime has developed one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet. The Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection. The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company. |
| CHINA: China Disables Some Google Functions
by Edward Wong, New York Times
June 19th, 2009
After meeting with managers of the Chinese operations of Google on Thursday to warn them, the Chinese government disabled some search functions on the Chinese-language Web site of Google on Friday. Officials alleged the site was linking too often to pornographic and vulgar content. |
| US: Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for U.S. Government
by CHRISTOPHER DREW and JOHN MARKOFF, New York Times
May 30th, 2009
The Obama administration’s push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts. Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies. |
| IRAN/CHINA: Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors
by John Markoff, New York Times
April 30th, 2009
The Internet is no longer just an essential channel for commerce, entertainment and information. It has also become a stage for state control — and rebellion against it. Computers are becoming more crucial in global conflicts, not only in spying and military action, but also in determining what information reaches people around the globe. |
| UK: Use of Web Tracking Tool Raises Privacy Issue in Britain
by Kevin J. O'Brien, New York Times
April 14th, 2009
The European Commission threatened Britain with sanctions on Tuesday for allowing use of a new advertising technology, created by Phorm, to track the Web movements of customers. The country’s largest service provider, BT, acknowledged last April that it used the tool without customers’ consent in 2006 and 2007. |
| WORLD: Skype’s iPhone application raises protests
by David Gelles, Financial Times
April 3rd, 2009
Skype’s application for the Apple iPhone is igniting network neutrality disputes around the globe after less than a week on the market. Free Press, asked the US Federal Communications Commission to investigate whether AT&T was violating US guidelines by preventing the app from running on its 3G network. An alliance of internet groups on Friday responded to Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile’s threat to block the Skype for iPhone application on its network. |
| UK: Residents challenge Google camera
BBC News Online
April 3rd, 2009
Google's Street View mapping project ran into local opposition in England, with angry residents in the village of Milton Keynes blocking a Google driver when he started taking photographs of their homes. Villagers accused the company of going too far, violating their privacy and possibly facilitating crime. |
| US, GLOBAL: Layoffs Without Notice Sting Workers
by Steve Lohr, New York Times
March 5th, 2009
With the economy weakening, chief executives want Wall Street to see them as tough cost-cutters who are not afraid to lay off workers. Big companies also routinely carry out scattered layoffs that are small enough to stay under the radar, contributing to an unemployment rate that keeps climbing. I.B.M. is one such company. |
| INDIA: Bail Opposed for Raju
by Eric Bellman and Jackie Range, Wall Street Journal
January 28th, 2009
Prosecutors pursuing the fraud at Satyam Computer Services Ltd. said Tuesday the Indian technology outsourcer's founder, B. Ramalinga Raju, should be denied bail because he could slow the investigation if released. |
| SWITZERLAND: Davos Scales Back Glitz
by Associated Press, New York Times
January 25th, 2009
The economic crisis that emerged out the collapse of securities based on shaky U.S. mortgages poses challenges for the Davos World Economic Forum, an arena that has championed market-driven approaches. |
| US: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
by Amy Goodman and James Bamford, Democracy Now!
October 14th, 2008
The Bush administration’s wiretapping program has come under new scrutiny. Two influential congressional committees have opened probes into allegations US intelligence spied on the phone calls of U.S. military personnel, journalists and aid workers in Iraq. James Bamford discusses the NSA’s domestic sprying, the agency’s failings pre-9/11 and the ties between NSA and the nation’s telecommunications companies. |
| UK: UK government responds on Phorm
BBC News
September 16th, 2008
Clarifying how the system will be used in response to the EU request, the UK government said future trials must be done with consent from those being targeted. |
| US: FCC to Rule Comcast
Can't Block Web Videos
by AMY SCHATZ, Wall Street Journal
July 28th, 2008
The Federal Communications Commission will rule that the cable giant violated federal policy by deliberately preventing some customers from sharing videos online via file-sharing services like BitTorrent, agency officials said. The company has acknowledged it slowed some traffic, but said it was necessary to prevent a few heavy users from overburdening its network. |
| US: FCC Chief to Seek Comcast Penalty
Associated Press
July 11th, 2008
The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday he will recommend that the nation's largest cable company be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet. |
| US: Former Customers Off Limits To Verizon
by Cecilia Kang, The Washington Post
June 24th, 2008
The federal government, speaking on behalf of former Verizon phone service customers, yesterday sent the communications company a stern message: Stop trying to woo back those consumers who have opted for a new provider. They've moved on. |
| US: House Passes Bill on Wiretap Powers
by ERIC LICHTBLAU and DAVID STOUT, The New York Times
June 21st, 2008
The House on Friday overwhelmingly approved a bill overhauling the rules on the government’s wiretapping powers and conferring what amounts to legal immunity to the telephone companies that took part in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. |
| GERMANY: Ex-Manager Tells of Bribery at Siemens
by CARTER DOUGHERTY, The New York Times
May 27th, 2008
A former manager of Siemens, the European engineering company, testified Monday about an intricate system of slush funds and bribery at the company as the first trial on allegations of corporate corruption in Germany began. |
| GERMANY: Phone Giant in Germany Stirs a Furor
by MARK LANDLER, The New York Times
May 27th, 2008
Germany was engulfed in a national furor over threats to privacy on Monday, after an admission by Deutsche Telekom that it had surreptitiously tracked thousands of phone calls to identify the source of leaks to the news media about its internal affairs. |
| US: F.C.C. Weighing Limits on Slowing Web Traffic
by STEPHEN LABATON, The New York Times
February 26th, 2008
The head of the Federal Communications Commission and other senior officials said on Monday that they were considering taking steps to discourage cable and telephone companies from delaying the downloads and uploads of heavy Internet users. |
| US: Comcast Defends Role As Internet Traffic Cop
by Cecilia Kang, The Washington Post
February 13th, 2008
Comcast said yesterday that it purposely slows down some traffic on its network, including some music and movie downloads, an admission that sparked more controversy in the debate over how much control network operators should have over the Internet. |
| US: Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry
by Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and Scott Shane, New York Times
December 16th, 2007
The Bush administration is waging a high-profile campaign to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program. At stake is the federal government's partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime. |
| US: Intel official: Say goodbye to privacy
by Pamela Hess , Associated Press
November 11th, 2007
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information. |
| EUROPE: Microsoft Ruling May Bode Ill for Other Companies
by Kevin J. O'Brien and Steve Lohr, New York Times
September 18th, 2007
Europe’s second-highest court delivered a stinging rebuke to Microsoft Monday, but the impact of the decision upholding an earlier antitrust ruling may extend well beyond the world’s largest software maker to other high-technology companies. |
| CHINA: An Opportunity for Wall St. in China’s Surveillance Boom
by Keith Bradsher, New York Times
September 11th, 2007
China Security and Surveillance Technology, a fast-growing company that installs and sometimes operates surveillance systems for Chinese police agencies, jails and banks, has just been approved for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The company’s listing is just a sign of ever-closer ties among Wall Street, surveillance companies and the Chinese government’s security apparatus. |
| US: Role of Telecom Firms in Wiretaps Is Confirmed
by Eric Lichtblau, New York Times
August 24th, 2007
The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by them was a “state secret.” |
| EU: EU lobbyists face tougher regulation
by Andrew Bounds and Marine Formentini, Financial Times
August 16th, 2007
Europe seems set for US-style controls on lobbying after the biggest public affairs companies in Brussels ruled out voluntary regulation because they would have to divulge their clients and fees. |
| CHINA: China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People
by Keith Bradsher, The New York Times
August 12th, 2007
At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity. |
| CHINA: Lead Toxins Take a Global Round Trip
by Gordon Fairclough, The Wall Street Journal
July 12th, 2007
High levels of toxic lead turning up in cheap jewelry from China are prompting recalls in the U.S. But some of the lead used by these Chinese manufacturers comes from an unconventional source: computers and other electronic goods discarded in Western countries and dumped in China. |
| US: Executive Pay: A Special Report. More Pieces. Still a Puzzle.
by Eric Dash, New York Times
April 8th, 2007
In response to a barrage of criticism that regulators have not kept up with the complexities of swelling pay packages, the Securities and Exchange Commission now requires corporate America to disclose details of executive compensation more fully. As this year’s proxies pour in, they are packed with fresh information aimed at making pay more transparent. Of course, it also is a lot more confusing. |
| US: Gore needs a greener Apple
by Marc Gunther , CNN Money
April 3rd, 2007
Environmental groups tell Al Gore to push the computer maker to improve its practices and limit its impact on the environment. |
| NETHERLANDS: Gimme Tax Shelter
by Lynnley Browning, New York Times
February 4th, 2007
When it comes to attracting celebrity wealth seeking shelter from taxes, the Cayman Islands and other classic Caribbean tax havens are receding in favor, according to tax experts here and overseas. But for earnings derived from intellectual property such as royalties, the Netherlands has become a tax shelter of choice. |
| US: PUC Not Letting Verizon off Hook
by Ann S. Kim, Portland Press Herald (MAINE)
January 30th, 2007
The Maine Public Utilities Commission decided Monday to begin contempt proceedings against Verizon Communications for failing to affirm the truthfulness of statements the company made about its possible role in the government's warrantless surveillance program. |
| US: Gates Foundation faces multibillion-dollar dilemma
by Kristi Heim, Seattle Times
January 14th, 2007
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation owns shares of BP — a company accused of fouling the air with its oil refinery and paper mill in South Africa. Since the foundation spends billions of dollars to improve the health of Africans, that investment strategy would seem to conflict with its mission. |
| US: Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
by Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, L A Times
January 7th, 2007
An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. |
| CHINA: Net giants 'still failing China'
by Thembi Mutch, BBC News
December 18th, 2006
Earlier this year net giants Google and Yahoo came under fire from Human Rights Watch and Reporters Sans Frontieres, for their activities in China. But is the criticism warranted? |
| CHINA: Net giants 'still failing China'
by Thembi Mutch, BBC News Online
December 18th, 2006
Earlier this year net giants Google and Yahoo came under fire from Human Rights Watch and Reporters Sans Frontieres, for their activities in China. But is the criticism warranted? |
| US: Noose incident sparks bias suit
by Collin Nash, Newsday
December 16th, 2006
A group of African-Americans employed as installers for a Cablevision subcontractor filed a discrimination complaint Friday against their employer and the media giant, alleging intimidation by white managers who the workers say dangled a noose from the rafters. |
| US: Apple gets low score in Greenpeace e-waste report
by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld
December 6th, 2006
Environmental group Greenpeace on Wednesday issued the first quarterly update on the technology industry’s performance on environmental issues. While the group recognized many companies are improving Apple does not appear to be among them — Apple remains in last place. |
| WORLD: Safety of Nanotechnology Needs More Attention
Environment News Service
November 28th, 2006
The number of consumer products made with nanotechnology is exploding, with a 70 percent increase in the past eight months. While recognizing the value of these molecular-level advances, critics say the Bush administration is doing too little to ensure the safety of nanotechnology for workers and the public. |
| US: Rep. Ney Admits Selling Influence
by James V. Grimaldi and Susan Schmidt, Washington Post
September 16th, 2006
Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) agreed yesterday to plead guilty to corruption charges after admitting to performing a variety of official acts for lobbyists in exchange for campaign contributions, expensive meals, luxury travel, sports tickets and thousands of dollars in gambling chips. He is the first elected official to face prison time in the ongoing influence-peddling investigation of former GOP lobbying powerhouse Jack Abramoff. |
| US: FBI, congressional panel open their own HP probes
by
Benjamin Pimentel, San Francisco Chronicle
September 12th, 2006
The scandal surrounding Hewlett-Packard Co. escalated Monday when members of Congress and federal law enforcement officials announced they would launch inquiries into the tech giant's practices during a controversial probe of media leaks that began last year. |
| US: Conviction of WorldCom's CEO Upheld
by Carrie Johnson, The Washington Post
July 28th, 2006
A federal appeals court today upheld the fraud conviction of WorldCom Inc. founder Bernard J. Ebbers, rejecting defense arguments that he was deprived of a fair trial and paving the way for the once-brash mogul to spend the rest of his life in prison. |
| US: Nigerian Entangled In Jefferson Investigation
by Allan Lengel, Washingtom Post
July 22nd, 2006
The corruption investigation of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) has taken many strange twists: an FBI sting that caught the lawmaker on videotape accepting a large payoff; a subsequent raid that turned up $90,000 of that cash in his apartment freezer; and a weekend FBI search of his congressional office that triggered a constitutional uproar. |
| US: Phone records lawsuit to proceed
by Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News
July 21st, 2006
In a setback for the Bush administration's secretive Terrorist Surveillance Program, a federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday denied a government motion to quash a warrantless-wiretapping lawsuit against AT&T. |
| US: S.F. Reviewing Pact with AT&T
by Scott Lindlaw, The Associated Press
July 12th, 2006
San Francisco officials are examining the city's telecommunications contracts with AT&T and whether to take action against the company over allegations it has cooperated illegally with the National Security Agency, Mayor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday. |
| US: Cingular Accused of Deception
by Jolayne Houtz, The Seattle Times
July 7th, 2006
Cingular Wireless pledged to "raise the bar" for 22 million AT&T Wireless customers it acquired when the two companies merged in 2004 — better coverage, same rates and phone no service interruptions. |
| US: The 100 Worst Corporate Citizens
by Phil Mattera, The Corporate Research Project
July 1st, 2006
For the past 52 years, Fortune magazine has been publishing a list of the largest U.S. corporations, an annual chance for chief executives to brag that "my revenue is bigger than yours." For the past seven years, Business Ethics magazine has issued another kind of ranking -- a list of what it calls the "100 Best Corporate Citizens" -- that promotes virtue over size in the perennial game of corporate comparisons. |
| EU: Brussels to raise fines for cartels tenfold
by David Gow, The Guardian (UK)
June 28th, 2006
Companies found guilty of anti-competitive practices will face multibillion euro fines or more than 10 times the current tariffs for abusing their monopoly and taking part in cartels under draconian new competition guidelines adopted by the European Commission today. |
| US: FCC Head 'in Bed' With Business in Magazine Spread
by Arshad Mohammed, The Washington Post
June 26th, 2006
When you run an independent federal agency, you generally want to avoid the appearance of being in bed with lobbyists or big business. So why is Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin standing on an unmade bed in a hotel room in a glossy magazine photograph that also features an influential lobbyist and a communications executive? |
| US: ATT: Wired News is a "Scofflaw"
by Ryan Singell, Wired News
June 13th, 2006
Wired News is a "scofflaw" full of "hot air" and should not be heard in a class-action lawsuit accusing AT&T of violating customers' privacy by cooperating with the National Security Agency in a warrantless internet wiretap operation, the telecommunications company said in a court filing Monday. |
| CHINA: Google must obey China law
by Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle
June 9th, 2006
China's government reiterated on Thursday that foreign Internet companies such as Google Inc. must abide by its laws, which require censoring online material that is considered to be politically sensitive. |
| US: Zomax ex-CEO convicted
by Thomas Lee, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
June 7th, 2006
Jim Anderson, who was chairman and CEO of Zomax when it was one of Minnesota's technology high-fliers in the late 1990s, was convicted of six counts of insider trading and five counts of engaging in illegal monetary transactions. |
| US: Taking Sides on 'Net Neutrality'
by Jim Puzzanghera, The Los Angeles Times
June 6th, 2006
Former White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry is no stranger to well-aimed political attacks. After all, he held down the briefing room podium for Bill Clinton during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a task he compared to being a "human pinata." |
| EU: Biotech Food Tears Rifts in Europe
by Elisabeth Rosenthal, The New York Times
June 5th, 2006
Greece and a few other countries in the European Union that have banned genetically modified organisms are on the front lines of a war over the future of modified food in Europe, the only large swath of the world that does not already grow or buy the crops. Facing international pressure and a lawsuit brought by the United States, Canada and Argentina at the World Trade Organization, the union said this year that all member states must open their doors to genetically engineered crops and prepare practical and legal regulations to ensure safety for health and the environment. |
| US: A Closer Look at Net Neutrality
PBS
June 2nd, 2006
Congress is considering legislation that critics charge would set up a discriminatory tollbooth system on the information superhighway. |
| US: AT&T Whistle-Blower's Evidence
Wired
May 17th, 2006
Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against the company, which alleges that AT&T illegally cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic-surveillance program. |
| CHINA: Yahoo China is under fire again
by Ilya Garger, MarketWatch
April 28th, 2006
U.S. internet companies like Yahoo and Google may have gone to China hoping to find a gold mine. But it's also turned out to be a mine field of controversy over censorship and political rights. |
| US: Recycling: Not Apple's Core Value
by Pete Mortensen, Wired
April 26th, 2006
Despite its image as a progressive corporate citizen, Apple Computer had one of the worst recycling records in the American PC industry -- until last week. But even after Apple unveiled its first free computer recycling program Friday, it still falls short of competitors like Hewlett-Packard and Dell, observers say. |
| US: AOL Blocks Critics' E-Mails
by Chris Gaither and Joseph Menn, The Los Angeles Times
April 14th, 2006
It's never been easy to win a fight against people who buy ink by the barrel. The same may be true about those who buy bandwidth by the terabit – as a coalition fighting Internet giant AOL discovered Thursday. |
| US: AT&T Seeks to Hide Spy Docs
by Ryan Singel|, Wired News
April 12th, 2006
AT&T is seeking the return of technical documents presented in a lawsuit that allegedly detail how the telecom giant helped the government set up a massive internet wiretap operation in its San Francisco facilities.
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| US: Your Tax Dollars at Work ... for Viacom
by Fred von Lohmann, The Electronic Frontier Foundation
April 11th, 2006
The Washington DC legal newspaper, Legal Times, is reporting that Kevin Murphy, a legislative aide to Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), has recently taken a job with cable and film giant Viacom. Senator Smith, you may remember, is one of the Hill's leading proponents of the broadcast flag. Smells fishy, you say? Legal Times thinks so, too:
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| US: Net Neutrality Gets Short Shrift in Congress
by Martin H. Bosworth, ConsumerAffairs.Com
March 30th, 2006
A final draft of Congressional legislation designed to update the nation's telecommunication laws is being called a "mixed bag," as it addresses issues ranging from cities developing their own Wi-Fi networks to codifying the principles of "net neutrality" into law. |
| US: How Congress Benefits from Corporate Flights
by Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY
March 7th, 2006
BellSouth’s McCloskey said providing transportation to federal officials “gives us an opportunity to form relationships, to have a long stretch of time to explain issues that are technical and complicated. If it wasn’t useful, we wouldn’t do it.” |
| US: The High-Speed Money Line
by Ken Belson, The New York Times
March 6th, 2006
Phone and cable companies have stoked those fears recently by floating plans that would have Amazon, Yahoo and other Web sites paying new fees to ensure that their content will be delivered to customers faster. |
| US: Tollbooths on the Internet Highway
by Editorial, The New York Times
February 20th, 2006
When you use the Internet today, your browser glides from one Web site to another, accessing all destinations with equal ease. That could change dramatically, however, if Internet service providers are allowed to tilt the playing field, giving preference to sites that pay them extra and penalizing those that don't. |
| US: Web Firms Are Grilled on Dealings in China
by Tom Zeller Jr., The New York Times
February 16th, 2006
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco Systems came under fire at a House human rights hearing on Wednesday for what a subcommittee chairman called a "sickening collaboration" with the Chinese government that was "decapitating the voice of the dissidents" there. |
| US: Pay Fight in Tech's Trenches
by Elissa Silverman, The Washington Post
February 15th, 2006
The situation casts light on the low-tech backbone of a high-tech project -- the casual laborers who are rounded up by subcontractors, sometimes bused across state borders to job sites and set to work digging ditches. Predominantly Hispanic, they work with few guarantees and often no benefits, and they typically are hesitant to come forward with problems, according to lawyers and advocacy groups. |
| US: EFF Challenges Clear Channel Recording Patent
ag-IP-news
February 15th, 2006
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced it has filed a challenge on Tuesday to an illegitimate patent from Clear Channel Communications. The patent - for a system and method of creating digital recordings of live performances - locks musical acts into using Clear Channel technology and blocks innovations by others.
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| US: The Net Effect of Neutrality
by Eric Hellweg, Technology Review
February 10th, 2006
In Congress this week, two sides presented their cases in front of a Senate committee that’s considering revising a 10-year-old telecommunications bill. The topic was Internet neutrality: the idea that all bits coursing along the Web should be treated equally. |
| US: The high-speed money line
by Ken Belson, The New York Times
February 6th, 2006
Phone and cable companies have stoked those fears recently by floating plans that would have Amazon, Yahoo and other Web sites paying new fees to ensure that their content will be delivered to customers faster. |
| US: The End of the Internet
by Jeffrey Chester, The Nation
February 6th, 2006
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online. |
| US: Telecoms let NSA spy on calls
by Leslie Cauley and John Diamond, USA TODAY
February 5th, 2006
The National Security Agency has secured the cooperation of large telecommunications companies, including AT&T, MCI and Sprint, in its efforts to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls by suspected terrorists, according to seven telecommunications executives. |
| US: Fed Contract Website Found Insecure
by John Markoff, The New York Times
January 13th, 2006
The General Services Administration has shut a Web site for government contractors after a computer industry consultant reported that he was able to view and modify corporate and financial information submitted by vendors. |
| US: Texas expands Sony spyware lawsuit
MSNBC
December 22nd, 2005
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott expanded his lawsuit against Sony BMG Music Entertainment on Wednesday, alleging that a second form of anti-piracy technology used by the label violates the state's spyware and deceptive trade practices laws. |
| EUROPE: EU Threatens Microsoft With Penalties
Associated Press
December 22nd, 2005
The European Union on Thursday threatened to fine Microsoft Corp. up to 2 million euros ($2.37 million) a day for failing to obey its 2004 antitrust ruling, saying the company was being intransigent about sharing information regarding its software blueprints with competitors. |
| US: Sony Agrees to Halt Gifts for Airtime
by Jennifer Bayot, The New York Times
July 25th, 2005
Sony BMG Music Entertainment, one of the world's largest record companies, agreed today to stop providing lavish gifts, free trips and other giveaways in exchange for airtime for its artists on radio stations, under the terms of a settlement with the New York attorney general's office. |
| US: Torture by Taser
by Peter Gorman, Fort Worth Weekly
June 24th, 2005
More than 5,000 police agencies across the country have purchased Tasers since 2000. Amnesty International documented hundreds of cases in the last three years in which Taser-happy police used the weapon on everyone from disturbed children to old men and women to a Florida man — strapped down on a hospital bed — who wouldn’t provide a urine sample. |
| US: Green Tinge Is Attracting Seed Money to Ventures
by Gary Rivlin, New York Times
June 22nd, 2005
In recent months Mr. Ehrenpreis, a venture capitalist at Technology Partners in Palo Alto, Calif., has been asked any number of times to speak to audiences about "clean tech," a term that encompasses such things as solar energy, water purification systems and alternative automotive fuels. |
| CHINA: Microsoft Censoring Bloggers
by Mark Magnier and Joseph Menn, L.A. Times
June 17th, 2005
Chinese bloggers using a new Microsoft service to post messages titled "democracy," "capitalism," "liberty" or "human rights" are greeted with a bright yellow warning. |
| UK: G8 Protesters Face Tasers
by Dan McDougall, The Scotsman
May 20th, 2005
Police dealing with civil unrest during the G8 summit in Scotland will have controversial weapons that have been blamed for the deaths of 104 civilians in the United States and Canada. |
| CHINA: Google Moves In
BBC news
May 11th, 2005
Google has secured a licence to operate in China, enabling it to compete more effectively with rivals in the world's second-largest internet market.
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| US: Students Do Not Share Gonzales' View on Piracy
by By Lorenza Muñoz and Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times
April 29th, 2005
Attorney general says downloading bootlegs is illegal, but many students are unfazed. "When I buy a CD I feel like I'm paying for corporate lawyers and corporate headquarters and, no offense, but I don't want to do that. And I don't have to," says one.
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| US: Microsoft Reversal on Gay Rights Bill
by By Sarah Kershaw , New York Times
April 22nd, 2005
The Microsoft Corporation, at the forefront of corporate gay rights for decades, is coming under fire from gay rights groups, politicians and its own employees for withdrawing its support for a state bill that would have barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. |
| US: Top Corporate Hate Sites
by Charles Wolrich, Forbes
March 8th, 2005
But while your average disgruntled consumer simply vents their bile by bellowing at a bewildered service rep, a few go farther. Much farther. These perennially peeved people build--and obsessively maintain--sites devoted exclusively to complaining about their least favorite corporations. |
| WORLD: The Rise of the Micro-Multinationals
by By Jim Hopkins, USA Today
February 11th, 2005
Nearly 40% of start-ups in a new USA TODAY study employ engineers, marketers, analysts and others in jobs created in India and other nations. The study found that many U.S. start-ups, speeding the pace of globalization, now bypass the USA for nations where customers and cheap labor are plentiful. |
| US: Deleting Hazardous Waste
by Alex Pham, LA Times
January 21st, 2005
Environmental rules and the proliferation of discarded devices push Companies to design gadgets that are easier to recycle and safer to dispose of.
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| NIGERIA: Vodacom in Eye of Stormgeria
by Gugulakhe Masango
June 2nd, 2004
Just days before reporting its maiden full-year results as a listed firm, Telkom has thrown a wall of secrecy around the scandal that has rocked cellphone subsidiary Vodacom, the jewel in its crown. |
| US: Union Plans Four-Day Strike Against SBC
Associated Press
May 19th, 2004
The union representing 102,000 employees of SBC Communications Inc. said Wednesday it would stage a four-day strike starting Friday because of a deadlock in contract negotiations with the nation's second biggest local phone company. |
| US: Gillette To Test RFID Technology In Wal-Mart Stores
Boston Business Journal
April 30th, 2004
Gillette Co. achieved a technology milestone as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. began testing electronic product codes in Dallas that will lead to the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags -- an electronic tracking system that has prompted privacy concerns in Massachusetts. |
| EU: Privacy International Files Complaints vs. Google
Reuters
April 20th, 2004
Google Inc.'s Gmail came under fresh fire Monday when an international privacy rights group said the soon-to-be-launched free e-mail service violated privacy laws in Europe and elsewhere. |
| US: Netease Falls On SEC Lawsuit Threat
by Mure Dickie, Adrian Michaels, Financial Times
March 16th, 2004
Shares in Netease fell more than 10 per cent after the US-listed Chinese internet portal said it was likely to be the target of a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit over past accounting violations. |
| India: The Dark Side of the Outsourcing Revolution
by Naeem Mohaiemen, AlterNet
January 25th, 2004
India is at the red-hot center of the Outsourcing Revolution. Thirty percent of all new Information Technology (IT) work for U.S. companies is now done abroad, mostly in India. Analysts forecast that by 2008 Indian IT services and back-office support will grow to a $57 billion a year industry with four million workers. |
| US: Patenting Air or Protecting Property?
by Jonathan Krim, Washington Post
December 11th, 2003
Millions of dollars could be riding on a court fight between a coalition of Internet video-porn providers and a small California research firm, which early this year began enforcing the eye-opening claim that it owns the patents on how most audio and video is sent over the Internet. |
| BRAZIL: Country Leans Away From Microsoft
by Alan Clendenning, Associated Press
November 16th, 2003
BRASILIA, Brazil - If he is to make good on his promise to improve life for the tens of millions of Brazilians who live in dire poverty, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva knows that one key challenge is to bridge a massive technology gap. And if that means shunning Microsoft Corp. software in South America's largest country, then so be it. |
| SINGAPORE: Internet Security Laws Tightens
Reuters
November 11th, 2003
Ultra-strict Singapore has passed some of the world's toughest laws against computer hackers and virus writers, allowing police to arrest suspects before they strike, official documents show. |
| US: Ex-Intel Worker's Case Goes to High Court
by Howard Mintz, San Jose Mercury News
March 30th, 2003
Five years after setting off a precedent-setting legal feud with an avalanche of nasty e-mail, a disgruntled former Intel employee's crusade against the Santa Clara chip giant lands this week in the California Supreme Court. |
| AUSTRALIA: Libel Case Could Change Internet Future
by David Fickling and Stuart Millar, The Guardian
December 11th, 2002
Once it was heralded as the last bastion of freedom of speech, a realm which transcended national law and the whims of the courts. But last night the internet was facing up to a harsh new reality after Australia's supreme court ruled that a local businessman could sue a website for libel in Melbourne even though it was based in the United States. |
| CHINA: Democracy Websites Censored
The Guardian
December 4th, 2002
Internet sites containing the words "democracy", "Tibet" and "Taiwan" are among those most frequently blocked by the Chinese government, a study of Chinese net access has revealed |
| US: AOL, Cendant Added to Homestore Pension Fund Suit
Reuters
November 17th, 2002
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- AOL Time Warner Inc. and Cendant Corp. were among 16 companies that contributed to the financial collapse of online real estate firm Homestore.com, a California retirement fund has alleged in a lawsuit. |
| INDIA: Microsoft Giveaway Drowns Out Open-Source Software Movement
Associated Press
November 14th, 2002
BANGALORE, India -- Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, visited this information technology hub earlier this month to try to persuade leaders that Microsoft and other purveyors of proprietary software are poison. |
| US: More Federal Web Sites Targeted for Shutdown
by William Matthews, Federal Computer Week
November 13th, 2002
Having persuaded the Energy Department to pull the plug on PubScience, a Web site that offered free access to scientific and technical articles, commercial publishers are taking aim at government-funded information services offering free legal and agricultural data. |
| US/China: Up Against the Firewall
by Ethan Gutmann, RedHerring.com
November 8th, 2002
Why are American corporations, which have labored hard to present positive global images, providing censorship and surveillance technologies to what many see as China's Big Brother Internet? The short answer: money. Building China's Internet means making lots of it, and companies that want access to this new market often must give the Chinese leadership what it demands. |
| US: Is Google Power a Threat to the Web?
by Stefanie Olsen, ZDNet.com
October 31st, 2002
In the dot-com shakeout, Google has not only survived but reigns supreme. Web surfers have flocked to the service, effectively voting it the best search engine around. So powerful has Google become that many companies view it as the Web itself: If you're not listed on its indexes, they say, you might as well not exist. And if you don't advertise on Google or otherwise curry favor, critics add, you may never find out what it takes to get a prominent listing. |
| US: Tech Budget Cuts Gut IT Headcounts, Salaries
by Lisa Vaas, eWeek.com
October 25th, 2002
Reducing cost is now the No. 1 IT priority for U.S. businesses, according to a recent study from Meta Group Inc. But there's not much left to cut, what with the past few years' drastic staffing reductions and contract renegotiations. |
| US: Slowdown Sending Tech Jobs Overseas
by Jennifer Bjorhus, San Jose Mercury News
October 21st, 2002
The U.S. economy might be stalling, but at least one niche is hot: shipping technology jobs offshore. The economic slowdown is speeding up the export of jobs, experts say. As executives face smaller budgets and more pressure for profits, they find it much cheaper to send work to contractors overseas. More U.S. companies are following Silicon Valley's lead by shifting engineering and other technology-related jobs to places such as China, Ireland, India and the Philippines to cut costs. |
| US: GAO Won't Touch WorldCom Defense Deal
by Renae Merle, Washington Post
October 10th, 2002
The General Accounting Office (GAO) dismissed protests by two competitors to WorldCom Corp.'s $450 million Defense Department contract, despite acknowledging that the agency "relied on grossly inaccurate financial information" in making the award. |
| US: New Eco-Menace, Discarded Cellphones
by Anahad O'Connor, New York Times
October 8th, 2002
As the nation's fondness for cellphones grows, the environmental effects do, too. According to industry figures, cellphone use in the United States has surged, to more than 128 million subscribers last year from 340,000 in 1985. Typically, each phone is used for 18 months before being dropped for a newer model. |
| US: Copyright Bill Gives Power to People
by Michael Grebb, Wired.com
October 4th, 2002
WASHINGTON -- With talk of preemptive war all the rage on Capitol Hill, it seems that such posturing has extended into the world of digital copyright law. |
| US: Lawsuit Seeks IPO Profits From Five Executives
Washington Post
October 1st, 2002
NEW YORK (September 30) -- New York's attorney general today sought to force five telecommunications executives to give up millions of dollars in profits they earned selling shares in companies going public during the Internet boom. |
| US: Telecom Swap Meet
by Cynthia L. Webb, WashingtonPost.com
September 25th, 2002
Surprise, surprise. Some big telecoms, just like a variety of other New Economy firms, engaged in questionable accounting practices to inflate revenues. In the case of several brand-name telecoms, the companies swapped bandwidth capacity with each other and then booked the deals as revenue. Revelations of just how far many companies took this scheme -- including allegations of verbal agreements made in tandem with written contracts -- were highlighted at a congressional hearing yesterday. |
| AUSTRALIA: Police Seek to Shut Down WTO Protest Sites
Sydney Morning Herald
September 25th, 2002
New South Wales (NSW) Police Minister Michael Costa has asked the Federal Government to shut down websites with instructions to disrupt a World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Sydney. |
| JAPAN: Panel Adopts Outline for Intellectual Property Legislation
The Japan Times
September 20th, 2002
A government panel adopted on Thursday an outline for proposed legislation aimed at promoting and protecting intellectual property rights, such as patents and copyrights. The proposed law is designed to encourage the transfer of intellectual property from academic institutions to corporations, according to the Strategic Council on Intellectual Property. |
| US: Enron's Giant Bandwith Scam
by Stephen Pizzo, Daily Enron
September 13th, 2002
At some point it dawned on the wheeler-dealers at Enron that selling real things - like gas and oil - had it limits. What they needed were products that had no physical limits. Energy contract futures were their first discovery, and how sweet they were. No more messy oil or smelly gas to deliver - just electronic bookkeeping notations. That's when Jeffrey Skilling discovered a product so ephemeral it bordered on metaphysical - bandwidth. |
| US: Recasting the Web, Info Commons to Cash Cow
by Karen Charman, Extra!
August 26th, 2002
If the Bush administration lets large media conglomerates and local telephone companies have their way, the Internet as we know it -- that free-flowing, democratic, uncensored information superhighway -- could soon be a thing of the past. |
| US: Store Customer Cards a Source for FBI?
by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, FoxNews.com
August 1st, 2002
WASHINGTON -- So you have a secret craving for Little Debbie peanut butter bars and a penchant for Kendall-Jackson merlot? While that customer loyalty card at the supermarket might perceivably save you a few pennies at the checkout counter, your buying habits could end up in the hands of government agents. |
| US: ACLU Pushes for Open Access
by Troy Wolverton, ZDNet News
July 30th, 2002
The Internet's status as an open forum for ideas will come under attack if cable companies aren't forced to open up their broadband networks to rivals, civil liberties and consumer advocacy groups said Monday. |
| PERU: Microsoft's Big Stick
by Agustin d'Empaire, Wired.com
July 27th, 2002
BUENOS AIRES -- Afraid that Peru may adopt a bill decreeing the use of open-source software in all government systems, Microsoft apparently enlisted the American ambassador in Lima to help try to convince the Peruvians to kill the legislation. |
| US: Tech Industry Pushes Homeland Security Legislation
by D. Ian Hopper, Associated Press
July 10th, 2002
The companies making new homeland security devices, such as bomb detectors and biological weapon alarms, want the government to pick up the tab if their products fail and they are sued. |
| EU: HP, Compaq Job Cuts Total 5,900
Reuters
July 3rd, 2002
FRANKFURT -- U.S. computer giant Hewlett-Packard said on Wednesday it plans to cut 5,900 jobs in Europe from a total of 15,000 already announced worldwide, as part of its merger with Compaq Computer Corp. |
| HUNGARY: Internet Users Take Action Against Telecom Giant
Association for Progressive Communications
May 31st, 2002
Matav, leading telecom company in Hungary, subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, responsible for the majority of internet connections in the country, at the end of Arpil declared they would withdraw their flat-rate dial-up access package (the ''Mindenkinek'' tariff package and the 150 HUF per session discount) from 1 July 2002, which would mean excluding a large number of Hungarians from using the net. The flat-rate packages, largely instrumental in spreading Internet use countrywide since 1999, were tolerable but not cheap. A rise in the prices would bereave many homes of Internet access, broadband connection being unaffordable for many of those who chose dial-up service. |
| Taiwan: Workers Link Cancer to RCA Plant
by Matthew Yi, San Francisco Chronicle
May 24th, 2002
While many laud the globalization of technology as a positive force that spreads the wealth and helps industry grow, a group of Taiwanese workers came to Silicon Valley Thursday to tell a different story. |
| US: Senators Question AT&T-Comcast Merger
Reuters
April 23rd, 2002
U.S. senators on Tuesday raised concerns about the possible negative impact that Comcast's proposed purchase of AT&T's cable assets could have on diverse programming and Internet access. |
| US: Ellison, Ashcroft Win 'Big Brother' Awards
Reuters
April 19th, 2002
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and database billionaire Larry Ellison were named this year's most notorious American violators of personal privacy by leading advocacy groups on Thursday. The annual ''Big Brother Awards'' are presented to government, corporations and private individuals who allegedly have done the most to threaten personal privacy. |
| AFRICA: The Great Internet Robbery
BBC
April 15th, 2002
Africa is being ripped off -- to the tune of some $500m a year -- simply for hooking up to the World Wide Web, say Kenyan internet company chiefs. And this extra cost is partly to blame for slowing the spread of the internet in Africa and helping sustain the digital divide, they contend. |
| US: Seeking Profits, Internet Companies Alter Privacy Policy
by Saul Hansell, New York Times
April 11th, 2002
Pressed for profits, Internet companies are increasingly selling access to their users' postal mail addresses and telephone numbers, in addition to flooding their e-mail boxes with junk mail. |
| US: New Hot Line Links CEOs to White House
by Tiffany Kary, CNET News.com
April 3rd, 2002
A high-security communications network linking government leaders to some of technology's biggest names in the event of a national disaster will be unveiled early next month, officials say. Inspired by the breakdown in communication on Sept. 11, when frantic calls overwhelmed phone lines, the so-called CEO Link will be used to shuttle high-priority news between government officials and executives. |
| AFRICA: Cyberia Takes Foothold
Wired.com
March 13th, 2002
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- It may take all day to phone Ghana from the country next door, but if you want the latest news from a shadowy group of rebels fighting in remote West African jungles, you can always go to their website. |
| US: Ashcroft Asks Telcom to Help Track Terrorists
by Brian Krebs, Newsbytes.com
March 1st, 2002
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft shopped the Bush administration's anti-terrorism agenda to the nation's regional telecom providers today, urging them to press ahead with reforms that would make it easier for the government to intercept terrorist communications. |
| US: House OKs Bells Web Access Bill
by D. Ian Hopper, Associated Press
February 27th, 2002
WASHINGTON -- The House passed sweeping legislation Wednesday to let four Bell telephone giants sell Internet access nationwide and to relieve them of state and federal regulation. |
| US: Williams Co. Spinoff May Seek Bankruptcy
by Kenneth N. Gilpin, New York Times
February 26th, 2002
The Williams Communications Group, the troubled provider of broadband network services, said yesterday that it was looking to restructure its debt obligations and that it might seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors. |
| US: Microsoft's Lobbying Efforts Eclipse Enron
by Matt Loney, ZDNet (UK)
February 12th, 2002
Microsoft's budget for political lobbying exceeded that of Enron, the judge residing over the antitrust case has heard. The software giant's budget for its Political Action Committee (PAC) increased from about $16,000 in 1995 to $1.6 million in 2000, according to Edward Roeder, a self-styled expert on efforts to influence the U.S. government, and founder of Sunshine Press Services, a news agency devoted to investigating money in politics. |
| US: Bush Sr.'s Ties to Global Crossing
by David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle
February 11th, 2002
President Bush had good reason to take an interest in Enron's demise. Aside from his close personal ties to the Houston energy giant, nearly three dozen of his senior appointees owned Enron shares upon arriving at the White House last year. |
| BRAZIL: Recife -- the New Silicon Valley
by Paulo Reblo, Wired.com
January 18th, 2002
Recife, in Northeastern Brazil, is being given a technology makeover to make it a sort of Brazilian Silicon Valley surrounded by the sea. Its goal is to lure both international and Brazilian IT companies and startups to this digital port. |
| WORLD: Digital Divide is Racism's New Frontier
by Robin Chandler, The Guardian (UK)
January 17th, 2002
The internet is slow to recognise its responsibilities as an ethical player. If we have racism, a digital divide is its new colonial frontier. Passions surrounding the access and control of IT worldwide have triggered a cultural revolution. |
| US: FBI Software Records Each Keystroke
by Bob Port, Seattle Times
December 18th, 2001
The FBI is planning to give away computer software. All you have to do to get some is make the bureau think you're involved in crime. |
| US: Software Firms Say FBI Eavesdropping Unacceptable
Reuters
December 11th, 2001
Antivirus software vendors said Monday they don't want to create a loophole in their security products to let the FBI or other government agencies use a virus to eavesdrop on the computer communications of suspected criminals. |
| US: Microsoft and Justice Department Near Deal
by Joseph Menn, New York Times
November 1st, 2001
The Justice Department has reached a tentative settlement to end its 3-year-old antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. and is trying to persuade the 18 states that joined the case to agree to the same terms, people briefed on the talks said late Wednesday. |
| Canada: Nortel Helps Build China's Surveillance Technology
The Register
October 22nd, 2001
Human rights activists have launched an attack on Nortel Networks, accusing it of contributing to human rights violations in China by helping the country overhaul its ageing surveillance technologies. |
| US: Feds Push Internet Surveillance
by Declan McCullagh, Wired
September 12th, 2001
Federal police are reportedly increasing Internet surveillance after Tuesday's deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. |
| EU: Secret Spy Network Formed to Track Protestors
by Stephen Castle, The Independent (UK)
August 20th, 2001
European leaders have ordered police and intelligence agencies to co-ordinate their efforts to identify and track the anti-capitalist demonstrators whose violent protests at recent international summits culminated in the shooting dead by police of a young protester at the Genoa G8 meeting last month. |
| NETHERLANDS: Global Treaty a Threat to the Net?
by Lisa M. Bowman, ZDNN
July 22nd, 2001
International policy-makers this week ended a round of talks aimed at setting common rules affecting online trade and commerce, but they made little progress in bridging divisions that threaten to delay the pact. |
| US: Media Giants Lobbying to Privatize Airwaves
by Jeremy Rifkin, The Guardian (London)
April 28th, 2001
Imagine a world in which a handful of global media conglomerates like Vivendi, Sony, BskyB, Disney, and News Corporation own literally all the airwaves all over the planet and trade them back and forth as 'private electronic real estate'. A strategy is beginning to unfold in Washington DC to make that happen. |
| INDIA: Most Literate State Plans IT Revolution
by R. L. Bindu, Inter Press Service
April 23rd, 2001
Realising that the state is lagging behind other provinces in India's great information technology (IT) race, the rulers of Kerala have shed off ideological opposition to high technology. |
| ARGENTINA: Poor Left Out of Internet Craze
by Chris Moss, New Internationalist
April 1st, 2001
Arriving in Buenos Aires from the pampa hinterland is like playing a simulation game called First World. The concentration of capital, concrete and a third of the Argentine population is dizzying for anyone approaching from the small farming towns of the province or from the far-flung villages of empty Patagonia and the northern altiplano. |
| UK: How the Market Made Us Stupid
by Will Hutton, The Observer (London)
March 18th, 2001
Four trillion dollars is a lot of money. It is the entire annual output of Britain and France put together. It is also the amount American investors in high-tech shares have lost over the past 12 months -- and that's before their losses in the rest of the stock market. |
| US: It's Not Easy Being Green
by Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.com
December 7th, 2000
The truth is, even policymakers, social scientists, environmentalists and engineers don't really know for sure. Researchers are only now beginning to study what e-commerce means for the Earth. |
| US: Amazon.com Fights Union Activity
by Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
November 29th, 2000
Amazon.com has come out swinging in its fight to stop a new unionization drive, telling employees that unions are a greedy, for-profit business and advising managers on ways to detect when a group of workers is trying to back a union. |
| FRANCE: Yahoo! Ordered To Block Users
by Pierre-Antoine Souchard, Associated Press
November 20th, 2000
In a landmark ruling, a French court on Monday ordered Yahoo! to block French Web users from its auction sites selling Nazi memorabilia. |
| US: Computers Bad for Kids
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation
October 5th, 2000
Last month, the www.allianceforchildhood.net Alliance for Childhood a group of more than 75 educators, child-development and health authorities called for a time-out from the overwhelming pressure on educators and parents to computerize childhood. |
| WORLD: NGOs Tell World Bank "Don't Hijack the Internet"
by Gumisai Mutume, Inter Press Service
September 21st, 2000
Non-governmental organisations and academics are alarmed over the Global Gateway, a portal website project which the Bank says will be the ''the premier web entry point for information about poverty and sustainable development'' but which the NGOs say is flawed and non-participatory. |
| US: Sony Corporation Tracks Environmental Organizations
by Danielle Knight, Inter Press Service
September 15th, 2000
A leaked document written by Sony Corporation, obtained by IPS, outlines a presentation made in July to fellow electronics companies at a conference in Brussels illustrating the various activities of environmental groups. It names specific US activists who seek to regulate waste caused by the electronics industry. |
| SOUTH ASIA: Digital Divide Sharpens Rich-Poor Gap
by Ranjit Devraj, Inter Press Service
July 21st, 2000
South Asia has emerged as the most promising region for sourcing information technology (IT) expertise, but this is an achievement that is of use only to the rich nations, say critics. |
| US: Info-Cleansing on the Web
by Marcia Stepanek, Business Week Online
July 7th, 2000
Beware the public relations person with a modem. Now corporate spinmeisters, too, can go online to track customers -- especially the disgruntled ones who vent their spleen in cyberspace. |
| USA: Spying for Free Trade
by Duncan Campbell and Paul Lashmar, The Independent (UK)
July 2nd, 2000
It is the new Cold War. The United States intelligence agencies, facing downsizing after the fall of the Berlin wall, have found themselves a new role spying on foreign firms to help American business in global markets. |
| USA: The Dot-com Obsession Warping the Economy
by David Friedman, Los Angeles Times
February 6th, 2000
Spurred by unprecedented stock-market wealth, land-use, tax and development policies are skewing economic incentives almost exclusively toward a postindustrial, dot-com society. Alternatives that might better distribute technology and capital among the population and diversify the economy are being sacrificed. |
| USA: One Big Company
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation
January 12th, 2000
AOL has been a leading proponent of open access -- meaning those who control high-speed internet access through cable systems or other means not have the power to discriminate against internet service providers that they do not control or favor. In buying Time Warner, AOL suddenly acquires one of the largest cable systems in the country, and gains a material interest in opposing open access. |
| MEXICO: Consumers Accuse Phone Company of Human Rights Violations
by Kent Paterson, Borderlines
August 11th, 1999
For more than four years, Graciela Ramos and Women for Mexico have been a thorn in Telmex's side. The group has waged a campaign to force Mexico's privately-owned, local phone service giant to cancel measured service, provide devices that track the number of phone calls made from a home, and ensure that economically disadvantaged groups have access to both public and private telephones. |
| MEXICO: NGO Battles Telmex Planning Move into US Market
by Kent Paterson, Borderlines
September 1st, 1998
U.S. consumers may soon have yet another long-distance phone company competing for their monthly accounts. After years of wrangling, Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) was recently granted approval by the Federal Communications Commission to test-market telephone services aimed at Spanish-speakers in Tucson, AZ. |
| India: New Computer Operating System Takes Country by Storm
by B. Harsh, India Abroad News Service
February 9th, 1998
MUMBAI -- Linux, a computer operating system that has thrown up the biggest ever challenge to Microsoft's monopoly and which got a boost with the Hollywood blockbuster ''Titanic'', is taking the Indian software industry by storm. |
| USA: RSI Suit May Finally Catch Up with Apple
by Reynolds Holding, San Francisco Chronicle
January 19th, 1997
For the first time ever, a keyboard maker has lost a lawsuit involving repetitive stress injury. And, with dozens of suits pending against it, this could be bad news for Apple. |
| USA: Intel Computer Chip Plant Tests New Environmental Rules
by Pratap Chatterjee, Inter Press Service
October 14th, 1996
SAN FRANCISCO -- The 1.3-billion-dollar expansion of a computer chip plant near Phoenix, Arizona, heralds a new era in environmental regulation, according to company and U.S. government officials. |
| CHINA: Google Moves In
BBC news
Google has secured a licence to operate in China, enabling it to compete more effectively with rivals in the world's second-largest internet market.
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