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Australia Moves To Close Broadband Gap
by Danielle Belopotosky
The Australian government on Wednesday announced final guidelines for a $36.6 million program plan to make high-speed Internet deployment more affordable in suburban areas.
The Metropolitan Broadband Connect program will subsidize Internet service providers that offer affordable broadband to Australians who live on the outskirts of metro areas, according to the office of Helen Coonan, the minister for communications, information technology and the arts. The program is part of that government's $2.2 billion Connect Australia plan.
Under the program, ISPs can register with Coonan's office to participate in the program. They will receive either an upfront payment or a per-customer subsidy. A separate registry has been created where consumers can record their interest in broadband services.
"I encourage all Australians living in these areas to register their interest in connecting to broadband immediately," Coonan said in a statement. "Keen interest to broadband will ensure more and more providers will be willing to get people connected."
Vietnamese Detained For Democratic Browsing
Two Vietnamese dissidents were seized last week from an Internet cafe after they were caught reading online material on democracy, according to news reports.
The well-known political activists, Nguyen Khac Toan and Do Nam Hai, were detained for six hours after the police discovered they had circumvented a government-installed Internet firewall.
The police "filmed, took pictures and documented our [online] activities," Toan told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. The two were forced to log into their e-mail accounts and print roughly 30 e-mails, which included conversations on democracy in Vietnam, he said.
Toan was released from prison in January after serving three years of a 12-year sentence for posting to the Internet articles about public protests against government seizures of land for development.
Reporters Without Borders included Vietnam in its list of 15 "enemies of the Internet," which was published in November. They cited Vietnam for its tight control over Internet content and its use of Internet police to filter "subversive" content and to "spy on cyber cafes." The Vietnamese government has denied the accusations.
On Monday, meanwhile, the OpenNet Initiative issued its case study on Internet filtering in Yemen. The online watchdog performed tests targeting Yemen's filtering, legal and regulatory practices between 2004 and 2005.
Of 5,242 Web addresses on two Internet service providers, 362 sites were blocked, the report said. Filtered sites involved pornography, homosexuality gambling, online dating, and content relating to converting Muslims to other religions.
According to OpenNet studies, Yemen's two ISPs are regulated by the Ministry of Telecommunications, which sets rules on what sites may be accessed or published.
Toward A European Virtual Library
Europe's plan to create a virtual library is taking shape, with the European Commission hoping to put the works of Baudelaire, Dante and Proust online with 6 million other cultural works, books and documents by 2010.
The commission is boosting efforts to build the European Digital Library, which will link archives, national libraries, academic institutions and museums across the 25-nation European Union. The commission last week announced that it would co-fund the creation of "digitization centers" across Europe, and it plans to recommend developing an intellectual property regime for posting copyrighted material online.
"Information technologies can enable you to tap into Europe's collective memory with a click of your mouse," Viviane Reding, Europe's commissioner on the information society and media, said in a statement.
A single, multilingual access point will be created for users to browse the digital material, which is expected to be made available in all European languages. The commission also said the library could be expanded to include publishers' collections.
The plan is rooted in public demand, according to the commission. Today, European libraries boast more than 138 million registered patrons, so putting material online will open doors for a wider audience. The online section of the French National Library, Gallica, receives more than 1.5 million hits per month and 4,000 downloads per day.
As the project moves forward, the commission's role will focus on three key areas: digitizing content currently stored in traditional formats such as microfilm, improving online accessibility and preserving digital content for future generations.
The announcement, which was initially made in November 2005, follows Google's plan to digitize millions of books for an online library. That initiative "appeals to the imagination" and "highlights the possibilities" for public-private initiatives, the commission said on its Web site. However, the initiative also has shown "that a European Digital Library cannot become a reality without addressing the issue of intellectual property rights protection."
United States, Pakistan Reaffirm Partnership
President Bush met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in a historic trip there last week.
The two leaders met to advance talks over an investment treaty, according to a joint statement issued Saturday. They also discussed ways to promote peace and democracy, as well as linking Afghanistan and Pakistan to the economic potential in south and central Asia.
Areas of strategic interest include energy cooperation, science and technology innovation, and Pakistan's nuclear non-proliferation efforts. The two nations will work toward increasing cooperation in science, technology and engineering. The United States also will assist Pakistan's efforts to improve the quality of education at its research institutions and higher education in the math and science fields.
The United States and Pakistan will establish a joint committee on science and technology aimed at collaborative relationships among the nations' relevant communities. The effort also will seek to build exchange programs within U.S. institutions for Pakistani experts.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, meanwhile, visited India. He met with Indian Prime Minster Manmohan Singh this week to advance talks on trade in goods and services, investment, education, science and technology, and security, Singh said Monday at a press conference.
"Our two societies stand on the threshold of greater depth and greater expansion in the years ahead," Howard told business leaders on Tuesday at a Bombay Chamber of Commerce luncheon. He said the Australian-Indian relationship has been strengthened in recent years.
Australia is the third-highest destination for Indian students to study abroad, after the United States and the United Kingdom, Howard said.
Movie Groups Target Piracy In China
The Motion Picture Association last week announced that it has signed an agreement with the China Film Copyright Protection Association to establish a framework for intellectual property rights education and other anti-piracy initiatives.
The associations have agreed to share information to better determine the effectiveness of government and industry anti-piracy efforts in China, according to a statement issued by the MPA. The two also agreed to assist U.S. and Chinese law enforcement efforts.
"We are in complete agreement that piracy is a scourge that is badly harming the Chinese film industry, as well as foreign producers and distributors," Mike Ellis, senior vice president and Asia-Pacific regional director for MPA, said in a statement.
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