AFP reports that “Australia on Wednesday unveiled a new code of conduct to regulate online and mobile phone content which will call for classifications similar to those for films, a government spokesman said. All content likely to be rated as for viewers aged over 15 will need to be assessed and classified under the code, the Australian Communications and Media Authority said. The code of practice
According to another AFP article, “[c]ommerce on the Internet in China is expanding rapidly, with spending rising 60 percent in the first half of the year, an industry body said Wednesday. China’s Internet users spent 256.1 billion yuan (37.5 billion dollars) in the first six months of the year, up 58.2 percent from the same period in 2007, research institute Data Centre of China Internet said in a report. Spending online for all of 2008 is expected to hit 587.4 billion yuan, up 47.3 percent from the previous year, the Beijing-based agency said.”
The Wall Street Journal reveals that “European Union regulators ordered music-copyright groups on Wednesday to end a system that makes it difficult for online music stores to buy EU-wide licenses — knocking down a major obstacle to iTunes’ rollout across Europe. Internet music downloads in Europe lag behind those in the U.S., pulling in just a fraction of the revenue the record industry is losing from falling CD sales. Part of the problem in Europe is that music rights are sold separately in each country, which has prevented Apple Inc.’s iTunes from setting up a single store from which it can service all of Europe. Instead, it has had to seek licenses from each EU member state in which it wishes to sell. The European Commission told music copyright groups — also called collecting societies — to end a system of contracts that allow artists to collect payments only from an agency based in their own country.”
CnetNews writes that “Intel is expected to face new antitrust charges from European regulators that focus on the chip giant’s marketing and sales practices, according to a report Tuesday night on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site, citing unidentified people familiar with matter. The new charges, which could come as early as Thursday, allege that Intel offered inducements to European retailers in return for not buying processors from rival Advanced Micro Devices, the paper reported.”
The Mercury News reports that “German data-protection agencies have started to monitor street scanning by Google as it seeks to build three-dimensional city pictures for its Google Earth application. The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, a Bonn-based agency, said Google’s activities in filming German streets are ‘problematic’ though federal and state data-protection agents have yet to find a legal basis to stop filming that’s carried out by cameras mounted on vehicles. ‘From a privacy viewpoint, we don’t welcome this activity,’ Federal Commission spokesman Dietmar Mueller said Tuesday. ‘Yet we have no legal instance to challenge it – anyone can walk along a street with a camera.’ Google plans to create a three-dimensional image database of Frankfurt, Berlin and Munich to add to 40 U.S. cities already logged by the company.