Yahoo!News reveals that “China said it has the right to block Web sites its says break its laws after being accused of restarting the practice it halted during the August Olympic Games as part of a promise to widen media freedom. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Tuesday that certain Web sites had breached Chinese law by recognizing ‘two Chinas’ — a reference to the self-ruled island Taiwan. Liu, however, wouldn't say whether any Web sites had been censored.”
The Seattle Times reports that “Apple Inc. must allow operators other than France Telecom's Orange SA to sell its popular iPhone mobile handset, the French competition regulator ruled Wednesday. The decision overturns an exclusive arrangement with Apple that has allowed Orange to be the iPhone's exclusive distributor in France since the phone was launched last year. Orange rival Bouygues Telecom SA, the No. 3 mobile operator in France, filed a complaint with the regulator over the arrangement in September. The regulator said Wednesday's order was a protective measure while it continues an investigation into the merits of Bouygues' complaint.”
The Register writes that “[t]he [UK] government has accused UK businesses of not doing enough to protect their intellectual property. According to new research commissioned by the Intellectual Property Office’s IP crime group, many companies understand the need to protect IP but fail to do anything about it. It found 40 per cent of individuals surveyed took no practical action such as trade mark registration or employee training to ensure theirs and others IP was protected. The IP crime group interviewed what it described as a ‘random sample’ of over 1,000 working adults, including those at management level, based in both private and public sector organisations and in businesses of all sizes across England and Wales. It said a third of businesses were clueless over whether goods sold on their premises by external traders were legit or not.”
Internetnews.com has a worthwhile article on a new Pew study predicting what the digital landscape might look like in 2020.
Internetnews also has an interesting (and somewhat amusing) article on a study sponsored by Intel which seeks clarification as to where the Internet ranks in today’s lifestyle choices. It turns out that “[p]eople would forgo sex and television watching for two weeks rather than lose a week's worth of access to the Internet.” And “[t]hose are just two startling tidbits from the survey, called ‘Internet Reliance in Today's Economy.’”