Antitrust Suit Filed Against Amazon and Partner Borders

A number of news sources just reported on a class action suit filed in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, on October 29, 2002 by Amazon.com customer Gary Gerlinger. The source of the information apparently originates from a 12/11/2002 Form 10Q filing by Borders Group, Inc. The following statement appears in the filing: …

Subjects: E-Commerce

EU Commission's Quality Criteria for Health Websites

The EU Commission issued a press release indicating the importance of setting standards for health related data on the web, as “Europeans access more than 100,000 health websites, making such websites amongst the most frequently used.” The Commission recommended the adoption of 6 criteria for such sites: “transparency and honesty, authority, privacy and data protection, …

Subjects: Internet

Comments Filed with FCC on Copyright Protection

The non-profit Center for Democrary & Technology is involved in keeping discussions of digital copyright issues front and center. The organization filed comments with the FCC concerning the escalating controvery over proposed copy protection systems for digital TV broadcasts for coypyright holders. They support the position that there must be a balance of the discretionary …

Subjects: Copyright, Digital Rights

Increased Suveillance By U.S. Gov't

This New York Times article, New Tools for Domestic Spying, and Qualms, provides important perspective on the increasingly contentious issues associated with domestic surveillance and civil liberties in the post 9/11 world. Data on citizens who use public services such as libraries, and a range of commercial services, such as flight training schools and scuba …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Patriot Act, Privacy

Feds Launch Science.gov

From the press release: “Fourteen scientific and technical information organizations from 10 major science agencies have collaborated to create Science.gov, the “FirstGov for Science” web site. Science.gov is the gateway to reliable information about science and technology from across Federal government organizations.”

Subjects: Government Documents

Liability on the Internet Goes Global

The High Court of Australia issued a ruling on December 10 in the Internet defamation case Dow Jones and Company v. Gutnick. The case may have global implications for the increasingly wired publishing world. It stipulates that Web publishers of any description (be they huge corporate entities or individual weblogers) can be sued anywhere in …

Subjects: Free Speech, Internet

Web Filters Block Health-Care Sites

The Kaiser Family Foundation issued a study, See No Evil: How Internet Filters Affect the Search for Online Health Information. The focus of the study was how the choice of the ‘least’, ‘intermediate’ or ‘most’ restrictive web filtering options available through six high profile systems (8e6, CyberPatrol, N2H2, Smartfilter, Symantec and Websense), impacted access to …

Subjects: Censorship, Freedom of Information, Libraries