DIGITAL DIVIDE
UK Wants Internet Access for All by 2008
E-Content: Voices from the Ground
E-GOVERNMENT
UK E-Government Fails to Catch On
MEDIA OWNERSHIP
FCC Moves San Antonio Public Hearing to January
Commentary: Media Consolidation is Hazardous to Your Democracy
INTERNET
White House Web Scrubbing
MIT Press Releases Sourcebook on Internet and Family
Holocaust Survivors Traced Online
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DIGITAL DIVIDE
UK WANTS INTERNET ACCESS FOR ALL BY 2008
UK Trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt has announced a plan
pledging that every home in Britain will have access to online services
within the next five years. Currently about 50 percent of UK households have
access to the Internet, mainly through dial-up connections. The government
is planning to form a Digital Inclusion Panel comprised of members of the
private and public sectors to advise the government on ways to meet the
target. The plan includes both narrowband and broadband services as well as
digital terrestrial, cable, satellite TV, and next-generation mobile phones.
News of the plan was welcomed by British Telecom (BT), which owns the route
of access to the Internet for most British households. However, some in the
Internet industry voiced concerns that BT has hijacked previous initiatives,
such as the government's plan to have the most competitive and extensive
broadband market in the G7 by 2005, as a means of maintaining the status
quo.
SOURCE: Guardian Unlimited; AUTHOR: Richard Wray
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/story/0,12123,1107904,00.html
E-CONTENT: VOICES FROM THE GROUND
At the World Summit on the Information Society last week, organizers of the
World Summit Awards announced the release of E-Content: Voices from the
Ground. Inspired by the World Summit Awards' grand jury meeting in Dubai
this past October, the book is a compilation of interviews with awards
jurors from 30 nations discussing the state of digital content in their
nations. It offers a variety of perspectives on how nations in the north and
south are utilizing ICTs as a medium for sharing knowledge, as well as the
digital divides and opportunities they each face. Co-produced by India's
Digital Empowerment Foundation, the book is the first step in the process of
publishing information about the state of e-content in all of the 136
nations that participated in the World Summit Awards. These additional
resources will be soon available via the book's official website.
SOURCE: Digital Empowerment Foundation
http://www.econtentworldwide.org
E-GOVERNMENT
UK E-GOVERNMENT FAILS TO CATCH ON
UK E-Envoy Andrew Pindar has published his fourth and final UK Online
report, revealing that three-quarters of Britons have never visited a
government website. The report also says that fewer than one in 12 Internet
users in the UK have ever carried out an online transaction with the
government. Pindar, whose contract is up in April, says the job of ensuring
that all Britons have access to the Internet is almost done. Over two-thirds
of government services are now online, every local council has a website and
96 percent of Britain's population is aware of a place where they can
readily access the internet, he added. The report notes that more than 3,000
.gov.uk websites have surfaced, but it admits that the lack of a "clearly
branded and heavily promoted" portal has held back progress. The UK Online
portal, for example, "falls a long way short of providing a single delivery
point," the report says.
SOURCE: Guardian Unlimited; AUTHOR: Ros Taylor
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/egovernment/story/0,12767,1107516,00.html
MEDIA OWNERSHIP
FCC MOVES SAN ANTONIO PUBLIC HEARING TO JANUARY
The FCC has announced that it is moving its San Antonio public hearing on
localism from December to January 28. The event will now take place at the
San Antonio City Council Chamber at 103 Main Plaza, beginning at 5:30pm. FCC
Chairman Michael Powell, along with Commissioners Kathleen Abernathy,
Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, will attend the meeting. The public
will be invited to speak during an open mic session following remarks from
invited guests and the FCC commissioners.
SOURCE: San Antonio Express-News; AUTHOR: L.A. Lorek
http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=110&xlc=1100789
MEDIA CONSOLIDATION IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR DEMOCRACY
[Commentary] Jay Heck of Common Cause in Wisconsin urges readers to take
action on the issue of media consolidation. He gives several examples of why
"we need more diversity on the public airwaves and in newspapers, not less."
After the Senate's roll back of the new FCC media ownership rules, the
action has shifted to the US House of Representatives, where Republican
leaders have blocked consideration of the resolution of disapproval that
passed in the Senate. A rarely used procedural device called a "discharge
petition" will be launched in January for House members to sign in order to
force the House leadership to schedule the resolution of disapproval for a
vote on the House floor. A majority of the House members must sign the
discharge petition to force the vote. "These outrageous ownership rules can
be rolled back if citizens let their members of Congress know of their
concern and adamant opposition to having the flow of information controlled
by ever fewer, larger corporations. Nothing less than the very foundation of
our democracy is at stake," writes Heck.
SOURCE: fightingbob.com; AUTHOR: Jay Heck
http://www.fightingbob.com/article.cfm?articleID=149
INTERNET
WHITE HOUSE WEB SCRUBBING
Under the Bush administration, government websites have experienced some
"creative editing," according to the Washington Post. Both the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention and the US Agency for International
Development (USAID) have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising
information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, promoting
abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute purged claims on its site
that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. Recently,
remarks by USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios vanished from the agency's
website, and Google "cached" copies have disappeared as well. The offending
transcript contained comments by Natsios asserting that US taxpayers would
not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned
out to be a gross understatement. Steven Aftergood, director of the Project
on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the
Natsios case is particularly pernicious. "This smells like an attempt to
revise the record, not just to withhold information but to alter the
historical record in a self-interested way, and that is sleazier than
usual," he said. "If they simply said, 'We made an error; we
underestimated,' people could understand it and deal with it."
SOURCE: Washington Post; AUTHOR: Dana Milbank
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9821-2003Dec17.html
MIT PRESS RELEASES SOURCEBOOK ON INTERNET AND FAMILY
MIT Press has announced the release of The Wired Homestead, edited by Joseph
Turow and Andrea L. Kavanaugh. The book offers recent findings on the
effects of the Internet on the lives of the family unit and its members.
Personalization, interactivity, and information abundance are three key
advantages for parents and children using the Internet. It examines
historical precedents of parental concern over media such as television. It
also looks at parental oversight of Internet use, including parental rules
about revealing personal information, time limits, and website restrictions.
The book reveals the effects of Web use on both domestic and neighborhood
life.
SOURCE: MIT Press; AUTHOR: David Weininger
http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262700948
HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS TRACED ONLINE
Nearly 60 years after World War II, Holocaust survivors are being reunited
with long-lost loved ones with the help of online databases and the opening
of Soviet bloc archives. The Baltimore-based Red Cross Holocaust and World
War II Tracing Center has connected 40 people in the past four months with
relatives missing since the war. George Gordon, a Catholic from Poland, was
told long ago that his parents, sister and baby brother died in the 1944
Warsaw uprising. This fall, at 77, Gordon learned that his mother lived
until 1986 and that his sister was still alive in Poland. In September,
Gordon, who lives in Seattle, reunited with his sister in Poland. The
tracing center was established in 1990 to sort through 47 million papers
from the Soviet Union and other East Bloc countries as well as seized Nazi
documents released after the Iron Curtain fell. To date, the tracing center
has found about 1,000 people. Just last week, the Red Cross tracing center
reunited a Holocaust survivor with the man who pulled him from a crib 61
years ago to keep him from being sent to Auschwitz. "I'm really shook up,"
Michael Hartogs, now 65, said as he hugged the 75-year-old Leon Schipper on
Tuesday at Los Angeles International airport.
SOURCE: Wired; AUTHOR: Associated Press
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,61639,00.html
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