The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is launching new consolidated Web sites in Vietnamese and Korean as part of its ongoing effort to provide environmental information in Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese, in addition to English.
These new sites compile EPA multilingual publications and materials in Korean and Vietnamese on a variety of environmental issues
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Bain & Company today announced the release of a benchmark study which suggests that online publishers are increasingly turning to sales intermediaries known as ad networks to sell off excess inventories. The use of “ad networks? surged from 5% of total ad impressions sold in 2006 to 30% in 2007, according to the newly released “Digital Pricing Benchmarking Study” from Bain, the global business consulting firm, conducted in coordination with the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
In the course of the last few years, a new architecture of electronic signatures services has emerged: Server based signature services. The main idea is that the signature creation data are not stored in a signature creation device located at the signatory, but in a central hardware security module located at the signature service provider. In order to create an electronic signature, authentication data and data to be signed or a hash of data to be signed are sent from the signatory to the provider via a secure communication channel. After verification of the authentication data, the signature is created by the hardware security module, and signed data are returned to the signatory for further processing.
Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) report, ”For Your Information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice” (report), is the product of the most comprehensive review of Australian privacy law ever conducted. The report is 2,700 pages long and includes 295 recommendations for reform over 74 chapters, covering 10 different broad topic areas. The report also recommends the introduction of a wholly new right of action for invasion of privacy, and a requirement that serious privacy breaches be notified.
Bangladesh enacted legislation aimed at controlling and preventing money laundering. Money laundering is a criminal offense in Bangladesh and can result in imprisonment for up to seven years, in addition to financial penalties. The Bank of Bangladesh is responsible for investigating suspected cases and presenting them to the courts, as well as applying for orders freezing or seizing assets of accused money launderers. This article offers an overview of Bangladesh Money Laundering law.
The practice of deeplinking, whereby a company´s Website directs consumers past the home page of another company´s Web site to one of its interior pages, has resulted in closely watched lawsuits from several countries, with unclear results but a general trend toward the legalization of the practice. Deeplinking bypasses the target Website´s advertising, resulting in a potential reduction in revenue to the deeplinked site. Other problems with unauthorized deeplinking include copyright infringement and the additional avoidance of the linked site?s policies, service information, and its own links. There have been lawsuits in Scotland, Denmark, India, the Netherlands, Germany, and other countries and the decisions have only muddied the waters, not calmed them.
The International Competition Network (ICN) is a non-formal organization, functioning basically as a forum, allowing its members ” national and multinational antitrust agencies ” to disseminate their experience on competition law enforcement and to work, through specifically targeted projects, on the convergence of antitrust laws. One of its most active working groups concentrates on the challenges of merger review in a multi-jurisdictional context. It has recently formulated a list guiding principles to be followed by competition authorities in relation with merger notifications and subsequent review. The document has been approved by the First Annual Conference of the ICN in September 2002.
Federal law authorizes US Indian tribes to regulate gaming activities within Indian lands provided that the gaming activity is not expressly prohibited by federal law or the law of the state where the Indian tribe is located. The US Congress enacted the Gaming Regulatory Act (GRA) in 1988 to provide a statutory basis for the operation of gaming by Indian tribes. GRA classifies gaming activities in three groups and it is still uncertain where specifically Internet gaming fits within this classification.
IRVINE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Internet Business Law Services (IBLS), www.IBLS.com, has established Graduate Fellowships for E-Commerce law specialization in Masters in Law in International Tax and Financial Services offered by Thomas Jefferson School of Law, http://llmprogram.tjsl.edu/.
Mozilla, the group that oversees scores of volunteer programmers collaborating on the free Firefox Web browser, hopes to attract more visionaries to help change the way people surf the Internet, a newspaper report said on Tuesday.
This week, the group’’s research arm, Mozilla Labs, is calling for developers, designers and artists across the globe to ponder the future of the browser and submit their creative ideas, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“We just touched the surface of the potential on the Web,” Chris Beard, vice president of Mozilla Labs, was quoted as saying.”Now we need to turn up the volume and to get more people involved, explore what the future could look like and inspire us to do it.”
The Maltese Data Protection Act of 2001 (the “Act”) was the first statute in Malta to deal exclusively with the protection of personal data. It was introduced to render Maltese law compatible with Directive 95/46/EC, even though at the moment of its introduction Malta was not a member of the European Union. The Act entered the statute book on December 14, 2001, with both sides of the House of Representatives voting in favor. It came fully into force on July 15, 2003, and it provides for the protection of individuals, known as data subjects, against violations of their privacy by the processing of personal data.
The United States (US) has strong antimonopoly laws that are currently being applied to e-commerce cases. Most of these claims, though, have not succeeded but it is definitely interesting to see how the antimonopoly area of law applies to the cyber world. The Medical Supply Chain, Inc.v. GE case is presented in this article as an example of this topic.
EU VAT Rules for Electronically Delivered Services
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Council Directive 2002/38/EC of May 7, 2002, is the Community law directly addressing and clarifying the VAT basis for assessment to electronically supplied services. This Directive was introduced to eliminate the then-existing discriminatory tax treatment for electronically supplied services. Before 2002, electronically delivered services within the EU were subject to VAT whereas those from non-EU Members were not. Thus, this Directive created a harmonized VAT system for electronic services and a competitive advantage for EU businesses.
As the Internet spins a web of interconnectivity around the globe, as it grows literally by the hour, India is struggling, not to catch up but to keep from falling further and further behind.
Inside India, things do seem to be improving. Five years ago there was limited Internet access but only in a few major cities, all in the hands of the government. VSNL, the agency responsible for Internet activities, and the DOT (Department of Telecommunications) provided an agonizingly erratic connectivity, with miserly bandwidth and far too few phone lines. Connection rates ran as low as 5% (for every 20 dialups you might get connected once) and users were frequently cut off. And the rates for this pathetic level of service were among the highest in the world. Domestic users paid about $2 per hour, and lease lines, for the few companies that could afford them, ranged over $2000 per month for a 64 Kpbs line. By the end of 1998, after three years of government monopoly, there were barely 150,000 Internet connections in India.
Taiwan or the Republic of China (ROC), has a well-regarded higher education system, especially in the science field. Public universities are rated in the top 1% of research institutions in the world. For example, in the period from 2003-2007, Taiwan had representation in five of twenty-two categories in the top 100 schools in the world. Areas in which Taiwanese universities excel include agricultural science, chemistry, engineering, materials science, and pharmacology and toxicology.
The ranking is based on each institution´s research output in high-standard international scholarly journals and is considered as evidence of their academic
excellence.
President Bush has signed into law a Bill stipulating that phone calls made over the Internet (called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP service) to a 911 emergency operator, will have the same status and safeguards as traditional 911 calls. This law will be especially helpful to those persons residing in the 50% of American counties, boroughs and parishes that do not have enhanced 911 capabilities.
According to a new study by Visa Inc. “B2C Electronic Commerce in Latin America and the Caribbean: Beating All Odds.”, retail e-commerce in Latin America, including travel and tourism, rose to nearly $11 billion in 2007, up from about $5 billion in 2005 and $7.78 billion in 2006, and is expected to surpass $16 billion this year and reach nearly $30 billion by 2010.