As always, if any member feels stirred by the snippets on controversial issues offered here, please feel free to use Your Say to make a comment, or kickstart a discussion on WAOE-Views. Web Editor
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As always, if any member feels stirred by the snippets on controversial issues offered here, please feel free to use Your Say to make a comment, or kickstart a discussion on WAOE-Views. Web Editor |
Internet Industry Association (Australia): Draft Code of Practice
The following is an extract from the Online Australia bulletin for September 6. It ties in with continuing controversy over the Commonwealth Government's insistence that Internet Service Providers accept liability for the monitoring of Website to prevent pornographic material coming into the view of minors.
The Australian Internet Industry Association (IIA) has unveiled its draft code for Internet service and content hosting providers.So, how do members think the important issue of preventing or controlling the distribution of pornography over the Internet should be handled?The code addresses parts of the Broadcasting Services (Online Services) Act (BSA) - if the industry signs up to it there will be no need for the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) to develop its own.
The IIA's code will require ISPs to provide Internet users with information and links to filtering software and other access control methods which they can use to censor and control online content in their own homes. Internet access accounts should not be provided to persons under the age of 18.
ISPs will not be required to meet the cost of the provision of software - which will be met by filtering software companies, who must update and distribute their software with the URLs of restricted material when alerted to it by the ABA.
In return for making content control solutions available the ABA will not require ISPs to block or monitor any material on the Internet. Serious illegal content will be reported by the ABA to the relevant police authorities in the country it is hosted.
"The approach can be reduced to four words ... 'industry facilitated user empowerment'," said Peter Coroneos, the IIA's executive director.
Other provisions address consumer reluctance to go or buy online - spam, privacy, copyright and fair trading. Some of these aspects were hashed out with the assistance of the Australian Consumers Association.
The code will be administered by an independent council and businesses who sign up will be entitled to display a compliance symbol on their Web site.
The Code will undergo changes from submissions over the next month. It is available on the IIA's Web site at http://www.iia.net.au.
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Electronic Privacy Information Centre on Filters and Freedom
Here's a different approach from that of Australian officialdom to the question of monitoring the content of the Internet. I picked it up on September 9 from George(s) Lessard's MediaMentor listserv.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, D.C. has released a new collection of critiques and studies that analyze the potential problems of Internet filtering and rating systems. "Filters and Freedom: Free Speech Perspectives on Internet Content Controls" warns that the adoption of software to limit the availability of material online may jeopardize free expression and facilitate governmental censorship.To Subscribe to MediaMentor via e-mail, send an empty message (no signature files or e-business cards) to mediamentor-subscribe@egroups.com. Be brave, stay calm, watch for the signs. List owner George(s) Lessard's URL is http://members.tripod.com/~media002. Please visit to learn more about him and his digital distance education work.The EPIC publication includes articles by leading advocates of free speech on the Internet, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontiers Australia, Peacefire, Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK), the Censorware Project, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the Global Internet Liberty Campaign, the Internet Free Expression Alliance, and the National Coalition Against Censorship.
Copies of the report will be distributed to participants of the Internet Content Summit in Munich this week, where 300 Net industry executives, government officials, legal scholars, and consumer advocates are joining to discuss proposals for controlling content on the Internet. The most controversial policy centers upon the implementation of a world-wide system of self-rating.
EPIC General Counsel David Sobel, who is attending the conference in Munich, said it is imperative to examine the arguments presented in "Filters and Freedom" before determining an approach for Internet regulation. "These views must be considered carefully if we are to preserve freedom of expression in the online world," Mr. Sobel said.
"Filters and Freedom: Free Speech Perspectives on Internet Content Controls," David Sobel, ed. (EPIC 1999, 182 pages, softcover, ISBN: 1-893044-06-8, $20.00) http://www.epic.org/filters&freedom/.
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Intellectual Property Rights on the Internet
Debate is becoming more urgent, in the United States and elsewhere, about another, no less significant issue affecting the practice of online education. This item is also picked up from MediaMentor.
Issue: Intellectual Property
Congress has much on its table with respect to copyright and the Internet. The issue extends far beyond the scientific community, affecting millions of stockbrokers, librarians, real estate agents and publishers -- anyone who makes a living collecting information. Today, such compilations or databases go largely unprotected by copyright laws that safeguard the interests of the authors and publishers of creative works. The database owners fear they will lose profits if outsiders can freely copy their information as it costs them tremendous amounts of money to collect and enter such data. On the other hand, companies such as Yahoo! fear they could be run into the ground if they can't easily trade works. The debate is essentially between people who collect raw data and people who distribute it. Real estate agents, for example, gather information about which apartments are available. Their concern is that an online publisher could see their listings in the window of an agency, copy them, and put them up on a Web site -- all perfectly legal under current federal law.Lexis keeps vast collections of court decisions. They might be faced with a competing on-line publisher who decides to use Lexis data to launch a Website of all court decisions from Massachusetts -- also perfectly legal under copyright law. "Why would anyone spend $2 million to create a database if it's not going to be protected?'' said David Mirchin, of SilverPlatter Information, a database publisher in Norton, Massachusetts. Companies such as AT&T and universities such as Brandeis in Massachusetts want legislation that would not restrict people from copying databases unless they plan to use the information in a directly competitive way. Behind the push for stricter copyright regulations are Reed Elsevier, owner of Lexis-Nexis and of Cahners Publishing of Newton, Massachusetts, the American Medical Association and the National Association of Realtors. [SOURCE: San Jose Mercury, AUTHOR: Boston Globe http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/075686.htm]
The issues and other matters raised in this section of WEB are intended to derive from membersā concerns and suggestions.
Input to WAOE-Views during the recent Annual General Meeting showed us that members are looking for opportunities to engage with important issues and ideas affecting the Web-based delivery of teaching and learning, but also that we need to do more to spell out to our members details of the organisational procedures through which they will get to know more frequently and reliably what goals the Association is pursuing, what action is being taken to realise these goals, and - most importantly - how members may make the most effective contributions to WAOE.
As a result, a new column, WAOE Policies and Procedures, has been split off from WEB Ideas and Issues. This will free the WEB Ideas and Issues column to be taken up more and more by topics of interest arising from the thinking of the members at large about their own professional practice in online education, and the role that WAOE as a whole and the sub-groups in which members are most actively engaged might play in lifting the standards and quality of Web-based teaching and learning.
If you have a concern to express, an idea to suggest, a question to raise, a point to make about online education in general and about WAOE's work in relation to online education in particular, write a short item for the WEB Ideas and Issues column and send it to the WEB Editor. On a smaller, less formal scale, you might prefer to air your views first of all in the Your Say section of WEB. Depending on the nature and volume of early responses to the Your Say item, matters raised may spark an article in the Web Ideas and Issues section of WEB, a free-ranging discussion on WAOE-Views, or a structured debate or online chat via the WAOE WebBoard.