INTERNET
The Broadband Economy (NYT)
Study: Teens Turn to Web For Health-Related Issues (SJM)
First U.S. Web Page Went Up 10 Years Ago (USA)
OWNERSHIP
Public Interest Urge FCC to Keep Newspaper Broadcast Ownership Rules
(MAP)
PRIVACY
Online Privacy Policies Apply To Offline Data Practices - FTC (WP)
INTERNET
THE BROADBAND ECONOMY
Issue: Broadband
According to author Karen Kornbluh, broadband "is integral to the
improvement of the American economy." Kornbluth urges government to
implement a "bold broadband strategy." She suggests that the government
needs to play a more active role in broadband deployment, just as it has
done with the development other essential infrastructure, like railroads and
phone service. "And if the cost of deploying broadband connections in some
areas is more than consumers can pay," Kornbluth writes, "the answer is for
the government to provide a subsidy - targeted at sparsely populated regions
of the country, at low-income users, or both." She concludes: "The broadband
network - the infrastructure of the 21st century - lies beneath our feet. A
good economic stimulus plan would start the process of bringing this
resource to the surface."
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Karen Kornbluh (Fellow at the New America
Foundation and former deputy chief of staff in the Treasury Department)]
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/10/opinion/10KORN.html)
(requires registration)
STUDY: TEENS TURN TO WEB FOR HEALTH-RELATED ISSUES
Issue: Internet/Health
According to a national survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation released on
Tuesday, teens and young adults are flocking to the Web for health-related
information as much as they are downloading music and playing games online
and more often than shopping online. The survey found that one in four
people 15 to 24 years old say that they get ``a lot'' of health information
online and nearly 40 percent of them say they have changed their own
behavior because of information they found on the Web. ``Confidentiality is
so important and at this point most young people have faith that the
Internet offers them that confidentiality,'' said Victoria Rideout, vice
president and director of the program for the Study of Entertainment Media
and Health at the foundation. Among 15 to 17 year-olds who were looking for
health information online, nearly half said they have experienced being
blocked from sites that they said were non-pornographic due to filtering,
the survey found.
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury, AUTHOR: RESHMA KAPADIA (Reuters)]
(http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/reuters_wire/1701110l.htm)
FIRST U.S. WEB PAGE WENT UP 10 YEARS AGO
Issue: Internet
Wednesday marks the 10th anniversary of the first U.S. Web page, created by
Paul Kunz, a physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).
Kunz went home and created what was to become the first Web page on a U.S.
computer; it gave scientists easy access to SLAC's database of physics
papers. World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee demonstrated Kunz's Web page
in front of scientists at a conference in France. ''It was a very dramatic
moment,'' Kunz says. ''I realized without that last piece in the demo people
would have forgotten about the Web before they got home.'' Instead, they
went home and told all their colleagues. Then they started creating their
own pages, and the rest, as they say, is history.
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Janet Kornblum]
(http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20011211/3688938s.htm)
OWNERSHIP
PUBLIC INTEREST URGE FCC TO KEEP NEWSPAPER BROADCAST OWNERSHIP RULES
Issue: Ownership
Several public interest groups, including the Consumers Union, the Consumer
Federation of America and the Media Access Project filed comments with the
FCC urging it not to abandon rules that restrict cross-ownership between
newspapers andbroadcasters
within the same market. Full comments can be found at URL below.
[SOURCE: Media Access Project
(http://www.mediaaccess.org/filings/consumers_union_et_al_nbco_comments.pdf)
PRIVACY
ONLINE PRIVACY POLICIES APPLY TO OFFLINE DATA PRACTICES - FTC
Issue: Privacy
Speaking at a Q&A session following his speech at the Promotion Marketing
Association's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., Howard Beales, the Federal
Trade Commission's consumer protection chief, said the commission would
consider privacy policies posted on a company's Web site to represent its
offline data collection, use and disclosure practices, without clear
disclosure to the contrary. That statement was taken by people at the
meeting as significant because up until now industries have considered a
privacy policy to apply to online activities only, whereas offline privacy
has been considered almost entirely unregulated, said Reed Freeman, a
partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Collier Shannon Scott LLC. FTC
Chairman Timothy Muris in early reverses his predecessor's call for federal
privacy legislation, saying he believed on- and off-line privacy violations
could be adequately addressed by stepping up enforcement of existing
consumer protection laws. In order to make those laws work, Muris promised
to increase the amount the agency spends on privacy enforcement by 50
percent.
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Krebs (Newsbytes.com)]
(http://www.washtech.com/news/regulation/14125-1.html)
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