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30 Countries Sign Controversial Cybercrime Treaty
The 26 Council of Europe member states, the U.S., Canada, Japan, and South Africa have signed a cybercrime treaty criminalizing child pornography, online fraud, and hacking; civil rights groups say the treaty goes too far in some areas. (11/26/2001 at IDG.net)
America Online's Entry Could Change China Game
America Online is expected to announce a deal with Legend Holdings, China's largest computer maker; analysts expect a wave of consolidation througout China's Net portal market. (6/4/2001 at The Industry Standard)
B-to-B Sprouts Outside U.S.
Business-to-business exchanges are out of favor in the U.S., but internationally, the WorldWide Retail Exchange (WWRE), iMerchants, MeetChina.com and other B2B players are going strong. (11/28/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Blueprint to Fight Cybercrime
At a meeting of the Group of Eight nations in Paris, the French Interior Minister called for more international coordination in cracking down on cybercrime, but argued against an international cyberpolice force. (5/15/2000 at Wired News)
Brazil Long On Cash, Short On Ideas
While money continues to pour into venture capital pools in Brazil, the number of entrepreneurs looking for funding there has decreased dramatically. (4/20/2001 at TechWeb)
China Enacts Sweeping Rules on Internet Firms
The Chinese government's newly published regulations on Internet companies include limits on foreign investment and require Chinese firms to suppress "subversive" content. (10/2/2000 at Excite News)
China: the Cost of Control
China's desire to fend off foreign influences (both cultural and financial) contradicts its desire to improve its Internet infrastructure. (12/18/2000 at NUA Internet Surveys)
Cyber-Europe Has Problems of Its Own
A look at the failure of World Online International, a Dutch ISP and portal that hoped to provide a pan-European onramp to the Internet; after the resignation of founder Nina Brink, it was sold at bargain rates to Tiscali, an Italy-based independent ISP. (3/15/2001 at Business Week)
DomainTheNet and i-DNS.net Launch Domain Names in Hebrew
DomainTheNet and i-DNS.net International will work together to sell Hebrew domain names to Israel-based customers. (12/27/2000 at InternetNews.com)
EU Task Force Examines Upgrade of Internet
Internet experts, including Vint Cerf, met with members of the EU Commission to discuss transitioning Europe from IPv4 to IPv6. (4/24/2001 at Excite News)
Europe Passes Stiff E-Commerce Law
The "Brussels I regulation", passed by European justice ministers, states that when a European consumer sues a European ecommerce site, the case will be tried in the consumer's country. (12/1/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Experts: Asia Not Taking Net Security Seriously
According to IDC Asia-Pacific, Asian business do not take cybersecurity seriously; they view Web defacements as minor embarrassments. (3/16/2001 at Excite News)
Global Internet Usage Has Come a Long Way
Information from the most recent ITU Telecommunication Indicators Update: 214 countries were connected to the Internet in 2000; Iceland has the highest percentage of Internet penetration; and there are 104 million "host" computers on the Net. (4/20/2001 at eMarketer)
Global Pains
The big U.S. ecommerce companies - Yahoo, Amazon, and Ebay - may have more trouble building market share in Europe, where local companies tend to have first-mover and other advantages. (3/17/2000 at Forbes)
Hits and Misses of 2000 in Europe
Failed Internet companies, third-generation wireless license sales, and Short Messaging Services (SMS) are among the major trends in Europe's technology industry of 2000. (12/27/2000 at InternetNews.com)
ICANN: Net Not Ready for 'Foreign' Languages
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is saying that registries should stop offering internationalized domain names until the board's IDN Internal Working Group meets; but says they're powerless to stop them. (6/5/2001 at The New York Times)
Incubators Feel the Heat As Dotcom Ardor Cools
European high-tech incubators are falling out of favor, as investment companies offer money directly to a select group of start-ups. (9/14/2000 at Excite News)
Internet Changing Latin America
Most Latin Americans can't access the Internet, because they can't afford computers; but for those who can afford it, the Net has provided cheap communication and unfiltered news. (4/20/2001 at Las Vegas Sun)
Internet Portals Find International Markets Tough to Tame
U.S. portals like Yahoo, Terra Lycos, and AOL are having trouble expanding overseas, due to local competition, language barriers, and lower Internet penetration outside the U.S. (3/1/2001 at USA Today)
The Land of the Rising eCommerce
According to eMarketer, e-commerce revenue in Japan is set to grow substantially in coming years. (3/2/2001 at eMarketer)
Latin America Online Push
Hoping to increase Internet use, a number of Latin American high-tech companies are offering computers bundled with Internet access and training in exchange for monthly installment payments. (9/14/2000 at CNNfn)
Latin Fever Cools
Latin American Internet use is growing, but still lagging far behind the U.S. and Europe; perhaps because local Latin American websites appear to be poorly designed, full of overblown style rather than real substance. (1/15/2001 at NUA Internet Surveys)
Latin-American Investors Cautiously Eye Startups
As in the U.S., Latin American investors are more skittish about funding startups; they are more likely to invest in established businesses' new online ventures. (12/27/2000 at TechWeb)
Mexicans Buy Into Net Shopping
Few Mexicans are online, but those who are, tend to shop there. (1/15/2001 at Wired News)
Monsieur, Do You Yahoo?
A caustic opinion on French judge Jean-Jacques Gomez's ruling that Yahoo must keep French citizens from viewing pro-Nazi materials on its auction site. (11/30/2000 at The Boston Globe)
Quepasa Says Si to Asset-Sale Plan
The once-promising Spanish-language portal Quepasa will sell its assets and distribute the proceeds to its investors, rather than remain in business. (12/27/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Safe Harbor, Stormy Waters
A look at the "safe harbor" agreement between the U.S. and the European Union regarding collection of European citizens' data by US companies, and the problems many privacy advocates have with the agreement. (10/27/2000 at ZDNet Developer)
Senior House Member Pans Euro-Net Tax Plan
U.S. Representative Phil Crane of Illinois says Congress should examine and disapprove of the European Commission's proposal to tax goods sold online to European customers by etailers, wherever the etailer may be based. (9/26/2000 at NewsBytes)
The Joy of Text
NTT DoCoMo is set to launch the world' first commercial 3G services in Japan; whether th high-speed Internet access is more popular than plain-old text messaging remains to be seen. (9/13/2001 at The Economist)
TRUSTe to Launch EU Safe Harbor Seal
TRUSTe will provide an "EU Safe Harbor Privacy Seal" for those U.S. companies on the U.S.'s "safe harbor" list; through a deal between the U.S. and the European Union, companies on that list don't have to comply with the EU's stringent Data Protection Dir (11/1/2000 at The Industry Standard)
UK: Software And Business Methods Not Patentable
Slashdot discussion on the UK's decision that business methods should not be patentable, and only certain kinds of software should be. (3/13/2001 at Slashdot.org)
Warning Issued on International Domains
Internationalization of domain names is an important, but hard-to-solve, problem. The IETF has proposed Nameprep as a short-term solution; others suggest using a directory layer between applications and DNS, or Unicode, or localisation. (3/12/2001 at ZDNet)
Web Sites' Merger Signals Consolidation of China's Internet Industry
The merger of Sohu.com and ChinaRen.com signals a potential wave of consolidations in the Chinese Internet market. (9/16/2000 at The New York Times)
White House Wants Powerful PCs Exported
The U.S. plans to allow export of high-end computer hardware to countries that might use them to develop nuclear weapons, and concentrate on keeping "the highly specialized software needed to perform such complex computations" from those nations. (1/10/2001 at Washtech)
Worldlingo: Internet Firms Fail Foreign Language Test
A recent survey indicates that less than 5 percent of the 50 most popular Internet sites could correctly answer a non-English email inquiry. (10/2/2001 at NUA Internet Surveys)
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