October 2011 - KICTANet

New US E-PARASITE Act Worrying
by Muchiri Nyaggah 28 Oct '11

28 Oct '11

By putting out this kind of legislation (especially if it ever passes into law), the US could loose the moral authority to speak against similar legislation being proposed in emerging markets. PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of Americafrom the *censorship-galore* dept As was unfortunately expected<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111025/08343716500/house-trying-to-rush-…>, the House version of PROTECT IP has been released (embedded below) and it's *ridiculously bad*. Despite promises from Rep. Goodlatte, there has been no serious effort to fix the problems of the Senate bill, and it's clear that absolutely no attention was paid to the significant concerns of the tech industry, legal professionals, investors and entrepreneurs. There are no two ways around this simple fact: this is an attempt to build the Great Firewall of America. The bill would require service providers to block access to certain websites, very much contrary to US official positions on censorship and internet freedom, and almost certainly in violation of the First Amendment. Oh, and because PROTECT IP wasn't enough of a misleading and idiotic name, the House has upped the ante. The new bill is called: "the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act" or the E-PARASITE Act (though, they also say you can call it the "Stopping Online Piracy Act"). The bill is big, and has a bunch of problems. First off, it *massively* expands the sites that will be covered by the law. The Senate version at least tried to limit the targets of the law (but not the impact of the law) on sites that were "dedicated to infringing activities" with no other significant purposes (already ridiculously broad), the new one just targets "foreign infringing sites" and "has only limited purpose or use other than" infringement. They're also including an "inducement" claim not found elsewhere in US regulations -- and which greatly expands what is meant by inducement. The bill effectively takes what the entertainment industry * wanted* the Supreme Court to say in Grokster (which it did not say) and puts it into US law. In other words, any foreign site declared by the Attorney General to be "inducing" infringement, with a very broad definition of inducing, can now be censored by the US. With no adversarial hearing. Hello, Great Firewall of America. And while defenders of this bill will insist it's only designed to target truly infringing sites, let's just recall a small list of sites and technologies the industry has insisted were all about infringement in the past: the player piano, the radio, the television, the photocopier, the phonograph, cable tv, the vcr, the mp3 player, the DVR, online video hosting sites like YouTube and more. All of these things turned out to be huge boons for the industry. And yet, with a law like this in place, the old industry gets to kill off technologies they don't understand. Scary stuff. And it's not just foreign sites impacted by this law (despite what supporters would have you believe). It appears to expand who would have to take on the entire burdens of enforcing this blacklist -- broadly naming "service providers" as defined in the DMCA. That's significant, because a big part of this bill is to undermine and strip away the safe harbors of the DMCA. The DMCA set up an important balance that gave online service providers freedom from liability if they pulled down content upon notification. This new bill provides a massive and ridiculous burden: allowing the Attorney General to create an internet blacklist that all service providers will need to block access to: *A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.* On top of that, the bill says any attempt to get around such blocks can lead to liability. Would this put liability on things like MAFIAAfire? It sure sounds like it: *To ensure compliance with orders issued pursuant to this section, the Attorney General may bring an action for injunctive relief.... against any entity that knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed for the circumvention or bypassing of measures described in paragraph (2) and taken in response to a court order issued pursuant to this subsection, to enjoin such entity from interfering with the order by continuing to provide or offer to provide such product or service.* While the text of the bill insists that nothing in it takes away the DMCA's safe harbors, once again this is a claim without the facts to back it up. A large part of the bill is an effective attempt to strip away the DMCA's safe harbors. The only *extraordinarily minor* change against the interests of the entertainment industry is that the bill ever so slightly changes the "private right to action," which allows individual copyright holders to take action under this bill. This was a big problem in the old bill, and the only requirement here is that prior to making use of this private right to action, copyright holders have to provide "notice" to payment processors and ad providers. But then those service providers are expected to take action anyway, or face liability. So all this really does is take the court out of the process, and make it even easier for copyright holders to effectively kill off sites they don't like. Think about this for a second: think how many bogus DMCA takedown notices are sent by copyright holders to take down content they don't like. With this new bill, should it become law, those same copyright holders will be able to cut off advertising and payment processing to such sites. Without court review. And... because this bill wasn't already ridiculously bad enough, it *also* lumps in a House version of the felony streaming bill<http://www.techdirt.com/search.php?q=s.978&eid=&tid=&aid=&searchin=stories> that will make huge swaths of Americans felons for streaming content online. This bill is an abomination and an insult to the Constitution. It's unfortunate that Rep. Lamar Smith thinks this is worth introducing in its current state, and anyone who signs on to co-sponsor is effectively supporting mass censorship of the internet in the US, as well as the criminalization of huge numbers of Americans -- while putting a huge burden on the one part of the economy that actually is creating jobs. All because a few legacy companies in the entertainment industry refuse to adapt. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111026/12130616523/protect-ip-renamed-e-… Kind regards, *Muchiri* Nyaggah Principal Partner @muchiri +254 722 506400 Semacraft.com

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Telkom/Orange shoddy/unresponsive service
by Joseph Waruingi 28 Oct '11

28 Oct '11

Dear listers, Our organization invested in fixed wireless lines as part of a recent office move. We have been struggling to have Telkom convert the lines from pre to post paid and despite having paid the requisite fees - Kshs 10,000 per line, we are still struggling to have this done, almost a month later. They claim they have done it but we have protested it has not been done, since we are the users of the services - a contest of sort of their word against ours. All the contacts we have had, have stopped answering our calls and responding to our emails. Is there anyone from Telkom/Orange on list who would care to respond and have this fixed for us? Seems old habits die hard. Joseph

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Google Advert Nuisance
by Wamuyu Gatheru 27 Oct '11

27 Oct '11

Folks, Is it just me getting annoyed and frustrated by popping Google ads and advertising? Now the Google trader page is opening over the video am watching. This strategy of driving users crazy cant be good business. Mucheru and co., please advice us on how to avoid this Google harassment. regards, Wamuyu

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Re: [kictanet] German high court establishes online libel rules
by Victor Bwire 27 Oct '11

27 Oct '11

German high court establishes online libel rules Federal Court of Justice The Federal Court of Justice has ruled that foreign companies can be held liable for content that appears on German websites. It has also set out steps online services need to follow when it comes to libel accusations. The German Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe ruled on Tuesday that German law applies in an online libel case involving German-language content posted to Blogspot, a blogging service owned by Google. The court also remanded the question of Google's liability with respect to the libel allegations back to the state court in Hamburg. The decision could have wide-reaching implications for online service providers that operate in Germany. The same court last year ruled the American newspaper The New York Times can be sued in Germany over statements on the newspaper's website if there is a strong connection to the country in an article. In late September, the Karlsruhe court, which is the country's highest criminal court, heard a case argued between an anonymous plaintiff and Google. A German man sued Google over a Blogspot blog entry claiming that he used a business credit card to pay for "sex club bills." The blog was generally about life on the Spanish island of Mallorca, where the plaintiff resided. "Google is pleased that the decision from the Federal Court specified the standards [of] how hosting providers deal with future complaints," wrote Arnd Haller, Google's general counsel for Germany, in a German-language statement sent to Deutsche Welle by e-mail. "The court has confirmed that neutral services like Google are not obligated to pre-check the legality of content stored with a hosting service. There is also not an obligation on the part of Google to be 'on call' for people who feel their rights have been infringed upon to remove statements of fact. In this regard, Google was concerned that such an obligation would be dangerous to freedom of expression and information on the Internet." Google lost two lower court decisions Google Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Google lost two previous decisions in this case Google argued that German law did not apply in this situation as Google is an American company, but the court rejected this argument as two previous courts had also done. The Karlsruhe court clarified the rules in such a situation, saying that "the first complaint of the person concerned is to be forwarded to the person responsible for the blog entry [to comment on it]." If the person does not respond to the potentially libelous statements "within a reasonable time," then it can be assumed that the charges are true. But if the accused does complain, the author must provide further evidence to support the statement. The court added that if the author does not provide evidence of the claim - in this case, that the accused used a business credit card for sex club bills - then, there is an "unlawful violation of personal rights," and the service must "delete the entry objected to." The Federal Court of Justice has remanded the second part of the case - whether Google is liable for these potentially libelous statements - back to the high court in Hamburg to see if Google followed this procedure. A surge of 'precautionary deletion'? Markus Beckedahl criticized the court's decisionBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Markus Beckedahl criticized the court's decision There was a mixed reaction from the European Internet activist community. "We criticize the Federal Court's decision to make platform-providers liable for user-generated content, as it forces providers to act as judges in order to avoid prosecution themselves," wrote Markus Beckedahl, chairman of the German digital rights advocacy group digitale Gesellschaft. "However, we acknowledge that the court has defined strict requirements for this liability, that aim at safeguarding free speech." Many Internet activists remain concerned, however, that the ruling could have a chilling effect of online speech. "This can only logically lead to precautionary deletion of innocent blogs and websites and contravene fundamental rights, wrote Joe McNamee, of European Digital Rights, a Brussels-based Internet activist group, in an e-mail to Deutsche Welle. Viktor Mayer-SchönbergerBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Viktor Mayer-Schönberger said the ruling was fair and predictable "Such rulings are of major importance for society as a whole because undermining the legal certainty of Internet intermediaries will - and does, in many European countries - lead to innocent material being deleted as a precaution against strict liability rules. This ruling is about society’s rights to democracy and free speech far more than it is about the rights and obligations of one particular part of industry." Some legal experts said the decision was expected and followed earlier legal precedents. "[The Federal Court] affirmed jurisdiction in this case, which was to be expected, and reaffirmed that host providers can be held liable, but only under quite narrowly defined conditions," wrote Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, an Oxford Internet Institute professor in an e-mail sent to Deutsche Welle. "They even went as far as laying out a procedure that when followed by host providers will insulate them from liability," he added. "Incidentally, this is the same procedure that lawyers, courts, and academics have been applying and writing about for a decade and a half." ________________________________________ From: kictanet-bounces+victor=article19.org(a)lists.kictanet.or.ke [kictanet-bounces+victor=article19.org(a)lists.kictanet.or.ke] on behalf of justus wamukoya [jwamukoya1(a)yahoo.com] Sent: 26 October 2011 11:21 To: Victor Bwire Cc: kictanet(a)lists.kictanet.or.ke Subject: Re: [kictanet] Freedom of Information laws and records management/More questions Many thanks to Edith and all those who are contributing to this hugely important debate. Unfortunately I have not been able to contribute as much as I need to as I am on a rather tight mission in Kigali. However, very briefly, let us appreciate that knoledge goes from data to information, then to records, then to knowledge and in some cases to wisdom. This should answer the question as ti weather information can ultimately be converted to knowledge. Secondlly, is the question fir standards. Yes, there are well established standards for records managemenr, irrespective of the formats on is thinking of and also for data conversion and data interchange. So let us not reinvent the wheel. Lastly, records are critical to FOI and so as a country we shall be cheating ourselves ti think that FOI can work wthout RM. And finally finally, whereas information and knowledge are important for various reasons, value is added if the records that evolve out of these are captured into sound RM systems for continuing usabily as evidence as well as both institutional and societal memory. More later. Justua On Wed Oct 26th, 2011 1:55 AM MSD Grace Githaiga wrote: > >Matunda, Harry, Edith and Macharia > >Your contributions are very important to this debate. > >It is true that in the course of the discussion, it has emerged that the topic may need further debate. It is emerging that records management is key in FOI, and that we need standards for records management including formats of storage. > >Matunda raises two key points: >1. That we need to discuss what standards would allow data interchange, and >2. Do we foresee a situation where we will be able to transform data to knowledge which informs decisions? > >Harry, you give a great suggestion on the need for a multistakeholder forum. Can ICT Board, e-goverment secretariat hear you on this one? I am sure listers will support your suggested theme Information Value Chain Management for Social Economic and Political Development . > >Macharia Gaitho, I have a feeling that you have echoed the sentiments of many Kenyans when you say your concern is about FOI as a basic right. > >Edith, great that you have provided us with themes that should be tackled in FOI. And you got me thinking: should we not start discussing/contributing to the FOI bill? We can be proactive so that article 35 of the the Constitution can be implemented...soon:)....I feel the energy from listers.... > > >Have a great day. >GG _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet(a)lists.kictanet.or.ke http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/victor%40article19.org The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

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domain names
by Kerubo Ombati 27 Oct '11

27 Oct '11

Hi Listers, Could someone help me with this: - what are the requirements are for domain name registration. - For a website is it necessary to indicate to whom the domain name is registered at the bottom of the webpage? Regards, Kerubo

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Newspaper archive
by Vanessa Malila [ICS RPG] 27 Oct '11

27 Oct '11

Hi Was hoping someone might be able to help. As some of you on the Kictanet mailing list may know, I am a PhD student at the University of Leeds doing my thesis on the Role of the media in ICT and communications policy processes in Kenya. The problem is that having travelled to Kenya last year, I now realise that I need to conduct further content analysis of The Standard newspaper. While I was there I was able to search through their archive for the dates I had selecteed (2008 and 2009), but now am hoping to search through the archive for 2007 without travelling to Kenya! Does anyone know of any UK based organisations that may keep such an archive? I have tried all the UK libraries, but none of them keep the archive for that year, so am hoping that you might know of another organisation which would keep such copies that I could search through. Would really appreciate any leads or help that you can give me. Regards, Vanessa Vanessa Malila PhD Student Institute of Communications Studies University of Leeds

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eCommerce Opportunity in Africa: Kalahari.com to be closed down
by David Lemayian 27 Oct '11

27 Oct '11

Hi listers, This week MIH Internet Sub-Saharan Africa announced that it shall close down Kalahari Nigeria and Kenya. ( http://blog.dealfish.co.ke/show/59586378/ ) Kalahari has been largely thought as having had the biggest investment in eCommerce and for it to be closed down is worrying. Is it that the African market is not ready for eCommerce or something else is at play here? David. -- David Lemayian E: dlemayian(a)gmail.com | Skype: David.Lemayian | Twitter: @DavidLemayian <http://twitter.com/DavidLemayian> | W: www.davidlemayian.com Techpreneur . Hiker . Photographer . Tech Consultant . Developer . Winner Google ADC Sub-Saharan Africa

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Vacancies @ AfriNIC
by Walubengo J 27 Oct '11

27 Oct '11

The real Kazi Kwa Vijana. Apologies for short notice but plse apply, deadline is next monday 30th Oct 2011. http://www.afrinic.net/job/ walu.

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Re: [kictanet] Freedom of Information laws and records management/More questions
by justus wamukoya 26 Oct '11

26 Oct '11

Many thanks to Edith and all those who are contributing to this hugely important debate. Unfortunately I have not been able to contribute as much as I need to as I am on a rather tight mission in Kigali. However, very briefly, let us appreciate that knoledge goes from data to information, then to records, then to knowledge and in some cases to wisdom. This should answer the question as ti weather information can ultimately be converted to knowledge. Secondlly, is the question fir standards. Yes, there are well established standards for records managemenr, irrespective of the formats on is thinking of and also for data conversion and data interchange. So let us not reinvent the wheel. Lastly, records are critical to FOI and so as a country we shall be cheating ourselves ti think that FOI can work wthout RM. And finally finally, whereas information and knowledge are important for various reasons, value is added if the records that evolve out of these are captured into sound RM systems for continuing usabily as evidence as well as both institutional and societal memory. More later. Justua On Wed Oct 26th, 2011 1:55 AM MSD Grace Githaiga wrote: > >Matunda, Harry, Edith and Macharia > >Your contributions are very important to this debate. > >It is true that in the course of the discussion, it has emerged that the topic may need further debate. It is emerging that records management is key in FOI, and that we need standards for records management including formats of storage. > >Matunda raises two key points: >1. That we need to discuss what standards would allow data interchange, and >2. Do we foresee a situation where we will be able to transform data to knowledge which informs decisions? > >Harry, you give a great suggestion on the need for a multistakeholder forum. Can ICT Board, e-goverment secretariat hear you on this one? I am sure listers will support your suggested theme Information Value Chain Management for Social Economic and Political Development . > >Macharia Gaitho, I have a feeling that you have echoed the sentiments of many Kenyans when you say your concern is about FOI as a basic right. > >Edith, great that you have provided us with themes that should be tackled in FOI. And you got me thinking: should we not start discussing/contributing to the FOI bill? We can be proactive so that article 35 of the the Constitution can be implemented...soon:)....I feel the energy from listers.... > > >Have a great day. >GG

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First Kenyan Tablet
by Matunda Nyanchama 26 Oct '11

26 Oct '11

You will love these guys: the first Kenyan tablet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kI46Ow4qc4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matunda Nyanchama, PhD, CISSP; mnyanchama(a)aganoconsulting.com Agano Consulting Inc.; www.aganoconsulting.com; Twitter: nmatunda; Skype: okiambe ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Be prepared to face ICT Security failures & know how to respond when they happen! Call: +1-888-587-1150 or info(a)aganoconsulting.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a workstation…" - Anonymous ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail, including attachments, may be privileged and may contain confidential or proprietary information intended only for the addressee(s). Any other distribution, copying, use, or disclosure is unauthorized and strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and permanently delete the message, including any attachments, without making a copy. Thank you.

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