Hi all,

This is the last of the news for 2006! So have a great
christmas and new year and/or festive season, and I'll
be back bright-eyed and bushy tailed in 2007, the week
commencing 8 January.

Till then I'll have regular updates on my website  -
http://technewsreview.com.au/.

Cheers
David

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The domain name news is supported by auDA.

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ICANN to undergo transparency review (IDG)
http://infoworld.com/article/06/12/19/HNicannreview_1.html

Cost of Wii domain name likely to stay a mystery
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/business/160788.php

ca: Internet registry scam
http://cfcn.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/B,C/20061219/crs?brand=generic&hub=&tf=CFCNPlus/generic/hubs/frontpage.html&cf=CFCNPlus/generic/hubs/frontpage.cfg&slug=crs&date=20061219&archive=CFCNPlus&ad_page_name=&nav=home&subnav=fullstory&site_cfcn=http://calgary.ctv.ca

**********************
DOMAIN NAMES
**********************
ICANN to undergo transparency review (IDG)
A U.K. governance organization will review ICANN as it
tries to increase transparency after criticism of its
close U.S. government ties. The report from One World
Trust will be made public when it's completed next
year, said Paul Levins, ICANN's executive officer and
vice president of corporate affairs.
http://infoworld.com/article/06/12/19/HNicannreview_1.html
http://www.itworld.com/Man/2681/061219icann/
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1467618322;fp;2;fpid;1
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=7918
http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=27591

Cost of Wii domain name likely to stay a mystery
Titans of their respective global industries clashed
this summer in a secret battle over three letters:
wii. Weyerhaeuser Co. of Federal Way, Wash. owned
them. Nintendo Co. Ltd. of Kyoto, Japan, wanted them.
When the digital-and-wood dust settled, ownership of
www.wii.com belonged to Nintendo.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/business/160788.php

ca: Internet registry scam
An Internet registry scam is hitting Calgary
businesses hard right now. CTV's Consumer Watch
received dozens of inquiries about the scam where many
businesses have received a $960 invoice in the mail
from Central Registration Service.
http://cfcn.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/B,C/20061219/crs?brand=generic&hub=&tf=CFCNPlus/generic/hubs/frontpage.html&cf=CFCNPlus/generic/hubs/frontpage.cfg&slug=crs&date=20061219&archive=CFCNPlus&ad_page_name=&nav=home&subnav=fullstory&site_cfcn=http://calgary.ctv.ca

Who's Your Go Daddy?
With shrewd marketing and in-you-face tactics, Bob
Parsons made his company the hottest thing in the
Internet domain world. Now he's about to see how his
act plays on a much grander stage.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/18/magazines/business2/godaddy.biz2/index.htm

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Announces New York City Show for Domain
Name Owners
The World Association of Domain Name Developers, Inc.
has announced it's first T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show in New
York City starting June 19th and running until the
22nd. The "by invitation only" domain conference and
trade show includes such giants as Google, Yahoo!,
Ask.com and over 300 other companies.
http://prweb.com/releases/2006/12/prweb491590.htm

ie: ComReg to launch commercial ENUM service
Ireland's Commission for Communications Regulation
(ComReg) is to launch the country's first commercial
electronic numbering (ENUM) service in 1Q 2007.
http://dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=20552
http://rte.ie/business/2006/1218/comreg.html

ICANN Okays Finland Domain
ICANN announced on Sunday it has signed an exchange of
letters with the country code top-level domain manager
for the .fi domain for Finland, the Finnish
Communications Regulatory Authority.
http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/121906_ICANN_Okays_Finland_Domain.cfm

China announces new anti-piracy crackdown as Treasury
Secretary Paulson visits (AP)
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson confronted mixed
signals as he arrived in China Wednesday for trade
talks, with Beijing announcing a renewed crackdown on
pirated goods but also running up a record trade
surplus with the United States. ... Also signed at the
ceremony, ... and a deal between VeriSign and the
China Netcom Group and the Ministry of Information and
Industry to set up a system to help create domain
names.
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/061217/b121706A.html
http://money.canoe.ca/News/Other/2006/12/15/2806635-ap.html
http://www.940news.com/nouvelles.php?cat=22&id=121706

SnapNames Tops DN Journal Top 20 For The Second
Straight Week With Six-Figure Sale of FixedIncome.com
SnapNames sold made the topof Domain Name Journal's
Top 20 list with at least 20 domains selling for
US$10K or more last week. The highest sales was for
FixedIncome.com that sold for $101,250.
http://dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2006/domainsales12_19_06.htm

Domain name changes sought (AP)
Over the past few years, the Internet has seen new
domain names such as ".eu" for Europe and ".travel"
for the travel industry. Now, the key oversight agency
is looking to get rid of some.
http://courierpress.com/news/2006/dec/10/domain-name-changes-sought/

*******************
OTHER INTERNET NEWS
*******************
au: Copyright ruling puts hyperlinking on notice
A court ruling has given the recording industry the
green light to go after individuals who link to
material from their websites, blogs or MySpace pages
that is protected by copyright.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/12/19/1166290520771.html

au: Australian court rules against MP3 link site
Linking to copyright music posted elsewhere online
without permission can be illegal, an Australian
appeals court ruled Monday.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6144590.html

uk: What price privacy now?
Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner, is repeating
his call for a two year jail term to deter those
convicted of trading unlawfully in personal
information. The report 'What prive privacy now?'
reflects the six months progress made since his
initial report 'What prive privacy?' was published in
May 2006.
http://www.ico.gov.uk/about_us/news_and_views/current_topics/what_price_privacy_now.aspx

EU should share web terrorism monitoring: Germany
(Reuters)
Germany will push the European Union's member states
to agree to share the surveillance of militant Web
sites when it takes over the bloc's presidency in
January, a senior German official said on Monday.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-12-18T184439Z_01_L18111220_RTRUKOC_0_US-EU-TERRORISM-INTERNET.xml

sg: Bandwidth bandit faces jail term
A Singapore teenager has pleaded guilty to tapping
into a neighbour's wireless internet network and will
be sentenced next month, a newspaper has reported.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/12/20/1166290603548.html

uk: Man whose head injury inflamed his sex drive wins
?3.2m payout
A husband who claimed that he became unfaithful and
sexually disinhibited after suffering a head injury at
work was awarded ?3.2 million in damages yesterday.
Stephen Tame, 29, was transformed from a devout
Christian into a sexually aggressive user of
pornography after falling from a gantry in a cycle
warehouse in 2002, the High Court ruled.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2512188,00.html

au: Court: Promoter can't stop eBay scalping
An Australian court ruled Monday that a concert
promoter cannot block eBay users from selling scalped
tickets.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/16266826.htm
(AP)
http://ecommercetimes.com/story/54768.html

au/us: CSIRO wins transfer of US WLAN court case
A federal court in California has agreed with CSIRO
that upcoming US WLAN patent cases brought against
CSIRO should be heard in Texas by the same court that
recently found in favour of CSIRO against Buffalo
companies. The court has said that patent cases
brought against CSIRO by Microsoft, Intel, Dell,
Hewlett-Packard and Netgear should be transferred to
the court which is already familiar with the CSIRO
patent infringement case in the Eastern District of
Texas.
http://www.csiro.au/csiro/content/standard/ps2lu.html

Triple threat targets Word users
Malicious attackers prepare booby-trapped Word
documents to catch out users.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6196213.stm

us: INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE?S STANDARD FOR VALUATION
OF WEBSITE
The rapid development of E-commerce in last decade has
created several challenges for the tax system
currently in place in the United States. Inspection of
the taxpayer?s website is every bit as important as
the inspection of the place of business. As cyberspace
has no boundaries, physical presence of company is not
required in any particular state. The auditing
technique for the tangible goods is different from the
intangible goods such as website or computer software.
http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?s=articles&id=040A752B-74DF-431F-8BF5-E6B29CD6EA10

2006: the year we were spammed a lot
Almost nine out of every ten emails sent globally is
spam, and Australia was one of the most heavily
targeted countries this year, according to a report
released by MessageLabs.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/12/18/1166290467781.html
http://home.nestor.minsk.by/networks/news/2006/12/1908.html

nz: Spammers face war on two fronts
Industry and the Government are gearing up to fight a
war on the spam that accounts for more than 90 per
cent of email traffic.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10415815

uk: Microsoft bans UK man from selling email lists
Microsoft took Paul Martin McDonald, who through his
company Bizads sold email addresses that were then
used as spam lists, to court. Microsoft sought and was
granted a summary judgement against McDonald, arguing
that his actions had caused Microsoft to suffer loss
and damage to the goodwill it enjoyed as owners of the
web mail service Hotmail.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39285196,00.htm

us: Poll: Internet now a big part of life
The next Bill Gates is more likely to come from China
or Japan than the United States, according to a poll
of Americans' Internet attitudes released Wednesday.
Most Americans polled also think that new camera and
Internet technologies are turning the United States
"into a nation of voyeurs and paparazzi."
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/technology/16282102.htm

Steve Irwin and World Cup top Google popularity poll
Google survey reveals that the life and bizarre death
of the Australian crocodile hunter was among the most
popular search items in the UK this year.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1974528,00.html

us: Nasa signs deal with Google to put data online
Interactive video from the moon, Mars and elsewhere
could one day be available at the click of a mouse
after Nasa signed an agreement with Google to post its
vast trove of images and data online.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1975815,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121801119.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/19/nasa_4_google/

cn: Google seeks Chinese solution
Google is locked in a race with rival Baidu.com to
find China's answer to YouTube
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-2506993,00.html

East Europe enjoys 'remarkable' broadband growth
Eastern Europe saw the highest broadband growth in the
third quarter of 2006, new research revealed.
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=43788

Internet spawns new addictions, claims UK mag
The internet has given birth to a quirky range of
modern addictions and maladies, the British weekly
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10416223

Piracy Suit Being Dropped Against NY Mom (AP)
The recording industry is giving up its lawsuit
against Patti Santangelo, a mother of five who became
the best-known defendant in the industry's battle
against music piracy.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MUSIC_DOWNLOAD_SUIT
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/technology/16276476.htm

jp: Group: YouTube to Post Copyright Warning (AP)
Popular video-sharing Web site YouTube Inc. has agreed
to post Japanese language warnings about respecting
copyrights in an attempt to prevent users from
uploading copyrighted materials, a Japanese
entertainment body said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JAPAN_YOUTUBE_COPYRIGHTS
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/technology/16277795.htm
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-12-20T025801Z_01_T146637_RTRIDST_0_TECH-YOUTUBE-JAPAN-DC.XML
(Reuters)

fr: French music lobby says copyright law is
unfinished (Reuters)
France's controversial copyright law aimed at fighting
Internet piracy is a "work in progress" and cannot be
the final solution for the struggling industry, an
influential French music lobby group said on Tuesday.
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-12-19T194535Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-280807-1.xml

BBC moves to file-sharing sites
The commercial arm of the BBC announces a tie-up with
file-sharing company Azureus to distribute titles in
the US.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6194929.stm

The YouTube world opens an untamed frontier for
copyright law
Larry Richard is one of the millions to have
discovered the world of YouTube, the free website that
allows people to post, watch, and share video clips.
When he receives a link to the site, usually via
e-mail, he spends a few moments to click and watch a
clip on his computer screen - sometimes a video of a
friend's singing recital, other times a snippet of a
foreign commercial or a monologue from late-night TV.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1218/p01s03-usju.html

Internet gold-mine attitude returns to Northern Europe
Northern Europe has long been a hotbed of technology
innovation, and now ? with some of the world's highest
levels of broadband usage ? the region is abuzz with
new Internet business models.
http://iht.com/articles/2006/12/20/business/ptscandi.php

Google Book-Scanning Efforts Spark Debate (AP)
Already facing a legal challenge for alleged copyright
infringement, Google Inc.'s crusade to build a digital
library has triggered a philosophical debate with an
alternative project promising better online access to
the world's books, art and historical documents.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DIGITAL_LIBRARY
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/technology/16281394.htm

Ebay suffers Chinese reversal
Ebay?s decision to close its main online auction
website in China and replace it with a
minority-invested joint venture is a stark
illustration of the difficulties facing foreign
internet companies in the country.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1a02ae16-8f8a-11db-9ba3-0000779e2340.html

Convergence and the death of the traditional telco
It sounds such an appealing term, ?convergence?,
conjuring up an image of things neatly slotting
together. There is some indication of it in the worlds
of IT and telecommunications, as proprietary forms of
communication and interconnection are being replaced
by one unified approach?IP, the internetworking
protocol at the foundation of the Internet.
http://www.it-analysis.com/blogs/Quocirca/2006/12/convergence_and_the_death_of_the_t_.html

The End User: The future of telecommunications may be
'comminfotainment'
When Olivier Baujard looks into his digital crystal
ball, he sees us all being customers of
"comminfotainment" providers. Within five years or so,
the familiar land-line "telco" and even the mobile
operator will disappear, in his view. Instead,
broadband service providers will replace them, selling
packages, bundles or channels of communications,
information and entertainment.
http://iht.com/articles/2006/12/20/business/ptend21.php

VoIP Risks Take Center Stage in 2007
Security experts warn that VoIP deployments could show
themselves to be more vulnerable and become bigger
targets for hackers in 2007.
http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=196700996
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=43811

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Sources include Quicklinks <http://qlinks.net/> and
BNA Internet Law News <http://www.bna.com/ilaw/>.

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(c) David Goldstein 2006

---------

David Goldstein
 address: 4/3 Abbott Street
           COOGEE NSW 2034
           AUSTRALIA
 email: Goldstein_David &#167;yahoo.com.au
 phone: +61 418 228 605 (mobile); +61 2 9665 5773 (home)

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