Archive for April, 2010

Premier League and Yahoo! exclusive UK online highlights deal

Friday, April 30th, 2010

The English Premier League, a member of the ICOMP Council, recently signed an agreement with Yahoo! which now has exclusive rights to show English Premier League highlights online for the next three seasons.

Carol Bartz, the chief executive of the internet giant, was in London yesterday to unveil the group’s global strategy. One source from a rival broadcaster was quoted in yesterday’s Independent saying: “This shows that a different type of potential licensee has emerged than has previously been considered. It is great news for the Premier League.”
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The Internet as a powerful tool for democracy

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

Social networking website Facebook has been working with the Electoral Commission to help get unregistered young voters in the United Kingdom to register before the 20 April deadline. This has been done in a bid to engage people who fail to register, keeping into account the 3.5 million people who were eligible to vote in England and Wales in 2001 but failed to register. While the effectiveness of this activity will be seen in the UK, it illustrates the importance of the Internet as a tool for maximising democratic participation.
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Google’s Register of Government Interference

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Whether by accident or design, Google launched its ‘Register of Government Requests’ on the same day as Data Protection Authorities from around the world published a letter slamming Google’s privacy practices (see ICOMP’s blog post of 20 April 2010).

The Register could be a useful tool and it will be interesting to see how it develops. However, there is one respect in which it goes too far and risks misleading rather than enlightening the public.
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Google on the Privacy Rack, Again

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Privacy issues have never been very far from the top of regulators’ agendas in recent years (and have appeared in numerous ICOMP blogposts). The challenge has not been to point out that the same rules apply to the online world as to the physical world (which, as with IP rules, is incontestable), but to explain what that means in practice. And whilst the same rules apply to everyone, it is clear that the practices of the market leader, Google, have the greatest effect both in terms of prevalence but also in terms of setting an example to all the other players.
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