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Contents of today's ICOMP newsletter: 
Welcome to New Members The ICOMP Secretariat would like to welcome two new members: Daniel Martin, Business Development Director at Double Jump Media, a specialist search marketing and search engine optimisation company, based in London. He looks forward to being included in relevant ICOMP events throughout the year.
Abhishek Rungta, CEO of Indus Net Technologies, a web development company providing Internet consulting and application development services. They are based in India and also in the UK, and look forward to finding out more about how engagement with ICOMP can benefit their business.
Upcoming ICOMP Event
When: 27 April 2009, 10h30 - 18h00 The EU's data protection rules grant Internet users a high level of privacy protection. Combined with proper competition between the key online service providers such as search engines, users should expect even better privacy protection. ICOMP organizes a conference that will bring together regulators, company representatives and users, to examine the right balance between competition and privacy. The discussion will focus on how we can ensure that Data Protection Authorities are aware of the impact their activities have on competition while the competition authorities in turn take into account the effect of their actions or lack thereof on privacy. Achieving an optimal level of enforcement will be another key focus of the conference.
Spain's copyright plight The creative industries, and music labels in particular, regularly call attention to what they see as heavy economic damage inflicted on them by online piracy. The industry's claims received some validation by a recently published report for the International Intellectural Property Alliance (IIPA), conducted by research group GfK, which found that illegal music downloads in 2008 increased sharply to about 2 billion songs as compared with 2.2 million songs purchased from legal download providers. In Spain, the IIPA report which confirmed that Spain has the highest levels of piracy not only in Europe but even in a worldwide comparison met with high resonance. The staggering figures say 67 percent of Spanish internet users acquire files illegally via P2P (peer-to-peer); and this number goes up to 81 percent when considering under-24-year-olds. The music industry in Spain, according to the referred survey from GfK, has been seriously impacted in its profitability and has reported a sharp decrease of 59% during the period 2001-2008. Members of the Spanish entertainment industry are once again prompted to call for stricter legislation on piracy and illegal downloads to enforce compliance with copyright law. But in order to find a sustainable solution, a wide range of measures will be needed - including efforts to induce a social awareness of the damage caused by illegal downloads, and finding an agreement between internet service providers (ISPs) and the owners of digital content, according to Europa Press. It would make little sense to punish users while leaving the illegal provision of content untouched.
In "Business Strategy 2.0" (only available in Spanish), communications expert Javier Celaya sets out to help companies better understand the concept of Web 2.0 and to identify its implications for their business model, visibility and positioning on the internet, as well as organizational and human resources policies. Most executives are not very comfortable with the incorporation of social tools such as blogs, wikis or networks in their companies. While the "fear of the unknown" is only human, Celaya argues entrepreneurs must come to terms with the fact that traditional communications models are losing their effectiveness, giving way to a new form of engaging with customers, journalists or shareholders. In the new age of participation, consumers do not want to be limited to receiving information on a new product or service. They also want to interact in the new communication media to become part of the information process. Social networks have generated a high degree of interconnectivity among consumers, enabling them to exchange all kinds of text, audio and video files, links and images to share their tastes and hobbies with communities of friends, family members, professional contacts, etc. According to Celaya, all businesses should be aware of, and adjust their policies accordingly to the fact that these technological innovations are immediately and naturally incorporated by new generations not only as channels of communications but as a means of building communities with the same tastes and product interests. Celaya also analyzes how Google’s dominant position as the primary gateway to the world of information online affects the environment in which companies are doing business. At a market share of around 90 percent in Spain, and comparable dominance of the search engine market elsewhere, search engine optimization – or appearing in the top 10-20 results of Google Search - has become a strategic issue for companies. Especially since this can generate more than 70% of the traffic to a company’s website. Hence concepts such as lowering the degree of dependence on Google or defining policies regarding the presence of your employees in social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn should be become a top priority for management, Celaya writes. Javier Celaya ICOMP Member is a partner and founder of Dosdoce.com and vice president of the Spanish Association of Online Publishing (ARDE). He is also a Council Member of ICOMP. Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You? Conti explains in simple terms how websites communicate with consumers and each other; how search engines, ISPs and various online services work; how companies monetize the data they collect about us; and how hackers and other predators can collect and misuse the data legitimate companies store. He believes we are approaching a "point of crisis," which requires consumer to "make more informed decisions regarding our use of 'free' web tools, as well as jointly seek solutions that will allow companies such as Google to innovate and thrive, while still meeting the privacy requirements of individuals and organizations." Conti explores at length how new Google services could dramatically change our personal privacy - and create security risks - in ways consumers cannot predict. Some novel services collect entirely new kinds of data, such as the contents of the voice mail and text messages sent to your phone, or your location at a particular point in time. Most new services require users to open a Google account, which allows Google to combine previously separate sets of data. Conti also looks at how new software might be combined with historic data to create entirely new threats. For example, employers could one day use facial recognition and lip reading software to mine years’ worth of their company's security camera footage. The central themes of Conti's book are consumers' general ignorance towards the risks associated with the accumulation and use of their data from free web services; the difficult balance between an "objective" system driven by auctions and consumer behaviour and a more profitable system, modified by Google employees for policy and business reasons; and the near certainty that new software applications, such as those based on cloud computing, will create new uses along with new risks for personal and company data. These messages could help policymakers and security professionals arrive at well-informed, meaningful solutions.
ICOMP representatives have attended a series of London-based events in February, starting with Search Engine Strategies London on the 17th, resulting in the acquisition of a new member, namely Indus Net Technologies. A breakfast briefing with Lord Carter in the UK on the 24th also generated a potential speaking opportunity for ICOMP on the role of IP within a digital society. We met our second new member, Double Jump Media, through attending an event called OpenSoho - a networking event for digital media organisations. On 5th March the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels hosted a public hearing about how to strengthen Fundamental Freedoms and Security on the Internet. The main outcome of the hearing was an assertion that the Internet is now part of the real world and fundamental rights have to be fully respected just like in normal life. However, due to the characteristics of the Internet, certain questions remain to be addressed. In particular, the participants stressed that it is necessary to define clear responsibilities on the internet and that transparency is a key issue. They also underlined the necessity to examine and prescribe limits to the 'consent' that can be requested of and obtained from users, whether by governments or by private companies, to relinquish part of their privacy.
The ICOMP Copyright & IP Symposium in Berlin in February received extensive coverage on the influential German IT news website heise online. In "Axel-Springer-Verlag fordert Verschärfung des Urheberrechts" ("Publishing group Axel Springer demands tightening of copyright laws"), journalist Stefan Krempl quotes panellist Christoph Keese, Head of Public Affairs at Axel Springer, who said publishers see themselves forced to subsidise their online content with income from their print business as income from online advertising is not nearly enough to break even. In "Whose data is it anyway?", the BBC's Mark Ward reviews the recent row over Facebook's changes to its terms of use and sheds light on the rights users surrender when signing up to a social network or online application. In what is very much a "consumer champions" piece, the article reinforces the importance of privacy online. The article also mentions ICOMP and David Wood is quoted as follows: The fact that Facebook moved quickly to roll back to its original Terms and Conditions showed how much respect it has for online communities, said David Wood, a Brussels-based lawyer who represents web trade group ICOMP. "It shows the power of social networks when things go wrong," he said. "They can push back."
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ICOMP Conference on Privacy and Competition in the Online Marketplace
La empresa en la web 2.0 by Javier Celaya, ICOMP member
