Media News - Monday, April 07, 2008

Europe’s .eu domain celebrates 2nd birthday in world top ten

The European .eu web domain has picked up 2.8 million customers in its first two years of existence and ranks in the global cyber top ten, the EU commission said Saturday. However 2007's .eu growth of some 300,000 registrations was far lower than the big-bang opening in April 2006 when over 2.5 million users were registered in the first year. It now ranks fourth among European Internet addresses and ninth worldwide, with plenty of ground to make up on .com which had 71.7 million registrations by the end of last year. In Europe the .eu tag still lags behind Germany's .de and Britain's .uk and is battling with the Netherlands' .nl for third place. In terms of total number of .eu registrations per country of origin, Germany continues to lead with 31.4 percent followed by the Netherlands (13.4 percent), Britain (13.3 percent) and France (7.3 percent). In terms of growth, however, there is a different picture. With overall growth at 11 percent in 2007, the number of registrations for .eu from Poland increased by 48.6 percent, followed by Lithuania (48.4 percent) and Finland (39.9 percent). While Germany currently enjoys the most popular nation web domain, .de could soon be dethroned by China's cyber army, as .cn already has 8.5 million registered users. (AFP via EU Business)

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Canadian broadcaster protests China censorship

Canada's national public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada called Friday on Chinese authorities to restore access to its websites, saying that .all eyes are on China. four months before the summer Olympics. CBC/Radio-Canada president and chief executive Hubert Lacroix said in a letter to the Chinese ambassador to Canada, Li Shumin, that China had been blocking access in China to the broadcaster's English-language website www.cbc.ca since the beginning of 2008, and its French website www.radio-canada.ca for at least six months. Lacroix noted that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao had promised freedom for the foreign press in covering China, and that recently the BBC's website had been unblocked. (AFP)

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China allows access to English Wikipedia

Chinese authorities appeared to have lifted a block on the English-language version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, but politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square are still off limits. Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai confirmed on Saturday that they could access the English-language version of one of the world's most popular websites, but the Chinese language version was still restricted. While searches of random topics such as .Johann Sebastian Bach. and .dim sum. brought up English-language articles, sensitive words such as Tibet were met with a message that the browser was unable to connect to the Internet. The move comes after International Olympic Committee (IOC) inspectors told Beijing organizers that the Internet must be open for the duration of the 2008 Olympics and that blocking it .would reflect very poorly. on the host country. (Reuters)

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Coming soon: superfast internet

The internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds. At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, .the grid. will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds. The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call. The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their .red button. day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates. (Times Online)

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Korea: More autonomy for print media planned

New president Lee Myung-bak pledged to support the revision of related laws governing the management and operation of print media, Friday. In a speech to mark the 52nd Newspaper Day, Lee said he would help print media and broadcasting firms effectively cope with the ever-changing media environment by implementing a .press-friendly policy.. His remarks were construed as the government's plan to seek alternative legislation to replace the current Newspaper Law in an effort to give press companies more autonomy than before. The now-defunct presidential transition team promised in January that the Lee government would allow print media to own broadcasters and vice versa. Under the current law, print media are prohibited from having shares of broadcasters, and newspapers and broadcasting companies are not allowed to encroach upon each other's turf. Factors such as diversification of the media and the emergence of alternative information sources are posing a threat to local newspapers. (The Korea Times via Asia Media)

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EU moves toward allowing in-flight cellphone calls

The European Commission plans to announce rules to let airlines offer midair mobile phone calls to passengers across the European Union, removing a major obstacle for companies that want to sell the service. With the new regulations, to be released Monday, the commission would unify cellular licensing requirements and technical standards to cover mobile phones as they cross multiple boundaries in the air. That is likely to prompt a scramble among leading airlines to give their passengers access to in-flight calls on their own phones. Already, national regulators in Britain have said they are ready to grant licenses, and Air France, Ryanair and BMI are either holding trials or have plans to make an in-flight phone service available. The move by Viviane Reding, the European commissioner responsible for telecommunications, would allocate space on the limited radio spectrum and ensure that licenses granted in one member state are recognized in all 27 EU countries. That means that, for example, an aircraft registered in France or Spain would be able to offer mobile communication services on aircraft to passengers when flying over Germany or Hungary without additional licensing. (International Herald Tribune)

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