Media News - Thursday, July 24, 2008

Parents to be punished for children’s net piracy

Parents whose children download music and films illegally will be blacklisted and have their internet access curbed under government reforms to fight online piracy. Households that ignore warnings will be subjected to online surveillance and their internet speeds will be reduced, making it very difficult for them to download large files. The measures, the first of their kind in the world, will be announced today by Baroness Vadera, who brokered the deal between internet service providers and Ofcom, the telecoms body. About 6.5 million Britons are thought to have downloaded music illegally last year. It has been estimated that illegal downloads will cost the music industry alone 1 billion GBP over the next five years. (The Times Online)

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Spain’s Telecinco wins lawsuit against YouTube

Spanish private television channel Telecinco said Wednesday it had won a lawsuit it filed against YouTube accusing the world's top video-sharing site of violating its intellectual property rights. Telecinco, controlled by Italian broadcaster Mediaset, which is owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said in a statement that Madrid's commercial court had ordered YouTube to stop broadcasting images belonging to the channel. The judge ordered "the discontinuation of the use of broadcasts and audiovisual recordings belonging to Telecinco on the Internet site operated by YouTube unless explicitly authorized in writing by Telecinco," the statement said. In announcing the lawsuit on 19 June, Telecinco charged that YouTube had refused to adopt "effective measures" to prevent clips of its programming from appearing on its site. YouTube was hurting Telecinco by airing episodes of its television shows before the channel broadcast them in Spain, he added. Last year media giant Viacom slapped YouTube and its parent company Google with a lawsuit in a New York court for copyright infringement that claims $1 billion (645 billion EUR) in damages. (AFP)

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German “fakebook” site incurs wrath of Facebook

Ehssan Dariani, founder of German social network studiVZ, never made any secret of his admiration for Facebook, which is now suing studiVZ for copying its ideas and look. When he and two of his friends launched studiVZ in October 2005, it was modeled after the US network. In fact, studiVZ is so close to the original, the German network for students has been dubbed "fakebook". The founders of online T-shirt shop Spreadshirt provided initial funding of 5,000 euros ($7,960) and within months studiVZ turned into Europe's largest student social networking site. According to data on its website, studiVZ currently has more than 10 million members in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and continues to add hundreds of thousands of users every week. Facebook filed a complaint last Friday accusing studiVZ of copying the look, feel, features and services of Facebook, ultimately seeking to put an end to the German site. The name studiVZ is an abbreviation of "Studienverzeichnis", which means "students' directory" in German, and the site -- while it visually resembles Facebook, only in red instead of blue -- is more practical than playful in its features. Industry experts attribute some of studiVZ's success to the fact that Facebook waited too long to make its site available in foreign languages. Facebook launched a German version in March. (Reuters)

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Thailand: Dictionary brings hope amid violence in restive south

A bilingual dictionary is the latest bid by the Thai government to build understanding with the majority Muslim population of the provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani which speak the Yawi dialect. Academics hope that the publication the Thai-Yawi-Thai dictionary will help restore peace in the restive south, by bridging the linguistic gap between Thai-speaking Buddhists and Yawi-speaking Muslims. The Yawi-speaking population's difficulty in understanding the dominant Thai language has been frequently cited by experts as a reason for Muslims' feelings of alienation. The three southernmost provinces are at the centre of a pro-independence rebellion that has killed at least 3,300 people since January 2004. The last victim of the violence was Saengphet Butrak, a soldier who was killed in an ambush on Tuesday in Narathiwat. The 596-page dictionary is the result of a two-year long research project to which 10 experts contributed, project chief Worawit Baru said. (ADK)

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Tehran debates breaking dress code to broadcast women at Olympics

For years, Iranian women have been active in regional and international sports competitions, but religious laws in Iran prevent women from being seen on television without an Islamic hijab. While Iranian women play sports dressed in the traditional hijab, their international competitors do not -- and therefore cannot be shown in Iranian broadcasts. For this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing, however, Iranian authorities might allow state television to broadcast the women's events. Ali Asghar Purmohammadi, who is responsible for broadcasting sports programs for Iran's state-run television, has said he is pressing Iranian authorities to give special permission to show women competing in the Olympic Games next month. There are three women among the 53 Iranian athletes who will compete in the Beijing Olympics from August 8-24, with one woman each competing in rowing, archery, and tae kwon do. Fatemeh Sepanji, a Tehran-based sports commentator, tells RFE/RL's Radio Farda that the Iranian media are forced to pretend that women athletes in Iran do not exist. Additionally, representatives of Iran's intelligence services follow the women athletes everywhere -- including at international competitions -- to ensure they don't violate any Islamic rules. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's government actually tried to promote greater female participation in sports during the early days of his term. But after facing vocal opposition and fierce criticism from religious leaders, his government gave up on the initiative. (Radio Free Europe)

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Colombia admits rescuers posed as journalists

Two people who helped rescue 15 hostages from Colombian rebels posed as journalists from a real Colombian television news organization, Colombia's defense minister said Wednesday. Former hostage Ingrid Betancourt with Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos after her release. Two of the nine rescuers assumed the roles of journalist and cameraman from the news organization TeleSUR during the daring rescue, Juan Manuel Santos said. An actual doctor and nurse also took part in the bloodless mission, along with members of the Colombian military who pretended to be an Italian, an Australian, an Arab, a Cuban and a Dominican, he said. Operation Check snatched 15 hostages from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia by duping the rebels into believing that they were releasing the hostages to a humanitarian organization that would bring them to another rebel camp. The actors "were drilled 24 hours per day in their own script" for the operation, Santos said, which freed former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three American military contractors and 11 Colombian law enforcement members. The move also brought the capture of two rebels. (CNN)

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