ACTA gets final stake through heart as EC drops court referral

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement can no longer come back from the grave in Europe, after the European Commission dropped its bid to have the copyright treaty’s legality confirmed by the union’s top court. Parliamentarians roundly rejected ACTA back in July. They had many reasons for doing so, primarily the large physical demonstrations taking place across …

Mike Silber and Chris Disspain Fried: Update their conflicts profile after .africa complaint

ICANN directors Mike Silber and Chris Disspain have updated their official statements of interest — used to identify potential conflicts on the board — after a complaint from a .africa applicant. The new SOI statement more clearly specifies the relationship between South African ccTLD policymaker ZADNA — for which Silber acts as treasurer — and …

Mobile accounts for 16% of November traffic on a U.K. affiliate network

16.29% of all traffic to Affiliate Window’s 10,000 sites stemmed from mobile devices in November, the U.K. affiliate network reports. That’s up from 13.25% in October. 9.45% of traffic was on smartphones in November, up from 7.76% in October; 6.84% of traffic was on tablets, up from 5.49%, the company says. During the last week …

A digital cold war?

THE International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has always prided itself on being one of the most pragmatic organisations of the United Nations. Engineers, after all, speak a similar language, regardless where they come from. Even during the digital cold war they managed to overcome their differences and negotiate the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR), a binding global …