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French lawmakers are poised to approve a law to create the world’s first surveillance system for Internet piracy, one that would force Internet service providers in some cases to disconnect customers accused of making illegal downloads.
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The proposal, called the “Création et Internet” and known informally as the “three strikes” directive, [...]

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PARIS — In a major blow for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to crack down on Internet piracy, the French National Assembly on Thursday rejected legislation that would have cut off the Internet connections of persistent copyright violators.
The bill was rejected 21-15 in a show of hands, meaning that most [...]

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PARIS — As the death toll in the American newspaper industry mounted this month, the German publisher Axel Springer, which owns Bild, the biggest newspaper in Europe, reported the highest profit in its 62-year history.
At Springer’s headquarters in Berlin, there has been no desperate talk of how to survive the recession and the digital revolution. [...]

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Internet advertising rose in 2008, according to a report released Monday, but the growth is starting to flatten.
“The economy has had a significant impact on the short-term growth of the Internet advertising market,” David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which contributed to the report, said in a conference call.
Internet advertising grew to $23.4 billion in [...]

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AUSTIN, Tex. — Weaving through the thousands of fans, spring-breaking music industry professionals and assorted revelers who clog the streets of downtown Austin this week, you might well think that South by Southwest, the annual music conference and festival here, is nothing but a big party.
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Slide ShowScenes from SXSW, March 18Related

Complete [...]

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BERLIN — As European lawmakers debate how to keep access to the Internet free and equal — so-called network neutrality — they are inundated, not unsurprisingly, by lobbyists.
But the corporate envoys roaming the halls of Brussels trying to make their case, more often than not, do not represent the Continent’s myriad telecommunications and Internet [...]

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In response to the shouted-out question, “What are some of the greatest inventions of all time?,” nearby office workers in a recent informal survey gave the following answers: the wheel, the engine, the ballpoint pen, diapers and the cheese Danish.
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A panel of eight judges from the Wharton School of the University of [...]

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Americans’ search patterns reflect their narrowing financial straits, according to the marketing research firm comScore. The number of Internet searches incorporating the word “unemployment” more than tripled from December 2007 to December 2008. Bankruptcy appeared in more than twice as many searches, and “coupons” went from 7.6 million searches to 19.9 million.
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Filed at 12:50 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) — Paul Twomey, chief executive of the Internet’s key oversight agency since 2003, will step down later this year after a successor is named.
Twomey, 47, said he declined a three-year contract renewal with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, for fear of becoming ”Mr. [...]

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ENTASOPIA, Kenya — The road from Nairobi winds 100 miles to this town deep in Masai country. The asphalt gives way to sand and dust, until finally it is just a dirt track climbing over broken hills and plunging back to desert flats. The going is slow.
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Chris Nicholson/The International Herald [...]

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