ICTD News for 02 April 2007

[ICTD Newsmaster <ictdnews@undp.org>]

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 UNDP's ICT for Development (ICTD) Observatory keeps an 
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CONTENTS

OPEN SOURCE
	GPL sparks openness debate in tech sector

E-GOVERNANCE/E-GOVERNMENT
	Cambodia bans texts for elections

TELECOMM/INFRASTRUCTURE
	Telecoms in the developing world: At your service

ENVIRONMENT
	Brazil offers Internet access to Indians




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OPEN SOURCE
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---- GPL sparks openness debate in tech sector
This is one likely consequence of the first rewrite of the licence for 15 years. The battle is central to the broader question of intellectual property rights in the internet age. It concerns an approach to licensing software that, over the past decade, has come to be seen as the model for an open approach to letting people share ideas over the Web.
http://www.sdnp.undp.org/perl/news/articles.pl?id=9363&do=gpage




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E-GOVERNANCE/E-GOVERNMENT
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---- Cambodia bans texts for elections
Mobile-phone text messaging in Cambodia has been suspended for the weekend, so that users are not bombarded with political texts during an election.
http://www.sdnp.undp.org/perl/news/articles.pl?id=9361&do=gpage




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TELECOMM/INFRASTRUCTURE
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---- Telecoms in the developing world: At your service
A recent study found that Peru's USF helped to reduce the rural population's average distance from a telephone from 56km (35 miles) in 1999 to 5.7km in 2002. This kind of achievement has encouraged countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, from Mongolia to Morocco, to establish funds. Around 2-5% of the world's population lives in areas where mobile services can be provided only at a loss.
http://www.sdnp.undp.org/perl/news/articles.pl?id=9362&do=gpage




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ENVIRONMENT
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---- Brazil offers Internet access to Indians
The environment and communications ministers signed an agreement Thursday with the Forest People's Network to provide an Internet signal by satellite to 150 communities, including many reachable only by riverboat, allowing them to report illegal logging and ranching, request help and coordinate efforts to preserve the forest. 
http://www.sdnp.undp.org/perl/news/articles.pl?id=9364&do=gpage




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