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Weekly News Digest
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November 5, 2007 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
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Groups Urge FTC to Protect Consumer Privacy Online
Nine privacy and consumer groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org), the Center for Democracy and Technology (www.cdt.org), and the World Privacy Forum (www.worldprivacyforum.org), unveiled a consensus document outlining key consumer rights and protections they want to see implemented in the behavioral advertising sector. The document has been submitted to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. It urges the FTC to take proactive steps to protect consumers’ privacy online. Among other measures, the groups want online users to have a Do Not Track option that would let consumers choose not to have their Web site movements logged for the purpose of delivering targeted advertising.Behavioral advertising was the focus of the FTC’s eHavioral Advertising Town Hall meeting that took place Nov. 1–2 in Washington, D.C. The network advertising sector has a self-regulatory plan, the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) in place; it has had this plan in place since 2000. The consensus document addresses the many areas where it alleges the NAI plan has failed to protect consumers. The recommendations to the FTC include the following: - The adoption of a new definition of "personally identifiable information" updated to reflect the realities of today’s Internet
- Providing more robust disclosures to consumers about behavioral tracking
- Ensuring that information about consumer privacy and choices is available to all individuals, including those who have visual, hearing, or other disabilities
- Independent auditing of those engaged in behavioral tracking to ensure adherence to privacy standards
- Providing consumers with access to personally identifiable information collected about them by companies engaged in behavioral tracking
- Prohibiting advertisers from collecting and using personally identifiable information about health, financial activities, and other sensitive data
- Establishing a national "Online Consumer Protection Advisory Committee"
Link to the concensus document: www.worldprivacyforum.org/pdf/ConsumerProtections_FTC_ConsensusDoc_Final_s.pdf Sources: World Privacy Forum and the Center for Democracy and Technology
Thomson Scientific Adds EMBASE Classic to Dialog and DataStar
Thomson Scientific (www.scientific.thomson.com) announced that it has added EMBASE Classic to the Dialog (File 772) and DataStar (EM73, EMXX) platforms, providing access to more than 25 years of archived life sciences data available for the first time in electronic format. For more information about the EMBASE Classic database on Dialog and DataStar, visit www.dialog.com/embaseclassic.EMBASE Classic, produced by Elsevier, includes the bibliographic records originally published in the 43 Excerpta Medica abstract print journals from 1947 through 1973. The fully digitized database is drawn from approximately 3,400 international journal titles, with a focus on European and North American published literature including non-English-language articles. EMBASE Classic contains more than 1.8 million records from the biomedical and pharmacological literature. The historical data in EMBASE Classic, combined with up-to-date records in the EMBASE database (File 73/EMZZ), gives researchers approximately 60 years of information regarding medical and drug-related subjects.Source: Thomson Scientific
Safari Books Online to Add Wiley Titles
Safari Books Online (www.safaribooksonline.com), an on-demand electronic reference and learning platform and a joint venture of O’Reilly Media, Inc. and Pearson Technology Group, announced an agreement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (www.wiley.com) to include selected Wiley business and technology titles in the Safari Books Online Library. With this new agreement, Safari’s institutional, corporate, and B2C customers will gain access to authoritative content from Wiley’s authors and branded imprints, making Safari Books Online the only online service where users can search across content from all four top technology publishers.The Wiley collection in Safari Books Online will complement Safari’s developer content as well as bolster product management and frequently searched business topics. Safari’s exclusive database now includes fully searchable technical and training content from all four top technology publishers in the market today. Pearson, John Wiley & Sons, O’Reilly Media, and Microsoft Press represent more than 85 percent of the computer books sold at retail in the U.S., according to Nielsen Bookscan figures. The first Wiley titles are scheduled to appear on Safari Books Online in December 2007. Among the titles to be added to the Safari service are titles from the For Dummies series, the comprehensive Bible series of computer titles, and best-sellers and key references in the business category. Source: Safari Books Online
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Brandi Scardilli
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