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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 07 Jul 2009
Remember the images of German soldiers marching through the Arc de Triomphe after conquering Paris during World War II?
Or those grainy black-and-white photographs from May 1933 when the Nazis embarked on their campaign of burning all books considered to be subversive?
Do you recall the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984? Perhaps the burning books in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451?
Welcome to Australia in the 21st century, where totalitarian history meets science-fiction and dark political satire.
Welcome to the Rudd Government's internet filter.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 06 Jul 2009
DUBAI—Disenchanted bloggers in Dubai fear their days may be numbered as police vow to crackdown on “mischievous elements”.
In a wide-ranging crackdown on Internet defamation and blackmail, police in Dubai and neighboring emirate of Sharjah have launched dedicated cybercrimes departments.
However, bloggers fear that the campaign could be broadened to clamp down further on online forums on which residents share irreverent thoughts on life in Dubai.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 06 Jul 2009
Reports from Iran say that SMS text messaging services have been unblocked for the first time since disputed presidential elections.
However, Iranian news agencies say there are still technical problems.
Text messaging and social networks were widely used by protesters in mass rallies following the election.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 06 Jul 2009
After scoring a surprise electoral win in Sweden and getting high-profile support in Germany, The Pirate Party's next port of call may be Canada, where a so-far small band of buccaneers are hoping to send copyright restrictions to Davy Jones's locker.
Right now, they're a handful of loosely-organized individuals spread across the country. But they want to become an official federal political party within the next few years and get enough support to persuade Parliament to relax proposed copyright laws they say are heavy-handed and a violation of personal privacy.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 06 Jul 2009
Independent information about deadly riots in China's remote northwest filtered out on Twitter, YouTube and other Internet forums on Monday, frustrating government efforts to control the news.
The communist authorities who built the so-called Great Firewall of China raced to stamp out video, images and words posted by Internet users about the unrest on Sunday which, officials said, left at least 140 people dead.
Twitter and YouTube appeared to be blocked in China late on Monday afternoon, while leading Chinese search engines would not give results for "Urumqi", the city in Xinjiang where the riots occurred.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 02 Jul 2009
India’s government has banned popular toon porn site Savitabhabhi.com. According to documents seen by contentSutra.com, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, has asked all Internet Service Providers to block the website in a communication dated 3 June.
The Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA), a government agency under the Department of Information Technology, is the agency that is entrusted under the IT Act to block websites. N. Vijayaditya, of the CCA, confirmed the development. “There were several complaints against the site. We have taken action under the relevant sections of the IT Act and blocked the site,” he said. When asked if the agency will give a chance to the owners of the site to defend themselves, he said nobody has come forward so far with such a request. He said he could not say if the agency will pursue legal action against the operators of the website.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 02 Jul 2009
Out of fear that history might repeat itself, the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms.
Between 1988 and 1990, amid a lesser global economic slump, pro-democracy protests that appeared to inspire and energize one another broke out in Eastern Europe, Burma, China and elsewhere. Not all evolved into full-fledged revolutions, but communist regimes fell in a broad swath of countries, and the global balance of power shifted.
A similar infectiousness has shown up in subtle acts of defiance by democracy advocates around the world this week.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 02 Jul 2009
GoogleSites allows users to create their own websites, and there are thus thousands of sites available.
Now the 2nd Criminal Court of Peace in Denizli, western Turkey, has banned access to GoogleSites.
The decree of 24 June 2009 does not give any justification for the decision.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 01 Jul 2009
Recently, the Canadian envoy to Iran was called in and admonished by Iranian officials for contributing to the destabilitization of the regime because of support for social networking tools, like Twitter and Facebook. The envoy must have scratched his head in puzzlement.
The Iranians' furor was ignited by the work of our company, Psiphon, which is based in Canada and has actively engaged in a campaign to help Iranians bypass their country's filters and exercise basic human rights of access to information and freedom of speech. On average, one Iranian per minute has signed up to our "right-2know" nodes -- customized websites pushed into Iran that contain access to BBC Persian and Radio Farda -- and more than 15,000 have used our service since the crisis began.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 01 Jul 2009
Today, Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB has announced it has acquired The Pirate Bay website for 60 million SEK, which is roughly the equivalent of $7.8 million USD.
This was almost immediately confirmed by The Pirate Bay. Although the title of their post is entitled “TPB might change owner,” from the text of the post it is obvious that the site has indeed been sold.
Two facts strike the eye: the incredibly small amount for which The Pirate Bay was sold, compared to its huge popularity and worldwide influence, and the fact that the site which has always been perceived as independent and quite controversial, was sold at all. The second fact explains the latter: yes, The Pirate Bay is one of the top 100 visited websites in the world, but it (and its owners) is also encumbered by the recent loss of a very important lawsuit.
