• Food company tries to censor news website’s old reports about union dispute
    By: Jillian C. York
    Date: 08 Jun 2010
    Reporters Without Borders is outraged that Yörsan, a privately-owned dairy products company, is threatening to sue the news website EmekDunyasi.net if it does not withdraw archived articles that reflect poorly on the company. The site could be closed if it refuses to take down old reports about union action taken by 400 Yörsan employees in 2008. “This kind of judicial blackmail is a real problem,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Few journalists dare to criticise private sector companies or financial groups for fear of reprisals. We urge the Turkish courts not to tolerate Yörsan’s censorship attempt, which could set a dangerous precedent for the online media.” The press freedom organisation added: “The company seems to think it has a right to draw a veil over the past. In reality, this is an aggressive public relations initiative designed to suppress records of an industrial relations dispute that is not good for the company’s image.”
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  • China Hails Internet, Praises Twitter
    By: Rebekah Heacock
    Date: 08 Jun 2010
    China on Tuesday released an official white paper on the country’s Internet industry. It reviews the history of China’s Internet, from its first connection in 1994, a single 64-kilobit line in Beijing’s Zhongguancun district, to the present day, when China boasts more Internet users than any other country. The paper contains an entire section on “guaranteeing citizen’s freedom of speech on the Internet.” But it adds all the usual caveats that leave ample room for the government’s extensive censorship: “While exercising such freedom and rights, citizens are not allowed to infringe upon state, social and collective interests or the legitimate freedom and rights and other citizens.” Ironically, the English-language version of the paper cites Twitter, the social networking service blocked by Beijing, as a positive development for China’s Internet and evidence of Internet freedom.
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  • Activists worry about a new 'Green Dam' in Vietnam
    By: Jillian C. York
    Date: 07 Jun 2010
    IDG News Service - Human rights activists are worried that new software mandated by Vietnamese authorities may lead to an Internet clampdown in the country's largest city. In April, local officials issued new regulations covering Internet cafes and service providers in Hanoi, ostensibly designed to crack down on hacking and other service abuses. Buried in the regulations is a mandate that service providers must add special software to their domain servers, used to authenticate systems on the network. Under the new rules, domain servers must install a copy of the "Internet Service Retailers Management Software," the regulations state.
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  • Scare tactics, blocking sites can be bad for kids
    By: Jillian C. York
    Date: 07 Jun 2010
    Scaring children about the dangers of the Internet and blocking access to social-networking sites can do more harm than good, according to a report released Friday by a committee tasked by the U.S. government to explore online safety. Parents, teachers, government agencies, and other organizations should promote online citizenship and media-literacy education, and actively encourage the participation of children in the process, concludes the report entitled "Youth Safety on a Living Internet." It was produced by the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, which was created by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
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  • [Turkey] Blockage of YouTube spreads to Google services
    By: Jillian C. York
    Date: 07 Jun 2010
    Reporters Without Borders condemns the growing repercussions of Turkey’s censorship of YouTube, the video-sharing service owned by Google. Turkish Internet users have been having problems accessing Google services such as Google Analytics, Google AdWords and Google Docs since 4 June, when the High Council for Telecommunications (TIB) reported that it had asked Internet Service Providers to block additional YouTube-linked IP addresses. The Turkish authorities have been blocking access to YouTube in Turkey since May 2008 because of videos that are said to insult the Turkish republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
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  • Access to certain Google services blocked from Turkey
    By: Jillian C. York
    Date: 04 Jun 2010
    Statement by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz, Associate Professor, Human Rights Law Research Center, Faculty of Law, Istanbul Bilgi University, and Director of Cyber-Rights.Org. ([email protected]) The situation in terms of Internet censorship has moved from BAD to WORSE in Turkey as the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB) asked the Turkish Internet Service Providers to block access to certain IP addresses associated with YouTube. As it is well know access to YouTube has been blocked from Turkey since May 2008, and DNS-poisoning method has been used until very recently. However, as of yesterday TIB asked the Turkish ISPs to block access to certain IP addresses associated with YouTube. The ISPs then started warning their users that as a result of the most recent IP blocking certain Google services may also be affected.
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  • Pornography, some other previously blocked websites accessible in China; reasons unclear
    By: Jillian C. York
    Date: 04 Jun 2010
    BEIJING, China — Some websites, including ones with pornography, that were previously blocked by China's Internet censors were accessible inside the country Friday, though reasons for the change were unclear. But China on Friday blocked Web service Foursquare, which lets users alert friends to where they are through their cellphones. The reason was not known, but many users had been "checking in" from Tiananmen Square to mark the anniversary of a bloody 1989 government crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests. Discussion of the event still is taboo in China and the Communist government is highly sensitive to any commemoration activities. Beijing encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to block material deemed subversive or pornographic and operates an extensive system of Web monitoring and censorship. The government has launched repeated crackdowns against online pornography, calling it unhealthy and harmful.
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  • China's censorship could lead to a brain drain
    By: Jillian C. York
    Date: 03 Jun 2010
    Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- They are coming from cities across China, including Beijing and Shanghai: Students are leaving mainland China for the opportunity to study in Hong Kong instead. "We are a small elite who can afford freedom beyond China's great firewall," says "Li Cheng" from Shanghai. Li, a student at the University of Hong Kong, did not want to disclose his real name or details about his study program, fearing consequences back home. "I live in one country, but it feels like having two identities," Li said. "In Shanghai, I use special software to access sites blacklisted by the government, like Twitter or the uncensored version of Google. "In Hong Kong, I am taught to integrate these tools in my research." In the past, students such as Li would have to travel to far-away countries to get around Beijing's control of information.
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  • Free journalists and netizens held for referring to 1989 Tiananmen massacre
    By: Jillian C. York
    Date: 03 Jun 2010
    On the eve of the 21st anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate release of the journalists and netizens who have been jailed for referring to this dark page in China’s history. It also calls for an end to the censorship of both traditional and online media that want to tackle this subject and challenge the official version. Shi Tao of the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News) is one of the journalists who are being held. He was convicted of “illegally divulging state secrets abroad” on 30 April 2005 and was sentenced 10 years in prison. The details of the verdict showed that Yahoo!’s Hong Kong subsidiary provided the Chinese police with information that helped get him convicted.
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  • Cracking China's Great Firewall
    By: Jillian C. York
    Date: 03 Jun 2010
    The number of Internet users in China recently surpassed 400 million, according to state media. And that makes it the world's most wired country. It's also making it more difficult for the government to control all those users. But it's trying. Often those controls affect internet businesses like Google, which recently decided to stop censoring its search results--that had been the price of doing business in China. The company rerouted searches inside China to Hong Kong, where there is no censorship. You've probably heard about the Google move, but it was just one of hundreds of websites that were simply shut down last year because they didn't conform to Chinese censorship rules. One of those shuttered sites was started right here in a garage in the Bay Area by three young Chinese entrepreneurs. They started an online translation community for techies that would eventually push the boundaries of freedom of expression in China and bump up against that country's authoritarian government. Japhet Weeks has this report.
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