Threats to the Open Net: November 18, 2011

By: Qichen Zhang on 18 November 2011
Posted in Threats to the Open Net

Every week, the OpenNet Initiative provides a weekly news roundup (dubbed "Threats to the Open Net") in addition to our usual in-depth blog posts. If you would like to subscribe to the RSS feed for our newsreel, our entire blog, or our weekly roundup, you may do so; you are also free to republish the feed on your own site, with attribution to the OpenNet Initiative.

  • ReadWriteEnterprise recently published an infographic detailing the mechanisms of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act bill. Outlining the current proposal, the page provides visual information about how a website gets blocked and how the bill could become law.
  • Frank La Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion, presented his report on Internet freedom to the United Nations General Assembly's Third Committee. In La Rue's presentation, he stressed concerns over increasing tactics to censor the Internet as well as the imprisonment of activists who express themselves online.
  • The Chinese government released its new measures to reign in the Internet. One of the government's new tactics bars news media from publishishing information without state-approved verification first.
  • Hacker group Anonymous threatened to shut down Toronto's Internet this week after mayor Rob Ford attempted to evict protestors from St. James Park. City officials took the threats seriously and began patrolling the city's Internet infrastructure.