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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Jan 2010
Sourceforge just became the latest US-based entity to join the technology “censorship” drive against Syrians (as well as 5 other sanctioned countries). Despite being one of the leading communities of the “open source” and “free software” movements, Sourceforge is betraying its own values.
Sourceforge is only the latest Internet technology company to join Washington’s call to target Syrian citizens with sanctions. Claiming to be abiding by US law, a long list on US based businesses have already denied their services to Syria’s increasingly Internet savvy youth. Microsoft refuses to provide technical courses and certificates to Syrian nationals, whether they live in Syria or anywhere else in the world. Google blocked the ability of anyone living in Syria to download their software tools. Cisco blocked sales of its infrastructure networking devices to Syria, RIM (Blackberry) has prevented its services from reaching Syria. Godaddy (and similar Internet hosting services) took down websites hosted on their servers by Syrians, regardless of content. US companies in the Gulf have reversed their decision to hire Syrian engineers, after their US lawyers warned them that they might be vulnerable to law suits by the US Treasury Department.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Jan 2010
MILAN – Silvio Berlusconi is moving to extend his grip on Italy's media to the freewheeling Internet world of Google and YouTube.
Going beyond other European countries, the premier's government has drafted a decree that would mandate the vetting of videos for pornographic or violent content uploaded by users onto such sites as YouTube, owned by Google, and the France-based Dailymotion, as well as blogs and online newsmedia.
Google, press freedom watchdogs and telecom providers are among those pressing for changes in the draft to prevent the fast-track legislation from taking effect as early as Feb. 4. They say the decree would erode freedom of expression and mandate the technically burdensome — maybe even impossible — task of monitoring what individuals put on the Internet.
Reporters Without Borders Media says the measures could force Web sites to obtain licenses to operate in Italy.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Jan 2010
Jordan is to extend its Press and Publications Law to all online content including news sites and blogs, drawing criticism from media activists who believe that it will have a negative impact on internet freedom in the country.
Global internet filtering watchdog OpenNet Initiative referred to Jordan as "beacon in a region of heavy Internet filtering", blocking only one site ArabTimes.com - a US-based online newspaper that often takes a critical stance against Arab leaders. That situation however is set to change as the country's Cassation Court has decided to bound online content to existing publication laws for traditional media.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Jan 2010
The Greens say their website will fade to black on Australia Day as part of a nationwide protest against the Federal Government's proposed internet filter.
The Federal Government wants to pass laws to force internet service providers to block banned material hosted on overseas servers, but its decision to press ahead with compulsory internet filtering has come under fire from lobby groups and the Greens.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says he intends to introduce legislation in the first half of 2010.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam says he believes more than 500 websites will take part in what is being dubbed 'The Great Australian Internet Blackout'.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Jan 2010
Internet users in Turkey have found an interesting visualization to highlight their numbers, connect with one another, air their grievances and hopefully reach their goals using Google Maps and shared documents.
A reader wrote to us tonight saying that his fellow citizens have been "struggling with cencorship for several years just like their Chinese counterparts. Prominent websites are banned in Turkey, such as youtube, lasf.fm and google pages mostly because of political reasons." In protest, many of them are virtually lining the streets using a shared interface, creating what is becoming a fascinating, non-violent and hopefully effective visualization.
The "virtual protest walk," our source said, is being staged to protest web censorship. "Thousands of Turkish users gathered on virtual Taksim Square of Istanbul to protest censorship. When prostestors achieve the target number, they will walk to Ankara, pixel by pixel, to the parliament house."
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Jan 2010
BEIJING — China delivered a bristling response on Monday to the United States’ demand that it investigate recent attacks on American computers from Chinese soil, saying that any suggestion that it conducted or condoned the hackers’ intrusions was “groundless and aims to denigrate China.”
The comment, in a published interview with a government spokesman, was part of a broadside in China’s state-run press on Monday that cast the United States as a cyberhegemon, trying to dominate the global information flow by meddling in Chinese Internet policies.
A brace of interviews and news articles placed in major state newspapers and on many prominent Web sites underscored the chill in public exchanges between the governments since Jan. 12, when Google threatened to leave China unless Beijing stopped censoring its search results.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 21 Jan 2010
As Google considers withdrawing from China, the BBC looks at the highs and lows of internet access and freedom in the most populous country in the world.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 21 Jan 2010
Google’s decision to stop helping the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censor the Chinese Internet is just the kind of peaceful act that made the Berlin Wall come down.
Google, the world's top Internet search engine, announced Jan. 11 it will no longer censor results on its Chinese-language search engine and may shut its offices in China, because of “highly sophisticated” cyber-attacks on its website and the Gmail accounts of Chinese rights activists. California-based Google said the attacks included theft of intellectual property and also targeted at least 20 other companies in technology, finance and chemicals.
The Google “incident” could be an omen of the Chinese “Wall” and regime coming down.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 21 Jan 2010
Hillary Clinton will today promise funding to organisations promoting internet freedom and pledge to make unrestricted access a foreign policy priority, days after Google's announcement that it is no longer willing to self-censor its Chinese service.
The US secretary of state sees internet access as key to America's promotion of democracy abroad, her innovation adviser Alec Ross told the Wall Street Journal.
In an online discussion yesterday, she said her speech in Washington would lay out policy "to ensure that our centuries-long traditions are preserved in the 21st century".
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 21 Jan 2010
Google has been making headlines recently over its decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, in response to attacks on its corporate infrastructure that targeted the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. Although this Google incident is a new development, Internet censorship in China has been a fact of life for years. If anything, the recent attack on Google is part of a larger trend, which started years ago and has been gathering steam since early 2008, of increased control and monitoring, both of Internet content and of China's own citizens as they get online in ever greater numbers.
