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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 31 Aug 2009
NEW YORK — Goofy videos weren't on the minds of Len Kleinrock and his team at UCLA when they began tests 40 years ago on what would become the Internet. Neither was social networking, for that matter, nor were most of the other easy-to-use applications that have drawn more than a billion people online.
Instead the researchers sought to create an open network for freely exchanging information, an openness that ultimately spurred the innovation that would later spawn the likes of YouTube, Facebook and the World Wide Web.
There's still plenty of room for innovation today, yet the openness fostering it may be eroding. While the Internet is more widely available and faster than ever, artificial barriers threaten to constrict its growth.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 31 Aug 2009
HANOI — one of Vietnam's most popular and boldest bloggers has been fired by his newspaper after the ruling Communist Party complained to editors about his writings.
Huy Duc, who writes his blog under the pen name "Osin," was dismissed this week because his postings did not reflect the editorial positions of Saigon Tiep Thi, said Tran Cong Khanh, an editor at the newspaper.
Khanh cited a recent Osin posting that praised the fall of the Berlin Wall and criticized the former Soviet Union's Communist leaders, saying their rule had led to years of misery for the people of Eastern Europe. Duc referred to the wall as "the wall of shame."
"The attitude of his entry did not reflect that of our newspaper, and we can't use him anymore," Khanh said.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 28 Aug 2009
Web rivals watch Yahoo's purchase of Arab portal Maktoob to see what gains and costs attend a big Mideast commitment. Censorship is a big issue
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 28 Aug 2009
Facebook has agreed to make changes to better protect users' personal information on the social networking site and comply with Canadian privacy laws within one year, Canada's privacy commissioner said Thursday.
"These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected," said privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 28 Aug 2009
Internet service providers (ISPs) have reacted with anger to new proposals on how to tackle internet piracy.
The government is proposing a tougher stance which would include cutting off repeat offenders from the net.
UK ISP Talk Talk said the recommendations were likely to "breach fundamental rights" and would not work.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 28 Aug 2009
Quite alarming to report that all of the most popular Tibetan language blog hosting sites (except one) have been inaccessible for almost three weeks now.
Although it is fairly common practice for Tibetan language blog hosting sites to be taken down (sometimes for “maintenance”) at times deemed sensitive by the authorites (see ‘All Quiet on the Tibetan Blog Front‘), this month holds no particular political significance as far as I can see.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 26 Aug 2009
Imagine if you waved to someone and, without your knowledge, a high-resolution camera took a photograph of your hand, capturing your fingerprints. You might be upset. Or—if you were visiting Disneyland, where they already make an image of your fingerprint to save you from waiting in a long line—you might find the novelty of the technology, and the immediate benefits…gratifying. The ambivalence we sometimes feel about new technologies that reveal identifiable personal information balances threats to privacy against incremental advantages. Indisputably, the trends toward miniaturization and mass-market deployment of cameras, recording devices, low-power sensors, and medical monitors of all kinds—when combined with the ability to digitally collect, store, retrieve, classify, and sort very large amounts of information—offer many benefits, but also threaten civil liberties and expectations of personal privacy. George Orwell’s vision in 1984 of a future in which the government has the power to record everything seems not so farfetched. “But even Orwell did not imagine that the sensors would be things that everybody would have,” says McKay professor of computer science Harry Lewis. “He foresaw the government putting the cameras on the lampposts—which we have. He didn’t foresee the 14-year-old girl snapping pictures on the T. Or the fact that flash drives that are given away as party favors could carry crucial data on everybody in the country.”
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 26 Aug 2009
CAIRO: As the number of internet users grows, security further tightens its grip on their activity, namely when it comes to “disseminating and receiving sensitive political information,” according to a report on blogging in Egypt by the US-based NGO, Freedom House.
The report titled “Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media,” explores the level of freedom internet users enjoy in different countries including Egypt, Cuba and Ethiopia.
The report explained that although there is no explicit and direct internet censorship by the government, there are other informal methods that establish red lines. The report cited court cases against journalists and "friendly" phone calls from military or security officers to both journalists and activists.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 26 Aug 2009
Iran is amongst those unfortunate countries of the Middle East where authoritarian regimes frequently use unyielding measures to gag the press in order to prevent free flow of information. Media watchdog Reporters without Borders Press Freedom Index puts Iran at number 152 out of 173 countries. The Freedom House 2009 Report ranked Iran 181 out of 195 countries for media openness. Recently, Iranian authorities have shut down the office of the Association of Iranian Journalists (AoIJ) and arrested three more journalists, raising the number of imprisoned journalists to 37 which is the largest in the world. In this backdrop, admittedly it is accurate to proclaim Iran as ‘world's leading jailer of journalists’ which have also been termed as “prisoners of conscience.” by the Amnesty International.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 25 Aug 2009
The government has today unexpectedly revived plans for laws to disconnect persistent illegal filesharers, in a move to delight the entertainment industry and anger ISPs.
The unscheduled changes to the Digital Britain consultation also envisage a more powerful, direct role for Lord Mandelson. Despite denials last week, the news will reignite speculation that the First Secretary of State's stance against illegal peer to peer was hardened by a summer holiday meeting with Hollywood mogul David Geffen.
The internet industry believed it had fought off pressure for the government to suspend internet access. Indeed, many in the recording industry had dropped support for a "three strikes" policy before the Digital Britain consultation began in June.
