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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 09 Mar 2009
iPrimus has indicated it may not wait for the Government to introduce a clean feed and that it may re-introduce an opt-in service for customers if there is sufficient demand.
The ISP, which is the largest to participate in the first round of the Federal Government's controversial content filtering trials, told iTnews it may use the results of its participation in the trials to re-introduce its own competing service early.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 09 Mar 2009
Sources in Ethiopia informed us last week that CyberEthiopia.com was accessible again from Ethiopia after a nearly 3 year ban.
The lifting of the Internet filtering comes few days after President Obama's administration released its Human Rights reports in 2009 accusing the Ethiopian government of restricting Internet access to its citizens and of "blocking web sites", including CyberEthiopia.com.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 09 Mar 2009
As European lawmakers debate how to keep access to the Internet free and equal — so-called network neutrality — they are inundated, not unsurprisingly, by lobbyists.
But the corporate envoys roaming the halls of Brussels trying to make their case, more often than not, do not represent the Continent's myriad telecommunications and Internet companies, but rather those from the United States. Europe has become the world's technology regulator. So the AT&Ts and Verizons are pitted against the Googles and Yahoos to shape European law in the hopes that American regulators will follow suit.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 08 Mar 2009
Westerners are quick to condemn the deterioration of Internet freedoms in Asia and the Middle East. But some U.S.-based Internet firms, spooked by export rules, seem to be committing similar sins. They practice a kind of self-censorship that bears a striking resemblance to the way Chinese Web-hosting firms censor customers for fear of incurring the wrath of Beijing. The situation is not helping the United States win friends and promote democracy abroad.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 08 Mar 2009
Internet users in Bangladesh are not able to access YouTube since Friday (March 6, 2009) evening. Soon people discovered that other Social Media and file hosting/sharing sites like Esnips, mediafire etc. were also not accessible. Apparently these are blocked by the firewalls at IIG (International Internet Gateway) as these can be accessed by proxy.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 08 Mar 2009
Richard Rothwell writes with news that Jack Straw, Britain's Justice Secretary, has made public plans to drop provisions from the Coroners and Justice Bill which would have allowed the government to take information gathered for one purpose and use it for any other purpose.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 07 Mar 2009
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will push for a re-think of the balance between the need for security and the right to privacy on the Internet, not just in Europe but around the world, they agreed during a debate at the Parliament on Thursday.
They supported a report which calls on the 27 countries in the European Union and the European Commission, its executive body, to define global standards for data protection, security and freedom of expression.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 07 Mar 2009
Prachatai web director Chiranuch Premchaiporn was arrested by police yesterday for “disseminating lese majeste content on the website.” To put it in another way, she was arrested for allowing comments on the website which the police deemed as offensive to the monarchy. Chiranuch is now out on bail.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 06 Mar 2009
A new law, that will allow increased monitoring of employees’ electronic communications by their employers, was passed by Finland’s parliament on Tuesday. Despite splits on the government side – most notably within the Green party – the Bill had a healthy majority: 96 in favour, 56 against, with 47 absent from the vote.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 06 Mar 2009
From unprintable curse word to cuddly children’s toy: that has been the voyage charted by an imaginary beast invented by Chinese internet users to poke fun at a new nationwide crackdown against online content deemed vulgar.
The saga of the “Grass Mud Horse” is in fact one of the many puns in which the Chinese language is so rich. It began at the start of the year when China’s cyberpolice launched a campaign to cleanse pornographic and other content regarded as unseemly from sites viewed by the world’s largest online population.
