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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 15 Apr 2011
The founder of the Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge has got very excited about a ruling by the European Court of Justice which appears to outlaw internet filtering by ISPs.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 15 Apr 2011
An organisation in Ireland wants to establish the "internet as a basic human right" as law.
It follows a decision this week to stop ISPs using filtering technology. The ruling was made by top and well respected judge Pedro Cruz Villalón, Advocate General to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), who ruled that Belgian ISP Scarlet should filter out copyright-infringing content from its network.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 14 Apr 2011
Malaysiakini, an independent news portal in Malaysia, has been inaccessible since Tuesday 12 April, 2011, after being targeted by cyber attacks.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 14 Apr 2011
Fred Teeven, the Secretary for Security and Justice wants to make downloading for personal use a crime, and to allow copyright holders to obtain a court order to force an ISP to block a “specific website or service” accused of infringement.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 14 Apr 2011
In a rebuke to the State Department, Congress has cut its budget for promoting Internet freedom and directed the government’s international broadcasting arm to take over some of the job of helping people in repressive societies reach censored Web sites.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 12 Apr 2011
This week, a DDoS attack was launched on Livejournal— which, with 4.7 million Russian users, has become a powerful forum for political discussion in Russia (Maria Garnaeva of Kaspersky Lab has a great analysis and report of the attack). The attacks began on March 24, from the Optima botnet on prominent Livejournal user Alexei Navalny (who discusses government corruption in his blog as well as a number of other URLs until April 1. By April 4, however, the botnet was launched on many popular Livejournal blogs and effectively caused the Web site to be inaccessible in Russia. The attacks rendered the Web site inaccessible in Russia on March 30 and April 4.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 12 Apr 2011
The Chinese government has attacked the US for targeting WikiLeaks while campaigning for internet freedom overseas.
Beijing has a doctrine of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, but the State Council Information Office releases an annual report on the US human rights record as a riposte to Washington's criticisms. The document says it underlines the hypocrisy of the US and "its malicious design to pursue hegemony under the pretext of human rights".
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 12 Apr 2011
In light of the rumors raging over a Facebook China partnership with Baidu, we decided to check in on the recent China numbers from SocialBakers (a site that monitors Facebook users by country.) Back in February, we saw users more than double following Mark Zuckerberg's visit in December. This month, the numbers are way, way down. Not a gradual drop off, mind you. On April 5, about 40% of Chinese Facebookers disappeared.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 12 Apr 2011
U.S. social networking site Facebook is reported to be in talks with Chinese search giant, Baidu, to set up a joint venture but no actual deal has been confirmed, according to news reports.
Business Insider on Monday reported that Facebook and Baidu have yet to sign a deal to set up a rumored social networking site in China. The U.S. social network, along with other Web services, is currently banned in the country.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 11 Apr 2011
Several Chinese media outlets are reporting this weekend that Facebook is close to a deal with Chinese search engine giant Baidu to provide social networking services in China, with some reports saying a contract has already been signed.
Facebook, like many other popular social sites from the west such as Twitter and YouTube, has been blocked in China going back to 2009. China’s strict Internet censorship and surveillance policies have earned the nickname the “Great Firewall of China”. However, with such a large Internet population at stake, many western companies are aggressively pursuing a way in through partnerships and talks with the government. Getting inside the Great Firewall would give Facebook access to 457 million Internet users.
