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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 18 Oct 2010
Beijing, China (CNN) -- With news media across the globe reacting to this year's Nobel Peace Prize announcement, authorities in the winner's homeland are racing to delete his name from all public domains.
Type "Liu Xiaobo" -- or "Nobel Peace Prize," for that matter -- in search engines in China and hit return, you get a blaring error page.
It's the same for the country's increasingly popular micro-blogging sites. "Nobel Prize" was the top-trending topic until the authorities acted to remove all mentions of the award.
Propaganda officials have also pulled the plug on international broadcasters -- including CNN -- whenever stories about Liu air.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 18 Oct 2010
When an Iranian court sentenced "blogfather" Hossein Derakhshan to nearly 20 years in jail, many observers assumed the punishment was exceptional and intended to make an example of the former democracy activist.
If so, it appears the government is looking to make a few more examples.
Mehdi Khazali, an opthamologist, blogger and the son of a well-known hardline cleric, was arrested in Iran on Oct. 13, local press reported. Khazali had been especially vocal in his criticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since the disputed 2009 presidential election and already had spent several short stints in jail.
Khazali's arrest came just a few weeks after blogger Hossein Ronaghi Maleki was sentenced to 15 years in prison for insulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the president and creating and using proxy software to circumvent government filters. Maleki's mother and lawyer have told the press he was beaten and forced to sign a confession.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 18 Oct 2010
Many of the most popular applications, or "apps," on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook's strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook's rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users' activities secure.
The problem has ties to the growing field of companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online—a practice the Journal has been examining in its What They Know series. It's unclear how long the breach was in place. On Sunday, a Facebook spokesman said it is taking steps to "dramatically limit" the exposure of users' personal information.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 14 Oct 2010
As Communist Party elders call for free speech in China, Wen Yunchao reveals how the government’s strict control of online content is supported by a finely tuned infrastructure of laws and censors
This article first appeared in Index on Censorship magazine January/February 2010
Day-to-day censorship in China falls into two categories. The government’s propaganda authorities supervise websites that are legally licensed to carry news, while those without a license are dealt with by the public security authorities and the internet police. Unlicensed websites that are considered particularly influential may also be overseen by propaganda officials.
All news sites operate on more or less the same lines: a combination of instructions from the authorities and self-censorship. Instructions are issued requiring the deletion of specific articles. Usually, the propaganda authorities will have automated indexers that use key words to identify pages which may be of concern and, once read by the censors themselves, these pages may be flagged for deletion. The authorities may also request the publication of specific content. News sites receiving such instructions must act quickly. Instructions may range from an order to delete content, or all related content, not to publish certain content, or not to ‘play up’ a news item.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 14 Oct 2010
SHENZHEN, China—A letter signed by nearly two dozen Chinese Communist Party elders blasting the government's clampdown on free expression is drawing attention to an intensifying discussion over political reform in the approach to a major leadership conclave.
The signatories—including a former secretary to Mao Zedong— say the letter was inspired by Premier Wen Jiabao's surprise call for political reform in the southern city of Shenzhen in August, and is intended to encourage reformists in the party who want to gradually loosen its grip on society by allowing the media to report freely and by halting Internet censorship.
The letter was published online this week as the party's 371-member Central Committee prepared for a three-day meeting, starting Friday, which is expected to decide the direction of economic and political policies ahead of a leadership change in 2012.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 13 Oct 2010
The High Court in Ireland has ruled that laws cutting off internet users who have illegally downloaded content cannot be enforced in the country.
It is a victory for Irish internet service provider UPC which took the legal action against copyright owners, including EMI and Sony.
But it will be a blow to the music and film industry, which wants the strict rules as a deterrent against piracy.
It is likely to have a knock-on effect to similar policies in other countries.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 12 Oct 2010
ANY PUBLIC relations professional would find China's response to the Nobel Peace Prize almost inexplicable. Liu Xiaobo, a dissident serving an 11-year sentence for peaceful advocacy of democratic reform, on Friday became the first Chinese citizen to win the prize. China's Communist rulers promptly pulled the plug on television broadcasts and ramped up Internet censorship so Mr. Liu's fellow citizens wouldn't hear the news. They detained two dozen fellow dissidents who attempted a private celebration in a Beijing restaurant. To the outside world, they fulminated about the "desecration" of the prize and threatened Norway with doleful consequences. And then, as icing on the cake, they placed Mr. Liu's wife, Liu Xia, under house arrest.
Self-destructive, from a PR perspective, but not in fact inexplicable. These reactions simply demonstrate, once again, how fearful China's rulers are of their own people. Deprived of the legitimacy that democracy can bestow, they must censor at home and bluster abroad. The more they do so, the more they affirm Mr. Liu's worldview. "A regime cannot establish its legitimacy by suppressing different political views," he wrote in his failed legal defense, "nor can it maintain lasting peace and stability through literary inquisition."
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 12 Oct 2010
Egypt's National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) has imposed new restrictions aimed at tightening control over the SMS messaging services provided by mobile phone companies and media institutions in an apparent effort to preempt possible anti-regime activism in the run-up to next month's parliamentary elections.
On Monday, a number of private media institutions--including Al-Masry Al-Youm--were notified by SMS news providers that they must now obtain approval from the Ministry of Information and the Supreme Press Council before sending news alerts out to subscribers.
A source at the NTRA denied that the new restrictions had a political aspect, insisting that they had been put in place to regulate 30 companies currently operating in Egypt without a clear legal status.
It remains unclear whether the new regulations will stipulate the suspension or cancellation of phone subscriptions for those found disseminating anti-regime text messages. It is also unclear how the new regulations will affect private newspapers' capacity to generate profits from SMS-based news services.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 11 Oct 2010
KARACHI: Pakistan is no stranger to state-sanctioned censorship. Since the 1950s, successive governments, both military and civilian, have taken pains to ensure that the media has been scrutinised, censored and harassed.
Even as the twenty-first century has dawned upon Pakistan, the cycle continues. In 2009, the Pakistan government removed videos, of a Pakistan Army officer allegedly beating a Swat resident, from YouTube. Later on, videos of President Zardari saying “shut up” to a supporter at a public gathering were erased off of YouTube. In 2009, following a petition in the courts, the Lahore High Court slapped a ban on Facebook, which was later lifted. Even www.thepersecution.org, which documents crimes committed against the Ahmadi sect, is routinely banned by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA).
Which makes it even all the more surprising that with such stringent control over the media and the internet, the Pakistan government has so far, turned a blind eye to the abundance of religious hate material that is floating around and readily available on the internet.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 08 Oct 2010
bu Dhabi, Uae (CNN) -- The United Arab Emirates will not implement a planned ban on all BlackBerry services that was to have gone into effect next week, the state news agency said Friday.
The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority confirmed that all BlackBerry services have conformed to the agency's regulations, the WAM news agency said.
As a result, authorities will not follow through with a ban on services that was to have gone into effect on Monday.
