The European Union is moving towards the establishment of a European Global Online Freedom Act: The proposal is not focussed at any specific country. It calls on the European Commission to deal with censorship in third countries through it…´s external trade policy. It is in no way solemnly directed at China.
Showing all posts tagged censorship
The dual challenge
Major internet companies are starting to realise that their collusion with repressive regimes is biting them on the arse: More Chinese dissidents sue Yahoo! Of course, China appears to be in the middle of a sexual revolution, so perhaps internet censorship isn’t on the minds of many citizens.
Getting around censors
Malaysians go to the polls on March 8. Much of the country’s mainstream media is seemingly content to publish propaganda masquerading as journalism. All is not well in the country’s democracy: A Malaysian government minister has accused bloggers, who have been writing avidly on upcoming elections, of being cowards and warned they are being monitored,…
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My latest column for New Matilda is about China’s crackdown on internal dissent and its fear of the internet: Although China is also battling a seemingly unsurmountable pollution problem, the regime appears determined to ignore Western calls for greater openness. “Why can’t China accept that dissent and argument are part of being a normal country?”…
Let the videos run free
When will dictatorships ever learn? The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has directed the country’s ISPs to block access to the videos sharing website YouTube for allegedly featuring a blasphemous video. However, and according to the Pakistani “Don’t Block The Blog” there are two theories that could explain PTA’s recent move to ban YouTube: vote rigging…
Don’t mess with internet freedom
Following the recent attempted closure of the Wikileaks site by a California judge, the move has spectacularly backfired. The story received international media coverage. Here’s the legal low-down.
Don’t post those full frontal shots
China continues its eradication program of the internet: News from the Ministry of Public Security is that 13 Chinese ministries have been taking a joint action since last month to regulate online order, with the emphasis being given to the cleaning out of such content as candid snapshots, nude pictures and “unhealthy” adult literature. During…
The Orwellian censorship of Wikileaks
The following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: Internet censorship is something we normally associate with countries such as Iran or China, but increasingly Western governmental and legal authorities are aggressively restricting the ability of users to view information unimpeded. Such is the story with Wikileaks, one of the most essential websites launched in…
Blogging to (partial) freedom
Ethan Zuckerman discusses the tranformative power of the internet in Kenya: There’s a strong overlap between the emerging middle class in the developing world and the world of citizen media. Bloggers in Africa are highly educated, and generally are wealthier than the average African. (It’s not cheap, in African terms, to afford the amount of…