Many Western multinationals, like Google, have embraced China and chosen to comply with onerous restrictions and censorship. WordPress, a popular blogging tool, has not. Matt Mullenweg, the 23-year-old founder, explains why: We had a bigger problem in China. It set the moral compass for the company. About a quarter of our traffic was coming from…
Showing all posts tagged internet
Blocking the fly-over
Internet censorship exists in Morocco, including the blocking of Google Earth. Once again, we find Western multinationals, in this case Vivendi, involved in the process:
Why can’t we hear them?
The Walkley Magazine is Australia’s leading media publication discussing trends, issues and controversies. In the latest edition, I have an article that highlights the rise of blogging around the world and the tendency of Western media to avoid highlighting these new voices because of racism and ignorance:
Do you want censorship with that?
Internet repression isn’t only happening in Iran, China and Syria. Italy, over to you: Though it never made the ”˜big’ news, Italy’s latest foray into the blogosphere is indicative of some rather strange thinking from their leaders. Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s undersecretary Franco Levi composed the text to a law that requires anyone with a…
Open-source everything
An Al-Jazeera English discussion between the founders of Wikipedia and Craigslist. The future of the media?
The hunger grows
China now has 172 million Internet users and roughly four million new users going online every month. While the Chinese regime parades its new leadership to the world, change is occurring within the country far away from the 17th National Congress.
Just try and stop us
The recent crackdown in Burma continues to reverberate around the world. The bravery of the monks and the general population is a testament to the will of the human spirit. The internet was a key factor in the dissemination of information. A new report from OpenNet Initiative, a leading group tasked to monitor web filtering…
The changing media landscape
Bloggers beware: Disgruntled fans of Sheffield Wednesday who vented their dissatisfaction with the football club’s bigwigs in anonymous internet postings may face expensive libel claims after the chairman, chief executive and five directors won a high-court ruling last week forcing the owner of a website to reveal their identity. The case, featuring the website owlstalk.co.uk,…
Don’t touch the Dalai Lama
The inevitable payback: American websites have come under attack in China since President George W. Bush met the Dalai Lama in Washington this week. Popular search engines are said to have been “hijacked” by computer hackers who had managed to redirect users to a Chinese website. Analysts at Search Engine Roundtable, a website focusing on…
Oh powerful one
The power of Google is only growing: Just a few moments ago, YouTube introduced the beta version of its “video identification” system, the purpose of which is to control the amount of infringing material that appears on the site. Under enormous pressure from movie studios and record labels and their friends on Capitol Hill to…