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Wow. Read it and weep. Tim O'Reilly is promoting this article. I haven't read anything quite so scarily propagandist since Caberet. What do I mean? (and who is this 'state'?) Courtesy of One Economy Corporation "If e-mail lives in the cloud, who owns that information?" says State Department's Alec Ross. Cloud computing is a double-edged sword in the fight for Internet freedom, a top State Department official said on Wednesday." "During a major policy speech in January, Clinton announced that Internet freedom would become a strategic priority for the United States in 2010. In March, State revived the Global Internet Freedom Task Force, a Bush administration initiative that worked to harmonize policies departmentwide on protecting free speech. The renamed NetFreedom Task Force met on March 4, when 19 telecommunications and information technology companies discussed the corporate sector's role in facilitating Internet freedom."

Engaging in social media backfires for Nestle. Due to the Greenpeace protest against the company with regards to how the company uses palm oil in its products, a number of people posted their distaste on Nestle's Facebook page. Unfortunately for the company, the representative in charge of replying to comments was far from being amiable, or even courteous. Sample exchange of comments: Nestle: "You have freedom of speech and expression. Here, there are some rules we set. As in almost any other forum. It's to keep things clear." Paul Griffin: "Your page, your rules, true, and you just lost a customer, won the battle and lost the war! Happy?" Nestle: "Oh please...it's like we're censoring everything to allow positive comments." Social media has significant benefits for companies and how they market the products to consumers. However, if used wrongly, as with this case, massive PR clean-up is inevitable.

This article discusses how cyberbullying is not limited to strictly school children, or students rather teachers are also victims of cyberbullying. As students create social network hate groups, secretly film or photograph their teachers, and post embarassing moments online. identities of the victims are stolen, and then are used for either harassment, or illegal activity online. Though Facebook has mentioned that they will remove any content regarding teachers if reported, it brings to light a new issue. If laws need to address how we conduct ourselves online, should we compromise our freedom of speech (any jurisdiction that has constituted it) because the content is online?

blog entry: it may seem as simple as eating here, but it's definitely not up there in China. Day after Google announced to resign China, couples of foreign reports' email accounts were either hacked or blocked. Coincident? !!!

'Freedom of speech' for one country is another country's 'propaganda attack'. Country is also a debatable term. Google is synonymous with the USA in most reports, and indeed the US Secretary of State is responding to China over this Google issue.

A blog post covering the Pirate Party UK and the recent launch of it's manifesto. The Pirate Party is fighting to reform 'intellectual property' law but also covers freedom of speech on the Internet an other web related issues. After winning seats on the European and German parliament, could they also be successful in the UK?

After the Secretary of State in the US Hillary Clinton's speech on Internet freedom, open source source code repository SourceForge.net blocked access to IP addresses originating in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Open source software provides important infrastructure to these oppressed and developing nations. I hope the American government can see what a blow this is to the infrastructure and fledgling industries in these countries.

Internet censorhip and interenet surveilance in South Korea have been very harsh in recent years; therefore, the freedom of speech and the public's right to know has been restricted. Internet surveilance has been less tolerant on not only violent and explicit content but also on the political issue-related online discussion. After the South Korean government has arrested the netizens for posting personal and critical views on the goverment, internet users in South korea are now silenced. South Korea is allegedly a "democratic country."

A speech by Stephen Collins, member of the EFA Board, that he gave at Parliament House recently to highlight the problems with the mandatory filter.

Apple has taken down two apps from German media, as they were considered offensive. This moves towards censorship could extend to a larger control of editorial content. Do media have to comply? 

It is the first time in North America that assisted suicide laws have been applied to the Internet. William Melchert-Dinkel has been charged with assisting in 2 suicides, where he posed under several aliases and made suggestions of suicides from medication to advice on how to tie nooses. Though the argument was that suicide is the behaviour done unto oneself, and suggestion is freedom of speech, this is no different than cyberbullies who also suggest the same thing, however this heinous individual offered information to those that were indanger of commiting suicide. Based on the wording in the state of Minnesota, assisted suicides do not require the actual physical presence of the person, hence the prosecution stands.

It seems like Internet censorship is compatible with democracy. It is shame that South Korea is with the countries of the Islamic theocracies of Saudi Arabia and some of less than democratic countries in the Middle East. South korea seems fond to mimic the US and Japan, but is the freedom of speech on the Net a thing they particularly want to stand up for themselves?

My latest blog post about censorship in the Netherlands and the fear of the unknown.

Amendments made to the digital economy bill last week, handing courts the power to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites, threaten freedom of speech and will lead to British websites being blocked without due judicial process, the chief executives of leading technology companies said in an open letter to the Financial Times. The heads of the four largest UK internet service providers as well as Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo have all co-signed the letter, along with consumer groups and academics, objecting to amendment. Theoretically the amendment could lead to sites such as YouTube being blocked in the UK.

How on earth can he guarantee that this will be 100 percent accurate - with no overblocking, and no underblocking!?!?! And in this interview, he advises that this is not a limit on freedom of speech and that the internet should not be considered a special platform.

This article discusses how the Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has dismissed the Internet as a special medium, claiming that it is nothing more than, "just a communication distrbution platform." Which, is quite short sighted, as the notion of open source, crowd sourcing, collective/collecting intelligence, collaborative intelligence is achievable because of the Internet. Conroy also claims that his filter is 100 percent accurate..." which begs to question, according to who? Filtering, content only prevents access, it does not prevent those individuals from crimnimal acts offline, nor does it address how to protect victims from their predators.

South Korean government still thinks that the benefits of censorship are worth the opprobrium. They block dusscusion sites, arrest bloggers for rediculous reasons; for instance, they publish controversial opinions or propagating falsehood online. Since many popular foreign websites such as Google and Youtube decided to require its users to undergo identity verification, Korean internet users have nowhere to have the freedom of speech on the web planet.

The Thai government is increasing censorship over the Internet, with a special focus on political websites due to the uprising in the country.  What is interesting is that this has been going on for a few years, but it has not received that much media attention compared to Internet censorship in China. It is possible that the websites being banned are not that widely accessed by Thai people in the first place.