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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."

An interesting interview with Austin Heap, a programmer from California who created 'Haystack', software that allows people to avoid the internet censorship imposed by governments. This software was created as a reaction to the increased censorship imposed by the Iranian Government during and after the elections. It allowed Iranians to skype, email and surf the net in relative safety. Other points of discussion include the apparent values of free speech embedded in the software, the relationship between Google and China, and Australia's proposal of censorship.

A California appeals court allows students to be trialled for hate crimes for posting threatening comments on a fellow student's blog after it was ruled these comments were not protected free speech. Interesting development that narrowss the gap between traditonal schoolyard bullying and cyber bullying.

A cyberbullying bill put to a House sub-committee in the US wasn't met with much enthusiasm as members felt it was an "unconstitutional breach of free speech." The proposed legislation was put forward in response to a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide because she was bullied online

Very interesting article about people being marked in social networks even if they are not a member - can Facebook and the like be made responsible? An Italian court recently sentenced three Google executives because of a video posted by a user. Swiss and German privacy watchdogs further discuss the matter, many other EU nations are also involved. Google asks where to draw the line between censorship (controlling users' content being an invasion of their privacy) and free speech. There could be a conflict between US Web Giants and EU authorities. Only mentioned in passing that American media companies only react very slowly to European concerns "given the close relationship between Silicon Valley and the administration of President Obama".

A 24 year-old netizen Wang Shuai was jailed for 8 days for posting pictures that mocked at illegal land requisition in Henan Ningbao county in 6 March. The issue has been exposed by local media and there is a strong public opining siding with Wang. However, Wang's family has already lost their land, and he will probably lose his job in face of the defamation charge by the government.

Censorhip originally meant protecting the property owners from infringement. But it has been changed to deny free speech to wealthy organisations or governements they deem facist. it happens everywhere and

Austin Heap, Director of the San Francisco Based Censorship Research Center, explained the development of "HAYSTACK" a software that has been distributed to Iranians since last March to beat internet censorship. "we can through technology allow people to have their basic human right of free speech without fear of retaliation." Austin Heap.

Another case of cyber bullying that led to the suicide of a teenager, Allem Halkic, who was sent threatening texts and Internet communication by former friend, Shane Phillip Gerada. Gerada received an 18-month community-based order after pleading guilty to stalking Allem. Another move towards the governance of threatening behaviour via the Internet.