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Sudan has just had it's first democratic elections in 24 years. The results have not yet been decided. This blog, Sudan365 discusses various elements that surround politics in Sundan (the name of the blog refers to the proposed referendum to be held next year to decide the future of Sudan). This particular blog entry interviews Alsarah, a Sudanese born artist who has remixed an old Sudanese political song that aims to encourage people to get out and vote. Alsarah explains her motivations behind revamping the song, "Vote!"

As mentioned in the tutorial: Sharleen spent 16 years under 24/7 house arrest in NSW. No one is actually sure what legislation she was detained under. Many other people were, and still are, doing exactly what she did. However, she broadcast the fact on national television and became a scapegoat. The intersection of media and politics, the forcing of action and then lack of transparency around the forced actions are very reminiscent of the Internet Filter and Black List debate.

During a speech at the Media Institute in Washington [February 24, 2010], Larry Strickling, President Obama's top official at the Department of Commerce and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), suggested that there should be policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments and key Internet constituencies on issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection and Internet governance. "It's now time to respond to all the social changes being driven by the growth of the Internet," Strickling said. "We need Internet Policy 3.0. We enter this new decade recognizing that we rely on the Internet for essential social purposes: health, energy efficiency, and education. It's also a general engine for economic and social innovation. We must take rules more seriously if we want full participation, but we must keep the need for flexibility in mind."

The US Federal Trade Commission has release a request for public comment on the  expansion of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)  The initial review was scheduled for 2015 but is being brought forward.  COOPA's goal is to protect the online safety and privacy of children under the age of 13.  They are considering extending this to children under the age of 17. 

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.

More evidence presented by Morozov on how the new media can serve the purposes of radical organizations. He is been arguing for a while that new media and new technologies (in this case the wikis) are not necessarily pro-western democratic tools.

A useful guide on the different types of licenses to share work as open source

A summary of Matt Mullenweg's talk  in "The Economist Innovation Conference", about Wordpress and the importance of people behind Open Source.

A Crikey article on DBCDE's proposal of mandatory filtering and the "Submissions on measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material". The Government's courting of mandatory filtering has drawn widespread criticism from such stakeholders as Google, the Internet Industry Association and highly regarded academics such as Professors Catherine Lumby, Lelia Greean and John Hartley. One of the main concerns is that the scope of the filtering is too wide and will have major implications on what content is available online. This article also helpfully provides links to some of the submissions.

Self-googling will not sound as vain or egotistic as it may seem if it means that an individual can be aware of what information the internet holds about him or her. To me, it's a form of "damage control". 

The Iranian government has allegedly blocked a popular French broadcaster website because of its reliance on social networking sites and other amateur techniques of online journalism.

Organisation that monitors the Botnet size 24/7. Its quite interesting that as the internet and networks continue to grow so do the 'bandwidth leeching' botnets that are only on the rise even the efforts to shutdown specific bot nets. Check out the graphs across different time spans.

GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name registration company is taking similar action to Google by deciding to not conduct further business in China. This decision is a reaction to China now demanding that applicants of domain names are to provide additional personal information, including a full colour head shot photograph. While China maintains forcing applicants to register extensive personal information will curb the creation of unsavoury sites (namely pornography) everyone else outside of the Chinese government believes such detailed personal information will equip the government to target any individual (to what extent - who knows) displaying any content that the government does not support. Is this an invasion of privacy? Should people be able to exercise multiple personas on the internet, or should you be who you are? If a government is to collect such information who will ensure the information it collects isn't abused? Do we answer these questions differently when thinking of China i.e. what would the answers be if Australia was to introduce such a law? At the very least, it's a relief to see companies realising that China is compromising the values of the internet and are reacting suitably by taking their services out of the country. More need to participate in the retalliation.

Good article on the social and political uses of social media (sic.) in Indonesia. There have been attempts to filter/censor content, but so far they have been avoided. Uses of Twitter, Facebook by politicians is also described. 

This article argues that the best alternative to fight against the Iranian Government, is providing the country with free satellite internet access. The flow of information and the use of Internet like a democratic tool will allow the own citizens to defeat the regime

This is my third blog entry on the theme of the Digital Divide. I've looked at the situation in Thailand in terms of the class divide, political divide, and digital divide that characterise the conflict.

I thought that freedom of expressions, access to information and political and social participation are universal rights, but, maybe, it is just fantasy for some conturies