Group items tagged

Mexico will hold presidential elections in 2012. Eight years after it lost the presidential seat to the conservative party PAN, the PRI (which held the "perfect dictatorship" by staying 71 years in power), is gaining momentum and seems to be the clear front-runner. The party has conducted many efforts to engage young voters (those who grew up hearing about the absolutist years of the PRI) with its political agenda. In Mexico. the money that parties invest in campaigns is prone to debate and finger-pointing. How will efforts like this Twitter account be accounted for? Is social media an investment? 

This blog by Dan Yoder counts 10 reasons why you should can your Facebook account. The main reasons for this boycott are related issues of privacy and how they treat the information of members, for example not providing complete information on how they use your information.

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.

On Thursday April 1st, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) - the Canadian equivalent to the SEC, put forth allegations against Agoracom.com an online investor relations forum for seeding fake conversations throughout their investor message board community. The allegations describe a scenario of more than 24,000 fraudulent posts made by 670 different accounts In the amount of time it took to create all these fake posts and different accounts, maybe they could have done something constructive? People don't seem to realise how much their actions are tracked on the internet. Beyond embarrassing, it's also becoming a grounds for legal action

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? !!!

CHINA'S President Hu Jintao has set up a microblogging account that has drawn thousands of followers in a country where social networking sites remain tightly controlled.

As a response to lobbying from entertainment industry, the UK has become the second country to approve laws to punish piracy, where offenders can face temporary suspensions of their internet accounts

Censorhip is Chinea is taking to another lever? Some journalists' email account in Yahoo is hacked; though the result remain unclear, but it may imply the "freedom" in China is somehow lost.

From Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez's blog. A short post that describes how the Cuban communist intelligentsia deals with Twitter. Interesting to see how some dissidents have contacts outside Cuba who are in charge of maintaining their twitter accounts. 

So, in the end it is not Hugo!!! It is 200 Hugos!

German Criminal Court rules that Wi-Fi internet account owners who do not have password protection will be fined 100 euros for 3rd parties which perform acts of piracy on their account, further broadening the spectrum of responsibility of copyright infringement.

Also "Directors of the UK's biggest 350 listed companies should also stand for re-election every year, instead of at least every three years, to increase accountability under recommendations in the revised code." Frequent re-election should keep directors more or their toes, or will it make them spend more time trying to defend their positions instead of doing their jobs? Time will tell.

Two of the world's leading providers of online services Google and Yahoo have criticised the federal government's plan to censor internet content as heavy handed. The Australian government are now trying to enhance accountability and transparency of the mandatory ISPs filering schema.

Call for consultation regarding Australian government's mandatory internet filtering scheme. 

The head of new media for Middle East broadcaster and news service Al Jazeera has poured cold water on the much-hyped role of Twitter as the technology that started grass-roots revolution in Iran. Despite the US government's moves to prevent scheduled maintenance of the site to enabled Iranians to "Tweet out" to the world about the election, it seems a torrent of on-the-ground Tweets simply doesn't add up. After analyzing information about the alleged Iranian-based Tweeters, just 6 accounts could be verified as actually being on the ground.

Very interesting article on Hollywood vs. downloads and ISPs. 

Really enjoyed this article and its historical account of Hollywood on the defensive to any new emergence of technology is apt. Unlike the open source software movement, this industry fails to understand that the circulation of its content, whether licensed or not, eventually produces indirect benefits. Hollywood defends its position through laws created in a time when the internet was yet to be conceived. The obvious flow on discussion here is that the law simply can't stay abreast of rapid technology changes.

"Australia's biggest technology companies, communications academics and many lobby groups have delivered a withering critique of the government's plans to censor the internet." (quoting smh, 23/3/10, 4.40pm)

This article discusses who is held resposible for cyberbullying. Three executives from Google have been convicted of privacy violation, and have been accused of not acting swiftly enough to take down an online video of an autistic boy being beating by teen bullies. There are many issues that arise from this topic, for example, how far does accountability stretch, does it stem from the original poster, to the Internet Service Provider, the company hosting the content.It brings to question who do we hold responsible, and under which jurisdiction and set of laws do we use. Should there be a screening process to prevent such videos from being posted online?

"Let us all renounce the harsh rhetoric about the POTUS [president of the U.S.]. Several, including myself, hv used inappropriate language. Let's remain civil! #tcot." See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/dCqW2m

Corporate governance is becoming more and more important, and in considering the growing economies in the Gulf states, there is considerable interest in the region. It will be interesting to see how models of corporate governance may differ in the Gulf countries, especially in relation to board members.