Group items tagged

Since May 20, some Muslim Nations ban Facebook and You Tube after the publication of groups and videos like "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" a Facebook group that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

This is an article I bookmarked a few weeks ago but neglected to post to Diigo. I was planning to focus on Haiti as the subject for a blog entry but didn't follow through. Regardless, this article outlines the plan by broadcasters to gain money through digital sales of a telethon intended to raise funds for the relief effort in Haiti. The main point of the article is not to look at the digital divide between Haiti and the nations funding relief efforts, as I initially thought. It looks at the telethon as a test run to figure out how to monetize live internet streaming and mobile downloads of television content.

Interesting article applicable to the issues with the digital divide. Most notable is the way that many developing countries are 'skipping' over technology-steps: ie, going straight to mobiles without any landline infrastructure or going straight to tablet computers without ever having desktops.

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.

US President Barack Obama would be granted powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet under a new bill that describes the global internet as a US "national asset"!!!!!!!!!!!!

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."

Ilse Aigner, Germany's minister of food, agriculture and consumer protection, who usually concentrates on issues over rotten meat, genetically engineered corn and imitation cheese, recently took on a different kind of issue: the Internet and data privacy. Suddenly Aigner finds herself facing online giants Amazon, Facebook and, above all, Google. Soon Google plans to send cars equipped with cameras out onto Germany's roads once again for the company's Street View project. Aigner is now insisting that Google should ask permission before violating the privacy of German citizens. The minister's attack and the following discussions reveal just how divided the German government is when it comes to the online world. The debate revolves around questions of national security and individual self-determination on the Internet. But it also concerns the power of the large giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and MySpace, as well as the question of what these companies are doing with the records of our everyday data, and how they will be able to obtain information from us, influence us or perhaps even control us in the future. It seem like, once again, a German politician is exploiting the popular issue of internet privacy and censorship in a superficial way in the hope of scoring political points.

my own

tactical withdrawal while maintaining a high threat level? or total showdown?

Victorian school charges levy for take-home computers; a charity steps in to pay when parents can't afford to. School possibly in breach of DER program.

Students at a high school in Perth have been suspended for setting up a facebook page and verbally attacking one of their teachers.  Parents were "horrified" at their children's actions. 

The manifesto, further discussion and information regarding the Pirate Party in the UK

Copyright is big news over there right now. This party sprang up during the election, in direct response to the new copyright laws. Given the UK's voting system, they never really had a chance, and managed just over 1000 votes nationally. Still, the important thing is that they tried - yes?

This is the Iranian government's answer to US anti-internet censorship groups who aim to undermine the regime's strict filtering rules through funding from the CIA. It brings up questions of international involvement in extreme national governance of the internet.

Australian censorship laws reach a new level.

I'm not certain how this fits into the RC internet filtering, but by requiring artists to lodge a $500 application for expert appraisal to certify an image 'art' as opposed to any old image that is subject to child pornography laws, you implicity RC everything else.

Conservative party in Britain have released their "Technology Manifesto" before the elections. This manifesto supports a new emergence of public access online. It really seems to be too good to be true. It also looks to increase the digital divide between nations when some countries are just trying to catch up.

This is a blog posting discussing the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) which recently added Indonesia, Brazil and India to its 'Special 301 Watchlist' which marks nations as a threat to intellectual property for encouraging their government departments and companies to use open source software

'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.

"They all said they didn't know how to put it (gender unspecified) into their computers, but they all agreed to do it and to have a word to their computer programmers," Norrie said. "It is the job of the system to fit the people it serves, not the job of the people to fit the system. Our identity is increasingly database driven and default settings are not very changeable.

It said people were still buying analogue radios which will be out of date in a few years' time.

This article discusses how Michael McConnell (former director of national intelligence), has suggessted that "we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment - who did it, from where, why and what was the result - more manageable." Under the guise of protecting the state, it deems the "netizens," as possible enemies of the state.