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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? 

Interesting use of social media by the Democratic Party as an opposition force in Texas. Notice how the webpages layout is not that different to the ones used by the Republican Party and their media allies, FOX NEWS. Does the web incite dialogue in political campaigning, does it represent a true paradigm shift, or are old propaganda and petition models just replicated? 

Interesting article on The Guardian on how the main British parties use social media. The article, though, treats social media as a fad that may eventually dissolve. The question, though, remains: do political parties know how to use social media?

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?

Interesting data on how and why British politicians are slow in the use of social media for political campaigning. They still trust other more traditional channels. Interesting data: Europeans are lagging behind American policy makers in their use of Twitter and other means of digital communication. Might the higher age average of European citizens have something to do with it?

Not only was Tudehope sacked for publishing satire videos of Liberal Party faction fights but was outed as ghosting Turnbull's twitter. What a job! Interesting to see how Australia's political parties use online media.

Following the government's decision to postpone the internet filtering legislation last week what is the future for this legislation? Post election there is the likelihood of even harsher censorship than that currently proposed. Fitzgerald suggests that the election could be turned in part in to a referendum on the issue? But when it comes down to it which party will actually nominate themselves to lead the charge against the filter in parliament- only the Sex Party??- a party founded on the issue of internet censorship.

This article discusses how a private Labor party polling has indicated that some computer-illterate mums and dads wish to have Conroy make the Internet safer for their children.

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?

Constantin films invokes copyright infringement and corporate citizenship to try to pull thousands of Downfall parody videos off the internet. As they admit, it's an impossible task which begs the question of why do it at all! My favorite was/is the Vegemite iSnack 2.0 clip - which I'm bookmarking for everyone right now. And while I never expected to find the Liberal Party at all interesting, I didn't realise that heads had fallen over a Downfall vid satirising faction fighting, which is pertinent after yesterday's tutorial discussions!

Four Corners and Q&A are covering the mandatory ISP filter debate tonight, should be a great double bill. Now its off the agenda till after the election, so the Government clearly misjudged the public reaction. Thanks to widespread media coverage on the inherent flaws of the MISP, coupled with the activism of protest movements such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Pirate Party, its fair to say that the general public have moved beyond the Government's black and white positioning of the proposal.

Thanks for the reminder!

Manuel Espino, leader of the PAN, Mexico's conservative party, twitted that Diego Fernandez de Ceballos, the politician who is missing, had been killed. He later said sorry and admited the information was not confirmed/true. But was it? Twitter's immediacy can put politicians in the spotlight even if that is not their intention. 

Scroll down and read the discussion forum paper, "Child Protection and Freedom of Expression Online". The report aims to open discussion and reframe the debate surrounding child protection by bringing together, rather than isolating, advocates of online child protection and those of freedom of expression. It rejects the current moral panics that dominate the debate, particularly in the media, which over-represents the likelihood of harm to children online. It highlights the unproductive nature of framing online protection as a moral panic because it obscures and undermines the work of both freedom of expression and child protection advocates. Rather than keeping these two parties as diametrically opposed the discussion laid the first steps in finding common ground between the two. From here they can work together to advance both of their agendas and therefore achieving a more desirable balance between defending the rights of children and maintaining freedom of expression.

Abstract In today's digital world, personal privacy has become the number one issue for consumers [9]. Consumers' confidence in personal privacy is directly affecting and limiting the growth of the Internet commercial development. Therefore, it has become a necessity to address the consumers privacy concerns for the interests of the parties involved.

The Digital economy Act in all its glory. There was a LOT of debate over this Act. It was introduced by Lord Mandelson of the Labour party, tossed back and forth between houses with amendments that were argued to the minutest detail, then finally spat out for the public to revile. All ISPs are now required to monitor their subscibers use of listed sites and warn them when they enter a site that enables pirating. They must then record every such warning, giving every subscriber a number, then make the list available to the government when they get a warrant to look for excessive downloaders. Only the government like this idea, because it makes their job easier. I wandered onto one of the listed sites recently in my quest to find Dr Who episodes before they aired in Australia. The message was like driving down the highway and suddenly seeing a police car parked on the side of the road. You might know you haven't done anything wrong (yet) but you still get a scare ...

Wonder what statistics service providers such as Nielsen will think about this...

Microsoft Corp and I-O Data Device have entered into an agreement that will provide I-O Data's customers with patent coverage for their use of I-O Data's products running Linux and other related open source software.

Find the whole idea vaguely repulsive. See Slashdot: "The Japanese computer manuracturer IO Data is the latest in line to license Microsoft's so-called 'Linux patents,' following the likes of Novell, Samsung, and Amazon. Yes, even the press releases use the word 'Linux' to describe these patents. From the press release: 'Specifically, the patent covenants apply to I-O Data's network-attached storage devices and its routers, which run Linux. Although the details of the agreement have not been disclosed, the parties indicated that Microsoft is being compensated by I-O Data.'" http://bit.ly/bmxIO4

Opponents of expanding gTLDs have largely based their arguments on the additional cost to business in performing defensive registration on their brands. What is defensive registration? Basically it's an action taken to protect a trademark (in the case of domain names, to protect a word or phrase which identifies the goods or services of a party). This study investigates how valid the defense registration argument, backed by organsiations such as Microsoft, actually is. It assesses the amount of defensive registration already undertaken in varying gTLDs for the top Fortune 100 companies. The conclusion: 'If past behavior is predictive of future actions, we will see a minimal amount of defensive registration activity in new gTLDs by brand owners, and new gTLDs will be largely ignored by cybersquatters.'

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.

Dutch political party 'D66' included that internet is a fundamental right in their campaign program. With 54% of their voters for internet as a fundamental right it is now in their political campaign. There will be elections in June to form a new parliament, this can be a critical point in their success.

Evidence that it really isn't hard to bypass an ISP filter. This provides a walk though so if you didn't know how - now you do