ARIN6902 Internet Cultures and Governance

Shutdown of large torrents site in Russia for allegedly distributing illegal content. Not read in detail.

Describes how twitter is being used for citizen participation and "democracy" in various countries from Moldova, Iran and now China. The author proposes that the best way to reduce censorship and promote "democracy" is not political pressure, but to "flood the Chinese market, and those of other countries that restrict freedom of expression, with cutting-edge technology". My opinion: Although Twitter seems to be good at allowing citizens to organise and to create consensus, it does not seem to translate well to actual policy outcome. 

The US government is being encouraged by various committees and "experts" to increase regulation of the Internet. The Internet is compared industry to the car industry before regulation was introduced to make cars safer. Apparently the "Internet Wild West" is over!

Interview with Jason Lanierm, an apparent "digital guru" who has changed his view of open culture to that which promotes a "digital maoism". He proposes that we need to pay people for the brain work that they do instead of encouraging them to be labourers of sorts. 

Short blog post about the loss of privacy that social networks entail. It especially looks at the emergence of foursquare and the foursquare/twitter mashup pleaserobme.com 

The campaign strategy of the newly elected US Senator Scott Brown heavily used the web. Article about how he did this. 

Article from Fibreculture journal.

SMH article about the Australian government's "Gov2.0" initiative which encourages government employees to use social media more.  

A short review on the book "SMS Uprising: Mobile activism in Africa" which is series of essays about the usage of SMS for citizen activism in Africa including in Zimbabwe.

Guest blog on Jenkins' MIT site about internet filtering in Australia by Mark McLelland from University of Wollongong.

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

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.

Plurk, a micro-messaging service that competes with Twitter, discovered that it is being blocked in China.

A fair amount has been written about the politics of net neutrality, but its technical aspects have generally pushed the debate to the fringes of the mainstream press.

This study explores an under-studied layer of Chinese Internet censorship: how Chinese Internet companies censor user-generated content, usually by deleting it or preventing its publication. Systematic testing of Chinese blog service providers reveals that domestic censorship is very decentralized with wide variation from company to company. Test results also showed that a great deal of politically sensitive material survives in the Chinese blogosphere, and that chances for its survival can likely be improved with knowledge and strategy. The study concludes that choices and actions by private individuals and companies can have a significant impact on the overall balance of freedom and control in the Chinese blogosphere.