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metapavlin

European Parliament Rejects Anti-Piracy Treaty - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • rejected an international treaty to crack down on digital piracy, a vote that Internet freedom groups hailed as a victory for democracy but that media companies lamented as a setback for the creative industries.
  • European legislators
  • Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, which has been signed by the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, South Korea and a number of individual E.U. members.
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  • The vote, they added, would hurt efforts to reduce online copyright theft, potentially costing Europe jobs at a time when it desperately needs them.
  • “Hello democracy, goodbye ACTA.”
  • unauthorized sharing of music, movies and other digital media. Treaty opponents had rallied tens of thousands of protesters to the streets of European capitals last winter, dangling the threat that approval of the pact would lead to the proliferation of anti-piracy measures.
  • “It’s a political symbol on an enormous scale, in which citizens of the world, connected by the Internet, have managed to defeat these powerful, entrenched industries.”
Miha Naprudnik

ACTA error: Democracy not found - RT News - 1 views

  • As European parliaments reject the Anti-Counterfeiting trade Agreement on human rights grounds, some are asking why it was signed in the first place.
  • The question is – why was the agreement signed in the first place, if its chances of being ratified are dropping by the day?
  • The pretext was the protection of intellectual property, and to control Internet resources that could be used by terrorists or to incite riots and other criminal activity.
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  • There's an argument to be made that freedom and security are usually in opposition; the most secured people are in prison, where they hardly have any freedom. Usually, security comes at the price of freedom – and that’s exactly the cost of ACTA.
Jan Majdič

Free speech on the internet | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

  • Freedom of expression has long been regarded as one of the fundamental principles of modern democracies, in which civil liberties are honoured and regarded as a prerequisite for individual development and fulfilment.
  • It is this classic liberal argument that is still used by civil liberties' campaigners on the internet, like Hatewatch, which argues that those "hate speak" groups, such as neo-Nazis, must still speak freely, if only to expose and discredit themselves
  • It is not simply a case of "same old issue, new technology" with free speech and the internet. With its low start-up costs and global reach, the internet enables almost anyone in the West, in theory, to speak and be heard around the world, as well as hear others' speech.
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  • particularly when they originate from, and are hosted in, foreign countries.
  • China have successfully prevented their citizens from receiving a huge quantity of (pro-democratic) material on the internet.
  • seeking to regulate and control its immense, potential, power.
  • The anti-censorship pressure group, Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain, was created in response Scotland Yard's request to ISPs to censor their news feeds
  • Governments in the USA, Germany and France, have all taken significant steps to curtail free speech on the internet
  • US is several years ahead of Britain
  • industry self-regulation
  • Technology is used to censor and evade censorship, although it seems likely that censorship tools will grow in sophistication and use as legislators struggle to censor the internet.
  • In December 1997, a 200-strong internet industry group agreed to accept a common standard of labelling called PICS - the Platform for Internet Content Selection
  • Millions of internet users in big offices, cybercafés, education institutions and libraries will use machines or ISPs which have filters installed in them.
  • In 1999, the EU launched an action plan, "Promoting Safer Use of the Internet", which provides for a hotline, where people can report sites which have caused offence
alja polajžer

BBC News - SpongeBob app pulled over children's privacy complaint - 0 views

  • pongeBob app became the latest game to be pulled following a complaint it had violated children's privacy rights.
  • The Washington DC-based group urged the FTC to investigate Nickelodeon and mobile game-maker PlayFirst's privacy practices.
  • ickelodeon has denied the allegation that it breached children's online privacy rules.
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  • The Center for Digital Democracy said children's email addresses had been collected without parental consent.
  • The SpongeBob Diner Dash game asks children to provide a wide range of personal information
  • The FTC last week published a report on mobile apps for children that showed parents were not being provided with information about what data an app collected, who would have access to that data, and how it would be used.
  • All of the companies in the mobile app space, especially the gatekeepers of the app stores, need to do a better job. We'll do another survey in the future and we will expect to see improvement."
donnamariee

Better Policy Through Better Information | John O. McGinnis | Cato Unbound - 0 views

  • Can Internet activism work?
  • is importantly correct that the Internet can help redress the balance between special and more encompassing interests by reducing the cost of accessing information. Such reduction redounds to the advantage of diffuse groups more than concentrated groups because reduced costs can temper the former groups’ larger problems of coordination.
  • earing that more information may enable citizens to better organize to attack their privileges, they have tried to restrict emerging technologies of free communication as long as these technologies have been around.
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  • In a democratic state like ours, the primary interest groups are not authoritarian cliques, but private actors, like public sector unions and trade associations, which have the leverage to pressure politicians to use public power on their behalf. And, like authoritarian leaders, such groups are desperate to avoid transparency to retain their benefits. A case in point is the opposition of teachers' unions to publishing evaluations of schools and teachers on the Internet. And many interest groups have tried to prevent laws requiring Internet disclosure of campaign contributions.
  • Yet the results of policies are contestable. And it is often hard for citizens who are distracted by many enterprises more interesting than politics to find good information about policies' likely outcomes. Most people also have a better intuitive sense of how policies will affect their short-term interests than the long-term interests of society, even if the long-term effects may be of great personal as well as social benefit.
  • The Internet provides an important mechanism of such social discovery. Because of the greater space and interconnections that the Internet makes available, web-based media, like blogs, can be dispersed and specialized and yet connected with the wider world. As a result of this more decentralized and competitive media, the web generates both more innovative policy ideas and better explanations of policy than were available when mainstream media dominated the flow of political discussion.
  • In short, over time the Internet and allied aspects of the computational revolution can create more focused and more accurate knowledge about the consequences of social policies. This knowledge in turn can help more citizens focus more on what they have in common—their shared goals and policies that may achieve them—rather than on the unsupported intuitions or personal circumstances that may divide them. Of course, some citizens will remain ideologues, impervious to updating on the facts. But democracy moves by changing the middle, not the extremes. Like other mechanisms that increase common knowledge, the Internet can give wing to the better angels of our nature.
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    essaytheme 
donnamariee

Who is Social Media Really Working For? | Jason Benlevi | Cato Unbound - 0 views

  • “digital activism” had tremendous impact and leverage for change
  • It’s my opinion that social networking, as an activist tool, is being vastly oversold.
  • Technology always cuts two ways. Although the personal computer provided empowerment and creative liberation for individuals, and the Internet gave us access to information, they came at a cost.
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  • Since centralized power is inherently non-democratic, these monolithic network entities are not inclined to liberate humanity. Therefore utopians better think twice if they are depending on the Net to promulgate democracy and freedom
  • Does social media make any kind of impact in molding opinion? Yes. As with all media types it serves both for good and evil, truth and lies
  • in the belief that cultural and physical realities are the determining factors far more than “friending” a cause. Whether we like it or not, bullets and batons are more potent than bytes. Reality generally trumps virtuality.
  • The efficacy of the network as a tool of activism is best examined in three different contexts: 1. Democratic states 2. Authoritarian states 3. Commercial “states”
  • the social network as it is presently constituted is not a serious tool for substantive social change. It is concentrated, centralized and controlled
  • n the democratic context, it is similarly a way to vent, and perhaps organize, but as of yet not much more. However, if you are selling widgets, the social network looks more promising.
  • Who is Social Media Really Working For?
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    "WHO IS SOCIAL MEDIA REALLY WORKING FOR?" - essay theme
donnamariee

Internet Activism? Let's Look at the Specifics | Rebecca MacKinnon | Cato Unbound - 0 views

  • Internet Activism? Let’s Look at the Specifics
  • Internet brings new dimensions and power to activism, we must not be naïve about the power of networked technologies. It is important to unpack the factors behind successful—and unsuccessful—online activism.
  • widespread social media adoption do not on their own guarantee activism’s success. The Internet is not some sort of automatic "freedom juice."
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  • Success or failure of digital activism in authoritarian states also depends on the regime’s technological capacity, skill, foresight, and planning
  • Internet itself—its technical architecture as well as the regulatory constraints shaping what people in different places can and cannot do with it—is a variable. We cannot treat the Internet as constant—either across geographical space or across time—in our calculations about the success of online activism.
  • often empowers activism, it is also used in many parts of the world as an insidious extension of state power—sometimes with the direct collaboration of companies seeking market access; sometimes much more indirectly due to the fact that Internet and mobile companies are conduits and repositories of vast amounts of citizens’ personal data, and also make commercial decisions that have a profound impact on people’s digital lives and identities
  • Whether the Internet remains conducive to political activism, or with liberal democracy for that matter, is by no means guaranteed. We face a virtuous or vicious cycle depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist: Activism is urgently required—nationally and globally—to ensure that the Internet remains compatible with activism.
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    "INTERNET ACTIVISM? LET'S LOOK AT THE SPECIFICS" - essay theme
Jernej Prodnik

The New Westphalian Web - By Katherine Maher | Foreign Policy - 0 views

    • Jernej Prodnik
       
      And yet it was set-up by the governmental agencies.
  • In the popular consciousness, the Internet was simultaneously a place of possibility and danger. In 1993, Time magazine warned, "People who use … the Net may be in for a shock.… Anybody can start a discussion on any topic and say anything." It was precisely this structural independence that transformed the Internet from a mere tool for information-sharing to the world's open forum.
  • The rise of self-publishing tools like Blogger transformed the "third space" of cyberspace into a modern speaker's corner, offering any motivated writer a platform for his or her political views. Initially, this online free expression was often marginalized or dismissed -- the term "blogosphere" was originally a joke. But bloggers kept plugging away. In liberal democracies their free expression was guaranteed, and in closed societies connectivity was often too limited to draw any real attention.
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  • . And the Internet -- this global resource, this wild space independent of states -- has made its mark on our neatly ordered world of nations.
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