August, 2010

Stories from August, 2010

Iran: Jailed blogger Goudarzi receives NPC award

  27 August 2010

The National Press Club has announced the international recipient of the 2010 John Aubuchon Freedom of the Press Award is Iranian blogger Kouhyar Goudarzi, who is being held in Tehran's Evin Prison–notorious for its torture of detainees.

Iran: Blogger May Face Charge of ‘Waging War Against God’

  25 August 2010

There is a growing concern that Shiva Nazar Ahari, a jailed human rights activist, blogger, and editor of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters website in Iran, may be charged with moharbeh (waging war against God/enmity against God) in an upcoming trial. In Iran, this can carry a death sentence....

Azerbaijan: Supreme Court Upholds Bloggers’ Conviction

  20 August 2010

On 19 August, the Azerbaijani Supreme Court considered the case of imprisoned bloggers and youth activists Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade. In its decision, the Court upheld the lower courts' rulings, which convicted Milli and Hajizade of hooliganism and sentenced them to two and a half years and two years of imprisonment respectively. The two were arrested on 8 July 2009 after appealing to police as victims of an assault following an incident in which they were attacked in a restaurant.

Our Guide “Mirroring a Censored WordPress Blog” is now available in Arabic

  20 August 2010

This guide is for bloggers with self-hosted* WordPress blogs who believe their sites may be blocked by government filters. Its goal is to help bloggers use a mirror site to make censored content available to readers despite these filters. It contains step-by-step instructions for setting up a mirror for an original (”source”) WordPress blog.

A First Glimpse at the Internet Filtering in Tunisia

  18 August 2010

We learned that the censorship imposed illegally on hundreds of Tunisian blogs and websites, both Tunisians and foreigners, was “shut off” temporarily for few hours on Monday, August 16, 2010. And although the information on this brief lifting of the censorship in the country is still contradictory – as some...

Online dictatorship in the Islamic Republic of Iran

  18 August 2010

Since the post-presidential election of 2009, the Islamic republic of Iran has intensified its crackdown on media including bloggers and even micro-blogging environments like Facebook and twitter. Although the crackdown on media has been a common practice in the Islamic republic, this time, the gravity of the situation is far...

Spaniard bloggers react to the Google-Verizon proposed policy

  17 August 2010

Spaniard bloggers have been very busy discussing and arguing about the recent Google-Verizon proposed policy for an open Internet. Most of them are against it because they consider it a very delicate subject because of the not so distant issue of the Sinde discussion when, “the Spanish Government announced at...

Iran: One of Mayor's sites was filtered

  15 August 2010

According to reformist Kalmeh, and several bloggers, Iranian authorities filtered “Khbargozarieh Shar” (means city's news agency). This site belongs to Tehran's Mayor and no information about the reasons for this filtering was released.

Facebook Responds to Activists

12 August 2010

I’ve been writing about Facebook woes for nearly four months, so imagine my surprise yesterday when I received an e-mail from a Facebook staffer in response to my blog posts. Since I don’t have said staffer’s express permission to use his name or post his e-mail in its entirety, I will instead post the most remarkable excerpts with my own notes.

Russia: Anothr Kemerovo Blogger Sued For Libelling

  12 August 2010

A criminal case has been started against Kemerovo-based Alexander Sorokin (aka LJ-user commentator40), Echo Moskvy reported. Sorokin is accused of libel against Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleev for the post in which he compares Russian regional governors to Latin American dictators. It is the second loud case of blogger prosecution in this region in 2010.

China: ISP level Gmail phishing

  11 August 2010

In the past few days, there are many reports from Chinese internet users saying that when they try to access gmail account, they are redirected to a url: http://124.117.227.201/web/gmail/ and asked to re-enter their password. Today NTDTV.com disclosed that the url is a phishing page for stealing users’ password. It...

China: Anti three-vulgarity campaign

  10 August 2010

Recently Beijing launched a new anti-vulgarity campaign for sanitizing the Internet. On August 3, China Daily and people.com.cn jointly organized a seminar on “boycotting banality, kitsch and debased culture, improving the new media cultural quality” to set the principles and figure out strategies for the new moral campaign. Below is...

Iran: Unifying Filtering

  9 August 2010

Iranian authorities announced [fa] that filtering policy will be unified in country. According to the Islamic Republic's authorities an Iranian company, whose name was not announced, has won the contract to be in charge of filtering in country.

Skype has launched its Middle East headquarters

  9 August 2010

On June 28, 2010 Skype announced on its blog the opening of the company's first headquarters in the Middle East and Africa which will be located in Manama, Bahrain's capital. Rouzbeh Pasha, Business Development Manager for the Middle East region, will lead the company's operations in the region. The announcement...

Iran: A blogger among hunger strikers

  8 August 2010

Kouhyar Goodarzi, human rights activist and blogger, is one of 17 Iranian political prisoners who started their hunger strike at the end of July to protest against the poor prison conditions, the behaviour of prison officials, and the ban on visits.

Russia: The First Case of YouTube Ban

  6 August 2010

On July 16, 2010, Komsomolsk-on-Amur city court issued a decision requested by the city prosecutor. The decision requires a local Internet provider “Rosnet” to block IP-addresses of five websites: lib.rus (the judge meant lib.rus.ec, a Russian Internet library), thelib.ru, www.zhurnal.ru, web.archive.org, and… youtube.com. The court believes those websites host extremist content (several online copies of “Mein Kampf” and a video “Russia for Russians” that accompanied a skinhead-related song uploaded by a user from Serbia) while the provider was accused of “not blocking them.

Blocking of Wikipedia reported in Iran

  4 August 2010

According to news published in English and Persian on July 25, the Wikipedia free encyclopedia website was blocked in Iran and could not be accessed. Users tryng to acess the website are having this blockpage stating “By refering to the law concerning computer related misdeeds (crimes) access to this site...

USA: Wikileaks representative detained

  2 August 2010

Jacob Appelbaum, a representative of Wikileaks, has been detained for 3 hours by US agents at the borders after returning from Holland trip. Recently Wikileaks published more than 90,000 leaked classified U.S. military documents. These documents reportedly reveal hidden details of the Afghanistan war.