Chai Rachawat posted a Facebook photo with a controversial caption criticizing Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra:

Please understand that prostitutes are not bad women. Prostitutes only sell their bodies, but a bad woman has been wandering around trying to sell the country.

The controversial Facebook post of Chai Rachawat. Image from Flickr page of bangkokpundit.

Chai Rachawat was reacting to a speech delivered by Yingluck in Mongolia last month. Yingluck is Thailand’s first female Prime Minister. She is also the younger sister of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who was ousted by a coup in 2006. Thaksin has been convicted of plunder and is living in exile outside of Thailand.

In an interview with the Bangkok Post, Chai Rachawat explained why he made the controversial remark:

The prime minister's speech overseas touched a raw nerve with many. They feel that the facts about democracy in Thailand were distorted with the intention of whitewashing the brother and his family.

Speaking negatively about one's own country is like betraying the nation. It makes foreigners misunderstand Thailand.

The prime minister made two mistakes: saying something that was out of place and lying.

He also clarified that he didn’t label Yingluck a prostitute:

What I meant was prostitutes are not evil because they sell themselves, not the nation. However, a woman who sells the nation is evil. I did not label the prime minister as a prostitute.

Despite his clarifications, Rachawat has been sued for defamation and for violating Thailand's Computer Crimes Act. The suit was filed on World Press Freedom Day.

Blogger Bangkok Pundit thinks the defamation suit is a bad idea:

On all levels, this lawsuit is politically a very bad idea…[It] will hurt Yingluck more than it will ever hurt Chai. Yingluck should drop the lawsuit.

The suit is unprecedented in Thailand, as it is the first time that a Prime Minister has accused a citizen of defamation in relation to a Facebook post. What is common in Thailand is the filing of Lèse Majesté cases against bloggers and online commenters who insult the Royal Family, including the blocking of websites that criticize the monarchy.

After suing Chai Rachawat, the Minister of Information and Communications Technology warned that websites containing defamatory remarks against the Prime Minister will be immediately shut down. It urged citizens to report websites with offensive content.

Human rights groups have been asking the Thai government to amend the Lèse Majesté law, which has been described as the harshest in the world. They are also concerned about certain provisions in the Computer Crimes Act which they think can be easily abused by authorities in order to target dissidents and members of political opposition groups.

Whether Chai Rachawat was right or wrong in his provocative remarks, his case will certainly have a great impact on Internet openness and Internet regulation in Thailand.

Written by Mong Palatino · comments (0)
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) self-described role is:

To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer — a name or a number. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination, we wouldn't have one global Internet. In more technical terms, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) coordinates the Domain Name System (DNS), Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions.

ICANN holds regular meetings where community participants discuss current issues, develop policy proposals and make decisions. Last month’s meeting in Beijing was the largest in ICANN’s history with 2600 people registered as participants including 700 from China.

The timing for the Beijing meeting was good: many human rights advocates are focused on the rapid rise in internet users in China (now more than 540 million) and their access to and ability to participate in global Internet-related policy spaces such as ICANN.

For example, a significant issue that ICANN is confronting, and one that has human rights implications, is its consideration of more than 1500 applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as .gay, .patagonia and .islam. ICANN determines what gTLDs are available globally and has been implementing a process for the creation of new gTLDs for several years. The first new gTLDs are likely to become available before the end of this year.

Fadi Chehade, CEO of ICANN. Image by ICANN. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The road to the new gTLDs has not been a smooth one. ICANN’s lack of international presence and US-centric operational focus has been a persistent criticism given the global nature of its functions. But ICANN does appear to be trying harder and doing more to be seen as an international organization. A major announcement at this meeting was the opening of a new ICANN regional office in Beijing. While these new developments are welcome, human rights advocates remain concerned at the impact of ICANN presence in countries where human rights records are poor and access to the internet is curtailed.

The openness of the Beijing meeting and uncensored access to the Internet were raised as concerns by participants in the lead up to the meeting. Many people took additional security protections by using Tor, VPNs, and alternative devices. During the meeting participants reported a considerable amount of surveillance – rumour had it seven people were arrested for attempting to use the ICANN VPN, but we did not get good information about who these people were.

Progress but not at the expense of the multi-stakeholder process.

The ICANN community has long had a testy relationship with its CEO. The current CEO, Fadi Chehade, has been in the role for just over seven months and has made a good start, demonstrating a laudable desire to broker better community engagement. In early 2013 his efforts focused on proposals for implementation of the trademark clearinghouse aspects of the current gTLD process. Unfortunately, significant policy matters were included in the details of the proposals resulting in protests from non-commercial constituencies (which include NGO members), registrars and registries. However, the proposal was pushed through to the Board for approval at the Beijing meeting.

Attempts to push along implementation of new gTLDs have also ruffled feathers and raised human rights concerns. Attempts to finalise the new Registrar Accreditation Agreement (needed by Registrars who will operate the new gTLDs, also known as RAA) foundered with the proposed introduction of a power for the ICANN Board to unilaterally change the contract. This met with near universal condemnation, as it would drastically change the relationship between the governance of the organisation and hands-on operational matters related to technical coordination functions.

Concerns were also raised about a newly introduced list of registrant “rights and responsibilities” that did not reference human rights. A rights-affirming RAA can have a critical impact on users’ abilities to register and use domain names – for netizens in countries with pervasive online censorship practices or real name registration policies, this is no small matter.

Last minute negotiations in Beijing resulted in a new proposal which is now out for public comment.

These developments are evidence that tensions continue to surface about the democratic nature of this “multi-stakeholder, bottom-up” policy development and technical coordination body. ICANN’s mandate is to be multi-stakeholder, meaning that representatives from governments, registrars, registries, civil society, the technical community and private sector alike can actively participate in the organisations’ processes. But the community messages in Beijing were clear: circumvention of the multi-stakeholder model is not acceptable, will not be tolerated and should not be sacrificed in order to push ahead with new gTLDs.

One positive outcome from these tensions is a renewed focus on ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO); it is clear that the GNSO must remain the pre-eminent policy making body in ICANN. In order for this to happen, GNSO Council members will need to work together despite their strong philosophical differences.

Increased civil society diversity

Another positive development, especially for those in developing countries, is that the number of ICANN civil society community members is growing. The Non-Commercial Users Constituency, is now the most diverse ICANN constituency group, with nearly 300 members from more than 70 countries. While in Beijing, NCUC hosted a policy event “One World One Internet: new gTLDS in a global changing internet” and launched a new video explaining its role in the ICANN policymaking landscape.

The ICANN fellows, a group of up to 30 participants who received funding to attend the meeting, included Internet rights advocates from countries such as Chile, Thailand and Egypt. A number of these participants raised human rights issues related to ICANN policy, for example, concerns about the impact of filtering and human rights and ccTLD policy-making. They emphasized the fact that one of the biggest threats to security and stability of the DNS in some regions is government action and that ICANN must strive to be sensitive to civil society concerns about its international outreach strategies.

Internet governance workshop

A session on Global Internet Governance was facilitated by Peter Major, the Chair of the United Nations Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation. The absence of any women on this panel was very disappointing (it really is time for a gender audit of ICANN's meetings). However, this session was timely, well-attended, and perhaps striking for the lessening of overt tension in discussions of global internet governance in an ICANN context. There is a growing maturity in the conversation about policy-shaping forums (such as the Internet Governance Forum, or IGF) and policy-making forums (such as ICANN) and how they connect to and influence each other. Participants emphasized that the IGF remains a unique and important space for multi-stakeholder dialogue.

Government participation

More than 80 government representatives attended the meeting including some new members, such as Lesotho. In a surprise move, almost all Government Advisory Committee meetings were held in closed sessions, many until late at night. However, the traditional GAC communique (through which it provides advice to the ICANN Board) was finally prepared and released during the last public forum.

The communique has some excellent aspects (including the very small number of formal objections to new gTLD applications.) However, it has also raised serious concerns as it appears to anticipate registrars and registries having more active roles in monitoring online content. The communique is open for public comment and a number of civil society groups are looking closely at its human rights implications.

All of these issues continue to be discussed and will be followed up at the next ICANN meeting, which will be in Durban.

Written by Joy Liddicoat · comments (0)
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Image by atlaszo.hu.

Recently, the number of FOIA requests filed through the public freedom of information request service KiMitTud [Who Knows What] [hu] surpassed one thousand. The website, run by anti-corruption NGO atlatszo.hu, is a useful tool for journalists, and has inspired a group of Hungarian students as well, to start their own blog covering student government spendings using the information obtained through FOIA requests.

Advocates suspect that the amendments were made in response to a FOIA request [hu] request filed by a group of NGOs and media organizations to the Ministry for National Development and the National Tobacco Trade Non-profit Ltd on tobacco license tenders. After the April 27 announcement that the retail sale of tobacco would soon become a state monopoly, tobacco sales licenses distributed last week immediately became the subject of public discourse. The NGOs and news sites called for transparency about the tenders, arguing that the list of licensees proved that applicants with ties to Fidesz, the governing party, had better prospects of winning a license.

Index.hu [hu] reported that MP András Cser-Palkovics, a member of the governing Fidesz party and co-author of the amendment, said that the change was provoked by one particular news site, atlatszo.hu.

Index.hu suggested that news site 444.hu also may have sparked government desire to change the law. 444.hu recently filed a FOIA request for documentation of expenditures by certain factions of Parliament. 444.hu reporter Péter Erdélyi wrote [hu] that he consulted with the Assembly's staff in order to make his request reasonable, yet still, two days later, the MPs submitted the draft amendment.

On April 28, two Fidesz MPs submitted an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act aiming to restrict data accessible to public to the data monitored by two government bodies, the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) and the Government Control Office (KEHI). The amendment, among other things, allows public institutions to refuse FOIA requests if they are “excessive,” but it fails to define what would be considered an excessive freedom of information request. The amendment was passed in less than two days, through a “special urgency procedure” which takes advantage of the governing party's supermajority in Parliament that makes lawmaking “on the fly” possible.

Atlatszo.hu has posted a petition on Change.org [hu] calling on Hungarian president János Áder to withhold his signature from the amendment – according to Hungarian legislation the President's signature would make the regulation approved. In addition to the petition which has amassed over 2,000 signatures so far, examples of individual citizen initiatives also showed up. 444.hu reported [hu] that a 24-hour shop in Budapest also started a petition against the questionable procedures applied in the distribution of the licenses.

In an op-ed published on atlatszo.hu [hu] András Jóri, former Commissioner for Data Protection, wrote that the idea of this “sunshine” law was introduced by a group of constitutional lawyers in Hungary after the country's transition to democracy. Citizen movements and journalists have only been making use of these legal mechanisms since 2000. Mr. Jóri concluded that rule of law has been upheld in Hungary until now — but at this critical point, it is up to Hungarians to keep it that way.

Written by Marietta Le · comments (0)
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Since the election, supporters of Maduro's opponent, Henrique Capriles, have staged massive demonstrations to demand a vote recount in Caracas and other major cities, despite efforts by the government and national guard to the block their actions. It has been reported that between six and eight people have died in these protests and several buildings have been set fire by extreme factions of the opposition, though these reports have not been confirmed.

“Tengo un dedito” [I have a little finger]. Photo by Luis Carlos Diaz. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

All of these events have had adverse effects on citizen and social media users. In just six weeks since Chávez’s death, two social media users have been arrested on charges of posting information and images deemed “destabilizing” to the country. On election day, the Internet was briefly shut down throughout most of the country. And today, social network users are facing threats to their employment status, as authorities search profiles for signs of political affiliation that have, in several cases, resulted in users losing their jobs.

The fourteen-year mandate of President Chávez was marked by controversy and divergence of views between different sectors within and outside the country. The framework of a so-called “ideological battle,” has pitted government supporters and critics against one another, though it shows few signs of real, critical debate. As the battle has been waged in traditional media and on the streets, it also has moved to social networks.

In many ways, the use of social networks was a strong marker of the unique brand of socialism cultivated by Hugo Chávez. Although traditional and digital media alike were instrumental tools for his administration, Chávez was especially known for his use of Twitter (@ChavezCandanga) as a platform for political communication.  Diosdado Cabello, one of Chávez’s aides, once commented on the power of the medium in the ideological battle:

The opposition believes itself to be the owner of social networking. They think Twitter and Facebook is theirs. We are fighting the battle and we are 7 million militants who will have Twitter.

Cabello noted that they would “assault social networks to counter the views expressed by [their] opponents.” Many government officials now have Twitter accounts and use them to communicate important information to citizens. Different political parties, candidates and NGOs also use Twitter to interact with followers. This has proven effective in Venezuela, which has high numbers of social network users relative to its neighbors, and globally ranks thirteenth for its number of Twitter users.

In April 2010, the government announced the creation of the “communicational guerrilla“, a group of citizens employed to “fight the ideological battle” in independent and mainstream media and on the Internet. So today, the battle is being fought in hashtags: keyword positioning in support of and against the government is a constant, and there are, on both sides, users dedicated to monitoring specific keywords to respond, often aggressively, to those expressing controversial opinions.

Hugo Chavez Frias. Photo from anticapitalistes.net. (CC BY-SA-NC 2.5 ES)

It is widely believed that the Chávez government was characterized by an “excessive” allowance of freedom of expression. Yet during the last six years of his tenure, at least five social network users were arrested, all under similar circumstances: Users with little or no influence in social networks were taken into custody for making politically controversial comments (usually on Twitter) and were charged with “spreading rumors” that caused “instability of the country.” They were held for short detentions, and then released on parole. Since Chávez’s death, there have been two similar arrests.

Curiously, none of these detentions has been based on the Law of Social Responsibility and its applications for electronic media. The law covers a wide range of online content:

[The law prohibits content that] uses anonymity, encourages and promotes hatred and intolerance for religious, political, gender, racism or xenophobic reasons; incites or promotes and/or justify the crime, constitutes war propaganda, promotes anxiety in the citizenry or alter public order; disowns legitimately constituted authorities; induces murder, incites or encourages disobedience of the existing law, or promotes, justifies or incites public disorder.

Passed by executive order and enacted in 2010, the law has not been applied in court thus far. The law also holds Internet Service Providers liable for such content. ISPs can face fines of “up to 4% of their gross income from fiscal year prior to the infringement.” But there is no evidence that the law is being applied; users report that censored websites are only being blocked by government-run ISP CANTV, but not by privately-owned providers.

A different formula has been used to push back against influential online critics of the government and party. A collective user group known as N33, allegedly comprised of government-supporter hackers (and by some accounts, promoted and financed directly by the government), has a long history of hacking into Twitter, Facebook and email accounts of journalists, activists, politicians, and other high profile figures from the opposition. The group has also been known to issue threats via electronic means and telephone to other well-known figures of digital activism.

During the country’s brief presidential campaign cycle this April, both candidates actively used social media and other online platforms, including a web TV channel, to promote their candidacy. Citizen journalists have played a key role in counter balancing the information transmitted through traditional channels. They have uncovered abuses and acts of violence in different parts of the country and established alternate spaces for public opinion.

Initiatives like UstedAbuso (You Abused) allowed users to report on violations of electoral law during the campaign. Personal accounts like that of Eugenio Martinez (@puzkas), a journalist specializing in electoral coverage, became essential to following the pulse of the country in recent months. Luis Carlos Diaz and Naky Soto created a “live feed” on YouTube (called simply “The Hangout“), where they broadcast several nights a week to discuss the political landscape. The channel has received nearly half a million views.

Election day in Venezuela. Photo by Luis Carlos Diaz. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

On election day, government power over telecommunications networks was brought to bear in a way that Venezuelans had never seen before: for somewhere between three and twenty minutes late in the day, nearly all Internet connections in the country were blocked. This was relatively easy. In 2010, the government attempted to create a single network access point through state-owned telecommunications company CANTV, which provides over 90% of Internet access in the country. The government’s nearly complete acquisition of CANTV has made it easier for authorities to censor websites deemed illegal (such as quelacreo.com or dollar.nu). When Internet access was blocked for all CANTV subscribersat the end of election day on April 14, the Ministry of Telecommunications explained that authorities blocked the network in an effort to “avoid hacks” to the website of the National Electoral Council. This website was also made ​​inaccessible from foreign IPs for the same reason.

Since election day, user profiles on social networks have begun to serve a new purpose: they are helping authorities to identify user political affiliations in order to “debug” public service and private enterprise. Countless complaints of public employees who have lost their jobs after authorities scanned their social network profiles and discovered their political support for the opposition. This has also happened to private sector employees, though for the opposite reasons. Citizens call this the “resurrection” of the Tascon List, an instrument used in order to filter out those citizens who had signed in 2004 in favor of a recall referendum against President Chávez, and to prevent their recruitment in the public service, which was allegedly eliminated by Chávez himself in 2005 [es].

The beginning of Nicolás Maduro's presidential term has been marked by a strong wave of protests, both online and offline, and rampant rumors and false information transmitted over the Internet. Maduro, Chávez's successor says he plans to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps in media strategy. He has created a Twitter account (@ NicolasMaduro, which was hacked by a collective Peruvian on election day) and has announced that his government will be “firm-handed” in media policy implementation. It remains to be seen whether this policy will affect how Venezuelan citizens make use of the Internet.

Written by Marianne Diaz · comments (2)
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After a hacking wave involving the Twitter accounts of the presidential candidate and current interim president Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) [es] and his party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (@PartidoPSUV) [es], the Internet across the country was down for about twenty minutes according to users’ declarations and for “no more than three minutes” according to the authorities.

Users reported they couldn't access the service through CANTV and later said that access to the majority of the pages was reestablished except for news and social networks’ sites. Some users reported having difficulties getting online through other ISPs, including Miguel Laversa (@MigueLaversa) [es]:

Nicolas Maduro's Twitter account, April 2013

@MigueLaversa: La pagina votacion2013.com esta bloqueada para los que navegamos por Inter o Cantv. Se puede acceder sin problemas usando una proxy.

@MigueLaversa: Site votación2013.com is blocked for those who browse with Inter or Cantv. You can access it with no problem using a proxy.

Vice president Jorge Arreaza (@jaarreaza) [es] declared in his Twitter account:

@jaarreaza: Compatriotas no hay problemas con internet. Calma!! Fue una maniobra breve para impedir más hackeos conspiradores del exterior.

@jaarreaza: Fellow countrymen, there is no problem with the internet. Calm down!! It was just a brief maneuver to prevent more conspiracy hackings from abroad.

Later on, Arreaza announced to the press that he blocked Internet access for a few minutes [es] to avoid a hacking attempt on the National Electoral Counsel site. The web page was made inaccessible for users outside the country to prevent more DDoS attacks after it had been under fire since Sunday, according to Arreaza.

Pages like NoticiasVenezuela.org [es], DollarToday.com and Votacion2013.com [es] were still down through CANTV, as well as the National Electoral Counsel [es] at 3:21AM GMT on April 15, the time of this post's original publication (in Spanish).

Written by Marianne Diaz Hernandez · Translated by Elizabeth · View original post [es] · comments (1)
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Troubles multiplied for the “Free Encyclopedia” when Vladimir Pikov, spokesman for Roskomnadzor (the agency charged with managing the blacklist), went on national radio [ru] and revealed that 15 different Wikipedia articles are now among the URLs banned in Russia. “[Wikipedia] has been on the list for a long time,” Pikov later told [ru] Interfax.ru, adding, “Why people are suddenly realizing this now, I don’t know.”

Responsibility for the confusion seems to lie with the government, yet it turns out that officials neglected to inform Wikimedia Russia about any of its blacklisting decisions until last week. (Pikov says Roskomnadzor was unable to reach Wikipedia’s nonvolunteer administrators.) Only aggravating the mess, the documents ultimately transmitted to Wikimedia are full of chronological holes. According to the actual [ru] “united registry” directory, for instance, the “Cannabis” article landed on the blacklist back in mid-December 2012. The paperwork [ru] sent on April 5, however, reports that anti-drug police came to their decision on March 26, 2013.

As it turns out, since last year there have been at least seven redundant decisions by state regulators and police to add Wikipedia’s “Cannabis” article to the RuNet blacklist. In a blog post [ru] published April 8, Wikimedia Russia revealed that a total of ten Wikipedia articles (not fifteen, as Pikov told RSN radio) are technically banned in Russia as of this moment. These encyclopedia entries relate to narcotics (cannabis smoking, LSD, etc.) and suicide (self-immolation, “suicide methods,” and so on), include both Russian and English articles, and were selected by officials from three different agencies: Roskomnadzor, FSKN (the anti-drugs police), and Rospotrebnadzor (consumer rights regulators).

Russian Wikipedia’s Twitter account announced [ru] the discovery with a nod to fellow prey of the federal blacklist:

Вот оно наконец и случилось: нас внесли в чёрный список (дважды?) за статью «Курение каннабиса». Привет @ru_pirateparty и @lurkmore_ru.

Well at last it’s finally happened: they’ve put us on the blacklist (twice?) for the article “Smoking Cannabis.” Hello to @ru_pirateparty and @lurkmore_ru.

Since the news broke last Friday, Russian Wikipedians have been feverishly revising and refining [ru] the “Cannabis” article, though not with any express aim to reconcile its content with Russia’s Internet censorship laws. The “Cannabis” article is almost six years old (first created in December 2006), and it has endured more than five hundred edits in that lifespan. Indeed, the latest wave of revisions addresses Wikipedia’s own quite stringent standards of objectivity and citation. On several Wikipedia discussion boards [ru], editors voiced their opinions about Russian officials’ decisions to ban several of their articles. While some users expressed concerns that the articles in question are poorly written, commenters are unsurprisingly and overwhelmingly opposed to deleting or altering the site’s material to accommodate the RuNet blacklist.

Editor Dmitry Rozhkov writes [ru] plainly:

Пусть закрывают, чё. Реакция на блокировку Википедии уже известна. Сами себя заблокируют.

Let them close [the site], hell. The reaction to blocking Wikipedia is already known. They’re [only] blocking off themselves.

Another user named Tucha (“stormcloud”) muses [ru]:

Пусть закрывают. Это может быть забавно, такая классная реклама для одной статьи.

Let them close it. It could be funny, such a classic advertisement for one article.

This, of course, was a reference to the Streisand Effect, “the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely.” The Effect operated in force over the weekend, propelling Russian Wikipedia’s “Cannabis” article to roughly 13,000% its normal traffic, jumping from 431 views on Thursday, April 4, to over 56,000 views the next day. In the past week, the “Cannabis” article has attracted over 125 thousand views, fewer only than the site’s entries for Odnoklassniki (a RuNet social network) and Margaret Thatcher (who died on April 8).

In a news post [ru] on ru.wikinews.org, Wikimedia Russia’s executive director, Stanislav Kozlovsky, complained that the RuNet blacklist’s vague prerogative threatens an absurdly broad spectrum of online content:

Даже название статьи «Курение каннабиса» можно подвести под его формулировку, так как законом запрещено упоминать о способах употребления наркотиков. [...] По самоубийствам аналогично: фразы «Есенин повесился», «Маяковскийзастрелился», «Ромео и Джульетта отравились» — уже повод для блокировки сайта, так как всё это способы совершения самоубийств.

Even the name of the article, “Cannabis Smoking,” might subject it to the [blacklist’s] formula, since it makes it illegal even to mention the means of drug use. [...] It’s the same for suicide: the phrases “Yesenin hanged himself,” “Mayakovsky shot himself,” and “Romeo and Juliet poisoned themselves” are also excuses to block the site, since they all concern means of committing suicide.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, 12 July 2008, photo by Joi Ito, CC 2.0.

Earlier today, April 9, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales responded [ru] to Ain92, a Russia-based Wikipedian, who notified Wales on his user page that “two articles of English Wikipedia is forbidden (blacklisted) by Roskomnadzor [sic].” Wales’ answer was unambiguously defiant:

For me, being blocked is always preferable to collaborating with censors. It's important to understand that the fear of site-wide blocking is based in concerns that some (smaller, presumably) ISPs may lack sufficient technical resources to block individual pages, forcing them to block the entire site to comply with the law. Believe me, if those ISPs block the entire site, while other ISPs only block specific pages, the ones which block all of Wikipedia will lose customers very very quickly. We are not weak, we are very powerful. Catering to the demands of weak and cowardly politicians – the kind who fear the spread of knowledge – is not the Wikipedia way.

Wales, though, will not be the one to decide how Wikipedia’s drug- and suicide-related content develops in response to the Russian authorities. That honor lies with Wikipedia’s volunteer editors, who were responsible for the articles in the first place. That said, all indications are that neither Russia’s officials nor her Wikipedians are likely to budge. That means “Cannabis Smoking” and its subversive neighbors are probably on the RuNet blacklist to stay.

Written by Kevin Rothrock · Translated by Global Voices · View original post [en] · comments (0)
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Award-winning blogger Asif Mohiuddin and three other bloggers have become the latest target of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, according to online news site Timesworld24.com [bn]. The commission recently contacted Somewhereinblog.net, the largest blogging platform in Bangladesh, requesting that the four blogs be taken down from the site.

In a report on its website, Somewhereinblog.net officially acknowledged that it had removed the four blogs in line with the government request.

The Bangladesh government formed [bn] a nine-member committee on March 13, 2013 to track bloggers and Facebook users who made derogatory remarks about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, a member of the committee, has requested information on a number of bloggers from different blogging platforms in an effort to ban certain writers considered insulting to Islam or anarchistic.

This development comes after Islamists had claimed that bloggers who support the ongoing Shahbag movement – which demands capital punishment for the country's war criminals, some of which are high-ranking leaders of the country's largest Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami – are atheist and anti-Islamic, and foster anti-social elements.

Some Islamist activists have gone so far to declare that Shahbag bloggers will be slaughtered in public. Blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, who was on the forefront of the Shahbag movement and wrote frequently about religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh, was brutally murdered outside his home in capital city Dhaka on February 15, 2013.

Mohiuddin, a self proclaimed atheist, has been vocal for the Shahbag movement and wrote against religion and religious politics. But whether his blogging has anything to do with inciting religious violence and hatred is yet to be proven. In January 2013, he was brutally attacked by unknown assailants, presumably for his writings. The police recently arrested four persons who revealed that they attacked Mohiuddin on instruction of a religious extremist.

In an interview with Deutsche Welle Syeda Gulshan Ferdous Jana, founder of Somewhereinblog.net said:

This is the first time in the over seven years of somewhereinblog.net that authorities have issued written instructions to discipline bloggers. The email named four bloggers, including Asif Mohiuddin's blog profile, and advised us to permanently remove all of these blogs immediately.

Mohiuddin, whose blog won the best social activism blog from the Deutsche Welle Best Of Blogs Awards 2012, has suffered backlash from his writing in the past. He was arrested in 2011 during an offline protest and police suggested that he should stop writing.

Blogger Asif Mohiuddin. Image by Siam Sarower Jamil. Copyright Demotix (10/2/2013)

On March 20, 2013, Mohiuddin and seven other bloggers were sued by an individual in the northern Bangladeshi district of Natore [bn] on charges of libeling Islam, God, and the Prophet Muhammad. Another lawsuit against these bloggers in Chittagong was dismissed on March 6, 2013 for lack of evidence.

Mohiuddin commented in a Facebook note [bn] about his recent ban:

প্রায় প্রতিদিন ধর্মের পক্ষে অসংখ্য ব্লগে অসংখ্য লেখা পোস্ট হয়। অথচ অনলাইনে শুধুমাত্র “আমি প্রচলিত ধর্মে অবিশ্বাসী” এই কথাটুকু বলার অপরাধে অসংখ্য অশ্রাব্য গালিগালাজের সম্মুখীন হয়েছি।

Each day, many posts are published on religion. But when I wrote only that “I do not believe in traditional religions”, I was attacked by many.

In the same post, he called the commission's efforts to shut down blogs a dangerous precedent:

কোন ব্লগারের লেখা সেই ব্লগটির নিজস্ব আইন অনুসারে বেআইনী মনে হলে বা শর্তাবলী লঙ্ঘিত হয়েছে বলে মনে হলে ব্লগ কর্তৃপক্ষই তার সিদ্ধান্ত নেবে। ব্লগ কর্তৃপক্ষ এই বিষয়ে স্বাধীন এবং কোন লেখা থাকবে আর কোন লেখাটি থাকবে না, তা সিদ্ধান্ত নেয়ার দায়িত্ব কোনভাবেই কোন ক্ষমতাশালী মহলকে দেয়া যাবে না। ভেবে দেখুন, আজ এই অজুহাতে কারো ব্লগ সরকার বন্ধ করে দিতে সক্ষম হলে সরকার ভেবে নেবে ব্লগারদের তারা নিয়ন্ত্রণ করতে সক্ষম। তাই কাল আরেকজন ব্লগারের ব্লগও তারা বাতিল করার আবদার তুলবে। কোন সরকারই অনন্তকাল থাকবে না, আগামিতে কোন ধর্মান্ধ গোষ্ঠী ক্ষমতায় চলে আসলে পরিস্থিতি কোনদিকে যাবে?

If the writings of any blogger defies any of the rules of the blog or is deemed illegal then the blog owners can decide on that. Which posts should be published or not should be at the discretion of the blog platform, not the regulatory authorities. Just imagine, if the authorities can manage to shut down a voice by forcing the platforms to do so they can start believing that they can control the bloggers. So they will find another reason to ban another blogger. The government will change and imagine if any radical Islamist government comes to power what will happen?

In an interview with Deutsche Welle radio Mohiuddin has said that he will not give up blogging.

“Stop authoritarian aggression against bloggers. Blogging is our right.” Image courtesy Asif Mohiuddin

Bangladesh is a non-religious parliamentary democracy, so there is no sharia law or blasphemy law. If anybody claims to be an atheist, he or she has the same rights as other citizens. However, Under Section 295A of Bangladesh's Penal Code (1860), any person who has a “deliberate” or “malicious” intention of “hurting religious sentiments” can be subject to imprisonment.

The commission has stated [bn] that according to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Act, it can ask required information from any individual or institution who uses the Internet. However, blogging platform Amarblog [bn] published a statement on March 22, 2013 saying that it won't jeopardize bloggers’ privacy at the request of the government. It questioned the commission's legal authority to ask for blogger information as well as questioned if it has jurisdiction over Amarblog which is registered in the United Kingdom and hosted on an overseas server.

Bloggers have also doubted the legal basis for such demands.

Blogger Mohammad Munim [bn] criticized the commission on Muktangon, a community blog:

বাংলাদেশের সংবিধানে মত প্রকাশের পূর্ণ মৌলিক অধিকার সকল নাগরিককেই দেওয়া হয়েছে। [..] BTRC নামের তথাকথিত স্বাধীন এই কমিশনটির হাতে যে-কোন ব্লগ বা ওয়েবসাইট বন্ধের সুইচ থাকলেও সে-সুইচের ব্যবহার দেশের সংবিধান মেনেই করতে হবে, কোন কর্তাব্যক্তির খেয়ালখুশিমতো নয়।

Blogger and activist Rayhan Rashid [bn] wrote on Facebook that the government might be piggybacking off of rising religious tensions in order to broaden its power:

বিটিআরসি'র সাম্প্রতিক এই অপতৎপরতার সাথে কোথায় যেন জামাত-শিবিরের শাহবাগ আন্দোলনকে “নাস্তিকদের আন্দোলন” হিসেবে সুযোগসন্ধানী ব্র্যান্ডিংয়ের মিল আছে। জামাত-শিবিরের দরকার ছিল শাহবাগ আন্দোলনকে প্রশ্নবিদ্ধ করা, আর সে লক্ষ্যে তারা ১৯৭১ এর মতোই অস্ত্র হিসেবে বেছে নিয়েছে ধর্মীয় উম্মাদনা, আর বিভাজন-বিদ্বেষকে। সরকার বা বিটিআরসি'রও একটা সুযোগ দরকার ছিল যাকে পূঁজি করে স্বাধীন চিন্তার এই শেষ প্লাটফর্মগুলোকে কোনোভাবে নিয়ন্ত্রণের আওতায় আনা যায় – এখানেও নাস্তিকতা, ধর্মীয় অনুভুতি ব্যবহৃত হচ্ছে সুযোগসন্ধানীর অস্ত্র হিসেবে।

Blogger Farhana Ahmed [bn] explained on Mukta Mona (Free Thinkers), a blog on freedom of expression, the reasoning behind why atheists and secular online activists are being targeted:

আমার মনে হয়, এই রকম ঘটার পেছনে দুটো বিষয় কাজ করছে। প্রথমটা অনেকটা তাত্ত্বিক, নাস্তিকদের নিয়ে ধর্মব্যবসায়ী বা অ-ব্যবসায়ী দু’শ্রেণীর এস্টাব্লিসমেন্টের পক্ষের লোকজনের মনে সন্দেহ ব্যাপক। এসটাব্লিসমেন্টের স্তম্ভগুলোর মধ্যে ধর্ম অন্যতম শক্তিশালী মাধ্যম, কখনো কখনো তা রাষ্ট্রের চেয়েও শক্তিশালী, রাষ্ট্রকেই ধর্মের মদদ নিতে হয়। এসটাব্লিশমেন্টের অন্য স্তম্ভগুলোও ধ্বসে পড়ার উপক্রম হলে মদদ মাঙ্গে ধর্মের। [..] বিনা প্রশ্নে মেনে নেওয়া, অতিপ্রাকৃত শক্তির ভয়ে ভীত করে রাখা—এইসব অস্ত্র ব্যবহার করে ধর্ম তার কার্য হাসিল করে। নারী পুরুষের পুরুষতান্ত্রিক শোষণের বিরুদ্ধে সচেতন হয়ে উঠলে, ধর্মই তাকে ঠান্ডা করে; মালিকের বিরুদ্ধে শ্রমিক যেতে পারে না, কারণ আল্লা যাকে এই যামানায় কিছু দেননি, আখেরাত তো তারই জন্য। রাষ্ট্রক্ষমতায় থাকার জন্য রাজনৈতিক দলগুলোর সহজ ব্যবহার্য অস্ত্র হলো ধর্ম।

I thinks there are two reasons behind this. The first one is theoretical, both the Islamist hardliner and practicing Muslims are skeptic about atheists. Religion is very powerful, sometimes more than the state such as when the state has to accept the help of religion. If any of those establishments are in trouble, they take refuge in religion. [..] Religion accomplishes their job by deploying instruments like blind faith, taking things for granted, and keeping people in fear. When patriarchal oppression is protested by women, religion keeps them in check, workers cannot revolt against autocratic employers as religion reminds that for those who have less in this world, there is an afterlife waiting for them. To remain in power the simplest of weapons is religion.

She continued:

দ্বিতীয় দিকটা শাহবাগের গণজাগরণ মঞ্চের প্রতিক্রিয়ার সাথে জড়িত। নাস্তিক মরলে বা মার খেলে তার প্রতি যে ঔদাসীন্য দেখাচ্ছেন আন্দোলনের সহযোদ্ধারা তাতে করে নাস্তিকরা জামাত-শিবির-হি্যবুতের সবথেকে সহজ টার্গেটে পরিণত হয়েছেন।

The second reason is the reaction to the Shahbag mass-uprising. Being labeled as an atheist is a distraction even among fellow protesters, so the atheists are becoming an easy target for the [religious political establishments] Jamaat-Shibir-Hijbut Tahrir.

Written by Rezwan · Translated by Rezwan · View original post [en] · comments (10)
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According to Brian Whitaker, who blogs at Al-bab, the Saudi authorities:

are threatening to block popular communication services such as Skype, WhatsApp and Viber unless the operating companies agree to monitoring of messages and calls.

Al-Arabiya reports that the Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) has given companies until the end of this week to respond.

If the companies do not comply with the Saudi request, the commission may take action and block these services.

Saudi Arabia appears on Reporters Without Borders’ “Enemies of the Internet” list.

Whitaker adds:

Al-Arabiya reports:

“In case they say it is impossible to monitor the applications, the commission said it will consider procedures to block them altogether in the kingdom.”

The Jeddah-based Arab News says the authorities are concerned because the applications use encrypted connections:

“According to two informed sources who work at local telecommunication companies, this issue has been at the top of the agenda of discussions during meetings between heads of telecom companies and the CITC over the past 20 days. The meetings have finally concluded with the CITC demanding that it be allowed to monitor the encrypted applications.”

Predictably, the authorities justify their demand for monitoring on the grounds that it will help prevent crime and terrorism. But, as Ahram Online points out, conservatives in the kingdom are worried about the growth of internet-based social networks which are outside their control and which “have enlarged the severely restricted scale of freedom of expression”.

Whitaker reminds us:

The question now is whether the companies concerned will agree to the CITC's demands. There was a similar issue three years ago when the CITC threatened to shut down the BlackBerry Messenger service unless it was given access to codes that would allow monitoring of messages.

The matter was later resolved, though it is not clear how. The CITC said it was dropping the ban after Research in Motion, the Canadian company behind BlackBerry, met “part” of its regulatory requirements. Some reports suggested the company had caved in and agreed to put a BlackBerry server in the country so that the Saudis could directly access customer data.

On Riyadh Bureau, Ahmed Al Omran reports that Saudi Arabia's grand mufti Abdulaziz Al Sheikh has described Twitter as a place where youth waste their time and as a “gathering place for every clown and corrupter who post tweets that are illegitimate, false and wrong.”

Al Omran adds:

The Grand Mufti has become increasingly critical of Twitter users recently. In January 2012 he said the social network “has become a platform for trading accusations and for promoting lies used by some just for the sake of fame.” Then in October he called people who use the site “fools” and accused them of lacking modesty and faith.

He also offers statistics on Twitter users in Saudi Arabia, saying:

Twitter has become a major platform for Saudi to exchange ideas and debate political issues in the country. A recent survey said 51% of internet users in Saudi Arabia are active Twitter users, putting it in first place worldwide. A Saudi official admitted last month that the government is struggling to monitor and censor the site due to the huge volume of messages posted by users inside the country.

As Saudis make their voices heard online, thanks to the wide reach of social media, Saudi authorities seem to be working even harder at muzzling their voices.

Written by Amira Al Hussaini · Translated by Amira Al Hussaini · View original post [en] · comments (2)
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Korean National Assembly. Photo by Flickr user jeroen020. (CC BY-SA)

According to an official press release [ko], the South Korean government introduced the three-strikes copyright control regime in July of 2009. Originally nicknamed the “netizen-killing law,” the legislation stipulates that if an Internet user violates copyright law online, he or she will receive up to three warnings from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (hereafter “MCST”), which is responsible for media content policy in South Korea. If the user's behavior does not change after three warnings have been issued, authorities can disable the person's web service account or shut down the bulletin board he or she used by administrative order.

This legal procedure is different from the three-strikes copyright regulation in France known as the HADOPI law. (France and New Zealand have adopted three-strikes copyright regulations; the United States has a somewhat similar six-strikes guideline.) In France, a person's Internet access cannot be blocked until his or her case has been reviewed and approved by a judge. But in South Korea, the executive branch is the sole enforcer of the regulation, making the process less transparent and more vulnerable to arbitrary decision-making.

Since the law was enacted, the Korean government has sent 468,446 takedown notices to users and shut down 408 website accounts. The law has affected far more users than it was originally intended to — it was passed with the goal of targeting users engaging in massive amounts of illegal downloading, estimated at about 1,000 users. But in fact, according to Mr. Choi's investigation based on his team's collected data from MCST, among 380 users whose accounts have been shut down, 174 of them inflicted damages of less than US$.90. Mr. Choi argues that their punishment, which constrains their right of access to information, is much harsher than the cost they incurred. Therefore, the law not only violates legal due process — it is also inefficient from an economic perspective, and it imposes a punishment that is disproportionate to the crime.

A coalition of Korean Internet companies, experts, and civic groups including Jinbo.net, IP Left, and newly formed digital rights group Open Net [ko] have all voiced their support for repealing the law. In a post [ko] entitled “Why We Can't Just Watch the Corruption of Copyright Law,” Open Net questioned the alleged economic motivations of the policy:

삼진아웃제 시행 3년이 지난 지금 정부의 주장과 달리 삼진아웃제의 규제 대상은 헤비업로더가 아니라 일반 이용자들임이 드러났습니다. 삼진아웃제 때문에 행정부로부터 경고를 받거나 실제로 계정정지를 당한 이용자 계정은 무려 47만 개나 됩니다. 2009년 당시 천 명에 불과하던 헤비 업로더가 3년만에 갑자기 급증하였기 때문일까요? 아닙니다. 실제로 계정정지까지 당한 이용자들 중 저작권 침해물을 전문적으로 유통한 사람은 거의 없습니다. 어떤 이용자는 침해액이 고작 9천원에 불과한데도 계정정지를 당했습니다. (…) 삼진아웃제를 어떻게 헤비 업로더 규제 제도라 할 수 있을까요?

Three-strikes law has been in force for the past three years. But it is already apparent that the government targeted not the heavy illegal down-loaders, but lay users. About 470,000 website accounts were warned by the government under the three-strikes law. In 2009, the government analyzed that number as only 1,000. Are we to believe that it has exponentially increased in the past couple of years? No way. Among users whose accounts have been shut down, there were none who traded copyrighted materials for commercial benefits. Some users were punished even though the amount of their indemnity was marginal, at US$0.9.

[...]

How then we can call the three-strikes law a regulation targeted at heavy down-loaders?

This and other Internet-related policies have brought together professors and activists who are forming new non-profit organizations focused on Internet rights. This emerging public coalition shows a promising sign of a new counter-force against state-guided Internet and communication policy making processes in South Korea.

Written by Jae Yeon KIM · comments (4)
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The study found that 80% of the original content circulated on Sina Weibo is created by a small group (4.8%) of micro-bloggers. Similar to other social media, the distribution of activity and influence is highly uneven on Weibo. It is this small minority of very active participants on Weibo who typically face government pressure to express opinions that are favorable to government interests. By taming this small but influential group of opinion leaders, authorities can channel public opinion, maintain its stability, and strengthen its legitimacy. It is thus not surprising that opinion leaders are often forced to drink tea [be interrogated by police], and that some of them are paid to produce and circulate government propaganda.

The HKU study used an API to randomly fetch user data from Sina Weibo. From an original sample of 29,998 validated user accounts, researchers found that 17,224 accounts were empty or had not posted to the site, meaning that these accounts were either inactive or fake. Among active micro-bloggers, 56.5% identified themselves as male and 43.5% identified as female. The geographic location of the users is reflected on the map below.

Most users were located in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong, accounting for 9% of the total sampled micro-bloggers. Macau, Hong Kong, and Tibet were the next most populous regions.

The researchers collected 21,030 posts within the seven-day research period, in which 8,139 were original posts and 12,891 were re-posts. Only 13% of sampled microbloggers created original posts. But as mentioned above, 4.8% of microbloggers sampled created 80% of the original content on the site. Furthermore, only 4.4% of users’ posts had been re-posted or commented on. The power law of Weibo is similar to other social media, such as Twitter.

Against this background, it is easy to understand why Chinese authorities have expended so much effort in taming Weibo opinion leaders.

Some researchers on the development of e-democracy in China have already pointed out that the negotiation between the state and individual has taken shape in the form of an “authoritarian deliberation” or a so-called “control 2.0“. As shown in the research, the distribution of influence is highly unequal in Weibo; maintaining some control over Weibo opinion leaders is thus a critically important feature in the regime's stability.

Apart from regular “tea sessions” with security police, a practice we described in another recent Global Voices Advocacy post, it has recently been revealed that the state propaganda machine, China Central Television (CCTV), is believed to have paid Weibo opinion leaders to echo CCTV political campaigns. One example of this was a smear campaign against Apple. Several prominent Weibo opinion leaders were instructed to criticize Apple products at 8:20pm on March 15, which is Consumer Rights Protection Day. Ministry of Tofu, a news and commentary site focused on social justice in China, has translated a post from Peter Ho, a Taiwanese-American movie star who has 5 million followers on Weibo:

Apple played so many tricks in customer service? As an Apple fan, I am really hurt… Is what you’ve done worthy of [Steve Jobs]? Worthy of the young man who sold one kidney? So you bully customers just because you are big! To be posted at around 8:20.

Similar tactics have been used by corporate entities in the past, but it is less common for a state-controlled organization to be involved in such a scandal.

For opinion leaders who are not intimidated by tea sessions and can't be bought off, their accounts are likely to be suspended or even deleted. During the Southern Weekend censorship scandal, in which censors and editorial staff at Southern Weekend newspaper clashed over the newspaper's political coverage, many reporters’ Weibo accounts were suspended. Another recent well-known case involved former Taiwan Democratic Progressive Party leader, Frank Hsieh Chang-Ting, whose Weibo accounts were deleted twice in the span of a few hours last month.

In sum, it is clear that Sina Weibo's most active users will continue to have a powerful influence on public opinion and ideas in China for some time, and that this in turn will elicit persistent if not increasing government efforts to control their messages. Global Voices Advocacy will continue to cover this issue as it develops.

Written by Oiwan Lam · comments (2)
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