Youth media project Syrian Documents reported on his death, and Syrian news blog YALLA SOURIYA called him the “Spirit of Syria”.

The conflict in Syria, as well as other Arab Spring uprisings, has seen a rise in citizen journalists reporting from the ground on the ongoing war between the country's pro- and anti-government forces. Many have been detained, tortured, and even killed while trying to bring the story of the revolution to the world.

Children have also paid a terrible price during the conflict, with thousands killed during the violence so far.

Media activist Omar Qatifaan was 14-years-old when he was killed while covering a battle in Daraa, Syria. Photo from the Twitter account of ‏@RevolutionSyria

Another media activist recorded video of Qatifaan after he was killed. The footage was posted on YouTube by SyrianDaysOfRage [GRAPHIC VIDEO]:

Written by Rami Alhames · Translated by Global Voices · View original post [en] · comments (0)
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Entry gate at East China Normal University. Photo by Peter Potrowl (CC BY 3.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Ellery Roberts Biddle, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This report highlights new policies in China that are increasing restrictions for netizens in the country.

Censorship

China's new so-called “Seven Speak-Nots” policy prohibits discussion of “universal values, civil society, citizen rights, judicial independence, freedom of the press, past mistakes of the communist party, and the privileged capitalist class” in university settings. Last week, East China University Professor Zhang Xuezhong described the policy on microblogging site Sina Weibo and subsequently had his account deleted. Mentions of the policy are no longer visible in search engine results in China and users report that all relevant comments on the policy have been wiped from Weibo [zh]. A government memo entitled “Concerning the Situation in the Ideological Sphere” reportedly notes that the “Speak-Nots” have also been incorporated into China’s Internet censorship policy.

A Chinese blogger known as B.Y. was interrogated by Chinese public security agents after she posted a petition on the US government website, We the People. The petition called for international attention to the environmental impact of a planned petrochemical plant in China's Sichuan Province. After authorities demanded she delete the petition, B.Y. posted on Weibo, asking for help in deleting the petition from We the People, which does not have a delete function. Her Weibo post has since been deleted.

Dr. King-Wa Fu at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre reported that users’ activities on Sina Weibo have dwindled [zh] since the implementation of China's real-name registration policy, which requires users to give their real names when registering for Internet services and social media accounts. Dr. Fu's team at the Centre developed WeiboSuite, a program that has restored more than 200 million posts in Weibo deleted by the Chinese censors.

At the request of the Australian government’s financial regulator, Australian network operators including Telstra and Optus blocked access to over 1200 websites including an education-focused community group called Melbourne Free University. The government claims the websites were blocked due to suspicion that the institutions had engaged in fraudulent activities. According to Delimiter.com.au, this could “open the door for other government agencies to unilaterally block sites they deem questionable in their own portfolios.”

In Equatorial Guinea, with parliamentary and municipal elections fast approaching, Facebook and the website of the country's opposition party have been blocked. The website of the ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea remains operational.

Syria underwent an eight-hour Internet blackout on May 15, the second this month.

Thuggery

Slovenian blogger Mitja Kunstelj was sentenced to six months in prison for defamation. On his popular Mikstone Blog [sv], Kunstelj crudely described details of the private lives of two journalists with whom he had personal relationships. Kunstelj was prosecuted after refusing authorities’ demands that he pay a fine or cease writing posts of the same nature.

Six Bahraini Twitter users were sentenced to a year in prison for “misuse of freedom of expression”; making defamatory remarks about King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa; and “undermining the values and traditions of Bahrain's society towards the king on Twitter.” Many Bahraini activists and supporters have used Twitter to air their grievances with the regime amid the current uprising against the ruling monarchy.

Surveillance

Saudi telecommunication company Mobily solicited help from American developer and privacy advocate Moxie Marlinspike for aid in surveilling encrypted communication applications. Marlinspike publicized the request on Twitter. Reactions can be tracked under a hashtag that translates as “Mobily spies on the people.”

Access to Information

US-based magazine The New Yorker announced that it will become host to Strongbox, the last major open-source secure information sharing project that Internet activist Aaron Swartz worked on before his death. The New Yorker writes that the platform, which is highly secure, will enable the public to “share information, messages, and files with our writers and editors” anonymously.

Ericsson South Africa and the City of Johannesburg are set to activate a broadband network that will provide Internet access to all the city’s municipal buildings, thus allowing the city to achieve ‘Smart City’ status. Other ISPs and companies can use the network too, as the city government needs only a small percentage of the 1.2tb core capacity network. The three-year project is set to launch on July 1.

Microsoft’s 4Afrika Initiative, which seeks to provide affordable access to smart devices, has launched another partnership in East Africa. Working with the University of Dar es Salaam, the goal of the pilot project is to test the use of TW white spaces in Tanzania, where the wireless spectrum previously used for television is now used to for wireless broadband.

National Policy

Azerbaijan's parliament passed new legislation criminalizing online defamation that will carry a fine of up to US$1270 and a prison terms of three years. President Illham Aliyev, often criticized by human rights groups for suppressing the media, is expected to sign the legislation into law. Amnesty International and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have condemned the amendment as an attack on freedom of expression.

Nepal's Ministry of Information and Communications has established a committee to oversee the registration and regulation of online journalism. The committee, comprised of two government officials, two online news site editors, and a representative of the Federation of Nepali Journalists, is currently holding consultations on how to improve the web domain registration process for Internet media outlets.

In an alleged attempt to identify a source of leaked information regarding CIA operations in Yemen, the US Department of Justice obtained telephone records of the Associated Press news agency using an administrative subpoena. In response, US lawmakers introduced the Telephone Records Protection Act which would amend the current Telephone Records Act to require that government agencies obtain judicial approval before demanding such records. The current law allows federal law enforcement to obtain basic subscriber information with only an administrative subpoena.

Irish Minister for Justice Alan Shatter is planning to introduce amendments to the country’s Criminal Justice Bill, which would allow the government to demand telecommunications companies shut down mobile phone service if authorities suspect that an act of terror might occur in a given area.

Internet Governance

Governments, companies and civil society groups gathered in Geneva from May 14-16 for the Fifth World Telecommunication Policy Forum. Six non-binding opinions on Internet infrastructure have since been issued. One of the more controversial opinions focuses on the issue of multi-stakeholderism in Internet governance. A summary report by ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Toure is available here.

Cybersecurity

El Mañana, a newspaper in Mexico's northern state of Nuevo Laredo, underwent two cyber attacks on May 12. In recent years, the newspaper has sustained attacks both on and offline. After a series of violent attacks on its offices in 2006, the newspaper stopped reported on drug trafficking.

Internet security company Trend Micro uncovered an active cyber espionage operation known as SafeNet that has reportedly compromised computers in over 100 countries. Trend Micro asserted that SafeNet, which targets users by sending them malicious programs via email, is primarily designed to steal information.

Netizen Activism

Researchers at Humboldt State University developed an interactive map, Geography of Hate, which charts the origins of hateful tweets–homophobic, racist, or targeted at the disabled–by region of the United States.

Cool Things

A man from China’s Sichuan province who had been abducted and taken to Fujian at five years old found his way back home after analyzing Google Maps to figure out where he came from.

Publications and Studies

• Reforming Telecommunications in Burma – Human Rights Watch

• Mapping Digital Media: Kazakhstan Country Report – Open Society Foundation

• Impact of the Internet in Africa – Dalberg

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For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Ali Abdulemam on May 13, 2013 in Oslo, Norway. Photo by Hisham Almiraat.

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Renata Avila, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we begin with the stories of two prominent political bloggers from Bahrain and Chad, both living in exile and facing unique challenges in the online and offline worlds.

Thuggery

Bahraini blogger, political activist, and Global Voices author Ali Abdulemam, who had been living in hiding in Bahrain for two years, appeared in London last week, where he has been granted political asylum by the British government. The founder of BahrainOnline.org, a leading website for political expression and opposition in the Gulf state, Abdulemam was an active organizer of uprisings in the country in 2011. While in hiding, he was tried in absentia by a military court and found guilty of charges related to terrorism and subversion. Abdulemam will speak this week at the Oslo Freedom Forum.

Chadian blogger Makaila Nguebla, who took exile in Senegal in 2005 after facing threats from government officials, has been exiled to Guinea by order of the Senegalese government. Nguebla was known for his critiques of President Idriss Déby who has ruled Chad for more than two decades. In an interview with Global Voices author Anna Gueye, Nguebla said he believes that Chad's Justice Minister pressured the Senegalese government to deny him political asylum and exile him to Guinea. Human Rights Watch suspects that this came as part of an ongoing crackdown in Chad.

Censorship

Syria suffered an Internet blackout on May 7, with service restored the following day. Renesys Corporation was the first to report the restoration of access, which was later confirmed by Akamai and BGPmon. Syrian Arabic News Agency attributed it to an optic cable malfunction, but Internet rights advocates were skeptical of this claim. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Danny O'Brien wrote that the blackout implied “either a massive infrastructure cut, or a deliberate silencing of online communication.”

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

In apparent observance of US economic sanctions on Syria, US-based domain name registrar Network Solutions LLC and its parent company Web.com have seized control of over 700 domains belonging to Syrian entities, including the Syrian Electronic Army. The US Office of Foreign Assets Control permits the sale of “certain services for the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email,” so as not to limit communications mechanisms for Syrian citizens, but domain name registration is explicitly banned under the sanctions. Nevertheless, it appears that Network Solutions was acting on its own accord, not in response to a government request.

Internet Governance

A new top-level Internet domain, “.africa” will soon be introduced. The new domain, which aims to promote adoption by commercial entities throughout the continent, is fully endorsed by the African Union, according to BizTech Africa. The application is still being assessed by ICANN, but will likely be evaluated by May 15, with the delegation of the new gTLDs due in the third quarter of 2013.

The International Telecommunication Union, the UN agency charged with telecommunication regulation, will address Internet governance issues at the World Telecommunication Policy Forum in Geneva, May 14-16. Delegates will discuss the adoption of IPv6 protocol for Internet addresses, the expansion of broadband access, and “multistakeholderism” in net governance.

A group of bloggers and active Internet users in Cote d’Ivoire have elected their first “web representative”. oAfrica reports that “web mayor” Emmanuel Aswan, a graphic designer by training, will “work with a core Ivorian online community to create a safe, welcoming, and productive environment for all Ivorian web users.”

Surveillance

Wired has catalogued five Russian-made surveillance technologies that are currently used by Western nations, including voice recognition technologies, facial recognition technologies, mobile phone interception and bus tracking.

US-based civil liberties organizations are condemning the use of automated license plate readers as an invasion of privacy. Up to 14,000 plates can be scanned during a single police shift and put into a database, creating a detailed record of geospatial movements.

Intellectual Property

Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement continue in Lima this week. Multiple petitions concerning the treaty's potentially detrimental effects on freedom of expression and information have been organized in response. NGOs in Peru, led by digital rights group HiperDerecho, have launched a petition urging Peruvian President Ollanta Humala not to sign the agreement, if it should infringe on fundamental rights. Canadian NGO Open Media has also initiated a petition to recently nominated US Trade Representative Michael Froman, who will be responsible for negotiating the treaty. The petition calls on Froman to oppose the criminalization of certain online activities under the treaty.

The New Zealand Government will change its patent rules to exclude software programs from patentability. The decision was praised by the Institute of IT Professionals, New Zealand’s largest IT representative body, for removing a barrier to software-led innovation.

Cybersecurity

The US Pentagon’s annual report to Congress directly accused China’s military of conducting cyber attacks on American government computer systems and defense contractors, the most explicit cyber security-related accusation leveled on the Chinese government by the US government thus far. The report surmised that the attackers’ primary goal was to steal industrial technology, but that they also sought to gain insights into American policymakers’ thinking. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded by calling the accusations “groundless”.

Two command and control servers for FinFisher spyware were found in South Africa, according to a recent report by Citizen Lab. South African government agencies and telecommunications company Telkom have refused to comment on the accusations.

National Policy

Parliamentarians in Hungary took action to change the country's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in an effort to limit the scope of data accessible to the public under the law. Advocates suspect that the amendments were made in response to recent FOIA requests [hu] filed by a group of NGOs and media organizations concerning tobacco license tenders, as well as a FOIA-driven investigation of Parliamentary committee spending. Transparency organization Atlatszo.hu has posted a petition on Change.org [hu] calling on Hungarian president János Áder to withhold his signature from the amendment.

Netizen Activism

Transparency Morocco presented a set of best practices in fighting corruption at a Transparency International SpeakUp! event. The organization launched an online platform, Mamdawrinch.com (meaning “we will not bribe”) to anonymously crowdsource accusations of corruption.

Cool Things

Non-profit education organization Khan Academy has released a new course explaining digital alternative currency platform BitCoin through a series of videos.

Publications and Studies

• Copyright in the Digital Era: Building Evidence for Policy — National Research Council, Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy

• Media Laws & Regulations of the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries — Doha Centre for Media Freedom

• Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression — Frank La Rue (The UN Special Rapporteur of the right to freedom of opinion)

• Protest at the speed of light: social networking the revolution — LINKS

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For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Internet traffic map. Image by Joana Breidenbach, licensed for reuse.

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week, we examine a range of regulatory and legislative issues that have recently emerged in Azerbaijan, Brazil, Germany, and Ghana.

National Policy

Yahoo! Inc. has declared its support for an Internet rights bill in the Brazilian Congress. The Marco Civil da Internet seeks to protect privacy and free expression online. The bill would require Brazilian law enforcement to obtain a judicial order before it can demand Internet service providers (ISPs) comply with government requests for user data and provides a safe harbor for ISPs faced with government requests for content removal. The bill has faced several rounds of amendments over the past two years, some of which have reduced the bill's power to protect user interests, particularly in the face of copyright restrictions.

Ghana's National Communications Authority (NCA) issued fines to five telecommunications companies for providing inferior service to consumers in the country. Service was reportedly plagued by dropped calls and traffic congestion. The NCA hopes that the penalties will push the telecom companies to improve customer service, but critics worry the negligible amount of the fines will make little difference.

The Algerian government has come under criticism for continuing to postpone the adoption of 3G telecommunications standards. Activists in the country believe the government “seems intent on hiding behind the shield of one of the world’s most archaic information and communications frameworks” in order to make anti-government activism more challenging.

Censorship

India’s Supreme Court said it would investigate the validity of the nation’s Information Technology Rules, which require website owners to screen and censor specific kinds of content.

Azerbaijan’s legislature may consider a bill that would “make profanity or libel on the web a crime” according to Net Prophet. If the bill passes, citizens could be punished with up to three years in prison for libelous statements made online.

Thuggery

The Ethiopian Supreme court upheld the conviction of journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega, who was arrested in 2011 on terrorism-related charges. Nega, who frequently wrote about politics and human rights violations in Ethiopia, now faces 18 years in prison. Last year the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion stating that his conviction was in violation of international law.

Surveillance

Mozilla Foundation, creator of the Firefox browser, has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Gamma International Ltd., demanding that the British spyware company stop misleading Internet users by attaching fake Firefox information to its FinFisher surveillance software. A report by the Citizen Lab indicates that Gamma misrepresented FinFisher as being affiliated with Firefox in order to gain users’ trust in the face of recent spyware attacks in Malaysia and Bahrain.

The US Department of Commerce has fined UAE distribution company Computerlinks FZCO US$2.8 million for its role in the illegal sale of Blue Coat Proxy SG Internet surveillance software to the Syrian government. The sale violated US sanctions that prohibit surveillance technology companies from selling certain products to Syria. The Syrian government has reportedly used Blue Coat to filter websites, block Internet access, and target dissidents. Blue Coat is believed to have been unaware that the distributor intended to re-export the product.

Copyright

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement between the US and nine Pacific Rim nations, mainly in Latin America and Asia, may pose a serious threat to the domestic copyright laws of its participants. The TPP would effectively allow the US to export some of its most stringent copyright laws to participating countries, including a ban on breaking digital locks on devices and creative works, increasing minimum copyright term lengths, privatization of infringement enforcement, and seizure of equipment allegedly used to commit infringement, to name a few.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released ‘Who Has Your Back? 2013,’ its annual scorecard for Internet communications technology companies that measures their commitment to protecting user privacy from infringement by law enforcement and other government agencies. Sonic.net and Twitter were the only two companies to score six stars out of six, while LinkedIn, Google, Dropbox, and SpiderOak came in close second at five stars. Apple, AT&T, and Yahoo received just one star each, while Verizon was the only company that received zero.

Internet Governance

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has announced the opening of a new hub in Istanbul, Turkey to cover operations in Africa. ICANN plans to spread its operations beyond it current headquarters in Los Angeles to Istanbul and Singapore to become increasingly international in its outlook. China

Cybersecurity

It was reported this week that British-owned defense contractor QinetiQ to the US suffered repeated hacking attacks by the Chinese government hacking unit known as the Comment Crew. From 2007 to 2010, the hackers reportedly obtained 13,000 passwords and accessed company servers in at least eight US cities. QinetiQ has been criticized for not taking sufficient measures to address security breaches.

LivingSocial, an American promotional coupon website fell victim to a cyber attack that may have affected over 50 million customers around the world. Attackers gained access to customer data, including names, email addresses, date of birth, and passwords, but the company has reassured customers that no financial or banking information was compromised.

Cool Things

In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the launch of the World Wide Web, CERN, the organization behind the World Wide Web, restored the world’s first website.

Publications and Studies

• Freedom of the Press 2013 – Freedom House

• Collateral Freedom: A Snapshot of Chinese Users Circumventing Censorship – OpenITP

• Legal Guide to Digital Security [ar] – Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression

• 24th Activity Report on Data Protection – The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information

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For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Israel – Lebanon border, Rosh Hanikra. Photo by campsmum. (CC BY 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Chan Myae Khine, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Renata Avila, Hisham Almiraat, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we focus on a new set of surveillance issues in Israel and the United States, as well as challenges to online activists in Singapore, Turkey, and Malaysia.

Surveillance

Israel’s Attorney General affirmed that Israel's Security Agency can legally demand to search of the contents of foreigners’ email accounts if they wish to enter Israel. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the Justice Ministry to overrule the policy after a Palestinian-American woman was denied entry into the country last year for refusing to comply with a search request. The Attorney General’s office said that the policy will only be applied when “suspicious or pertinent information has been identified.” While travellers are not expected to give up their passwords, those who refuse to allow security officials access to their email may be denied entry to the country.

The Nigerian government awarded a US$40 million contract to Israel-based Elbit Systems that will allow authorities to monitor computers and email correspondence within the country, according to Premium Times Nigeria.

According to documents received by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Obama administration officials secretly authorized the interception of Internet communications by the US National Security Agency and the Department of Defense as part of a military-run cybersecurity pilot project aimed at protecting critical infrastructure.

A judge in the US state of Texas denied a request by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to install spyware on a computer to track a suspect in a bank fraud and identity theft case. According to Slate, the judge called the tactic “extremely intrusive” and refused to approve it because the FBI “did not know the location or identity of the suspect and could not guarantee the spy software would not end up targeting innocents.”

Thuggery

Singaporean cartoonist Leslie Chew was arrested in response to a complaint filed against him for publishing a satirical comic on his Facebook page, “Demon-cratic Singapore,” that accused the Singaporean government of racism and discrimination against the country’s Malay minority. Chew was released on a bail of over US$8,000. If convicted under Singapore’s Sedition Act, he could face up to three years in prison and/or a hefty fine.

With general elections approaching, independent news websites in Malaysia including Harakah Daily and Malaysiakini reported that DDoS attacks have left their sites difficult to access through certain ISPs. Malaysiakini CEO Premesh Chandran called on ISPs to “stay out of politics” and “ensure shared gateways are free of tampering and restrictions.”

Privacy

Changes to EU data regulations could weaken provisions that protect online privacy. A group of consumer rights groups, including the Open Rights Group, Privacy International, Digital Gesellschaft, Access, and La Quadrature du Net have launched a “Naked Citizens” campaign opposing the changes, claiming the amendments “are an effort to strip EU citizens naked by making it almost impossible for them to control who sees their personal information and even how it is used.”

National Policy

ICT policymakers in East Africa are considering new ways to lower broadband costs for the region. Kenya has not build a broadband cable connection with Tanzania, largely due to competition between the countries; both wish to be the primary provider of fiber in the region. Others have argued that creating an Internet Exchange point may be the key to lowering broadband costs for East Africa.

Iceland's Supreme Court decided on April 24 to fine Valitor, a subcontractor of Visa ISK, US$6,830 per day for blocking DataCell, the processor for WikiLeaks’ donations, from their payment processes.

Copyright

Swedish authorities arrested an administrator for Sweden’s second most popular torrent site, Tankafetast, another in a series of police raids on torrenting sites in the country.

Finnish websites went dark on April 23 to promote a new Citizen’s Initiative Act, which would require Parliament to process bills proposed by the public that obtain 50,000 signatures of support. The bill currently has just over 27,000 signatures.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on a proposed EU-US trade agreement, the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. The resolution encourages the inclusion of copyright, patent, and trademarks. Many civil society groups oppose the inclusion of intellectual property and patent provisions in the agreement.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

Advocates in the United Kingdom accused Facebook of political censorship after a post promoting the privatization of the UK health system was taken down. Written by Kerry-Anne Mendoza, the post chronicled the story of a cancer patient navigating the country's healthcare system, but was taken down after receiving over 1,000 shares.

Google released a new Transparency Report, illustrating a sharp increase in the number of content removal requests it received from July-December 2012. Large quantities of requests came from Brazil, the US and Russia. Google received requests from 20 countries concerning posts of the controversial film “Innocence of Muslims”.

Cybersecurity

The “Syrian Electronic Army,” a group alleged to have close ties to the Syrian government, took credit for a hacking attack on the Associated Press’ Twitter account. Attackers posted a false report that explosions had occurred at the White House and injured US President Barack Obama. The news agency’s accounts were suspended temporarily following the attack and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney issued a statement affirming that the report was indeed false.

In response to the hack, Twitter is now testing a two-step authentication feature that would increase platform security.

The self-proclaimed leader of LulzSec was arrested by Australian police this week. The Australian citizen is part of the group that took down the American Central Intelligence Agency website in 2011 and other Australian government websites more recently.

BadNews, a “malicious ad network library,” has widely infiltrated Google Play and has reportedly been operating for at least 10 months. The malware has been downloaded up to 9 million times, according to security researchers. The apps connect to a rogue server every four hours and report information including the device phone number as well as its unique serial number.

Cool Things

A new version of the Ubuntu operating system has launched. A review of the new operating system is available here.

Wolfram Alpha conducted research on Facebook user statistics using a free report feature on its computational search engine. The New York Times conducted an analysis of the aggregate findings.

A site similar to Reddit and directed at African Internet users launched this week. Called MyAfrika, it uses a similar format and interface, allowing users to ‘up’ or ‘ignore’ news and questions.

Publications and Studies

• “Spyware. HackingTeam” – SecureList

• “Understanding impact: an Internet Rights are Human Rights training curriculum from APC” – Association for Progressive Communications

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Image by Bernissimo. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Hisham Almiraat, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we focus on a series of attacks on digital news sites in Guatemala, Hong Kong, and Bangladesh, and examine challenges to online activists in Russia, Venezuela, and Nigeria.

Cybersecurity

The website of Guatemalan newspaper El Periódico suffered its sixth cyberattack in recent months. The attack may have been triggered by coverage [es] of corruption allegations against Guatemalan Vice president Roxana Baldetti. Guatemala’s secretary of Communication has denied the government played any role in the attacks.

Hong Kong-based independent online news site inmediahk.net [zh] suffered a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) last week, which resulted in the website going offline on April 19. Inmediahk.net editors believe that the attacks, which mostly originated from China, may have been elicited by their reports on the ongoing Hong Kong's dock workers’ strike.

Thuggery

Four bloggers and a newspaper editor were arrested in Bangladesh for charges related to their exercise of free speech. The government has indicated further arrests and restrictions of Internet media are still to come.

Russian investigators have searched the offices and home of Pavel Durov, founder of VKontakte, a Russian social media platform similar to Facebook. Although authorities claimed the search was related to a traffic accident, the Guardian reports that “a source inside VKontakte said that pressure against the site began after Durov refused to co-operate with the Federal Security Service (FSB) when Moscow erupted in protest.” A fund linked to state-owned oil company Rosneft bought 48% of the network on Wednesday, bringing the site closer to government ownership.

Prominent Russian blogger Alexey Navalny is currently standing trial on charges that he embezzled money from a state-owned timber company in Kirov. Navalny’s supporters have created a website, 6may.org, to spread information and collect donations for Navalny and other suspects’ legal defense.

Venezuelan Facebook user Andres Rondón Sayago was detained by the Interior and Justice Ministry for posting a photograph of burning ballots following the country’s presidential elections on April 14. He has been accused of sharing the photo with “destabilizing intentions.”

A documentary on the #OccupyNigeria movement, which saw civil demonstrations in response to rising fuel prices and government corruption, has been banned in Nigeria by The National Film and Video Censors board, who are appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan. However, the government has not be able to enforce the ban on dissemination as YouTube has not taken down the video.

Turkish pianist Fazil Say has been convicted of insulting Islam in a series of Tweets he sent earlier this month. The messages involved referenced a poem by an 11th century Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, that joked about Islamic practices.

Censorship

In an effort to combat Internet-based crime, Japan’s National Police Agency may encourage Internet Service Providers to block the Tor anonymization program, which allows users to browse and communicate anonymously online. A memorandum about the decision raises concern that individuals may be using Tor to assist in exchanging child pornography and identity theft schemes.

China’s new Anquan Lianmeng [zh], or “Safety Alliance,” which identifies itself as a “neutral and impartial third-party organisation” is hiring a Chief Pornography Officer who will research, monitor, and review online pornographic content in order to establish an industry standard for Internet safety. Although pornography is technically illegal in China, plenty of obscene content from overseas has found its way around the Great Firewall.

Surveillance

UK human rights group Privacy International is suing the British government over transparency concerns surrounding the UK-based company Gamma International, maker of FinFisher surveillance software. Government officials refused to respond to the group's requests for information about an investigation of whether or not Gamma had exported FinFisher software to Bahrain. The software, which can be used to log keystrokes and eavesdrop on users, may be prohibited under British law. Gamma has denied the charges, claiming that the Bahraini government must have acquired a stolen copy of its software.

Users of the Firefox browser may find strong warnings against visiting HTTPS-encrypted websites that have been verified by Swedish and Finnish telecommunications company TeliaSonera. Mozilla, creator of Firefox, may decide to reject TeliaSonera’s root certificate over claims that TeliaSonera was selling surveillance technologies to dictatorships. Before making a decision on whether or not to do so, Mozilla has asked its community of users for their views.

National Policy

The United States House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), sending the controversial cybersecurity bill on to the Senate. The bill has been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation for its lack of provisions to protect user privacy.

Iran’s “Center for Managing National Development of the Internet” reports that 60% of Iranians are connected to the Internet, almost 2.5 million of whom are connected through mobile devices.

Copyright

The Pirate Bay is now on a list of blocked sites in the UK, according to TorrentFreak.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace

An Italian prosecutor has appealed the acquittal of three Google executives in a suit over Google’s failure to block a video posted to now defunct Google Video, which showed a handicapped student being bullied. Although the Milan appeals court overturned the six-month suspended prison sentence handed to top Google executives, they must now face the highest court in Italy’s judicial system. Central to the case is the issue of whether Google can be held responsible for user-generated content that is in breach of Italy’s privacy laws.

Google lost a defamation lawsuit in Japan over the autocomplete function in its search engine. A Japanese man sued Google after he found that in a search, the autocomplete for his name suggested criminal acts that he did not commit. According to the plaintiff’s lawyer, Hiroyuki Tomita, “this [autocomplete feature] can lead to irretrievable damage, such as job loss or bankruptcy, just by displaying search results that constitute defamation or violation of the privacy of an individual person or small and medium-size companies.”

Internet Governance

The European Consumer Organization (BEUC) and European Digital Rights (EDRi) sent a letter to the European Commission on behalf of over 80 organizations calling for new laws to protect net neutrality and user privacy. They argue that encouraging competition and transparency alone (as the EC has done) are insufficient, since consumers have limited option for suppliers.

Netizen Activism

Anonymous has raised $54,798 through the fundraising platform Indiegogo to set up a dedicated news site, Your Anon News. The platform will expand its Twitter and Tumblr services and “provide a space for people on the ground, or ‘citizen journalists’” to generate news coverage of issues of interest, according to The Next Web.

Digital activist Cameran Ashraf, an Iranian-American citizen who was involved in facilitating activism online during Iran’s Green Movement, wrote a compelling piece for Global Voices Advocacy about his personal experiences during the movement. The piece has drawn substantial commentary from the digital activism community.

Publications and Studies

• The New Gatekeepers: Controlling Information in the Internet Age – Center for International Media Assistance

• The Global Information Technology Report 2013 – World Economic Forum

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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Russia is a place that’s no stranger to courtroom outrage. Last August, Pussy Riot may have set a new standard for global scandal, but the trials against former oligarchs Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev in 2004 and 2010, as well as the “judicial murder” of investment banker William Browder’s colleague Sergei Magnitsky in 2009, have all blackened Russia’s image at home and abroad for nearly decade now. This is to say nothing of the looming trials against the more than two dozen “Bolotnoe Delo” suspects (supposedly involved in instigating acts of violence against riot police at a mass rally last year on May 6). More than half of these people have been rotting for months in pretrial detention. Others were spared incarceration, but they too await their day in court. The muscly Maxim Luzianin has already been sentenced [ru] to over four years in prison.

Alexey Navalny at a Moscow protest, 26 May 2012. Photo by MItya Aleshkovskiy, CC 3.0.

Activists have created a website, 6may.org, to spread awareness about the still-ongoing investigation, regularly publishing sympathetic bulletins about individual suspects, and encouraging the public to donate money [ru] to their legal defense and publicity campaign. Navalny’s own “political prisoners” project, rosuznik.org, also collects crowdsourced funds for the Bolotnoe Delo accused, among others.

On what netizen support, other than his own RosPil offshoots, can Navalny rely, if he too finds himself behind bars, come the end of his trial in Kirov?

At the time of this post's publication, exactly five hundred Facebook users had pledged to attend a demonstration [ru] outside Novopushkinsky Square in Moscow, scheduled for the day that Navalny’s trial in Kirov begins. The rally—yet to be sanctioned by the city’s authorities—is being organized by “The Citizen Federation,” a movement tied [ru] to quasi-oppositionist oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov and human rights activists such as Lev Ponomarev.

The comments section on that Facebook event features your standard mix of earnest support and jaundiced Internet trolling. Sergei Valuev, for instance, writes:

Я не поддерживаю Навального, потому что ему не верю

I don’t support Navalny because I don’t believe him.

Ilya Barsukov declares:

Наваленный такой же вор как и правящая псевдо элита! Стране нужен настоящий лидер- оппозиционер, но я такого пока не вижу. И видимо не увижу, т. К. Путин в своем деле профессионал

Navalny is the same kind of thief as all the ruling pseudo elite! The country needs a real leader-oppositionist, but I don’t see anyone like that. And apparently I’m not going to see one, as it seems Putin is a professional [at keeping out competition].

The group’s creator Igor Bakirov, meanwhile, has tried to stay on message:

Друзья, реально нужно чтобы на митинг пришло много много людей, приглашайте своих друзей и друзей своих друзей

Friends, we really need for lots and lots of people to come to the rally. Invite your friends and your friends’ friends!

Elsewhere on Facebook, journalist Alexandra Astakhova has launched a group [ru] titled “The Case Against Navalny Is a Case Against Us All!” The group’s self-description begins with the following fighting words:

Эта группа объединяет тех, кто понимает: уголовные дела, сфабрикованные против Алексея Навального, направлены против всех нас. Шаг за шагом преступный режим, опьяненный безнаказанностью, делает жизнь в нашей стране невыносимой, шаг за шагом подбирается к нам, к нашим друзьям.

This group unites those who understand that the criminal cases fabricated against Alexey Navalny are directed at us all. Step by step, the criminal regime—intoxicated on impunity—makes life in our country more unbearable. Step by step, it closes in on us, on our friends.

Astakhova’s group (open to the public) now boasts over 1,660 members [ru], including many prominent members, both Russian and foreign, of the Moscow press corps (and more than a few activists), such as: The Guardian’s Miriam Elder, Ekho Moskvy’s Tikhon Dzyadko, activist Ilya Yashin, satirist Viktor Shenderovich, The New Times’ Ilya Barabanov, activist Olga Romanova, Slon.ru’s Tonia Samsonova, Berlingske’s Simon Kruse, The New Times’ Yevgenia Albats, EJ.ru’s Aleksandr Ryklin, and Ekho Moskvy’s Ksenia Larina—just to name a few.

Screen capture from Oleg Kalman's LiveJournal instructions for “becoming Navalny's secret agent,” 13 April 2013.

In a photo campaign that somewhat mirrors the anti-homophobia website loveislegal.ru (an association Navalny and company would probably wish to avoid), Navalny-supporters have begun publishing photographs [ru] of themselves holding up signs that read, “The case against Navalny is a case against me!” Oleg Kalman, Astakhova’s colleague at the newspaper Vedomosti, has similarly encouraged [ru] Russians to get involved by “becoming Navalny’s secret agents” and spray-painting Navalny’s surname onto the asphalt wherever possible. (Kalman insists this is legal, so long as people keep the paint on the ground, though he also advises readers to carry out the deed at night, when nobody is looking.) “It’s not vandalism, you’re not destroying someone else’s property, and the inscription will wear off after a couple of months,” he assures his audience.

Russia’s netizens—or at least Moscow’s most active denizens—seem to be ready for a fight. Will their protests pass with a whimper or unleash a new wave of social unrest? Are Russians ready to take up Navalny’s cause? Or does the nation suffer from a crippling “political prisoner” fatigue? The sanctity of Moscow’s pavement, along with the fates of several human beings, hangs in the balance.

Written by Kevin Rothrock · Translated by Global Voices · View original post [en] · comments (0)
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Most of this report was researched, written, and edited by Lisa Ferguson, Weiping Li, Alex Laverty, Renata Avila, Chan Myae Khine, Ellery Roberts Biddle, and Sarah Myers.

Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This week we focus on the Wikimedia Foundation, which is challenging take down orders in both Russia and France, and chart a wave of threats against netizens in Chad, Mexico, and various countries in the MENA region.

Censorship

Roskomnazdor, the Russian government agency responsible for managing the nation’s blacklist of illegal websites, has blocked ten Wikipedia articles on topics related to narcotics and suicide. Wikipedia’s article on cannabis has since seen its traffic increase by 13,000%. It appears unlikely that Russian Wikipedians will seek to reconcile the content to fit Russian censorship laws. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales responded, saying “catering to the demands of weak and cowardly politicians – the kind who fear the spread of knowledge – is not the Wikipedia way.”

The Wikimedia Foundation reported that the French Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (DCRI) asked that the organization remove a French-language Wikipedia entry about a French military compound, claiming it contained classified information. After Wikimedia refused to grant the request, DCRI forced a Wikipedia volunteer (who had not contributed to the article) to delete the entry, threatening that he would be prosecuted if he refused to do so.

Athens Indymedia, a popular independent news website in Greece, has been shut down by Greek judicial authorities, according to tweets from a Greek Member of Parliament. The website announced [el] it was being suppressed by the government, along with 98FM radio, and provided a Tor link [el] offering users an alternate method for accessing the site. In the past, right-wing politicians have campaigned to block the site based on accusations of anti-state incitement. Athens Indymedia was also blocked last September [el] and had several administrators arrested.

Thuggery

Chadian blogger Jean Laokolé was arrested on March 22 and is currently being held in an undisclosed location, according to Internet Without Borders. Known for his coverage of corruption and poor governance, Laokolé was arrested for making allegedly “false accusations” against a group of people who may have filed a complaint against him. Internet Without Borders issued a petition this week calling for his release. Amnesty International is soliciting letters of appeal for submission to the Chadian government.

Two Tunisians were arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison for “violation of morality and disturbing public order” after posting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook.

In Egypt, video blogger Ahmed Anwar is being tried for “insulting the Minister of the Interior” and “deliberate harassment of others using communication techniques.” The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression and the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information have both condemned the charges and have called on the Egyptian government to end its persecution of Internet activists.

An Iranian store owner was arrested for selling illegal software that enabled Internet users to access blocked websites. Iran outlawed most VPN connections last month to prevent users from circumventing online censorship in the country.

The administrator of the Facebook and Twitter pages “Valor por Tamaulipas” announced the impending closure of both accounts after being threatened for reporting on drug-related violence in northern Mexico. This comes after flyers were circulated in the state of Tamaulipas (presumably by a drug cartel) offering a reward of nearly US$50,000 for any information that would help identify the administrator.

Internet Governance

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held its 46th meeting in Beijing last week. ICANN is the entity responsible for allocating and setting standards for the Internet's domain name system and what are known as “top-level” domain names (.com, .net, etc.) for websites. ICANN's president announced that it will introduce Chinese character options for top-level domains later this year.

Mali announced plans to give national domain (.ml) to users for free starting in July. Despite low Internet penetration in the country, the policy aims to bring in outside investment and support for Malian businesses. A representative from Mali's Information and Communication Technology Agency explained that the plan was based on the .tk domain model of Tokelau, which has become one of the most popular in the world. Officials hope that the domain will be particularly attractive to businesses in Malaysia and Manila (Philippines), given the shared letters in their names.

Cybersecurity

Peruvian lawmakers announced the resuscitation of an IT crimes bill introduced in 2012. Known among netizens as #LeyBeingolea (named for its author, Congressman Alberto Beingolea) the bill raised concern among civil liberties advocates who fear the law would infringe on users’ rights to privacy and free expression online. Congressional web services indicate that the bill will be discussed in Congress in the near future.

The Intelligence Committee of the US House of Representatives approved language for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a controversial data-sharing bill aimed at protecting the US from cyber threats, without including any amendments to limit intelligence agencies’ capacity to collect sensitive user data. The House of Representatives will vote on the bill as soon as next week. Last year, members approved the legislation but a veto threat by President Obama prevented it from advancing to the Senate.

According to researchers at the Hack in the Box security conference, Wireless IP cameras from Foscam and other vendors have security weaknesses that could allow hackers to attack and access them remotely.

Netizen Activism

Pakistani digital rights NGO Bytes for All (B4A) has begun legal proceedings against the Federation of Pakistan seeking to challenge “rampant censorship, surveillance and Internet filtering in the country.” B4A is working in collaboration with the international media law advocacy network, Media Legal Defence Initiative.

Canada’s SecDev Foundation has launched the Syria Digital Security Monitor to visualize “reports of disruption to critical infrastructure in Syria including Internet, telecommunication, electricity and water.” The project relies on crowdsourced data derived from reports by Syrians as well as monitoring through Syrian social media.

Cool Things

Afrinnovator discusses the ramifications that pan-African trade and business could face if Bitcoin were to be adopted as a continentally-accepted currency.

Publications and Studies

• Social Entrepreneurship and the Web in Africa – Internet Sans Frontieres

• Iranian Internet Infrastructure and Policy Report – Small Media

Subscribe to the Netizen Report by email

For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age, see the Global Voices Events Calendar.

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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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