CyberLaw Blog

Archive for January 5th, 2010

Expert claims file-sharing Bill could give Government control of the internet: “The Digital Economy Bill would give the Government the power to control the internet access of UK citizens by ministerial order, bypassing Parliament and without an adequate right of appeal, according to one legal expert.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

ISPs slam Digital Economy Bill’s multi-million pound price tag: “

Why should broadband users bail out the music industry?

Internet service providers have grumbled that the anti-piracy measures proposed in the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) could cost consumers up to £500m.…

“

(Via The Register – Comms.)

Global Voices partners with Google on freedom of expression award: “

Nominations open today (December 29, 2009) for the Breaking Borders Award, a new prize created by Google and Global Voices to honor outstanding web projects initiated by individuals or groups that demonstrate courage, energy and resourcefulness in using the Internet to promote freedom of expression. The award is also supported by Thomson Reuters.

The Breaking Borders Award builds upon the values expressed in the Global Voices Manifesto, the document co-written on a wiki in 2004 to articulate the guiding principles of the organization and community that would come to be known as Global Voices. The Manifesto opens with the words:

‘We believe in free speech: in protecting the right to speak — and the right to listen. We believe in universal access to the tools of speech.

To that end, we seek to enable everyone who wants to speak to have the means to speak — and everyone who wants to hear that speech, the means to listen to it.’

The Breaking Borders Award also complements the work of Global Voices Advocacy, which was formed in February 2007 to bring focus to the organizations freedom of expression-related activities.

The Breaking Borders Award is open to people of all nationalities. Winners will be selected by a panel of experts in the field of freedom of expression. A cash prize of $10,000 will be awarded in each of three areas:

1. Advocacy, given to an activist or group that has used online tools to promote free expression or encourage political change

2. Technology, given to an individual or group that has created an important tool that enables free expression and expands access to information

3. Policy, given to a policy maker, government official or NGO leader who has made a notable contribution in the field

Nominations for the Breaking Borders Award can be submitted at http://www.breakingborders.net and close on February 15, 2010.

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(Via Global Voices Advocacy.)

Algeria Joins Filtering Fray: “

Algeria is the latest Arab country to join the ranks of Internet filterers, leaving only Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Lebanon without widespread filtering. The first report of a blocked site came about a week ago, when users on Twitter reported www.rachad.org, the site of political movement Mouvement Rachad to be blocked. The sites have since been reported to Herdict.

The blog Algerian Review outlines the filtering and calls on Algerian Internet users to sign a petition against the creation of a filtering regime.

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(Via Global Voices Advocacy.)

Tunisia and Bahrain Block Individual Twitter Pages: “

First, governments blocked Blogspot. Then they blocked Facebook, and then Twitter. And just when technophiles all over the globe started groaning, a couple of governments got a bit wiser to social media and, rather than block the entire platform for the transgressions of one user, began blocking individual accounts instead. Notably, this has happened in the past with YouTube where, rather than cut off the video-sharing site for all users, a government will simply block a single video; the latest trend seems to be blocking individual Twitter pages.

Over the past few weeks, reports have trickled in to Herdict and via Twitter, alerting us of the filtering of individual Twitter pages in Tunisia and Bahrain (as well as, possibly, China). In Tunisia, the accounts of exiled activist Sami Ben Gharbia (@ifikra), engineer @Ma7moud, and popular independent news source Nawaat (@nawaat) have been confirmed inaccessible, while in Bahrain @FreeBahrain was allegedly blocked on New Years Day.

ifikra and freebahrain ruminate on their Twitter accounts being blocked

Twitter is no stranger to being blocked: Both China and Iran have blocked the social networking/microblogging site in the past, and Saudi Arabia reportedly blocked two individual Twitter users pages in mid-2009.

What is particularly interesting is that the governments of Tunisia and Bahrain have now demonstrated capability and desire to block individual Twitter pages, thus silencing certain voices while still keeping a major communication platform open. Only time will tell if this will become a global trend.

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(Via Global Voices Advocacy.)

Christmas Blues for isoHunt – Liable for Inducing Copyright Infringement: “A California court has granted Columbia Pictures a summary judgment against Gary Fung, the owner and administrator of isoHunt.com, TorrentBox.com, ed2k-it.com and Podtropolis.com. In the summary judgment, Judge Stephen Wilson found little different in Gary Fung’s operation from other products such as Napster, Grokster or Usenet.com. The court found that Gary Fung was liable for inducing copyright infringement.”

(Via Slyck.com File-Sharing News And Information.)

CN – China Closes Down The Internet: “(Forbes)
This week, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released regulations, dated Dec. 15, requiring the registration of all Web sites.
MIIT’s justification was the need to eliminate sexual content. As a Ministry spokesman stated, ‘This is about mobile pornography, it’s not referring to any other issue.’ The explanation, however comforting it sounds, is disingenuous. The wording of the rules is broad enough to cover all sites, domestic and foreign, whether or not they carry sex-themed material. ‘Domain names that have not registered will not be resolved or transferred,’ the regulations state. In other words, unregistered sites will become unavailable to users in China. see also Blacklist, White List? China’s Internet Censors Spawn Confusion (WSJ) by Loretta Chao.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

IN – Yahoo, Flickr and Microsoft introduce access filters: “(Guardian)
A Guardian investigation has discovered that several internet companies have quietly introduced filters to prevent Indian users from accessing sexual content.

The Yahoo search engine and Flickr photo-sharing site (owned by Yahoo) altered their sites earlier this month to prevent users in India from switching off the safe-search facility. The block also applies to users in Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea. Microsoft has also barred Indian users of its Bing search engine from searching for sexual content. Users who do try to search for sexual material receive a notice informing them that ‘your country or region requires a strict Bing SafeSearch setting, which filters out results that might return adult content’. The clampdown is understood to be in response to recent changes to India’s Information Technology Act of 2000, which bans the publication of pornographic material./p>

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

CN – China says 5,394 arrested in Internet porn crackdown: “(Reuters)
Chinese police said the crackdown on Internet pornography had brought 5,394 arrests and 4,186 criminal case investigations in 2009 – a fourfold increase in the number of such cases compared with 2008. The announcement said the drive would deepen in 2010.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)