Web Censoring Widens Across Southeast Asia

By BHRP

Photo | Emilio Labrador

Malaysia has recently used its colonial-era Internal Security Act, which allows detention for up to two years without trial, to muzzle bloggers. Thailand is ramping up its reliance on a recently introduced Computer Crimes Act to restrict criticism of its royal family and limit the spread of what the government calls seditious material. Vietnam, an authoritarian Communist state, has been arresting people caught posting thoughts that run contrary to government policy, and has detained lawyers who try to defend them.
“A number of governments in the region have discovered they can’t use technology alone to block out dissent because people will always find a way around it,” says Roby Alampay, executive director of a Bangkok-based media advocacy group, the Southeast Asia Press Alliance. “Instead they are trying to send out the message that the government is watching what their citizens are up to, and many of these arrests are deliberately high-profile.”
To be sure, not every government in the region is trying to bolt down the Internet. Singapore, where mainstream media are largely controlled by the government, has taken a relatively hands-off approach to the Internet. The governments of Indonesia and the Philippines don’t limit political content on the Internet in their countries.
The case of Raja Petra Kamarudin, Malaysia’s best-known blogger, reveals a different approach. The 58-year-old prince, or raja, in one of Malaysia’s royal families started his feisty Malaysia Today news Web site a decade ago after the arrest of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on sodomy charges, which Mr. Anwar denied. Mr. Anwar was convicted, jailed until the conviction was overturned, and is now being prosecuted again on sodomy charges, which he again is denying.
Since launching his Web site, Raja Petra has been a thorn in the side of Malaysia’s ruling National Front coalition, posting a series of articles notable for their criticism of the government. His postings led to his detention for nearly two months under the Internal Security Act in 2008.
Malaysian authorities have accused Raja Petra of suggesting in a letter to prosecutors investigating the murder of a Mongolian model in 2006 that Prime Minister Najib Razak was involved in the killing, which Mr. Najib denies. Raja Petra was charged with sedition and went into hiding. He says the charge is misdirected because he didn’t publish the letter, though he admits writing it and stands by its contents.
Malaysian government spokesman Tengku Sharifuddin Tengku Ahmad declined to comment about Raja Petra’s allegations, and he didn’t respond to questions about the broader issues surrounding Malaysia’s approach to censorship.

Malaysia’s government is careful not to be seen to be directly censoring the Internet because of a longstanding pledge not to interfere online and potentially scare off foreign technology companies, such as Microsoft Corp., which operate there.
In August, Mr. Najib’s government backed off from implementing Web filters similar to those used in China to weed out certain political topics and other contentious discussions. It has also considered requiring that bloggers register with the government, but decided not to implement the rule.
Instead, says Raja Petra, Malaysia’s authorities are using criminal laws “to make an example of me so that others will run away from the truth,” although he says their efforts will backfire. “Other bloggers are becoming more vocal and more aggressive.”
Some media analysts suggest governments are catching up with the impact of the Internet and mobile-phone messaging and how they helped to trigger social upheavals in countries such as Ukraine and the Philippines. Iran’s success in putting down Twitter and Facebook-driven protests this summer may have lent some indirect encouragement, too.
“Even if governments aren’t censoring outright, they are providing an adequate disincentive to posting criticism. People now know there will be consequences,” says Rebecca MacKinnon, a professor of journalism and media studies at Hong Kong University and a co-founder of GlobalVoices, an international citizens’ media Web site.
In Thailand, police last month arrested two people for forwarding an audio recording of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva purportedly ordering soldiers to attack antigovernment demonstrators. Mr. Abhisit said the recording is fake. Another Thai, Suwicha Thakor, was sentenced to 10 years in jail in June after pleading guilty to posting videos mocking Thailand’s revered monarchy.
Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn says the country’s computer-crime laws are designed to protect people from fraud and defamation, and says the laws are at times being used to address what he describes as “national security” issues.
In recent weeks in Vietnam, meanwhile, popular blogger Bui Thanh Hieu was detained for several days after criticizing the government’s mining policies; another blogger, Huy Duc, was fired from his job at a Ho Chi Minh City newspaper after the Communist Party complained about his posts, while others have also been briefly detained. A Vietnamese foreign-ministry spokeswoman on Thursday said the bloggers had been detained to enable police to investigate alleged violations of national security.
Internet-freedom advocates worry that more governments beyond Southeast Asia will follow the region’s lead and try to take additional steps to tighten Internet controls.  “Being blocked from visiting a Web site is frustrating,” Mr. Alampay, the Bangkok-based activist, says. “But when you see or hear about people being arrested, then that could stop you from logging on at all.”

Building Hope: Yahoo! Acquires Maktoob.com

By BHRP

The Wall Street Journal | September 4, 2009
photo credit: amerune

These are the views of Faisal Ghori, Principal at Middle East Ventures, a strategy consultancy focused on the greater Middle East and North Africa, on Yahoo buying Maktoob.com:

Hope is often in short supply in the Middle East, but that may be quickly changing, at least for the regions entrepreneurs. On Aug. 25, Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), the Internet giant, announced it will acquire Maktoob.com, the Middle East’s largest web portal and online community founded and operated in Jordan.

As the first acquisition of a Middle East-based technology company by a U.S. technology giant, this is nothing short of a sea change for the region. Overnight it has bolstered the region with instant credibility and given its entrepreneurs reason to hope that they too can succeed in creating companies. The acquisition, in short, has fundamentally altered the technology landscape in the Middle East.

In a day and age when business in the Middle East has become synonymous with Dubai, this story’s genesis is found in the rocky crags of Jordan. Better known for Petra and the Dead Sea, Jordan has been the region’s leading base for technology startups. While Dubai may boast an Internet City, more of the region’s startups were founded and operate in Jordan than anywhere else in the Middle East. This is due in large part to investments made by King Abdullah II in its technology sector.

Amongst its peers, Jordan is the only Middle Eastern nation with a state-funded technology incubator designed to assist startups, and a fledgling technology ecosystem comprising an incubator, two technology-focused venture capital firms, many technology startups and a burgeoning culture of entrepreneurship. Proverbially overnight, Samih Toukam, Chief Executive Officer and founder of Maktoob.com, and his team have accomplished what Jordan has spent the better part of a decade trying to do: garner international attention for its technology sector. This is nothing short of a coup. Jordan and the region’s entrepreneurs are now in the spotlight.

For Toukam, the road to success has been considerably longer than overnight. He founded the company in 1997 when the Internet was still nascent in the Middle East. Originally founded as an Arabic online email service, over the past 12 years Maktoob.com (literally meaning ”written” in Arabic) expanded into a fully-fledged search portal and online community, providing a vast array of services ranging from matrimonials to local sports. By any measure, Maktoob.com is the Middle East’s undisputed Internet leader with over 16.5 million unique users.

It isn’t surprising then that Maktoob.com was the first regional Middle Eastern technology company to be acquired. However, what is surprising is that the acquisition happened now. If nothing else, the acquisition signifies that the Middle East has, for the first time, become relevant in the eyes of U.S. Internet giants, and with their attention, the region has become globally relevant for its technology-based entrepreneurship.

This significance hasn’t been lost on Toukam. For him the acquisition signifies “it’s time to invest in the Arab world. The market is ready and has huge growth potential and there is good talent and brains out there and also good exits for your investments.”

Given the lack of initial public offerings as a viable exit (no technology company has ever gone public in the region), the acquisition will assuage investors concerns about exiting a technology investment in the Middle East.

Emile Cubeisy, Managing Director of IV Holdings, a venture capital firm that invests in technology companies in the Middle East, says the acquisition is an important milestone, in that it proves to Arab entrepreneurs that if you focus on building true value in your businesses, execute patiently and with professionalism, and go through the full stages of growth, real exit opportunities will emerge.

While IV Holdings is one a handful of regional venture capital firms, U.S. technology giants like Intel Corp. (INTC), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) began investing a while ago with other U.S. investment firms slowly following their lead. Tiger Global Management, a U.S. investment firm, was amongst the largest stakeholders of the company.

Maktoob.com’s acquisition will now make it increasingly harder to ignore the 300 million audience that comprise the greater Middle East.

Maktoob.com’s accomplishment wasn’t without its difficulties. In the typical investment cycle of technology startups, an investment lasts between five to seven years. For Maktoob.com, it took nearly twice as long.

Throughout the region, nearly 13 years after the Internet was introduced, entrepreneurs still refer to the technology market as being in its infancy. Ahmad Humeid, perhaps the region’s earliest serial tech-entrepreneur, observes that regionally e-commerce activity and quality of Internet content remain dismal with Middle Eastern nations widely censoring the Internet, and the overall environment for technology companies remains bleak.

Clearly, the Middle East hasn’t done as well as other global technology hubs including Israel, Europe and Asia, all of which can point to billion-dollar companies from their shores. It is rumored that Yahoo! acquired Maktoob for around $85 million to $100 million. While this amount is significant for Jordan and the region given its small scale, it wouldn’t move the needle in Shanghai, London, or Tel Aviv.

Yet Maktoob.com, with its widespread reach, did move the needle enough in Sunnyvale, Calif., for Yahoo! to move off the sidelines. The acquisition has done for Jordan and the region what AOL’s acquisition of Mirabilis, the maker of the chatting client ICQ, did for Israel nearly a decade earlier: it has provided vital lifeblood for technology-based entrepreneurship.

For all of Ahmad Humeid’s pessimism, he remarks that for him the acquisition represents a real breakthrough. It sort of gives me a push to hold on to the dream of building something worthwhile on the ‘Arab Internet.’

Regionally, that type of hope is worth much more than whatever Yahoo! paid to acquire Maktoob.com.

African governments move to monitor Internet communications

By BHRP

By Michael Malakata
August 26, 2009 | IDG News Service

Southern African countries including Zambia, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe are grappling with the question of whether to intercept and monitor mobile phone calls as well as Internet and other electronic services including communications over social networks.

While some countries are opening the telecom sector to all forms of services and social networks, others are closing up, claiming Internet and mobile phones are putting the security of the countries at risk. A number of laws and regulations are being developed by some Southern African countries that give powers to regulators, service providers and government security agents to censor Web sites and intercept mobile and Net-based calls.

But the technology sector is warning that the censorship laws are certain to scare aware investments by regional and international service providers that may fear that investing in such countries restricts their freedom to roll out new services, including 3G technology.

The Malawi Communications and Regulatory Authority (Macra) has announced that it has passed a new regulation under which it will start monitoring the Internet and intercepting all electronic communications throughout the country. Macra is Malawi’s telecom sector regulator. But it is the first time that the regulator is being given censorship powers by the government.

ISPs in Malawi will also be pressed by the new law to monitor social-networking sites including Twitter, Facebook and the Malawiana — a local social-network site — and any so-called “illegal content” in e-mail communications by Malawians on Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and other e-mail services.

The law also means that digital satellite televisions will also be censored in Malawi.

Malawian Minister of Information Leckford Thotho said the government passed a law creating a new tool for censorship because the number of people with Internet and mobile phones access has increased over the past years.

“As the number of Internet users has been growing steadily over the past years, there is now a need to monitor what people were doing on the Internet to ensure that they do not involve themselves in unlawful acts,” Thotho said.

Internet users in Malawi are already complaining that the Malawian government will be violating their privacy by reading e-mail and listening to their conversations.

Malawi has become the second country in Southern Africa after Namibia to develop Internet and mobile censorship laws. In July Namibian lawmakers passed the spy law, which calls for interception centers to be manned by secret service officers who can screen e-mail, SMS (short message system) texts and Internet usage, including banking services.

The Zambian government, on the other hand, said it has developed laws that allow people to communicate without government interference. The new Zambian law further allows service providers to deploy any form of technology on their networks that will allow subscribers to have access to services available around the world.

Zambian President Rupiah Banda said Zambian government was committed to providing an ICT regulatory environment that encourages private sector participation in the Zambian economy. Aware that spy laws scare away international telecom investors, Banda said he is confident that the current ICT reforms would generate national development through the use of ICT.

Yahoo’s bold advance into the Middle East

By BHRP

By Douglas MacMillan

Businessweek, August 26, 2009

On the pages of Arabic-language Web site Bentelhalal, men and women from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa list personal details and describe the qualities they’re looking for in a mate, such as “polite,” “stylish,” and “God-fearing.” It’s reminiscent of an American dating site, except for one big twist: All of these singles are ready to marry.

Bentelhalal is one popular site within Maktoob, the large Jordanian Internet property Yahoo! (YHOO) said it was acquiring on Aug. 25 for what the Web site TechCrunch reported to be $85 million. It’s also a sign that Yahoo, which trades in tech news and celebrity gossip to assemble its audience at home, has entered a different world.

The purchase gives Yahoo command of one of the most visited online news portals in the Arab world, with business, finance, games, blogging, and other sites that reach an estimated 16.5 million people. Yahoo says it will translate its home page, e-mail, and instant messaging services into Arabic but plans to keep Maktoob’s local flavor mostly intact.

While rivals Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) have waded cautiously into the emerging Middle East, Yahoo will be the first major Internet company from the West to run a full online content business in the region. How the company navigates the cultural and legal norms of the Arab world will be watched closely by competitors back home. So will its approach to Internet censorship.

Maktoob: Supported by Online Ads

The relatively tiny market for online ads in Arab countries has companies stepping carefully into the market. Microsoft partners with an Egyptian ISP for its MSN Arabia site, and Google offers an Arabic-language version of its search engine. But neither has entered the Middle East with as much conviction as Yahoo. “Many of the emerging markets are very similar. You have nascent penetration of online users and ad dollars,” says Keith Nilsson, Yahoo’s senior vice-president for emerging markets. “The Middle East is unique because you have a contiguous language which a very large population speaks—one of the reasons we were interested in this acquisition.”

The market for online advertising and transactions in the Middle East may be tiny by Silicon Valley standards, but experts say the potential is huge. Maktoob is largely supported by online ads, which are expected to make up a $142 million market among Arabic-speaking countries by 2011, according to Dubai-based Madar Research.

“The Arab citizen is hungry for local content in their local language, and this is something that has enormous potential” for Internet companies, says Soumitra Dutta, a professor of business and technology at Paris business school INSEAD. Dutta says the Middle East has improved its technology competitiveness faster than any region in the world over the past five years, according to a study he conducted with researchers from the World Economic Forum. Technology companies that include Cisco Systems (CSCO) and SAP (SAP) are seeing fast growth in the region, and Cisco has been investing aggressively there.

Yahoo sees its success in the region dependent on catering to local markets. “We have to have a team in place that understands the nuances between each country,” says Nilsson. While Maktoob currently has a sales force in five countries, Nilsson says the plan is to develop local sales forces in all countries the site reaches.

“Political Filtering” in the Region

As it expands to the Middle East, Yahoo is taking pains to avoid the kinds of government complications it has encountered in Asia. In 2004 the company was criticized for providing information to the Chinese government that critics say led to a 10-year prison sentence for journalist Shi Tao. Since then, Yahoo has helped form the Global Network Initiative, a symposium of Web companies and advocacy groups that share advice about dealing with foreign governmental requests. So far, the efforts appear to be paying off in Vietnam, where the company is expanding despite government restrictions on blogging and other online activities.

The Arab world will be another test. A March report from Paris-based Reporters Without Borders listed a number of regional states—including Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria—on its annual list of countries it considers “enemies” of the Internet for jailing bloggers and otherwise preventing free speech on the Web. “Political filtering is strong in the region,” says Rob Faris, research director for Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Yahoo says it plans to abide by local laws while operating Maktoob but will also protect users’ freedom of speech. Yahoo Deputy General Counsel Michael Samway says when the company was performing its due diligence, it studied “the potential intersection points with human-rights challenges.”

One cautionary measure was already in place: Maktoob keeps its users’ private information stored on servers “outside the region,” which would prevent them from being subject to local governments’ demands.