Cuban blogger Sanchez calls media prize a ’shield’

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Jared Tarbell

AFP | September 5, 2010

HAVANA — Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez said winning the media watchdog IPI prize of World Press Freedom Hero is a “protective shield” that will help her break “the wall of censorship,” she told AFP Sunday.

“For someone who three years ago started opening cracks in the walls of censorship, my first feeling is that of enormous gratification,” Sanchez said of the award she was given Friday.

The recognition from the Vienna-based International Press Institute, which hailed her defiance of press restrictions and commitment to free speech, is “also a shield to keep daring” to put out news from the closeted Communist isle.

Sanchez began her blog Generation Y, which now counts over one million readers, in 2007. However, access to the site was banned in Cuba in 2008.

To bypass this, Sanchez, who celebrated her 35th birthday Saturday, emails her comments to friends abroad who post her notes on the Internet.`

In 2008, Time Magazine in the United States named her one of the 100 most influential people. The following year, her blog was listed as one of the 25 best blogs of the year by the magazine.

The future of Cuba is “where the power of the Internet can be used to promote freedom of expression,” Sanchez told AFP, adding that the IPI prize was an additional “incentive” to keep going.

“Gradually the circle of censorship is in the process of breaking down. I am very happy. I will continue,” she said.

Alison Bethel McKenzie, director of the Vienna-based International Press Institute, said Friday that Sanchez’s “tremendously important work provides a glimpse into what is otherwise a closed world.”

She “represents a future where the power of the Internet can be harnessed to promote free speech,” McKenzie said in a statement.

Harassed and beaten on separate occasions, Sanchez has noted on her blog that she is constantly watched by state security agents.

But she refuses to stop writing: “If you are insulted by the mediocre, the opportunists, if you are slandered by the employees of the powerful but dying machinery, take it as a compliment,” she has written.

China Requires ID for Mobile Phone Numbers

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Windell Oskay

By Michael Wines | New York Times | September 1, 2010

BEIJING — China’s government began on Wednesday to require cellphone users to furnish identification when buying SIM cards, a move officials cast as an attempt to rein in burgeoning cellphone spam, pornography and fraud schemes.

The requirement, which has been in the works for years, is not unlike rules in many developed nations that force users to present credit card data or other proof of identification to buy cellphone numbers. The government’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that about 40 percent of China’s 800 million cellphone users currently are unidentified. Those users will be ordered to furnish an ID by 2013 or lose their service, the Communist Party’s English-language newspaper, Global Times, reported.

A government center that deals with cellphone complaints reported that an average Chinese phone user receives a dozen spam messages a week, and that three in four users received messages that involved fraud, the state-run English-language newspaper, China Daily, reported on Wednesday.

Some analysts, however, questioned whether the new requirement would substantially reduce illicit messages. Instead, they warned that it could give the government new tools to locate and punish individuals who send cellphone messages that censors deem unacceptable. China’s central government has steadily tightened its censorship of the Internet and wireless communications since 2008, blocking increasing numbers of Internet Web sites, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and, most recently, shutting down microblogs that it regards as subversive.

The new regulation will be implemented largely by the three government-controlled companies — China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom — that provide all cellular service.

“Is China prepared for this?” David Bandurski, an author and media analyst at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, said in a telephone interview. “Does it have the legal framework and the institutions in place to guarantee they can do this and still protect the privacy of consumers?

“People are basically providing their phone numbers and ID numbers” to the mobile carriers, he said. “Those are the two most important pieces of information that most people have.”

In an article posted Wednesday on the China Media Project’s Web site, a legal researcher at the government-sponsored Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhou Hanhua, expressed doubts that requiring users to register their names with the companies would control spam.

Initially, he wrote, the rules likely will first create a black market in legally registered SIM cards that can be used for spam, and then spur hackers to find ways to circumvent the registration requirement.

“Technology innovation will soon trump the government’s control,” he wrote.

Others were less concerned. A professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Zeng Jianqiu, said that real-name registration was essential if services now common in other nations, such as payment by cellphone, are to become established in China.

Privacy “is a problem that needs to be considered seriously,” he said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “The regulators and mobile operators also need to find ways to protect personal information. But I think some, like China Mobile and Telecom, are already doing this.”

Under the new policy, convenience store and street vendors who have been selling anonymous SIM cards were to suspend sales on Wednesday until they are trained to register their customers. Foreigners will also be required to furnish a passport or other identification when establishing cellphone service.

Zhang Jing contributed research.

The Read and the Black

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Kathy Hurley

Why are Latin American democracies suddenly attacking the free press?

By Mac Margolis | Newsweek | August 31, 2010

Here’s a puzzler. Latin America has never been more democratic: of 34 nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, all except one (Cuba) are constitutional democracies, with laws guaranteeing open elections, independent courts, legislatures, and freedom of expression. So why do so many governments still trample on citizens’ rights, bully journalists, harass private business, and generally lord over hearth and home?

Incidents in just the last few weeks range from the grave (the Argentine government’s order to shut down the main Internet provider in retaliation to criticism from its owner) to the ridiculous (a Brazilian law banning parents from spanking kids). But the breadth of official incursions into citizen’s lives has sent out distress signals from Patagonia to the Antilles. In early August, after a shower of lawsuits filed by indignant politicians, the Brazilian Electoral Court ruled that television and radio comedians may not make fun of candidates in the coming national elections. The Argentine government declared war on its two largest independent media groups, Clarin and La Nación, which have been acid critics of president Cristina Fernandéz de Kirchner’s strong-armed rule. In Venezuela, where the homicide rate is soaring, the government reacted by getting a court to ban news media from publishing “violent, bloody, and grotesque images.” Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua have passed new media laws—all of them aimed at clipping the wings of privately owned news sources—and the call for “social control of media” is viral among lefty groups. (It was unanimously endorsed, for instance, by participants at an August confab in Argentina of regional leftist parties—which now govern 11 Latin American countries—called the São Paulo Forum.) “The threat to freedom is all around,” says Amaury de Souza, a Brazilian political scientist. “And it’s growing.”

The clampdown has the pundits and pols buzzing. To some, this is a relic of authoritarian culture dating from the time of military dictatorships, which between 1960 and 1990 kept many Latin nations in check with a boot and a gag. To others the habit dates to colonial times, when paternalistic monarchs ruled. No political party or ideology has a monopoly on the new authoritarianism; rank self-interest united Brazil’s politicians—from left, right, and center parties—in their effort to outlaw sendups by satirists that could make them look bad before millions of voters. And in Mexico, where drug lords are spreading terror and have killed 56 reporters since 2000, the latest threat is “narco-censorship,” in which drug cartels kill nosy reporters.

But it’s no surprise that the worst offenses have emerged in the most volatile flank of the region—in the Andean nations of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia—where the push by charismatic leaders like Hugo Chávez to reinvent their societies through “21st-century socialism” has produced economic dysfunction, hardship, and political strife. And where neo-despots are against a wall, they strike back in time-honored fashion—doctoring numbers, manufacturing applause, and crushing dissent. Populist Bolivian President Evo Morales has proposed a media law that calls for punishing news organizations that criticize candidates during an election year. The last time the Venezuelan government announced crime statistics was in 2004.

Meanwhile, the trouble in Argentina started in 2008, when Kirchner, looking to top up government coffers, slapped a 35 percent surtax on grain and food exports, which infuriated the country’s growers. The media took up the farmers’ cause and drew a swift response from the president, whose popularity is now wavering—just as she ramps up the dynastic plan to elect her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner, to succeed her in 2011 (just as she succeeded him in 2007). Ever since, she has spared no effort in trying to break up Clarin and its rival La Nación. This month, the row came to a boil when Kirchner ordered Argentina’s largest Internet service provider, Fibertel, to shut down on the claim that the parent company, Clarin, was violating its user license and building an illegal monopoly. Meanwhile, a million Internet users received notice they will have to find a new server. Then, on Aug. 27, in a clear move to muzzle dissent, she demanded that congress nationalize the country’s leading newsprint company, Papel Prensa, which is jointly owned by Clarin, La Nación, and a third paper.

That was not the first effort to spin the news in Buenos Aires. In 2007, with the economy faltering, Kirchner took control of the country’s statistics bureau, Indec, replacing its director and firing top staff. The move was seen as a thinly veiled attempt to cook the books and has since thrown a pall over Indec’s numbers. Officially, prices are rising in Argentina at the pace of 7 percent per year, while independent estimates put the number at twice that, with inflation heading to 20 to 30 percent over the next two years.

The spin is even more aggressive in Venezuela, where recession, spiraling prices, and the worst murder rate in the hemisphere (75 per 100,000 residents—three times the Brazilian homicide rate and nearly twice that of Colombia, a country still under siege by guerrilla insurgents) have pushed President Chávez’s approval ratings off a cliff. With congressional elections scheduled for late next month, the Venezuelan strongman has lashed out. Deploying the courts, the cops, and even loyalist mobs, he has muscled one independent media channel after another off the air. Those he cannot bully into silence, he buys. After hounding Guillermo Zuloaga, the director of the scrappy news channel Globovisión, into exile—“Why has he not been arrested!” the president publicly demanded—Chávez’s handlers picked a new manager and are now proceeding to purchase controlling shares in Globovisión in the name of the Bolivarian revolution.

Not all Latin Americans have been cowed into silence. Chile, Colombia, and Peru—all nations that have lived through brutal episodes of terrorism and censorship—are increasingly demanding transparency and democratic freedoms. On Monday, Argentina’s lower house denounced Kirchner’s move to shutter Fibertel as an assault on “democracy and the rule of law.” And even where authoritarian reflexes linger, the most vibrant democracies are fighting back—and winning. Last week, after a flood of writs and a jocular street protest by cranky Brazilian comedians, a supreme court judge suspended the gag order on campaign humor. The ruling: constitutional rights are no joke.

Jordan amends cyber crimes law after media outcry

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | ccarlstead

AFP | August 29, 2010

AMMAN — Jordan on Sunday approved a temporary law on cyber crimes after amending it to appease the fury of journalists who said the legislation was a means to control local news websites.

The law had initially allowed the authorities to raid and search offices from which websites are published and to access computers without prior approval from public prosecutors.

But under the new amendments approved by the government, searching such offices requires court permission and enough evidence that these places are used to commit cyber crimes, Information Minister Ali Ayed said.

Journalists have complained that one of the articles of the law banned sending or posting data on the Internet or any information system that involves defamation or contempt or slander, without defining such crimes.

“That article was removed because these crimes have been already tackled in other laws,” said a statement posted on local news websites, adding that “the amendments came in line with King Abdullah II’s directives.”

“Other changes removed all parts that could be used to affect press freedom and freedom of expression.”

The statement quoted Ayed as telling a group of journalists that the law “never targeted local news websites and that the amendments came to clarify things, remove any misunderstanding and make sure the law is implemented the right way.”

“The government has consulted several experts, including the National Centre for Human Rights and the Jordan Bar Association, before amending the law.”

International and local rights organisations had added their voices to journalists and opposition parties, including the Islamist movement, in harshly criticising the new law before its amendment.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had urged King Abdullah II to veto the law, saying it gave authorities “sweeping powers to restrict the flow of information and limit public debate.”

It’s not the Kremlin

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Josh Berglund

By A.S. | The Economist | August 25, 2010 

A.S. appears courtesy of Global Voices Online, an international community of bloggers

THIS summer Russians faced several state attempts to “filter” (selectively block) websites. And as in many other things, Russia has gone its own way with a slightly more complicated technique: regional filtering.

There are two ways to control the internet. You can influence the companies and bloggers who use the web, or you can muck with the architecture of the web itself to block or monitor traffic. China does both. Russia, so far, has leaned on websites and telecoms operators using its criminal code, and encouraged groups of like-minded citizens to nudge the online conversation in directions the Kremlin finds pleasing. Until now, few websites have been blocked altogether in Russia.

But this year three such cases were identified. In each, the site was blocked only within a certain region. On July 16th, the city court of Komsomolsk-on-Amur obliged Rosnet, a local internet provider, to ban YouTube and the Internet Archive, among other sites. The court was worried about far-right extremist material that can be found on the sites; it is the country’s first YouTube ban. The decision has not been enforced. For similar reasons in late July, a regional court in Ingushetia forced a local provider to block LiveJournal, Russia’s most popular blogging site. And in August in the Tula region, the state-controlled local telecoms operator temporarily blocked the website of Tulksiye Priyanki, an independent regional news portal.

In each case, the region used internet-protocol or “IP” blocking, a straightforward way of preventing anyone within a certain network — in this case those of the regional providers — from viewing content at specific address. This could be described as an inefficient method, since it can be sidestepped with a proxy server, which mimics a location outside of the network.

But regional filtering is in many ways more efficient than national filtering. First of all, it attracts less media attention and is easier to hide. Even if the filtering is exposed it’s easy to say the site was inaccessible due to technical reasons. Second, regional blocking affects the target group only.

In Ingushetia and Khabarovsk the prosecutor’s office requested the filter. In Khabarovsk, the provider exposed the court’s decision and appealed it. It is likely that the higher court will overrule the lower court’s decision. In Ingushetia, the block on LiveJournal lasted for 17 days; it was removed as soon as several influential online media outlets wrote about it. In Tula it was allegedly the governor of the region, irritated by the website’s criticism, who ordered the block; Tulksiye Prinanki had already mirrored its site at blogger.com.

This news is both discouraging and encouraging. It proves that there’s room for internet censorship wherever a political power is aligned with a network. At a national level, Russia prefers internet monitoring to internet filtering; at a local level, Russia’s regions may begin to better understand how to manipulate their own networks. But all three attempts were technically crude and quickly detected, and none survived much contact with sunlight. That’s something to be thankful for.

Yahoo! Declared Not Liable for Defamation in Argentina

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Steakpinball

On August 13, 2010, an Argentine Appellate Court overturned a 2008 ruling of a lower court that had found Yahoo! de Argentina SRL and Google Argentina  liable for defamation in the case of an Argentine entertainer, Virginia Da Cunha. Da Cunha is one of several Argentine celebrities who have been seeking money damages in relation to the companies’ alleged failure to block all third-party owned and controlled sexually-oriented Web sites that contain their name or images.

In issuing the 2-1 decision in favor of the companies, the Appellate Court concluded that the companies could be held liable for damages based on a defamation claim only if they were made aware of clearly illegal content and were negligent in removing it. The Appellate Court stated:

 “…this Court finds no liability can be held against Defendants (search engines) for injurious search results that appeared on the Internet before Defendants have received notice requesting the exclusion of said search results. The mere possibility that a (defendant) search engine produces search results from third party sites that yield offensive and scandalous information about an individual, which may cause injury or damage to that person’s image or reputation, does not by itself mean that said individual has a right to seek damages directly against the search engines.”

In response to the ruling, Bill Carvalho, Yahoo’s Regional General Counsel for Americas, issued the following statement:

“Yahoo! is happy with and encouraged by the Da Cunha ruling; we believe this will set precedence for similar pending cases in Argentina. Rulings in these cases and the preliminary orders associated with them seem to reflect the Argentine courts trying to develop their understanding of an issue created by the modern development of search engines. As they come to more fully understand the Internet and the roles of the various parties involved in these cases – from the search engines to the parties actually publishing the content objected to – we are confident that the courts will conclude that we neither control nor manage the content published by third parties and should not be held responsible or liable for their editorial choices on their own websites.

Yahoo! will continue to defend the important principles behind our position and pursuing these matters within the Argentine legal system. We believe a positive outcome for Yahoo! Argentina on the principles we are defending will also benefit Internet users throughout Argentina.

The ruling affected Yahoo!’s search engine in Argentina only and not the U.S. sites. The Argentine Appellate Court alluded to the importance and accessibility of information in a free and democratic society and that the Internet is but one important tool for Argentine society to be informed of different and diverse ideas. The Appellate Court concluded by stating:

 “Argentine Civil Law #26.032/05 has established that the search, receipt and exchange of diverse ideas from an Internet service, falls clearly within the constitutional guaranty of the freedom of expression”.

By Ernesto Luciano |General Counsel |Yahoo! Hispanic Americas

Google and Yahoo Win Appeal in Argentine Case

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Diegosaurius Rex

By Vinod Sreeharsha | New York Times | August 19, 2010

BUENOS AIRES — In a rare victory for Google and Yahoo Argentina, an appeals court has cleared the companies of defamation for including sex-related Web sites in their search results for an Argentine entertainer.

The appeals court overturned a lower-court ruling that had found the companies liable for defaming the entertainer, Virginia Da Cunha.

The lower-court decision last year had also ordered the companies to pay damages and remove all sites containing sexual, erotic and pornographic content that contained the name or image of Ms. Da Cunha from its results.

The 2-to-1 appeals court ruling, issued last week, said the firms could be held liable for defamation only if they were made aware of clearly illegal content and were negligent in removing it.

The Da Cunha case was the furthest along in the courts of at least 130 similar cases, dating back to 2006. Each one demands content removal. Plaintiffs have included a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Yesica Toscanini, and the soccer legend Diego Maradona, but are mostly entertainers and models.

Latin America is growing in importance to United States technology companies, particularly those dealing with user-generated content. Despite the victory, Google and Yahoo Argentina’s legal battles are not over. Argentine judges are not required to abide by the latest decision and one of Ms. Da Cunha’s lawyers, Gustavo Tanus, said he intended to appeal to the Argentine Supreme Court.

Most injunctions have been upheld on appeal and take effect until liability is decided. But more than four years later, just two cases have been decided, in what Argentine lawyer Pablo Crescimbeni calls an “abuse of the system.” The Maradona case was reversed.

Google has maintained that it is unable to comply with broad injunctions. Yahoo has taken a different approach, saying the only way to follow the order is to block all sites referencing each plaintiff. So a Yahoo Argentina user searching for Yesica Toscanini gets a nearly blank page citing the judicial order.

The issue of liability over third-party Internet content has long been debated in the United States and Europe. Congress has largely shielded content carriers in the United States over what third-party sites put up. Internet filtering takes place in at least 40 countries, according to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School.

Yet the Argentine cases are unusual, Internet legal experts say. “This is a unique situation in Argentina. I know of no other examples in which the search of an individual is completely blocked,” said Rob Faris of the center. He said China was the only other country requiring search engines to decide what was acceptable.

Ms. Da Cunha’s lawyers, Martin Leguizamon and Mr. Tanus, contend the two companies, by allowing third-party sex sites to mention their client’s name, are violating her privacy and producing “moral harm,” which they say is prohibited by Argentina’s constitution. They also argue that the search engines are violating the country’s copyright laws by allowing sites to display their client’s images without consent.

In a recent interview, Mr. Tanus said, “We are not these crazy Argentines who are against technology.”

Maria Baudino, Google’s Latin America counsel, said that most of the judicial orders against the company were “overly broad and would censor all content regarding an individual.” She argued that Google was a neutral platform and should not be held responsible for third-party content.

Bill Carvalho, Yahoo’s general counsel for Latin America, said that “it is not illegal in Argentina to have a person’s name next to a sexually related Web site or have any association with the Web site. That would be requiring search engines to decide what is defamatory.”

North Korea creates Twitter and YouTube presence

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Josh Berglund

By Clark Boyd | The World | August 17, 2010

It is common to use words like “reclusive” and “secretive” when writing about North Korea.

But last Thursday, the North Koreans created a Twitter account – @uriminzok, a shortened version of a Korean word that translates as “our people”.

It already has more than 4,500 followers.

The move to Twitter follows last month’s launch of a North Korean YouTube channel, which now hosts close to 80 videos.

“The North Koreans are technologically literate,” says Hazel Smith, a long-time North Korea researcher at Cranfield University in Britain.

Ms Smith says that the North Koreans have been investing heavily in information technology now for more than 20 years.

“They have a cadre of people who can use modern social networking sites. But the problem for them is the content,” she said.

On the North Korean YouTube channel, that content includes a lot of propaganda laced with bombastic rhetoric; the United States and South Korea are often called “warmongers”.

In a recent Twitter post, the North Koreans said the current administration in South Korea was “a prostitute” of the US.

“As far as content goes, there’s nothing new as far as I can tell,” says Sung-Yoon Lee, professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston.

Mr Lee says that the agency responsible for the videos and the tweets is a major arm of the country’s ruling communist party.

“They’ve been putting out stuff like this for years now,” said Mr Lee.

‘Government’s voice’

The irony is that the vast majority of North Korea’s 23 million people have no Internet access, and therefore cannot follow their own government’s social networking sites.

And even if they could follow, they would not be allowed to use social media to criticize the regime, says Gilles Lordet, chief editor of Reporters without Borders in Paris.

“There is absolutely no press freedom at all in North Korea, no independent media,” Mr Lordet said. “There is only the government, the voice of the regime.”

For now, North Korea’s online offerings are only in Korean.

But Professor Lee thinks that they might soon expand their offerings to include video clips and posts in English.

“The North Koreans already produce propaganda material in English, through the Korean Central News Agency,” he said. “They have the wherewithal to do it.”

He added: “It will just take them a little more time and effort.”

PRI’s The World is a co-production between the BBC World Service, WGBH Boston, and Public Radio International. It is heard on public radio stations across the US and on-line at theworld.org.

Internet is Latest Battleground in Thailand’s Heated Political Landscape

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | SpecialKRB

By Ron Corben | Voice of America | August 11, 2010

The Internet is the latest battleground in Thailand’s stormy political climate as the government attempts to shut down Web sites critical of it and the monarchy. The government is using tough laws to silence online criticism, but net users are finding ways to be heard.

During months of political protests earlier this year, the Thai government shut down thousands of Web sites it said fanned the protests or criticized the royal family.

May protests

The protests, which left 90 people dead and more than 1,400 injured, ended on May 19 when the army dispersed the crowds.

But the battle over the Internet continues.

Internet crackdown

Using the Computer Crimes Act and an emergency decree, the government shuts sites it thinks support the red-shirt protest movement. Media rights groups say more than 50,000 Web sites have been closed.

Chiranuch Premchaiporn is a director with Prachatai.com, an on-line news site the government shut down in April. A big concern for the government apparently was the site’s discussion boards.

She says Prachatai shut the discussion board in July. Chiranuch faces charges under the Computer Crimes Act and if convicted could go to jail.

“Even I believe in the freedom of expression or free speech but I understand some limitation and we also set up a kind of system to moderate some content that can be considered violate the rights of the people or violate the law,” Chiranuch said.

Government position

Government spokesman Panitan Wattanaygorn defends the Internet censorship policy.

“The situation under the emergency decree is very different,” said Panitan. “On one hand we still keep the freedom of the media. But on the other hand we do look into certain messages that create tension, confrontation and push people to confront among one another and that activity is monitored.”

A decade ago, it was easier for the government to control the media. TV and radio have long been state-controlled.

And newspapers faced attacks during Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s administration earlier in this decade.

Tough to control

Chris Baker, an author and political analyst on Thailand, says new technologies are harder to control.

“In the past the government was able to control all broadcast media very closely and generally could influence the press,” Baker said. “But that situation has totally changed with cable and satellite TV spinning out of control, community radio and the whole Internet as well.”

Prachatai.com is an example of that. Pinpaka Ngamson, an editor for the site, says the government could only shut it temporarily.

“Now it’s not difficult for us to work anymore, we know how to cope with this kind of order from the government,” said Pinpaka. “We just change our server and use another URL [Uniform Resource Locator] and go on with our work.”

Media plea

Thai media commentators have called on the government to rethink on-line censorship. They say it reinforces international opinion that Thailand’s media is increasingly less free.

Supinya Klanarong, a media activist, says the Computer Crimes Act is applied too broadly beyond insults against the royal family. Supinya says more media restrictions have emerged since the anti-government protests ended in May.

“It means a general opposition Web site related to the red-shirt movement or the critics of the government are also being blocked as concern for national security, too,” Supinya said. “So it’s not only about the issue related to les majeste but is also about political Web site in general, especially the dissident point of and the opposition.”

Some of the concerns appear to have been heard.

Improvements

Government leaders say they hope to improve draft legislation on the Internet laws.

Panitan, the government spokesman, says the there is a need to balance security and Internet freedom.

“On the one hand we regulate these activities in such a way that it’s not going to harm our national interests,” Panitan added. “Specific activities may not be allowed to be in those Web sites. But on the other hand we want to keep other communications open.”

But media groups such as the Southeast Asian Press Alliance say the government has been intimidating Web users who engage in “sensitive political discussion”. The group warns that shutting down Web sites may backfire and lead to the radicalization of those who post political comments on-line.

Court orders YouTube and four other sites blocked over “extremist” content

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Howard Lifshitz

Reporters Sans Frontieres | July 30, 2010

Reporters Without Borders condemns the draconian and disproportionate ruling issued by judge Anna Eisenberg in the Russian far-east city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur on 16 July ordering local Internet Service Provider RA-RTS Rosnet to block access to video-sharing website YouTube and four other websites from 3 August onwards.

YouTube is to be blocked because of a nationalist video called “Russia for the Russians,” which is on a list of extremist content banned by the justice ministry. The other four sites – three online libraries (Lib.rus.ec, Thelib.ru and Zhurnal.ru) and Web.archives.org, which keeps copies of old or suppressed web pages – are to be blocked for having copies of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

“This unilateral decision, blocking entire websites instead of targeting the offending web pages, violates freedom of information and could affect all of Russia’s Internet users,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Russia’s laws on extremism are much criticised because they are used arbitrarily and because they can have such dire consequences as the blocking of independent websites.”

The press freedom organisation added: “There are other mechanisms, envisaged in YouTube’s user conditions, for obtaining the withdrawal of videos that pose a problem. Why did the prosecutor take this case directly to court? Why didn’t he just contact YouTube’s moderators or those in charge of the online libraries to request withdrawal of the offending content?”

The head of the Russian ISP, Alexandre Ermakov, said he would appeal against the ruling and would not execute it because, in his view, he did not have the right to restrict access to information in the absence of any violation of the user conditions of the service offered. He added that he proposed several ways for filtering out access to the offending content, without blocking the entire domain name, but the court ignored him.

Describing the ruling as “contrary to the constitution,” Google said the content of the “Russia for the Russians” video could have been reported to the YouTube moderator as a violation of the user conditions.

Reporters Without Borders added Russia to its “Countries under surveillance” list in the March 2010 update of its “Enemies of the Internet” report (http://en.rsf.org/surveillance-russia,36671.html). The Internet became Russia’s freest medium for sharing information after the Kremlin brought the broadcast media under control at the start of the Putin era.

But the Internet’s independence is being threatened by arrests and prosecutions of bloggers and by the blocking of independent websites on the grounds of “extremist” content. The authorities are also themselves now using the Internet extensively for propaganda purposes.

YouTube has a lot of content, including the Russian president’s TV station.