As of midnight, Wikipedia is shut down for 24 hours, and hundreds of other popular websites have gone dark right along with it. They are standing together in protest of two controversial pieces of legislation that threaten Internet security and undermine the freedom of speech all in an effort to crack down on online “piracy” — the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Hollywood, the music industry, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have gone to bat on behalf of the proposed laws on the grounds that they will help protect …
Would you be outraged if the Department of Justice shut down The Foundry without any warning and blocked access for more than a year? That’s exactly what happened to a hip-hop blog called Dajaz1.com, which was falsely accused of criminal copyright infringement. The blog posted music from artists promoting their work. But federal authorities viewed it differently. They seized the domain name, then shared virtually no information with its owner for more than year. Only recently did they quietly drop the case. The government’s handling of this hip-hop blog is …
China has the dubious distinction of being one of the most controlled information environments in the world. Yet even China’s army of censors can at times have trouble staying on top of the vast sea of communication that flows through the Internet. The most recent challenge to government control is microblogging sites like Twitter, which produce a prodigious volume of output. Twitter itself is, of course, outlawed by the Chinese government, which created a number of internal Internet services, like the popular Weibo microblogging service. Ironically, that has now proven difficult …
As governments in the Middle East struggle to come to grips with the surging demands for freedom of expression among their populations, media across the spectrum are coming under attack. Repressive regimes do not discriminate between old media and new. Sometimes the threat does not originate from a government but from counterrevolutionary forces operating with the tacit blessing of officials who turn a blind eye. Reporters without Borders is doing yeoman’s work in day-to-day reporting of these human rights violations. For the U.S. government and for civil society, the important …
The ongoing cyber-crackdown in China, as censors now prevent searches regarding the health of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, is a reminder that the Internet is seen by Beijing as a double-edged sword. By allowing the flow of information, the Internet poses challenges to Chinese authorities, not only in terms of internal messaging and dissent but also as a source of foreign influence that could affect the perceptions of Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy. Yet China cannot afford to reject the Internet, given its multiple applications to daily modern life, …
Which country has the most Internet users? No, it is not the United States, as cyber connected as we are in this country. The correct answer is China, with 446 million users by the end of 2010, according to “Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media,” recently published by Freedom House. At the same time, China also has the highest number of imprisoned cyber dissidents of any country in the world and one of the most restrictive Internet environments, “characterized by a sophisticated, multilayered control …
It’s a hard rain that’s been a-fallin’ on Bob Dylan from some blustery climes. This is because the 69-year-old folk-rock icon supposedly broke the sellout meter with a Chinese concert debut in which he performed songs approved in advance by the Communist regime. Not that it’s Dylan’s job to stand up to dictators, tyrants and thugs — whether visiting their countries or hosting them at home and, say, the United Nations. Last time we looked, that was President Obama’s gig. Writing this week on Chinese authorities’ most severe crackdown on …
A Florida TV reporter this weekend quickly learned that a journalist’s job is not to dig for facts and a beach is no place for a shovel — at least not in the eyes of government officials. Dan Thomas, a reporter at the local ABC affiliate in Pensacola, Fla., took a shovel to the Gulf Island National Seashore to investigate just why BP workers can’t dig more than six inches in the sand to look for oil. Park officials promptly stopped him. “We had come out here to the National …
Palm Beach State College activities director (and Michael Moore Facebook fan) Olivia Morris-Ford is on camera shutting down a Young Americans for Freedom booth during the school’s rush week earlier this month. The reason? The students were handing out Heritage research at a student event. Specifically, it looks like the school’s administrators were allergic to Heritage Fact Sheet #72, titled “The Obama Tax Hikes: Killing Job Creation.” Who would have thought that free speech could be so easily snuffed out on an American college campus? One would think The Heritage …
Google just announced that its Internet licensed was renewed by the Chinese government. Google originally automatically redirected google.cn users to their Hong Kong site, google.com.hk. Now, China is forcing users to click on the link for Google Hong Kong (or almost anywhere on the page) on the google.cn page. Google did enough technical maneuvering to get what it wanted: a renewed license. Google gets to tell the good news story that it is still in China and that it doesn’t censor. The bad news is that mainland Chinese people will …
