Censorship

Egypt’s Internet Blocked - I Call on My Friend Tarek Kamel to Unblock It and Join His People

Internet all over Egypt has been blocked in an unprecedented revolt. I call on my friend Tarek Kamel, Egypt's Minister of Telecommunication, to overturn this oppressive decision and to unblock the Internet in all Egypt immediately and to join his people in their peaceful revolt. I have known Tarek Kamel for more than a decade and long before he became minister back in the days when he used to say he had no authority and that the decisions were in the hands of his boss and that he was a mere decision-less adviser to then Minister of Telecommunication, Mr. Nazif.

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts for 2010

Looking back at 2010, here is the list of top ten most popular news, blogs, and industry news on CircleID in 2010 based on the overall readership of the posts (total views as of Jan 1, 2011). Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership and best wishes to the entire community for 2011. Happy New Year!

Internet Governance: Leading by Example

On CircleID Jeremy Malcolm blogged in "Wikileaks and the Gaps in Internet Governance" that "For the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC), this highlights the need for cross-border Internet governance issues to be made subject to a due process of law, informed by sound political frameworks, including those of human rights." A reaction, in which a network of the willing is suggested.

Wikileaks and the Gaps in Internet Governance

The recent publication of leaked United States diplomatic cables by Wikileaks has produced an extremist reaction by some governments, provoking them and compliant large corporations to strike out at the organisation's Web site, its financial base, and the person of its founder, Julian Assange. For the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC), this highlights the need for cross-border Internet governance issues to be made subject to a due process of law, informed by sound political frameworks, including those of human rights.

Open Internet and Democratic Principles Under Attack

It is somewhat ironic that, several years ago now, Rupert Murdoch (while hinting at China) said something along the lines of the new media constituting a threat to totalitarian regimes, and that these regimes would have to open up and democratise. At that time the entire the western world, led by America (perhaps quietly), applauded his statement. ... However, now that those western leaders are being confronted with exactly the same issues, and are seeing for themselves the enormous democratic benefits of the Internet, they are behaving in a most authoritarian way.

Wikileaks, Anonymous Hackers, and an Excuse for the UN

Vigilantism, in cyberspace or a New York subway, gets rejected in the main because more than just one vigilante results in an unlovely chaos. What the Anonymous cyber-vigilantes - those meting out "payback" for commercial decisions about Wikileaks - don't seem to realize is that chaos begets reaction, and in this case the victim may be the Internet itself.

U.S. Uses Domain Names As New Way to Regulate the Net

Governments have long sought ways to regulate Internet activity, whether for the purposes of taxation, content regulation, or the application of national laws. Effective regulatory measures have often proven elusive, however, since, unlike the Internet, national laws typically end at the border. Earlier this month, the United States began to move aggressively toward a new way of confronting the Internet's jurisdictional limitations - the domain name system.

Does the First Amendment Forbid Spam Filtering?

A friend of mine wrote to ask: "The Supreme Court overturned the Jaynes conviction on First Amendment grounds, yes? I'm wondering what that could mean from the spam filtering perspective." Spam filters, and in particular DNS blacklists are intended to prevent e-mail from being delivered. Doesn't the First Amendment make it illegal to block speech? The short answer is no, but of course it's slightly more complicated than that in practice.

Violet Blue on .XXX

We seem to hear quite a bit from ICM about their .xxx TLD proposal. People who might be interested in the view from the porn community might be interested in Violet Blue's article on the proposal. As you might expect, she is against and sees no real support from the porn world. She does not consider 153K defensive domain registrations as proof of demand.

Google.cn Added ICP License Number on Monday

Beijing News is reporting (in Chinese) that one of their reporters noticed on Monday that the Google.cn landing page has added an ICP license number dated 2010. The license number had not been there before. ... The report did not clarify whether the addition of the ICP license means that the Chinese authorities have renewed Google.cn's ICP license...