Censorship

It’s Time to Curtail the Censorship Industry Cartel

Last month INHOPE, a global trade association of child abuse reporting hotlines, rejected a joint call from Prostasia Foundation, the National Coalition Against Censorship, Article 19, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, that its members should stop treating cartoons as if they were images of child sexual abuse. As our joint letter pointed out, INHOPE's conflation of offensive artwork with actual abuse images has resulted in the misdirection of police resources against artists and fans... more

Russia Says It Has Successfully Tested a Country-Wide Alternative to the Global Internet

Russia's Ministry of Communications has announced that it has successfully tested a country-wide alternative to the global Internet and that general users did not notice any changes. more

Internet Reporting Hotlines Are Censoring Art as Child Sexual Abuse

This week United States Attorney-General William Barr cited the need to address child exploitation as one of the factors motivating a mooted review of law called CDA 230, which provides that Internet companies aren't responsible for what their users say or do online. There are many dimensions to the problem of child exploitation, ranging from inappropriate comments on Instagram photos to child grooming on Fortnite... more

Internet Governance and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Part 1: Foundations

One could think that the authors of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) -- adopted in 1948 -- had the Internet in mind when they declared in Article 19: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." All human beings are entitled to certain rights, and it makes no difference if they choose to exercise them in a town square or an Internet chatroom. more

Iran Almost Completely Shuts Off Internet Access Across the Country Amid Protests Over Fuel Prices

Iran has almost entirely shut down internet access across the country amid protests over an increase in fuel prices. more

China to Require Face Scan for Internet Access and New Phone Numbers Starting December

Chinese citizens will be required to let telecommunications carriers to scan their faces in order to sign up for internet access or to get a new phone number. more

Encryption and Child Sexual Abuse Prevention

Just over one week ago, the New York Times published a major investigation into the intractable problem of illegal sexual images of minors being exchanged online. Despite flaws in the story and its companion pieces, the main take-away that Internet companies have failed to adequately address the problem has resonated widely. Prostasia Foundation too has been critical of some of the Internet platforms called out in the article. But at the same time, we need to be realistic about how much responsibility we can (or should) place on tech firms to solve this problem. more

URS Is a Bad Fit for .ORG, Says EFF

The online digital rights group, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Tuesday published a post warning ICANN's latest move requiring the use of Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) for .org domain names is a "bad fit." more

Other Countries Beginning to Adopt China’s Unique Approach to an Isolated Internet Structure

While in most developed nations, foreign telecoms are interconnected with local and other international Internet exchanges, in China, there are no foreign carriers detected within china's borders. more

Domestic Internet of Russia, Iran Far Deeper Kind of Fragmentation, More Physical Than Seen Before

The internet fragmentation practiced by various countries have, for the most part, been alternations to the information flows on top of the internet architecture, not the architecture itself. China, for instance, still relies on the global DNS and is yet to unplug from major internet exchange points. more

A Closer Look at the “Sovereign Runet” Law

In December 2018, a bill on the "stable operation" of the Russian segment of the Internet was introduced and got the title "Sovereign Runet" in mass media and among the public. It was adopted after 5 months later, despite doubts about the technical feasibility of its implementation. The law is very ambitious in its intent to simultaneously control Internet traffic and protect Runet from some external threats, but legislators still have no idea how it would actually work. more

Vladimir Putin Signs ‘Sovereign Internet’ Law to Further Tighten Government Control of the Internet

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed an "internet sovereignty" bill into law that further expands government's control of the Internet. more

A Case for Regulating Social Media Platforms

There are some who see the regulation of social media platforms as an attack on the open internet and free speech and argue that the way to protect that is to let those platforms continue to self-regulate. While it is true that the open internet is the product of the same freedom to innovate that the platforms have sprung from, it is equally the product of the cooperative, multi-stakeholder organisations where common policy and norms are agreed. more

Indian Government Proposes Vast New Powers to Suppress Internet Content

The Indian government has proposed a bill to suppress online content in the country, increase control over messaging and trace messages to their origin. more

Cuba Censors SMS Messages ... for Now

What could the Cuban government do with Russia-style access to Facebook data? What sorts of fake news could they create and circulate on YouTube and Pinterest? What can be done to control the dark side of the Cuban Internet? Cuba is about to hold a referendum on a proposed constitution that the government supports and Eduardo Sanchez posted a test showing that SMS messages with anti-referendum terms. more