Stories from June, 2009
Egypt: Police Asks For Information about visitors of ‘Political Websites’
After detaining more than 100 blogger in 2008 alone, Egypt is now using a new technique in controlling the internet freedom, as police officers asked an internet café owner to spy on his customers.
Global Voices Advocacy Wins Zemanta Blog Contest
Global Voices Advocacy won first prize in Zemanta's Blogging for a Cause competition today. More than 60 different websites were nominated, and the top 5 to receive the most votes from bloggers have each won $1200. Thanks for all the support!!
Caste Based Communities on Orkut Mirror India's Splintered Society
I have written before about Shiv Sena's militant approach towards Orkut communities critical of the party, its leader Bal Thakeray, or its Hindutva ideology. Caste-based communities on Orkut are another disturbing example of online communities mirroring the splintered nature of Indian society.
China: Green dam PC filtering
According to Wall Street Journal (June 8, 2009), the Chinese government has required international PC makers to equip their PC shipped to China with filter software from July 1 onward. The new software, known as ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’, would link PCs with an updated database of banned sites and block...
Hostages of Realpolitik: EU Wouldn’t Notice New Belarusan Prisoners of Conscience
A video is now being circulated by bloggers on the Internet in order to attract attention to the fate of Belarusan prisoner of conscience Mikalaj Autuchovic who is dying in custody. It is the EU approach to Belarusan regime that that may silence him for good. Mikalaj Autuchovic, Jury Lavonau...
Tanzanian blogger faces jail term over manipulated photographic images
The Nairobi Chronicle reports that a Tanzanian blogger faces jail after publishing manipulated photographic images depicting Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete engaging in lewd sex acts. According to Habari Leo , a Tanzanian newspaper[sw] the country’s police are seeking help from Interpol in tracing the owners and publishers of the blog....
China: Chinese Internet Maintenance Day
On 2nd of June, a number of overseas websites including twitter, flickr and youtube have been blocked. Today, on 3rd of June, a large number of local websites, including Fanfou (Chinese version of twitter) and VeryCD (user generated resource sharing website), have put up system maintenance notices stating that the...
Twitter, Flickr, Bing, etc. blocked in China
With the 20th Anniversary of June 4 approaching, netizens reported that a number of social networking and peer to peer communication websites have been blocked in China, including Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Youtube, Blogspot etc. On Herdict, a censorship-tracking website, there are reports from all over China on the blocking of...
