Stories from August, 2010
Russia: The First Case of YouTube Ban
On July 16, 2010, Komsomolsk-on-Amur city court issued a decision requested by the city prosecutor. The decision requires a local Internet provider “Rosnet” to block IP-addresses of five websites: lib.rus (the judge meant lib.rus.ec, a Russian Internet library), thelib.ru, www.zhurnal.ru, web.archive.org, and… youtube.com. The court believes those websites host extremist content (several online copies of “Mein Kampf” and a video “Russia for Russians” that accompanied a skinhead-related song uploaded by a user from Serbia) while the provider was accused of “not blocking them.
Blackberry face growing pressure in the Gulf and India over encryption code
The United Arab Emirates’ Telecommunications Regulation Authority (TRA) and The Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) announced, respectively on August 1st 2010 and on August 5th, 2010, that they will block some functions of the Blackberry due to non-compliance with the regulatory requirements in both countries.
Blocking of Wikipedia reported in Iran
According to news published in English and Persian on July 25, the Wikipedia free encyclopedia website was blocked in Iran and could not be accessed. Users tryng to acess the website are having this blockpage stating “By refering to the law concerning computer related misdeeds (crimes) access to this site...
USA: Wikileaks representative detained
Jacob Appelbaum, a representative of Wikileaks, has been detained for 3 hours by US agents at the borders after returning from Holland trip. Recently Wikileaks published more than 90,000 leaked classified U.S. military documents. These documents reportedly reveal hidden details of the Afghanistan war.
