Stories from August, 2010
Iran: Jailed blogger Goudarzi receives NPC award
The National Press Club has announced the international recipient of the 2010 John Aubuchon Freedom of the Press Award is Iranian blogger Kouhyar Goudarzi, who is being held in Tehran's...
Iran: Blogger May Face Charge of ‘Waging War Against God’
There is a growing concern that Shiva Nazar Ahari, a jailed human rights activist, blogger, and editor of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters website in Iran, may be charged...
Azerbaijan: Supreme Court Upholds Bloggers’ Conviction
On 19 August, the Azerbaijani Supreme Court considered the case of imprisoned bloggers and youth activists Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade. In its decision, the Court upheld the lower courts' rulings, which convicted Milli and Hajizade of hooliganism and sentenced them to two and a half years and two years of imprisonment respectively. The two were arrested on 8 July 2009 after appealing to police as victims of an assault following an incident in which they were attacked in a restaurant.
Our Guide “Mirroring a Censored WordPress Blog” is now available in Arabic
This guide is for bloggers with self-hosted* WordPress blogs who believe their sites may be blocked by government filters. Its goal is to help bloggers use a mirror site to make censored content available to readers despite these filters. It contains step-by-step instructions for setting up a mirror for an original (”source”) WordPress blog.
A First Glimpse at the Internet Filtering in Tunisia
We learned that the censorship imposed illegally on hundreds of Tunisian blogs and websites, both Tunisians and foreigners, was “shut off” temporarily for few hours on Monday, August 16, 2010....
Online dictatorship in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Since the post-presidential election of 2009, the Islamic republic of Iran has intensified its crackdown on media including bloggers and even micro-blogging environments like Facebook and twitter. Although the crackdown...
Spaniard bloggers react to the Google-Verizon proposed policy
Spaniard bloggers have been very busy discussing and arguing about the recent Google-Verizon proposed policy for an open Internet. Most of them are against it because they consider it a...
Iran: One of Mayor's sites was filtered
According to reformist Kalmeh, and several bloggers, Iranian authorities filtered “Khbargozarieh Shar” (means city's news agency). This site belongs to Tehran's Mayor and no information about the reasons for this...
Iran: Hamed Saber is out of jail
Aftab News reported on 9th of August that Iranian photo-blogger, Hamed Saber, was released on bail.
Facebook Responds to Activists
I’ve been writing about Facebook woes for nearly four months, so imagine my surprise yesterday when I received an e-mail from a Facebook staffer in response to my blog posts. Since I don’t have said staffer’s express permission to use his name or post his e-mail in its entirety, I will instead post the most remarkable excerpts with my own notes.
Russia: Anothr Kemerovo Blogger Sued For Libelling
A criminal case has been started against Kemerovo-based Alexander Sorokin (aka LJ-user commentator40), Echo Moskvy reported. Sorokin is accused of libel against Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleev for the post in which he compares Russian regional governors to Latin American dictators. It is the second loud case of blogger prosecution in this region in 2010.
China: ISP level Gmail phishing
In the past few days, there are many reports from Chinese internet users saying that when they try to access gmail account, they are redirected to a url: http://124.117.227.201/web/gmail/ and...
China: Anti three-vulgarity campaign
Recently Beijing launched a new anti-vulgarity campaign for sanitizing the Internet. On August 3, China Daily and people.com.cn jointly organized a seminar on “boycotting banality, kitsch and debased culture, improving...
Iran: Unifying Filtering
Iranian authorities announced [fa] that filtering policy will be unified in country. According to the Islamic Republic's authorities an Iranian company, whose name was not announced, has won the contract...
Skype has launched its Middle East headquarters
On June 28, 2010 Skype announced on its blog the opening of the company's first headquarters in the Middle East and Africa which will be located in Manama, Bahrain's capital....
Iran: A blogger among hunger strikers
Kouhyar Goodarzi, human rights activist and blogger, is one of 17 Iranian political prisoners who started their hunger strike at the end of July to protest against the poor prison...
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...
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.
