tagged w/ Internet Freedom
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Why You Should Care: SOPA (E1)
http://youtu.be/Jt2Aag32jYg
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PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites; they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.” The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year. That’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.
This piece includes a video about SOPA.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/stop-sopa-protect-your-online-rights/PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is... more
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Politicians are letting foreign-owned companies covertly gather information about voters.
The websites of Barry O'Farrell, Kristina Keneally, Tony Abbott and the Greens plant spying devices on visitors' computers, which can track them as they browse the internet.
Information gathered about a user's online behaviour can be used to build detailed profiles to help target advertisements - a practice many believe is a threat to privacy.
Online tracking is done mainly by cookies (text files) and beacons (invisible images).
READ MORE: http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2010/11/cookie-monsters-browser-beware-as.htmlPoliticians are letting foreign-owned companies covertly gather information about... more
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Is the Internet Blacklist already being enforced via web browsers? Microsoft's Internet Explorer recommended that visitors should not access Activist Post today, claiming the site contains threats to outside computers. First, we want to assure all of our visitors that this is blatantly FALSE. Our site does not contain any viruses, malware, or data-harvesting capabilities. We have a voluntary and confidential sign-up mechanism for our free weekly newsletter, which apparently now falls under the category of illegal data mining according to Microsoft.
Read More: http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2010/11/independent-news-site-fraudulently.htmlIs the Internet Blacklist already being enforced via web browsers? Microsoft's... more
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There's dumb - and then there's really dumb, predicated on people who simply don't understand what they're doing, and should be barred from authoring legislation until they consult with some people who do know what they're doing.There's dumb - and then there's really dumb, predicated on people who simply... more
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[UPDATE: The interview is live! Head over here to read Adrian's responses to your questions!]
Last week, Mariana Van Zeller's "The OxyContin Express" kicked off our third season of Vanguard. Along with the premiere, Mariana agreed to be interviewed by fans of the show, aspiring journalists, and anyone else in the Current community with a burning question. We collected the questions via blog comments and Twitter, and I posted the full interview with Mariana here on the Current.com blog.
In "Cuba: Waiting for a Revolution" Adrian Baschuk travels to Cuba to examine the potential of a counter-revolution against a leadership that has been in power for 50 years. He's agreed to be interviewed in the same fashion as Mariana, which means we need questions from you!
Here are a few things to help get the "question asking" juices flowing:
Watch "Cuba: Waiting for a Revolution":
Read Adrian's producer's notes on the Vanguard blog:
>> Visions of Havana: Photographer Brayan Collazo in Cuba
>> Jorge Moreno on being Cuban-American and seeing the real Cuba
>> Freedom -- Adrian contrasts Internet freedom in the USA vs. Cuba.
Starting today, we're opening up questions for Adrian. Here's how it works:
Tune in for "Cuba: Waiting for a Revolution"
Ask a question: you can post your question as a comment below, or as a tweet @current.
Come back to the Current.com Blog next week to see the full Q&A.
[UPDATE: The interview is live! Head over here to read Adrian's responses to your... more
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Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on internet freedom in which she argued that it was a critical part of US foreign policy. She called out a few countries by name for restricting their citizens' access the information online. China was one of them. Unsurprisingly, today China expressed its unhappiness with Mrs. Clinton's speech...
"...calling on the United States government “to respect the truth and to stop using the so-called Internet freedom question to level baseless accusations.”
Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a written statement posted Friday afternoon on the ministry’s Web site that the criticism leveled by Mrs. Clinton on Thursday was “harmful to Sino-American relations.”
“The Chinese Internet is open,” he said.
Here's video of Mrs. Clinton's speech from yesterday.
The speech gives a new dimension to China's fight with Google. China has been making it out to be a business-only spat, but Clinton seems to have made it not just China vs. Google but China vs. US foreign policy.
Interestingly though, Joshua Keating at FP Passport thinks China's response was overblown and made Clinton look like she was being harder on China than she was:
It strikes me that Beijing could have issued a statement along the lines of, "Secretary Clinton is right to say that the United States and China have different views on this issue. We welcome her invitation to dialog but ask that the United States respect the sovereignty of our electronic space and unique political context. We are actively engaged in cracking down on criminals and extremists who take refuge in cyberspace."
Acting as if Clinton's temperate remarks amounted to a thrown gauntlet makes it appear to the outside world that they have something to be ashamed of. It doesn't seem like the response of a secure superpower.
If China is treating Clinton's speech like a 'thrown gauntlet', what will be the next step for the US? The Obama Administration up to now has been very reserved in its criticisms of China. Will criticism increase?
Recently on the Current News Blog:
- How people are helping Haiti
- Supreme Court opens doors to corporate money
- China to start watching texts
- Haiti: Challenges to come
- Haiti: Following along in the newsYesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on internet freedom in... more
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This video that explains why discrimination on the Internet is a problem and will continue to be as long as net neutrality rules are not enforced.This video that explains why discrimination on the Internet is a problem and will... more
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SavetheInternet.com Coalition is more than a million people who have banded together with thousands of non-profit organizations, businesses and bloggers to protect Internet freedom.
The Coalition believes that the Internet is a crucial engine for economic growth and free speech. They are working together to urge Congress to preserve Network Neutrality, the First Amendment of the Internet, which ensures that the Internet remains open to new ideas, innovation and progress.
SavetheInternet.com Coalition is more than a million people who have banded together... more
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