A Possible Death Sentence For Three Tweets. As dawn rose over Saudi Arabia on Feb. 4, the Muslim holiday marking the prophet Muhammad’s birthday, a 23-year-old business administration graduate named Hamza Kashgari posted three tweets in which he imagined himself speaking directly with the founder of Islam. "On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you've always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you," read his first tweet, translated here from the original Arabic. "I shall not pray for you. " One of Mr. Kashgari’s friends noticed the tweets when he woke up. As he rushed off to work, he said to himself, “I’m afraid for him,” he recalls. By the time the friend ended his shift, he switched on his phone to find thousands of Twitter users calling for Kashgari's execution.
Furious at what they saw as insulting the prophet Mohammad, critics also created a Facebook page called: “The Saudi people want the execution of Hamza Kashgari.” Mr. China Blocks Tiananmen Talk On Crackdown Anniversary. China Cracks Down on Web Critics. Bill C-11 And Disgruntled Canadians. A reporter's laptop shows the Wikipedia blacked out opening page.When news of the threat Bill C-11 potentially poses broke nearly three weeks ago, the majority of Canadian observers took a hard stance against this Canadian SOPA-like anti-piracy legislation. Comments from our Bill C-11 blog were unequivocally opposed to this bill passing through the House of Commons. Tweets responding the the blog echoed that same sentiment. And the poll placed on our SOPA topic page saw an astounding 94 per cent vote against online piracy regulations. But it's not enough to simply draw a line in the sand and choose a side.
The 'Stop Bill C-11: Fight Harper's proposed Copyright Act - Defend Your Data' Facebook page is encouraging followers to contact their local MPs and voice their displeasure. One follower commented on the page, stating she "just got a reply from the NDP leader, regarding my letter of concern about C-11.
The Right Click will be keeping a close eye on this burgeoning national issue. Death for 140 characters? Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: Pity Hamza Kashgari, the foolhardy Saudi blogger, now threatened with apostasy and death for his imprudent tweets. To mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, the 23-year-old journalist posted a few comments. They included the confession: “I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.”
The response was immediate and hostile. Saudi imams took the Internet en masse to call for his execution for apostasy. There were apparently 30,000 tweets in 24 hours, most condeming the young man. Surprisingly, the Kingdom’s clerics have been early adopters of Twitter, despite warnings from the Grand Mufti cyberspace was full of lies. As Faisal J. Twitter, the real-time information network which is partly owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz, has grown enormously in popularity in the past few months. Access Denied Map. Digital Rights Management.
Censorship in History. Syria reportedly bans iPhone. Posted at 05:13 PM ET, 12/02/2011 Dec 02, 2011 10:13 PM EST TheWashingtonPost Syria has banned the iPhone in an attempt to stop the constant flow of images and video taken by citizens of the anti-government protests and shared online, the BBC reports. In this citizen journalism image made on a mobile phone, anti-government protesters shout slogans as they protest in Homs province, Syria, Sept. 29, 2011. (AP) The Next Web blog reports that activists are being served with notices from the customs department of the Syrian finance ministry.
An alleged example of that customs document, posted on Lebanese Web site el-Nashra, states that authorities will confiscate any iPhones that are found and prosecute the owners. The reported iPhone ban comes as the United Nations’ human rights chief called on the international community Friday to protect Syrian civilians. Read more stories from around the world: With visit, U.S. extends a wary hand to Burma Al-Qaeda claims it is holding American.
Searches. Anti-censorship Organizations. Obama Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA. White House bypasses Senate to ink agreement that could allow Chinese companies to demand ISPs remove web content in US with no legal oversight Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Thursday, January 26, 2012 Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization. A d v e r t i s e m e n t Print this page. Why Nevada Is A Huge Victory For Freedom. ACTA = Global Internet Censorship. The American Dream January 28, 2012 Global Internet censorship is here. SOPA and PIPA have been stopped (at least for now) in the United States, but a treaty known as ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is far worse than either of them.
ACTA was quietly signed by Barack Obama back on October 1st, 2011 and most Americans have never even heard of it. But it could mean the end of the Internet as we know it. This new treaty gives foreign governments and copyright owners incredibly broad powers. If you are alleged to have violated a copyright, your website can be shut down without a trial and police may even show up at your door to take you to prison. It doesn’t even have to be someone in the United States that is accusing you. So how come the U.S. Of course it does. But Barack Obama has gotten around this by calling ACTA an “executive agreement”, which is a load of crap.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of nonsense we are getting out of Obama on a regular basis now. Yes, seriously. Could SOPA Be Coming to Canada? After widespread online protests that saw several sites including Wikipedia go dark, the U.S. House of Representatives effectively killed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) last week. But the spirit of SOPA lives on in a bill before the Canadian Parliament, according to at least one law professor. Michael Geist, who specializes in Internet and ecommerce law at the University of Ottawa, says that Bill C-11, currently under review in Canada's House of Commons, could bring SOPA-like copyright law to the country. Bill C-11, titled the Copyright Modernization Act, aims to replace the country's current copyright law with something more compatible with the days of broadband. Geist says it goes further than that. Citing a document that appears to be a set of proposed amendments to the legislation from a music-industry representative, Geist makes the case that the same lobbying groups that backed SOPA are laying the groundwork for SOPA-like rules in Bill C-11.
Are you concerned about Bill C-11?