Net Freedom
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Domain registrar Go Daddy has changed its stance on recently proposed legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) from “not supporting” to full on opposition, according to a statement from the company today. “We have observed a spike in domain name transfers, which are running above normal rates and which we attribute to Go Daddy’s prior support for SOPA, which was reversed,” said Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman. “Go Daddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities. Our company regrets the loss of any of our customers, who remain our highest priority, and we hope to repair those relationships and win back their business over time.” The strengthened opposition may have something to do with today’s “Dump Go Daddy Domain Day” boycott, which was organized by users of community news sharing site Reddit.
Not even a shift to full SOPA opposition can stop Go Daddy from hemorrhaging customers | VentureBeat
HANOI — Vietnam will tighten state control of bloggers and other media with new regulations that enhance its already extensive powers to limit press freedoms, according to a watchdog. A decree signed by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung last week set out fines of up to 40 million dong (2,000 dollars) for offences including publishing information which is "non-authorised" or not in "the interests of the people". The new rules, which come into effect next month, build on previous moves "to bring online media under the same censorship regime imposed on the traditional media", the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said. "Ultimately, this new decree aims to increase government control over Vietnam's already over-regulated and highly suppressed media," said CPJ senior Southeast Asia representative Shawn Crispin.
AFP: Watchdog warns of Vietnam media clampdown
The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet | Techdirt
from the free-speech-isn't-free dept This is hardly a surprise but, this morning (as previously announced ), the lame duck Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to move forward with censoring the internet via the COICA bill -- despite a bunch of law professors explaining to them how this law is a clear violation of the First Amendment . What's really amazing is that many of the same Senators have been speaking out against internet censorship in other countries, yet they happily vote to approve it here because it's seen as a way to make many of their largest campaign contributors happy.Chinese woman sent to labor camp for retweeting | Asian Correspondent
China has sentenced a woman to a year in a labor camp for “disrupting social order” by retweeting a satirical message urging Chinese protesters to smash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, an international rights group said. Cheng Jianping, 46, re-posted a message from the social networking site Twitter last month hinting that Chinese protesters should smash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo and adding on the message “Angry youth, charge!” according to Amnesty International, which condemned the sentence in a statement late Thursday. Amnesty said Cheng’s retweet was meant as satire, mocking anti-Japanese protesters who had grown in number since tensions between the countries increased after a dispute erupted in September over islands claimed by both Japan and China.
Net Neutrality
L’édition vietnamienne en zone rouge - Libération
Par PASCALE NIVELLE Le mot «démocratie» ne passe toujours pas au Vietnam communiste. Pour pouvoir publier De la démocratie en Amérique, du Français Alexis de Tocqueville, un éditeur a dû ferrailler avec la censure et accommoder le classique de 1835 à la sauce de Hanoi, nettement moins piquante. Le titre est devenu De la gouvernance du peuple en Amérique. La traduction étymologique est correcte, mais la portée idéologique sensiblement différente.
Transparency Report
Transparency is a core value at Google. As a company we feel it is our responsibility to ensure that we maximize transparency around the flow of information related to our tools and services. We believe that more information means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual. We've created Government Requests to show the number of government inquiries for information about users and requests to remove content from our services. We hope this step toward greater transparency will help in ongoing discussions about the appropriate scope and authority of government requests.
The search company this week released a new online tool to highlight specific instances of government censorship of the internet in countries from Germany to Turkey and Australia to Thailand. Called Google Transparency, the online report shows that internet censorship around the world is increasing over time, and not always in the countries you'd expect, said Dorothy Chou, a Google policy analyst who worked on the project. "The threat to internet freedom has actually been growing over the past few years," she said, noting that the United States generally bucks that trend by supporting open online communication . Google Transparency includes an interactive map where users can see how many requests countries have made for Google to block or remove content.