http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/81017/wikileaks-internet-pirate-party-save
The Internet's Voltaire Moment Subscribe to this blog About Author With a focus on open source and digital rights, Simon is a director of the UK's Open Rights Group and president of the Open Source Initiative. He is also managing director of UK consulting firm Meshed Insights Ltd. Contact Author Email Simon Wikileaks Calls for Sarah Palin's Arrest The official Twitter account for Wikileaks has posted a press release this evening drawing a comparison between the controversial rhetoric from public figures that some believe contributed to the attempted assassination on Saturday of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the even more explicit calls from public officials for violence against Wikileaks spokesperson Julien Assange and others. The organization called for public figures making such calls to violence to be arrested and charged with crimes. Assange is attributed the following quote in the release: "No organisation anywhere in the world is a more devoted advocate of free speech than Wikileaks but when senior politicians and attention seeking media commentators call for specific individuals or groups of people to be killed they should be charged with incitement -- to murder. Those who call for an act of murder deserve as significant share of the guilt as those raising a gun to pull the trigger." From the release:
What if WikiLeaks' Dream of Open Society Became Reality? The torrent of confidential U.S. government documents posted to the WikiLeaks website may have slowed over the Christmas holidays, but diplomats and military officials across the world continue to count the cost of the leaks — and question their long-term effects on governance. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says his organization's goal is to force governments into total transparency by making all official documents available to the public. But just how transparent would governments be under such forced scrutiny? What the attacks tell us The current row over the latest WikiLeaks trove of classified US diplomatic cables has four sobering implications. 1. The first is that it represents the first really serious confrontation between the established order and the culture of the Net. As the story of the official backlash unfolds – first as DDOS attacks on ISPs hosting WikiLeaks and later as outfits like Amazon and PayPal (i.e. eBay) suddenly “discover” that their Terms of Service preclude them from offering services to WikiLeaks — the contours of the old order are emerging from the rosy mist in which they have operated to date.
Douglas Rushkoff The Next Net The moment the "net neutrality" debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network - its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation - is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them - that network loses its power to effect change. The mere fact that lawmakers and lobbyists now control the future of the net should be enough to turn us elsewhere. Of course the Internet was never truly free, bottom-up, decentralized, or chaotic. Yes, it may have been designed with many nodes and redundancies for it to withstand a nuclear attack, but it has always been absolutely controlled by central authorities.
Why Twitter Was the Only Company to Challenge the Secret WikiLeaks Subpoena Alexander Macgillivray" />Secret subpoenas* information requests of the kind the Department of Justice sent Twitter are apparently not unusual. In fact, other tech companies may also have received similar WikiLeaks-related requests. But what is unusual in this story is that Twitter resisted. Which raises an interesting question: Assuming that Twitter was not the only company to have been served a secret subpoena order, why was it the only company that fought back?
Life & Arts - The new power of the press In the past year journalism, which in the west sees itself as beset by decline, has vastly increased its power. Three large developments have made the implicit, yet huge, claim that journalism, our way of knowing what is happening in our complex world, is essentially a matter of competing high-decibel political dispute and total transparency. Taken together, these developments – the takeover of US politics by the broadcast media; the revelations about governments around the world from the WikiLeaks website, and The Daily Telegraph exposé of business secretary Vince Cable’s true feelings about the UK coalition government – ensured that the media ended the year with large victories over politics and politicians. What’s more, all three were claimed in the public interest.
France adds to US pressure The French government today added to international calls for WikiLeaks to be prevented operating online, warning that it is "unacceptable" for a "criminal" site to be hosted in the country. Today's move by the French government is particularly significant because the 250,000 US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks to the Guardian and four other media organisations are hosted by a French company, Octopuce. The industry minister, Eric Besson, today wrote to the French body governing internet use warning that there would be consequences for any companies or organisations helping to keep WikiLeaks online in the country. French companies are banned from hosting websites that have been deemed "criminal" and "violate the confidentiality of diplomatic relations", Besson added. The site's cache of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables are also hosted in part by Octopuce, though they are also widely available on peer-to-peer filesharing sites which do not sit under the jurisdiction of one state.
FCC net neutrality decision sets up court battle, say experts The US Federal Communications Commission's recent vote to impose net neutrality rules on broadband providers will lead to lengthy court battles, as well as efforts in Congress to repeal the rules, a group of Internet law experts said Wednesday. Even supporters of the FCC's Dec. 21 vote predicted that multiple court challenges are likely as soon as the FCC officially publishes the new rules in the Federal Register. Court challenges to the rules are "inevitable," said Colin Crowell, former senior counselor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski . Multiple lawsuits in courts across the US are likely, with some questioning the FCC's authority to make rules affecting Internet service providers and other groups suggesting the rules are arbitrary, added Markham Erickson, executive director of the Open Internet Coalition and a supporter of the rules. The new rules prohibit service providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web traffic.
Secrecy is the problem, not leakers - Opinion Ukrainian activists cover their mouths with US flags during a rally in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in front of the Swedish embassy to Ukraine in Kiev on December 22 2010. WikiLeaks is now at the centre of a global battle between media and those in power but what's new about what Julian Assange is doing? WikiLeaks is much more than just another journalistic scandal, it is a challenge to the way that power and news media operate in the Internet Age. Hacker Culture: A Response to Bruce Sterling on WikiLeaks - Gabriella Coleman - Technology As someone whose job is to study hackers, I have nothing but admiration for the journalists and authors who have penned wonderful books on hackers. Bruce Sterling is one of those luminaries and without fail, I always assign a few chapters from The Hacker Crackdown, which reveals in stunning and humorous ethnographic detail the cultural logic of the hacker underground. Given that WikiLeaks can only be understood in light of hacker values and traditions, I was wondering when Bruce Sterling would chime in to connect the dots between WikiLeaks, the organization, and the wider culture of hacking from which it emerged. He finally did, and like most of his writing, it is a tour de force: lyrical and seductive, thought provoking with many excellent points. It is important to read.