The new year opened with a bang and much reason to celebrate. The people of Tunisia are celebrating the first anniversary of the end of Ben Ali’s rule. We are also celebrating the release of Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, who was detained for 56 days for refusing to cooperate with the Egyptian military court. (We remain concerned, however, that he is still accused of multiple charges and will face trial in a civilian court.) Global Voices also celebrated its seventh year in existence. The image above shows how Global Voices is connected to citizen media conversations all over the world.

Although the open Internet faces mounting challenges from all directions we are encouraged to see that netizens around the world are fighting back. “Hacktivist” groups continue to support cyber-activism around the world. For example, Telecomix hackers are helping Syrians detect and avoid government surveillance online, and there is also a project among the hackers to send a satellite into space in order to circumvent censorship.

In the democratic West, the battle to preserve civil liberties and free expression online is centered around efforts to require censorship and surveillance in the name of protecting copyright. In the United States, netizens continue to oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), proposed by members of the House of Representatives. The PROTECT IP Act, (PIPA) the Senate’s version of SOPA, will be brought to a vote on January 24. Internet companies are planning a blackout to protest against the bills and opponents are gearing up for a showdown. The digital rights advocacy group EFF provides a guide on how to meet the congress representatives in person to tell them one’s opposition against SOPA. Another website suggests other actions that opponents of SOPA and PIPA can take.

Unfortunately, other governments are imitating the U.S. congress. TheSpanish government has adopted its own SOPA-like law allowing copyright holders to get allegedly-infringing sites shut down within days of a complaint. Wikileaks cables released last year raise concerns that the US government pressured the Spanish government to pass the law.

Here are other notable incidents from the final days of 2011 and first two weeks of 2012:

Censorship:

The Iranian government is moving ahead with its “Clean Internet” project: a national intranet to shield citizens from “immoral content.”  According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, in recent weeks  Iranian Internet users have experienced an Internet slowdown and blocked access to virtual private networks (VPNs). Iran also issued new regulations mandating Internet café owners to install surveillance equipment to monitor Internet users’ online activities and keep records of customers’ personal information.

The Tibetan Autonomous Region government has passed a law requiring phone and Internet users to register with real names. According to the government, the new law can stop junk mail and prevent “harmful messages”.

India’s anti-corruption website was suspended for showcasing content that allegedly mocked the Indian constitution.

EFF has collected several cases of U.S. government efforts to censor twitter accounts, including a Boston district attorney’s subpoena of Occupy Boston Twitter account information.

Surveillance:

In Belarus a new law effective on January 6 requires not only Internet café owners, but also anyone who has shared Internet connections, tomonitor their user. Owners of these Internet connections will be fined if they fail to report visits by their users to banned websites.

Australian government documents released under that country’s freedom of information laws confirm that environmental activists are being monitored by the Australian government. Documents also revealed that the Australian Resources and Energy Minister has secretly pushed for increased surveillance of activists protesting peacefully at coal-fired power stations and coal export facilities.

RIM, Nokia and Apple have allegedly provided access for Indian intelligence to spy on user communications, in exchange for mobile presence in India.

According to a study of 31 mobile operators in Europe, Morocco and Thailand, providers offer poor or weak defenses to protect consumers from illicit surveillance and identity theft. Outdated mobile network security protocols expose voice mail to hacking.

National Policy:

Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur issued an order asking all restaurants, cafes, and clubs larger than 120 square meters to provide wireless Internet access for free or at reasonable prices.

Internet Governance:

Despite vehement criticisms (much of it from the United States) of ICANN’s new generic top-level domain names (gTLD) program enabling new organizations to apply to run new top level domains (the part of the address after the “dot”, like .com or .net), ICANN has stuck to its plan to begin accepting new gTLD names applications this week. ICANN also said there is a possibility that the organization will issue a new edition of its Applicant Guidebook. For an excellent analysis of the arguments and controversies surrounding the new gTLDs, be sure to read this essay by Cyber law expert Susan Crawford.

Thuggery:

Chinese dissident Chen Wei was sentenced to 9 years on jail for his four online essays advocating political reforms.

Internet Rights as Human Rights:

A New York Times opinion article by Vint Cerf, one of the creators of the Internet, asserted that Internet access is not a human right and that even though it is important, technology is an enabler, not a right. Cerf’s opinion has sparked debate and conversation.

Eduardo Bertoni, a Latin American academic and Director of CELE writes that in order for governments to protect human rights online they should: “Coordinate their policies with other countries; Apply international human rights standards, especially freedom of expression ones; Regulate the Internet with responsibility; and take into account the Economic impact of their policies.”

Corporate responsibility:

Tech companies are factoring stronger attention to Internet and human rights issues into their business decisions.  Some companies like AnchorFree, are looking at this as a new strategic opportunity. According to the EFF, more and more companies have adopted a win-win strategyto support the initiatives on freedom of expression and also gain market advantages.

International group of activists at the 28th Chaos Communications Congress created the Providers’ Commitment for Privacy (PCP) policy, a document outlining the best practices the writers believe Internet Service Providers should follow to respect privacy.

Cybersecurity:

The US government is increasing funding for cyber security programs and building strategy with an emphasis on Asian cybersecurity and space threats.

Governments prepare for cyberwar as concerns about cybersecurity grow. Government engineers are building new viruses and worms that could neutralize an attack as well as planning to conduct denial-of-service attacks.

Amnesty International’s UK site was hacked to serve malware in December 2011, and further evidence showed that that site was not the only target. Experts warned that other human rights organizations may also be compromised.

A malware virus attacked 45,000 Facebook user accounts. Most of the accounts attacked were in France and the UK.

China’s social media websites were reported to be hacked last December and users’ account information was leaked. The number of the users affected is estimated to be over 1 billion. The Chinese Software Developer Network first apologized for the leak of over 6 million accounts and PIN information, which was followed by an announcement from popular Internet forum Tianya Club which confirmed that 40 million users’ information had been breached. Chinese netizens reported that other major social media websites such as Sina, RenRen were also hacked.

Copyright:

Major news media set up an organization to cope with the usage of their copyrighted articles: the organization will put code onto the online articles and track their spread. The organization claimed that only those who “scrape” the article will be targeted. People quoting and citing articles will be spared.

Movie company Reliance Entertainment obtained an order from an Indian court to demand Indian ISPs block file-sharing websites.

In Italy, the Court of Milan has held video sharing platforms liable for copyright infringement.

Duke University explores what works you would be able to republish, remix, translate or make a play or movie from if the maximum copyright term was still 53 years (as it was according to the 1978 Copyright Act) instead of  70 years, as it is today.

A study by the American Assembly found that 46 per cent of the over 2,000 people surveyed had engaged in piracy, with this figure increasing to seven in ten among people aged 19 to 27. The study also found that people prefer to use legal alternatives to view online content, but find the prices for content too high, which drives illegal file sharing.

A Swedish student founded a religion called “Kopimism”, which has been recognized by the Sweden government. This religion makes it a creed that sharing and copying information is a virtue.

Canada has expressed its interests in joining the Trans-Pacific partnership (TPP) negotiations. The impact of the TPP provisions on Canada’s copyright laws may be the extension of copyright terms, which is currently life of the author plus 50 years. If you are Canadian and support the idea of preservation of public domain, it’s time to take action!

Netizen activism:

Bytes for All Pakistan has launched a new project called “Secure Journalists Programme” to evaluate the digital security of Pakistani journalists and bloggers.

Internet expert Dan Berninger has initiated a program named “The 550 Challenges” to connect everyone on the earth to the Internet by Febrary 3, 2018, the 550th anniversary of Johannes Gutenberg’s death.

Cory Doctorow writes his take on Ethan Zuckerman’s “cute cat” theory of online dissent. Also be sure to see the talks by Cory Doctorow, Jacob Appelbaum, and Roger Dingledine at the 28th Chaos Communication Congress.

EVENTS: For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age see the Global Voices events calendar.

Creative Commons License

Written by Rebecca MacKinnon

Attribution:

“Netizen Report: Celebration Edition” by Rebecca MacKinnon and co-authored by Mera Szendro Bok and Weiping Li shared under Creative Commons license Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

Netizen Report: Remembrance Edition

Written by Rebecca MacKinnon with co-authors Weiping Li and Mera Szendro Bok

Vaclav Havel, a poet, playwright, dissident, last president of Czechoslovakia, and first president of the Czech Republic, died on Dec 18 at age 75. His story and words continue to inspire people around the world to fight against repression. Take for example a letter that he wrote in 1969 to the deposed reformist leader Alexander Dubcek:

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.

The converse is also true – seemingly trivial and small abuses of power by politicians, soldiers, police, religious leaders, companies, corporate managers, or anybody else with power over other people’s lives can cumulatively add up to great evil.

Speaking of those who fight repression, the Global Voices community is celebrating the release Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi, who has been charged with three crimes. We remain concerned and worried however that she still has to face trial later.

In the United States, the battle over whether Internet censorship and surveillance are appropriate weapons for intellectual property enforcement raged onward. In the House of Representatives a vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was delayed thanks in no small part to massive opposition by internet engineers, legal experts, internet content providers, activists, and journalists.

Saudi netizen Sarah AlKatheer aptly invoked another freedom fighter from an even earlier generation, Thomas Jefferson:

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

It’s not clear exactly which unjust law in which country she was referring to, but it doesn’t really matter. Netizens around the world are doing their best to resist all of them, as events of the past fortnight make clear:

Censorship: In China last week, the Beijing municipal government published a new rule requiring users of micro-blogging services called “weibo” to register with real names.  Weibo websites are also required to “ensure the authenticity of users’ identity.” As our colleague Oiwan Lam reports, other cities have begun to follow suit. But even as it seeks to limit dissent on Weibo the Chinese government also sees micro-blogging as a useful tool to disseminate its own messages. According to an article on South China Morning Post, there are nearly 20,000 government-related accounts on Sina Weibo, the most popular microblog service in China. The government agencies not only use weibo to communicate with citizens but also “counter negative news.” According to the first “Report on Official Weibo” published by Sina Weibo and People.com (run by the official government newspaper The People’s Daily) the most popular official weibo in Chin – with a whopping 2.1 million “fans” – is “Peaceful and Safe Beijing” published by  Beijing Public security Bureau.

In Russia, Wall Street Journal reports that government critics blame the Kremlin for interfering with mobile internet services during the Moscow protest. The critics also worried that the interference and the recent attacks on websites are just the beginning of struggle on the Internet.

In the United Kingdom, Vodafone’s “child protection” filtering mechanism has blocked two lingerie websites - an example of how difficult it is to prevent even very targeted censorship from going overboard in sometimes ridiculous ways.

Surveillance: Be sure to check out a troubling global info-graphic produced by Bloomberg titled The Surveillance Market and its Victims.

More developments in the controversy in the United States overCarrierIQ software which logs and transmits cell phone user activities. The FBI admits that it uses Carrier IQ software for “law enforcement purposes.” Here is the complete list of the all  phones with CarrierIQ. Sprint has recently decided to disable CarrierIQ from their phones.CarrierIQ has admitted to tracking text messages while Netizens continue to sign petitions calling for an investigation of the software.

You Have Downloaded site watches your BitTorrent habits and shows what you’re downloading. The database owns over 51 million users, over 100,000 torrents, a million files, and it’s still growing. Lifehacker reports that the creators of the site want the project to encourage users to be more private and secure their activities through VPN or proxy. Most amusingly the site seems to indicate that somebody in the home of French President Nicholas Sarkozy (or at least somebody using the IP address of their home network) used BitTorrent to download some pirated music and movies. What more can we say but.. LOL.

Thuggery: Rwandian journalist Charles Ingabire, the editor of the news website Inyenyeri News, was killed on November 30, 2011 and was one of the victims in a series of attacks against journalists.

Egyptian supreme military court of appeals imposed two-year sentenceon blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad, who was charged with insulting Egyptian military. Also in Egypt, there is a possibility that the blogger Alaa Abdel-Fattah will be tried in a civilian court and have the right to appeal.

Bahraini blogger Zainab Al-Khawaja was brutally arrested.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace: After being criticized on selling technology to Iran for helping trace of dissidents, Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications equipment company, announced a decision to restraining its business activities in Iran. According to the r Wall Street Journal, Huawei is seeking to expand its business in the United States and Europe. This decision may help improve Huawei’s image.

Blue Coat - whose surveillance technology infamously ended up in Syria among other places – agrees to be Acquired by Private Equity Firm Thoma Bravo and now has been sued by an investor.

Netizen Power: Tunisian and Palestinian free media advocates have launched the Arab Network for Freedom of Expression to organize actions which promote freedom of expression.

The Financial Times has a detailed report on how the low-cost high-speed Internet combined with social media have motivated and empowered Russian netizens to improve  Russian society and change their compatriots’ indifferent attitude.

Copyright: Last week, the Council of the European Union adopted the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in which several provisions criminalize the circumvention of Digital Rights Management and which free speech groups are concerned may inadvertently restrict the free flow of information. This controversial treaty must now be approved by the European Parliament before taking effect.

Creative Commons is going to renew its licenses and is gathering ideas from the Creative Commons community.  Among the licenses in need of improvement, the spotlights are on database rights and the definition of commercial uses. Another important issue is how to accommodate CC licenses with different countries’ IP laws.

Internet Governance: Here are the 10 trends of internet governance in 2011.

EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes announced the “No Disconnect Strategy” to provide tools to Internet users, bloggers and cyber activists living in countries with poor track records on human rights and help them “bypass surveillance and censorship measures.”

O.E.C.D. Council Calls on 34 Member Countries to Defend Internet Freedoms and has released the O.E.C.D Principles for Internet Policy Making. These principles encourage member countries and policymakers to protect global free flow of information, an open and decentralized internet and take a light-touch approach on internet regulation.

The United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) criticized ICANN’s new gTLDs (generic top-level domains) policy and expressed concerns on the risk of expanding gTLDs. There have also been highly critical hearings in Congress examining the gTLD program, and you can read a long description and scathing critique of all parties concerned by Kieren McCarthy at dotNext here. ICANN’s CEO Rod Beckstrom has responded to some of the criticisms, arguing that ICANN’s multi-stakeholder policy processes around gTLD’s have been the product of six years of consultation and negotiation with a range of stakeholders.

Cool stuff: In New York City, a pirate Wi-Fi for subway commuters.

M.I.T expands its commitment to open education by offering more free courses online.

Commotion Wireless, aka “Internet in a Suitcase,” a project to build up low-cost and easy-to-use wireless mesh networks and which receives State Department funding to deploy the system in repressive countries, is has been tested at Occupy D.C.

Publications

EVENTS: For upcoming events related to the future of citizen rights in the digital age see the Global Voices events calendar.

Attribution:

“Netizen Report: Remembrance Edition” by Rebecca MacKinnon shared under Creative Commons license Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

CIYR! Signs Civil Society Statement Opposing SOPA

November 15, 2011
Chairman Lamar Smith
Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman
Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515The Honorable Lamar Smith
Re: H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act
Dear Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Conyers,
As press freedom and human rights advocates, we write to express our deep concern with
H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). While this is a domestic bill, there are several
provisions within SOPA that would have serious implications for international civil and
human rights which raise concerns about how the United States is approaching global internet governance. The United States has long been a strong advocate for the protection and promotion of an open Internet. However, by institutionalizing the use of internet censorship tools to enforce domestic law in the United States, SOPA creates a paradox that undermines its moral authority to criticize repressive regimes. We urge the United States to uphold its proclaimed responsibility as a leader in internet freedom and reject bills that will censor or fragment the web. Through SOPA, the United States is attempting to dominate a shared global resource. Building a nationwide firewall and creating barriers for international website and service operators makes a powerful statement that the United States is not interested in participating in a global information infrastructure. Instead, the United States would be creating the very barriers that restrict the free flow of information that it has vigorously challenged abroad. By imposing technical changes to the open internet while eroding due process, SOPA introduces a deeply concerning degree of legal uncertainty into the internet economy, particularly for businesses and users internationally.
Business cannot be conducted online when international users and businesses do not have faith that their access to payments, domain names, and advertising will be available, raising challenges to economic development and innovation. This is as unacceptable to the international community as it would be if a foreign country were to impose similar measures on the United States.
The provisions in SOPA on DNS filtering in particular will have severe consequences
worldwide. In China, DNS filtering contributes to the Great Firewall that prevents citizens
from accessing websites or services that have been censored by the Chinese government.2 By instituting this practice in the United States, SOPA sends an unequivocal message to other nations that it is acceptable to censor speech on the global Internet. Additionally, Internet engineers have argued in response to the Protect IP Act, DNS filtering would break the internet into separate regional networks.3 Worse still, the circumvention technology that can be used to access information under repressive Internet regimes would be outlawed under SOPA, the very same technology whose development is funded by the State Department.
SOPA puts the interests of rightsholders ahead of the rights of society. SOPA would require
that web services, in order to avoid complaints and lawsuits, take “deliberate actions” to prevent the possibility of infringement from taking place on their site, pressuring private companies to monitor the actions of innocent users. Not only will this effectively negate the safe harbor protection provided in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but the proposed legislation would disproportionally affect small online communities who lack the capacity to represent their users in legal battles. Wrongly accused websites would suffer immediate losses as payment systems and ad networks would be required to comply with a demand to block or cease doing business with the site pending receipt of a legal counter-notice. Even then, it would still be at the discretion of these entities to reinstate service to the website regardless of the merits of an alleged rightsholder’s claim, robbing online companies of a stable business environment and creating a climate where free speech is subject to the whims of private actors. Censoring the internet is the wrong approach to protecting any sectoral interest in business. By adopting SOPA, the United States would lose its position as a global leader in supporting a free and open Internet for public good.

The international civil and human rights community urges Congress to reject the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Best regards,
Access
AGEIA DENSI (Argentina)
ahumanright.org
Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
Avaaz
Bits of Freedom (The Netherlands)
Bytes for All (Pakistan)
Center for Media Justice
Center for Rural Strategies
Centre for Internet and Society (India)
Center for Technology and Society (CTS/FGV) (Brazil)
CEPES (Peru)
Church of Sweden
Colnodo (Colombia)
Communication Is Your Right!
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Consumers International
Derechos Digitales (Chile)
Digital Democracy
Digitale Gesellschaft e.V. (Germany)
Digital Rights Ireland
Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi)
EsLaRed (Venezuela)
European Digital Rights (EDRi) (Association of 27 digital rights groups from around Europe)
Fantsuam Foundation (Nigeria)
Forum InformatikerInnen für Frieden und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung e.V. (FIfF)
(Germany)
Foundation for Media Alternatives, FMA (Philippines)
Free Network Foundation
Free Press
Free Software Foundation
Funredes (Dominican Republic)
Global Partners & Associates
GreenNet (England)
The Julia Group (Sweden)
Instituto Nupef (Brazil)
Index on Censorship
Internet Democracy Project (India)
Internet Rights and Principles Coalition
Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor (Brazil)
Karisma (Colombia)
La Quadrature du Net (France)
LaNeta (Mexico)
May First/People Link
MobileActive.org
Net Users’ Rights Protection Association (NURPA) (Belgium)
Networks & Development Foundation
Nodo TAU (Argentina)
NUPEF (Brazil)
Open Rights Group (ORG) (UK)
Open Source Initiative
Open Spectrum Alliance
OneWorld – Platform for South East Europe (OWPSEE)
Palante Technology Cooperative
The Public Sphere Project
Reporters Without Borders / Reporters sans Frontières
Sulá Batsu (Costa Rica)
Telecommunities Canada
Virtual Activism
wlan slovenija (Slovenia)
10com (European Union)

1http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2011/11/02/freedom-abroad-repression-at-home-the-clinton-now-cameron-paradox/

2 http://opennet.net/research/profiles/china
3 Security and Other Technical Concerns Raised by the DNS Filtering Requirements in the PROTECT IP Bill domainincite.com/
docs/PROTECT-IP-Technical-Whitepaper-Final.pdf

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