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- The Web's Benevolent DictatorsYesterday
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Jeffrey Rosen has a great article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend titled Google's Gatekeepers. In it he deals with the question of whether we are becoming too overly dependent on a few big web companies like Google - and whether it's wise over the long run for us to trust their team of (currently) very nice, well-meaning people who are trying hard to do the right thing when faced with government censorship demands and surveillance pressures. He writes:
Today the Web might seem like a free-speech panacea: it has given anyone with Internet access the potential to reach a global audience. But though technology enthusiasts often celebrate the raucous explosion of Web speech, there is less focus on how the Internet is actually regulated, and by whom. As more and more speech migrates online, to blogs and social-networking sites and the like, the ultimate power to decide who has an opportunity to be heard, and what we may say, lies increasingly with Internet service providers, search engines and other Internet companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL,
- Studying Chinese blog censorshipNovember 29
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On Thursday this past week, Beijing-based lawyer-blogger Liu Xiaoyuan won Deutsche Welle's annual prize for the Best Chinese Blog. Then on Friday he discovered that the parallel blog he keeps at Sohu.com had been taken down. Fortunately, being a famous blogger, he was able to call an editor at Sohu and get it restored, although the editor wouldn't explain what had happened. Ironically, Liu had just praised Sohu in an interview with the Wall Street Journal for being a more, er, considerate censor than the other blog-hosting platforms he uses:
In the past I sued Sohu for deleting my blog posts, but now I want to praise them. Sohu is the only BSP that posts notices on my blog saying, “this post has been hidden/removed for certain reasons . ” As a result, when web users visit my Sohu blog, they can know that a post has been hidden by Sohu. I think Sohu is brave to do this. I also run blogs on Sina, Ifeng, and others, but they simply delete
- Blogger Zhou Shuguang a.k.a. "Zola" barred from leaving China: "potential threat to state security"November 24
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27 year-old blogger Zhou Shuguang goes by the nom-de-blog "Zola." The tagline of his blog says in English: "You never know what you can do till you try." He seems to be hitting up against the limits of what the Chinese authorities will let him do.
Zola has stirred up controversy by turning himself into a commercial brand while at the same time committing citizen journalism. He has been called many things by many people: The "nailhouse blogger." "Enfant terrible of the Chinese blogosphere." A Chinese journalist-blogger friend of mine calls him "post-modern."
Now Chinese authorities say he is "a potential threat to state security." For that reason, they barred his exit from China to Hong Kong on Sunday. He was on his way to Germany to serve as a judge for Deutsche Welle's Best of the Blogs awards.
I first learned of Zola's detention on Twitter, where he posted
- Go Obama go!!!!November 3
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We've got to do this!!
For my many globally-minded readers, note that global experts will be live-blogging the election from around the world. See Voices Without Votes for details.
For anybody who is on the fence who cares at all about technology policy, there's no contest between the two candidates. Here's a video:
For general inspiration, here's the final YouTube video now being circulated by the campaign:
If you're in the U.S. (and didn't vote absentee from overseas as I did) you can report your voting experience on Twitter. Here's a video demonstrating how to do it:
- The Global Network InitiativeOctober 28
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After more than two years of work behind closed doors, the Global Network Initiative is launching this week. That's the corporate code of conduct on free speech and privacy I've been talking about in generalities for quite some time. By midnight Tuesday U.S. East Coast time, the full set of documents and list of initial signatories will be made publicly available at globalnetworkinitiative.org. UPDATE (noon HKT): the site is now live.
On that website you'll be able to read the full text of the Principles on free expression and privacy. A group of companies including Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft, human rights organizations, socially responsible investment funds, academics, and free speech groups spent the last two-plus years reaching agreement on what should go into that document. There will also be a Governance Charter and a set of Implementation Guidelines giving more detail on how companies should adhere to the core principles. There will be an FAQ, list of participants, and contact people for the organizations that have joined the Global Network Initiative so far. The hope is that many more companies, NGOs, investment funds, and academic institutions around the world will join in the coming months.
The initial plan was to release