"Civil liberties group Reporters Without Borders has released its annual list of "Enemies of the Internet"--regimes the group claims restrict freedom of expression online. ..."
This list includes many of the usual suspects, and some surprises. For example, Libya, an obvious suspect and a member of this list for several years, was taken off this year since no apparent censorship is currently taking place and and "cyberdissidents" are not being jailed. Muammar Gaddafi is still viewed with some suspicion, and will, no doubt, be watched closely.
Other issues of concern are the relationships between hardware manufacturers and information providers. Cisco routers, which are a key element in the world's internet infrastructure, is also the provider of the firewall that walls off China from the rest of the world. Yahoo! and Google both have made accommodations to China, and Yahoo! in particular provided email records to authorities that resulted in a ten year prison sentence for a Chinese journalist.
Reporters Without Borders deals with press freedom issues worldwide, and includes bloggers in their concern. They recently had a 24 hour vote on the "Black Holes of the Web" which shows in stark graphics where the major problems are:
Clicking the image will take you to the original site, which will probably be around for a few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment