Monthly Archives: May 2011

eG8 Summit takes place in Paris
A two-day forum convened by French President Nicolas Sarkozy has seen industry bosses come together in Paris to discuss proposals for future internet regulation, the BBC reports. Their conclusions will be presented to G8 leaders later this week at the G8’s 2011 summit in Deauville. A consortium of civil society actors, including la Quadrature du Net, the Association for Progressive Communications, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and European Digital Rights (EDRi) have signed a joint statement condemning the lack of civil society voices at the summit.
Report | Protest statement

Azerbaijan tables law to criminalise spreading “misinformation” online
Eurasianet reports on amendments being proposed to Azerbaijan’s Criminal Code that would outlaw “distribution of disinformation with the aim of spreading panic among the population, false information about terror”. The amendments, which also target attacks on computer networks and online copyright violations, will be debated by Azerbaijan’s Parliament in the Autumn. Government officials this month charged Wikipedia with spreading disinformation about Azerbaijan. There are fears that the new law could be used to restrict free speech online.

Suit says Cisco helped China pursue Falun Gong
A lawsuit filed in California by the Human Rights Law Foundation on behalf of members of Falun Gong claims Cisco customised its internet routing technology to help China track Falun Gong members, the New York Times reports.

Brazil pushes forward with copyright reforms
Following a period of uncertainty around the future of long-fought-for reforms to Brazil’s copyright law, the Ministry of Culture is holding a seminar in Brasilia to finalize the preparation of the Draft Law.

US: “International Strategy for Cyberspace” launched
The US Whitehouse launched its “International Strategy for Cyberspace” last week, emphasising the expansion of access to secure networks as an economic good, and calling for the development of new international norms to promote an open internet. This week, the Center for Democracy and Technology has released a four-part analysis of the proposals.
Strategy | Analysis

India: Centre for Internet and Society demands list of blocked websites
The Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society has filed a Right To Information request with India’s Department of Information and Technology, asking for a list of websites blocked by the Indian government.

European Commission launches IPR strategy
The European Commission has launched a new Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) strategy this week. LINX reports: “Notable promises include a commitment to legislate to enable pan-European copyright licensing [and] measures to enable libraries to digitise orphan works. A new copyright enforcement directive is also proposed. EDRi have produced a shadow report setting out how “the EU has been making policy ‘blind’, building their strategies on faith not fact and ignoring objective, robust evidence”.
LINX | EDRi shadow report

Rwanda: Kagame gets into Twitter spat with journalist
Balancing Act Africa reports on a heated exchange on the state of press freedom in Rwanda between the country’s president Paul Kagame and British columnist Ian Birrell that took place on Twitter this week.
Report | Exchange

Magna Carta 2.0: a transparency research agenda
The Sunlight Foundation make an impassioned plea for transparency and accountability activists to seize the current moment of fiscal tightening to effect a rebalance of power, by promoting “the financial and efficiency benefits that transparency brings to the operation of government and our society”.

Twitter’s oral culture
Zeynep Tufekci examines Twitter’s oral culture and “the reemergence of oral psychodynamics in the public sphere” in response to an opinion piece in the New York Times by its Executive Editor Bill Keller berating the growth of social media.

Research: Administration of FOI law in Chile
This study of Chile’s two-year old Freedom of Information (FOI) Law highlights serious problems for those wishing to use the internet to make requests. Less than half of organisations examined allowed for online FOI requests.

Video: Ben Fry on visualisation future and data literacy
An eight-minute interview with information designer Ben Fry about the history and evolution of data visualisation.

Open science: a future shaped by shared experience
This long-form Guardian feature is a great introduction to issues and practice in open science.

Demonstrators take to streets across Turkey to protest internet bans
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Turkey last weekend to voice their opposition to a new law that will mandate state-controlled internet censorship. The law is scheduled to come into force in August.

UK: Independent review rejects “lobbynomics” and suggests copyright reform could lead to economic boost
A six-month independent review commissioned by the UK government has recommended changes to the copyright system it says could add up to £7.9bn to the UK’s economy, the Financial Times reports. The changes revolve around strengthening exceptions and limitations to copyright law, and linking enforcement to licensing practice. Professor James Boyle, a copyright scholar and advisor to the review, has written a cogent analysis of its findings.
FT report | Boyle analysis

Burma: Ban on CDs, USB drives in internet cafes
Burma’s communications ministry has issued a new regulation forbidding the use of external data storage devices in internet cafes. Democratic Voice of Burma reports: “The ban on CDs, USB sticks and floppy drives comes two months after the government prohibited the use of services like Skype and VZOchat that allow internet users to make free or cheap international phone calls”.

EU to fund African internet infrastructure for research
The European Commission’s EuropeAid Cooperation Office and the international research network operator DANTE have announced a new contract to provide support for sub-Saharan African intra-regional research networking infrastructure to boost its connection to the pan-European research network, GÉANT. Worth just under €15m, 80% of the project funding will come from the Commission, with African partners contributing the remaining 25%.

The Quiet Revolution in Open Learning
This Chronicle of Higher Education feature reveals the history of the Obama administration’s landmark $2bn open education resources policy and charts the likely future of an initiative it says “could have a catalytic effect on a movement that increasingly looks like the future of higher-education reform”.

Fair Mobile – Two Years On
Steve Song compares the difference in price drops for mobile services over the past two years between South Africa and Kenya, and introduces a new survey from Fair Mobile of affordability across the continent.

Brazil’s Copyright Reform: Timeline
Pedro Paranaguá offers a useful timeline to help understand Brazil’s currently stalled copyright reform, eight years in the making. The process, writes Paranaguá, has gone from open and participatory to closed and opaque.

Video: What the internet is hiding from you
Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org shows how advances in technology can tailor the web to each of its individuals users, noting the downsides this might have for education, pluralism and cross-cultural understanding: “What we’re seeing is a passing of the torch from human gatekeepers to algorithmic ones”.

Audio: NPR’s On The Media “The Data Show”
US National Public Radio explore the seductions of data in this special episode of On the Media: “Wallmart logs more than 2.4 petabytes of information about customer transactions every hour, equivalent to 167 times the books in the Library of Congress”.