July 15, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Just as we have a right to clean drinking water, we have a right to unobstructed access to information. This should be the aim of any regime of national cyber-security, not the application, or projection, of centuries old military force doctrine to the world of digital information and communication. In the atmosphere of true hyper-convergence, the web beyond Facebook and gMail, the integrated freedom of the individual depends on the integrated civil liberty of the world wide web.
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February 20, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
What is democracy? That is the first question that is always asked by pro-regime elements, whether in 18th-century Britain or France or 21st-century Egypt or Bahrain, because their aim is to muddy the waters and oppose the spread of democratic freedom. Free and open access to factual information is the cornerstone right of all citizens of a free society. Journalists are the “Fourth Estate” —in the words attributed to Edmund Burke, by Thomas Carlyle—, the watchdogs of the people’s access to truth.
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February 7, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
After intense pressure from Amnesty International, foreign governments, private business and the press, Egypt’s new vice president Omar Suleiman pledged yesterday that Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who is reputed to have launched a Facebook page denouncing police brutality and political persecution, would be freed. He was abducted by regime police near the beginning of the pro-democracy demonstrations, on 28 January, and was not heard from publicly till today.
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December 7, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The media storm surrounding the personal story of Julian Assange, reputed founder of WikiLeaks, is in many ways a sad commentary on the state of our security policy. The malice directed at Assange, and the coincidental pursuit of him on accusation of sexual assault in Sweden, appear to fit into a campaign designed to dissuade the general public from taking seriously anything produced by WikiLeaks. The fact is: there would be no use for WikiLeaks and no controversy whatsoever, if democratic governments did not rely so heavily on secrecy.
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December 5, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
There are reports online that suggest the US Dept. of State may be seeking to suppress the use of data and information emerging from WikiLeaks document releases, telling possible recruits that all such information remains “classified”, i.e. secret, and that any use of such data, including reposting of links to the leaks themselves or to WikiLeaks generally, will disqualify them from serving at the Dept. of State. Critics say this is an attempt to avoid facing reality and an undemocratic demand against the the right to free and open debate.
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November 8, 2010 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
MSNBC anchor and news analyst Keith Olbermann will be back on the air on Tuesday evening, after being indefinitely suspended, and thus missing his Friday and Monday programming. MSNBC president Phil Griffin had suspended Olbermann, alleging that three campaign donations violated the ethics rules for journalists employed by NBC News. The suspension had appeared to many to be politically motivated, given Comcast’s plans to take over the network, and the likely incoming president’s staunchly pro-Bush views and past fundraising activity.
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June 5, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
On 4 June 1989, the Chinese military moved into Tiananmen Square to disperse a long-running student and citizen protest in favor of democratic reforms. The military were reportedly ordered to use deadly force and opened fire, killing an unknown number of unarmed civilians. The anonymous man in the above photo became known around the world as an icon of human rights, when he stopped a column of tanks by standing in their way, a moral and human challenge to the military crackdown.
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May 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is now looking at ways to use legislation that grants the power to regulate traditional phone networks in order to establish a regulatory paradigm of ‘net neutrality’, meaning internet service providers (ISP) who provide connectivity cannot block or slow traffic to some sites while privileging traffic to others. Bandwidth itself is an important limiting factor in the physical environment, and so efforts to expand bandwidth may be crucial to making real net neutrality work.
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April 7, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
In what could be a landmark ruling, a federal court has blocked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from imposing a network neutrality constraint on internet service providers who own the network they administer. There are serious issues of Constitutionality involved in the ruling, and net neutrality advocates say any move away from absolute neutrality would be a violation of the First Amendment protection of press freedom, and possibly of the freedom to assemble.
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March 24, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Google has announced it will stop censoring search results for users in China. This radically reverses the dynamic of its relationship with the Chinese government, which had demanded as a condition of being searchable in China that the internet giant systematically bar certain content from appearing in lists of search results. Google had agreed to enter the Chinese market filtering out search results related to the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of June 1989, even to the word “democracy”, but a cyber-spying attack that originated in China caused Google to rethink the validity of the initial agreement.
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December 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
China may be fast moving toward global superpower status, with rates of industrialization and wealth-creation nearly unprecedented in human history. But the ancient imperial state still faces pervasive problems of regional and ethnic disharmony and multiple separatist movements intent on breaking up the map of the modern political state. To hold together, Beijing will have to democratize public and private institutions at a rapid pace and in a credible way.
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December 6, 2009 :: Anjika Sridhar :: Comments Off
Iran’s government has temporarily banned foreign media from operating in the capital, Tehran, in anticipation of student rallies on Monday, marking Iran’s Student Day commemoration. The government has warned against any “illegal rallies”, suggesting it fears the student rallies could turn into a new round of protests against the alleged rigging of the June presidential vote and the subsequent violent crackdown against dissent.
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December 3, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
GE, the parent company of NBC Universal, has agreed to a deal that would give Comcast a controlling interest in the media giant. NBC Universal is one of the leading producers of feature films, network television and TV news. Its flagship news services, NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC, could see their budgets affected by the sale, and there are concerns over conflict of interest for a cable TV and internet service provider owning a controlling stake in such a vast media enterprise. Congressional hearings and federal communications regulatory investigations are considered likely to ensue, before the deal can be implemented.
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October 23, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
John McCain, the Arizona Republican who ran against Barack Obama in last year’s presidential election, today introduced in the Senate the “Internet Freedom Act”, in a brazen bid to make the internet far less free for the average web surfer. The bill would bar the FCC from enacting regulations that would prevent internet service providers from interfering with users’ preferred content choices, penalizing small content producers and slowing the internet down broadly in order to collect fees for higher-speed services, which the providers would select.
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September 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Apple’s long-awaited tablet computer, likely to run a version of Mac OS X and to merge the touchscreen stylings of the iPhone and iPod Touch with the full functionality of the MacBook line, is expected to be aimed at revolutionizing the way print media deliver text to readers. If true, the device would again put Apple at the cutting edge of a field where Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and others, are trying to set the standards for e-book distribution and licensing.
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September 25, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
DVR is an increasingly popular consumer-oriented technology which simultaneously liberates viewers from strict TV viewing schedules and also imposes new constraints on recording freedoms (including sharing). DVR is a concession by content providers, advertisers and infrastructure (connectivity) providers, to the advantages of digital technology, and to the common individual demand for more freedom to control when information (content) is accessed. And the technology is framing a new logistics of consumer access and corporate control.
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August 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The Internet Archive is joining with major internet-related firms, such as Yahoo and Amazon, to fight Google’s settlement with the Authors’ Guild, allowing Google Books to publish copyright-protected materials online, if they are out of print, and to compensate authors according to the sales generated by the display of the copyrighted text (possibly 70% going to publishers or copyright holders, including a cut of ad revenues). The Coalition plans to fight the legal settlement on anti-trust grounds.
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August 5, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Now, we face unprecedented challenges to the right of people everywhere to access information intended for public consumption. Repressive governments are building state-of-the-art censorship , tracking and filtering mechanisms (the ‘Great Firewall of China’, for example), and internet service providers (ISP) are seeking to establish profit-dr… that limit users’ access to certain websites or content-producers.
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August 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Associated Press perceives the routine standard for online journalism, blogging and social networking, which involves quoting, citing and linking to sources, as injurious to its revenue stream. It is now seeking to institute a blanket global policy, whereby quoting even 5 words by the AP would cost the quoting publication $12.50. Quoting 251 words or more would cost $100. Critics say the AP, like other online news producers, benefits immensely from the incoming links posted across the web by readers and journalists referring back to its news material.
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July 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Access to the internet must be a basic human right, across the globe, for a number of reasons. First of all, legitimate, transparent democratic processes of government require in today’s world that information flow freely and that citizens be empowered to share information and to find information, according to their choices and their needs.
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July 1, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”
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June 28, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
I’d like to thank you again for your peaceful objections which have received widespread coverage across the world, and would like to ask you that by using all legal channels, and by remaining faithful to the sacred system of the Islamic Republic, to make sure that your objections are heard by the authorities in the country. I am fully aware that your justified demands have nothing to do with groups who do not believe in the sacred Islamic Republic of Iran’s system. It is up to you to distance yourself from them, and do not allow them to misuse the current situation.
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June 28, 2009 :: staff :: 4 Comments
Iranian authorities have reportedly shut down Kalemeh, the official website of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. Kalemeh was considered to be Mousavi’s only remaining independent means of communicating directly with supporters or with the world beyond Iran’s borders. The development is an escalation of the government’s efforts to disrupt opposition channels of communication and organizing capacity.
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June 25, 2009 :: staff :: 7 Comments
Reports from Wednesday protests in Tehran include harrowing though unconfirmed accounts of axe-wielding thugs, brutal assaults against civilians and mass detentions. Baharestan Square was reportedly the scene of a messy attempt to stage a pro-opposition rally, but accounts of what took place are hard to verify. At least one victim’s family may have been taken into custody and bans on public mourning have been reported.
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June 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 8 Comments
As Iran’s presidential election has morphed into a massive international spectacle, with opposition protesters demanding justice and a full accounting of how votes were tallied, the regime has used every technological advantage at its disposal to obstruct online communications and mobile phone traffic. The government now has a wealth of powerful technologies, from western firms, it can use to spy, block communications, and even alter messages before they are delivered.
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June 17, 2009 :: staff :: 16 Comments
On Tuesday, as opposition demonstrations calling for a full accounting for all votes cast in Friday’s election spread, authorities revoked press credentials for foreign journalists and warned media not to report from the protest marches. Opposition leaders, protest organizers and some media staff have reportedly been rounded up and held in undisclosed locations.
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June 11, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
The Associated Press is the most widely distributed news wire service in the world. Credible impartiality is vitally important to its reputation as an unbiased source of global reporting. However, that journalists might have opinions, perhaps informed opinions, on matters on which they are not reporting for pay should never be in and of itself cause for reprimand. The AP, like any reputable news agency, has a moral obligation to honor the inherent value of press freedom, and that includes the right of individuals to express their views in other venues.
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June 10, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
How can we reach the state of affairs in which online activity is entirely secure against identity theft? Hyper-convergence means media and services of all kinds will be increasingly integrated across a broad-spectrum multi-media fabric, where one’s actions and interests, private information and financial data, will be increasingly widespread.
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June 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The Chinese government, in Beijing, controlled by a Communist party that allows no dissent, and no opposition, continues to suppress public awareness, discussion or inquiry, regarding the events of June 1989, in which the Chinese military massacred hundreds of student demonstrators. The term Tiananmen produces filtered results in web searches, and the regime has blocked access to Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, the Huffington Post, LiveJournal, MSN’s Bing, and other sites, in an effort to prevent Chinese internauts from locating any reporting on the massacre of 4 June 1989.
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May 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Publishing models determine which texts are made available to a wide audience, and by what means. New media, like this social network, are providing new opportunities, but the crossover between print and digital media will provide bold new opportunities for making the best new ideas available to the people who can do the most with them.
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May 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
What can we do to impede the erosion of some of our most prized social-intellectual habits of mind, rooted in organic brain structure and in social networking (from campfire to empire, parliament to newsprint, to Twitter and The Hot Spring Network), while taking advantage of the power of the web?
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May 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
As the world marked international Press Freedom Day yesterday, there was growing concern about the conditions facing journalists around the world. Reporters without Borders (RSF) has expressed concern a Tibetan editor jailed in China may be suffering torture, the American journalist Roxana Saberi is said to be frail due to an ongoing hunger strike in protest of her 8 year sentence for ‘espionage’ in Iran, and numerous heads of state are listed as ‘predators’ working against press freedom.
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May 3, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: One Comment
Lin Zhao was a Chinese poet who hoped that the end of feudal imperialism in 20th century China would lead to real democratic rights for its people. She was executed in 1968 as the regime of Mao Zedong sought to crush all dissent and sweep away potential cultural and conceptual rivals to its rule.
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May 2, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: 5 Comments
UNESCO Committee on Communication and Information representative presents award for research into press freedom. Debate discusses anti-press actions that have impeded the free flow of information about civilian suffering in war-zones ranging from Gaza to Sri Lanka to Iraq. The debate is hosted and moderated by William Horsley, of the Association of European Journalists.
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April 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The election of 2008 is historic for a variety of reasons: it saw the election of the first African American president, a second consecutive “wave election” —not seen since 1930 and ’32—, saw two women come very close to the most powerful job in the world, mobilized millions of voters and saw record amounts of fundraising from “small donors”. It was, however, also a watershed moment in the fundamental decentralization of the American political process.
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March 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Investigators in several countries say they have uncovered a global “ghost net” of cyber-espionage, with major centers in three Chinese provinces and a foothold in California. Just one of the group’s alleged cyber-spies is said to have created a system that hacked into 30,000 computers per day. The investigation began with a probe into alleged hacking of computers used by the Dalai Lama in exile in India.
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March 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Amazon Kindle is a nice device, and it handles its job well, but it is just a very clumsy start to what will be a technological convergence few in mainstream media (and publishing) are anticipating, though it may not be far off. The page-perfect, for lack of a better term, e-reading device will make portable electronic reading easier and more comfortable than ever, packing huge amounts of data, as well as wireless downloading and even browsing capability, into an ultrathin tablet touchscreen.
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December 16, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Communist party government of China has resumed blocking some websites it had unblocked as a gesture of good will, after foreign reporters complained during the Olympics that certain foreign information sources were not available to them. The BBC and Reporters without Borders (RSF) report their sites being blocked, and the Chinese government says sites that contain information sympathetic to Tibetan or Taiwanese independence movements cannot be allowed to be read in China.
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July 14, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will take regulatory action to prevent internet service providers (ISP) from blocking or controlling users’ access to online content. The announcement came from the FCC chairman after Comcast moved to manipulate internet access —limiting their freedom to navigate— who had engaged in file-sharing online services, presumably in an effort to control access to content for which the cable provider was not being paid per-content-access.
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July 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
President George W. Bush yesterday signed an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) into law, after the Senate passed the controversial legislation, giving telecommunications firms retroactive immunity for cooperating with warrantless wiretapping conducted on American citizens, with no foundation in US law and in direct violation of the original FISA law, and the US Constitution. A federal court had ruled that the warrantless wiretaps violated the US Constitution, prompting a move by Pres. Bush and his allies in Congress to pass a new law correcting the legal problem.
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June 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Federal Communications Commission has been asked by leading members of Congress to investigate revelations about a Pentagon program to use retired military personnel, some working for defense contractors and arms manufacturers, to deliver “talking points” on US television in the months before the Iraq war. The viewing public was not informed of these officials’ special relationship to their former employer or of their ties to military contractors who stood to profit from the war.
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March 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
We are on the verge of a major communications and global economic revolution, in which major media, technological advances, cloud computing and dispersed optimization, adapt to and take over new models for living and producing in human society. The New Scientist magazine reports in its March 15-21, 2008 edition that “web 3.0 will be about making information less free”.
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January 9, 2008 :: The Editors :: One Comment
AT&T is proposing the implementation of new filtering technologies “at the network level” that would essentially interrupt in a definitive way the public’s freedom to access online content. The concept known as ‘net neutrality’ refers to consumers and netizens’ ability to freely gain access to any site, paid or unpaid, without major telecommunications companies programming [...]
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January 9, 2008 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
PLANNED FILTERING WOULD END OPEN INTERNET AS IT HAS EXISTED UNTIL NOW, REPLACING IT WITH STRATIFIED, PREMIUM-BRAND CONTROLLED CONTENT FORMAT AT&T is proposing the implementation of new filtering technologies “at the network level” that would essentially interrupt in a definitive way the public’s freedom to access online content. The concept known as ‘net neutrality’ refers [...]
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August 31, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
OF 25 SUCH FORMAT ‘FLIPS’ OVER 18 MONTHS, ZERO HAVE PRODUCED HIGHER RATINGS THAN THE CANCELLED PROGRESSIVE TALK FORMAT In San Diego, California, the sixth largest city in the United States, Clear Channel is planning to shut down the city’s only progressive radio station, Air America, a nationally-syndicated talk radio format that often voices criticism [...]
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August 14, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
When Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder asked Pres. Bush to “leave this world alone” in song, online viewers watching Lollapalooza via AT&T’s ‘Blue Room’ webcast were not able to hear it. The company cut the political lyrics from the webcast in what band-members, fans and net-neutrality advocates have called blatant censorship. AT&T blamed an outside contractor and apologized for the ‘mistake’.
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August 9, 2007 :: staff :: Comments Off
Journalist Bill Moyers explains how Net Neutrality is really about stipulating for all media regulations an ‘Equality of Access provision’ like that imposed on AT&T after “Free Press and Save the Internet.com orchestrated 800 organizations, a million and a half petitions… a top-shelf communications campaign…”
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August 9, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
THE OPEN INTERNET IS A FORCE FOR DEMOCRACY & OPEN GOV’T, NOW IT IS UNDER THREAT FROM THOSE WHO WISH TO BOTTLENECK THE FREE PRESS The concept of ‘net neutrality’ refers to the current state of affairs in the free democracies of the world, where those who control the physical infrastructure of the Internet are [...]
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September 26, 2005 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
In a high-level Communist party meeting, China’s president Hu Jintao has reportedly called for an intensive crackdown on media liberties. While China’s government has sought to project an image of a more market-oriented, open system, it continues to forbid basic press freedoms and still persecutes journalists at an alarming rate. Reporters without Borders (RSF), a [...]
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