Archive for the ‘Freedom of Information’ Category

Freedom of Information

Tharoor's Net stock

The setting up of supporttharoor.org is the democratic right of either Sebastian Fuhrmann or his employers, especially if they are sitting in far-off Germany.
It also seems to be fulfilling a need of those who actually think that “an educated, world-renowned, sophisticated and pro-active minister was shown the door for not much fault.” This fact is [...]

Freedom of Information

South Asian Journalists Demand: Stop the War on Journalism in Sri Lanka

The following statement was issued by the South Asia Media Solidarity Network at its meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal, on September 6-7.

We, the representatives of journalists’ unions and associations in the South Asian region, meeting on the platform of the South Asia Media Solidarity Network (SAMSN), express our deepest concern over continuing violations of media rights [...]

Blogging & RSS

Just five minutes to send a blogger to jail

No surprises here. Just that we need to take note. After all Mubarak is a “democrat” by some standards

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An Egyptian court has sentenced a blogger to four years’ prison for insulting Islam and the president.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Egypt blogger jailed for ‘insult’

technorati tags:blogging, freedom, ethics

Ethics & Legal issues

Is a free media essential for development?

A special edition of The World Debate, one of the BBC’s flagship programmes, will be filmed on Thursday October 26 at the World Congress on Communication for Development in Rome, Italy. Entitled “Is a free media essential for development?” it will be broadcast on BBC World on 28-29 October, as well as made available online.

Transmission [...]

Freedom of Information

Google: To give or not to give?

Increasingly new media companies have to confront this:

“A Brazilian judge has ordered the local office of Web search company Google to disclose the data of users of Google’s social networking site Orkut accused of crimes like racism or child pornography.”

The choice is not so easy but the issues at stake are.

Blogging & RSS

Upstaging big bro

This one’s for posterity.
The subversive potential of new media is real. Yet blogsphere has served merely to extend the reach of established media. The manufacturing of consent becomes that much more easier if news spreads through the blogosphere. Ultimately, the framework remains the same. But in cases such as the one that the link below [...]

Ethics & Legal issues

CERT-In and the attacks

“India is under attack from rogue elements within and outside the country, not only in its physical space (think Mumbai), but in cyberspace too. Extensions “.co.in” and “.gov.in” are special targets of hack-attacks, whose number, and intensity, is increasing at a worrying pace,”  reads a report from Vandana Gombar in the  Business Standard today. CERT-In [...]

Ethics & Legal issues

Appalling, to say the least

With a site named Indian Online Journalism and there is no rant about the blocking of the 17 websites or inaccessibility of three popular domains. Yes, strange indeed.

There is excellent activism going on already. There is no need for duplicating the effort here save to extend a hand of solidarity.

The casual manner in which three [...]

Blogging & RSS

All the action

According to Shivam Vij, the 22-page ban order refers to “sites to be blocked”. If that was the case, the ISPs must have gone for the overkill. Why? But that’s not the fundamental issue.
I have been able to visit a few blogspot sites from home. That’s strange because blogspot is supposed to be blocked completely. [...]

Blogging & RSS

The madness continues

As of this writing many blogs continue to remain out of bounds — typical bureaucratic overkill.

One obviously is concerned about hate mongering. The disproportionate noise that fundamentalists of all hues are able to inflict on the online world is evident.

There are techno-fundamentalists, of course, who think that blogosphere or cyberspace will somehow filter hate mongering. [...]

Broadcast

Dasmuni broadcasting

Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi’s diatribe against media owners is not without merit. If the proposed Broadcasting Bill facilitates a discussion on the way the media function, we need to welcome it.
While the ratcheting up on the supposed attack on freedom of the press in the Bill is good, even it is unfounded. It [...]

Business

Monitoring e-mails

A company, Email Data Source Inc’s business it to “analyze, organize, and archive thousands of daily email marketing messages” and, of course, make money by doing that.
The website claims that Email Data Source’s “catalogue currently contains over 900,000 email marketing messages on 18,000 brands, sent by 14,000 companies, through more than 6,000 mailing lists”.

Ethics & Legal issues

Heading in the same direction

A headline in The Progressive reads thus: VA Nurse Investigated for “Sedition” for Criticizing Bush. Hallelujah!
It surprised me to hear a journalist-friend say that he wasn’t particularly concerned about what Yahoo!, Google or AOL do with the personal information they have of their customers as long as he gets to use what’s on offer by [...]

Freedom of Information

The Bill of Media Rights

The Bill of Media Rights ostensibly concerns the media situation in the United States.
But please do read the Bill. We in India too are in need of a “free and vibrant media”. While for media owners the rising newspaper circulation figures are indicative of markets unexplored, it cannot be the view that the readers, or [...]