Because every American
should have access
to broadband Internet.

The Internet Innovation Alliance is a broad-based coalition of business and non-profit organizations that aim to ensure every American, regardless of race, income or geography, has access to the critical tool that is broadband Internet. The IIA seeks to promote public policies that support equal opportunity for universal broadband availability and adoption so that everyone, everywhere can seize the benefits of the Internet - from education to health care, employment to community building, civic engagement and beyond.

The Podium

Blog posts tagged with 'Online Censorship'

Wednesday, August 05

Censorship Only Gets You So Far

By Brad

When it comes to blocking websites and social networking applications from citizens, China is one of the leaders of the pack. But a new study from the group Netpop Research (via Read Write Web) finds that despite their government’s attempts at censorship, 92% of Chinese citizens use social media sites—a higher percentage than the U.S.

Monday, May 11

Today in Censorship

By Brad

While America’s Internet remains chock full of anonymous commentators—sometimes to the detriment of society as a whole (see any comment thread on YouTube)—South Korea is cracking down on the freedom to namelessly gripe:

[E]ffective April 1 anonymous posting became illegal under certain circumstances. The new law is called the “Cyber Defamation Law.” The law provides that any Internet user making a comment or upload to a website that has over 100,000 unique visitors a day must append their real name to the comments they make. Sites must identify whether they meet the number of visitors threshold. If they do, the registration process must require the visitor wishing to post something to enter his national identification number.

 

Friday, May 01

Surfing Through Oppression

By Brad

Iran has perhaps the strictest online censorship program on the planet. But, as the New York Times reports, that’s not stopping many Internet users in the country from accessing banned content:

Last July, on popular sites that offer free downloads of various software, an escape hatch appeared. The computer program allowed Iranian Internet users to evade government censorship.

College students discovered the key first, then spread it through e-mail messages and file-sharing. By late autumn more than 400,000 Iranians were surfing the uncensored Web.

As it turns out, the censor-busting software has come from a surprising source:

The software was created not by Iranians, but by Chinese computer experts volunteering for the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has beem suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999. They maintain a series of computers in data centers around the world to route Web users’ requests around censors’ firewalls.

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