Well let’s get straight to it, shall we?
ReadWriteWeb is banned in Tunisia. Additionally, groups of Islamists are targeting Facebook users and uniting to ban them. An attempted target of one of these groups was our own ReadWriteWeb France editor, Fabrice Epelboin.
U.S. Senate passes Daniel Pearl Act. The Senate passed the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act. It will mandate the expansion of “the examination of press freedom worldwide in the State Department´s annual human rights report.” Daniel Pearl was the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by terrorists in Pakistan.
Iran arrests editors of news sites. Mazyar Khosravi, the editor of the Hammihannews, was arrested “on a charge of publishing false information as a result of a Tehran University complaint accusing him of posting reports and eye-witness accounts about attacks on the university campus by Basij militiamen on 14 June 2009, two days after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection.”
U.S. press sues for release of Gizmodo editor’s search warrant. In the wake of the search and seizure of computer equipment and paperwork at the home of Jason Chen, the editor who wrote about the leaked iPhone, U.S. press organizations are suing for release of the warrant. Associated Press, Bloomberg News, CNET News, Los Angeles Times, Wired and the California Newspaper Publishers Association are all involved. Normally, a warrant of this sort is release automatically after 10 days. But this one has not been.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission head pushing net neutrality. “(T)federal government will step in and begin regulating broadband lines under rules adopted decades ago designed for traditional phone networks. The move will go a long way in enforcing a ‘net neutrality,’ which is meant to insure that all content is delivered equally, regardless of its source or type.”
Draft bill of U.S. online privacy act unveiled. “The discussion draft of the legislation sets up requirements for Internet companies and online ad networks that include ‘conspicuous’ notice of information capture, initial user opt-in on all such collection and user opt-out afterward.”
Top photo by Andrian van Leen
Bottom photo by Hey Paul