31 Aug 11 | Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost
Internet access in educational institutions must be under control, said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as he addressed educators on 29 August. Lukashenko said they and teachers should pay close attention to communication among young people online, primarily on social networks, which he labelled “a dangerous weapon” that could be used for “destructive purposes.”
30 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
It’s not only China that’s working on a musical blacklist. Over 2,600 songs have been banned in the past two years in South Korea after being flagged for “hazardous media content” by the South Korean Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
But it’s not 1990s boy bands whose declarations of love are being censored. Lyrics deemed “problematic” by the ministry have included references to the effects of alcohol made by contemporary Korean groups.
The ministry’s aim is to protect young people from “negative cultural influences”, but both musicians and fans have criticised the ban as an infringement on freedom of expression. One netizen wrote,
This is pitiful. We are living in the internet era and they forbid songs due to their references to liquor? One can easily access to more hard-core stuff online… Why dont you just block the internet, deeming it inappropriate for kids below age 19. […] They spent about 21 billion 940 million Korean Won (approximately 200 million USD) of government money this year in censoring these songs! [This refers to the Ministry’s yearly budget, not the total amount of money spent on the censorship alone] Will songs about liquor (exclusively) prompt kids to drink alcohol? The kids are not that simple. Why don’t you, the Ministry, focus on taking care of runaway kids rather than doing this?
Lee Yoo Eun at Global Voices Online has a great wrap-up of the story.
26 Aug 11 | Index Index, minipost
Today, Fiji’s Ministry of Information sent a mass e-mail asking media outlets and journalists to send all news headlines to censors half an hour before stories are published, following soldiers being photographed removing anti-regime graffiti from public property. Fiji’s military-backed regime began requiring daily monitoring of all news stories last April.
24 Aug 11 | Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost
Bucking a trend of official anxiety over the explosive growth of microblogs in the country, Beijing’s Communist Party Chief urged China’s internet companies to put an end to the spread of fake and harmful information when he visited major internet firm Sina this week. Liu Qi praised the company for its achievements with Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging platform with 200 million registered users, but said internet companies should “step up the application and management of new technology, and absolutely put an end to fake and misleading information.”
