Dissent has suffered a crackdown in Vietnam in recent years, with bloggers often being the main target. Geoffrey Cain asks what has prompted this backlash against free speech (more…)
Vladimir Putin says [Ru] he doesn’t use the internet very much. But he has definitely recognised its power. The biggest protest rallies in post-Soviet Russia, against Putin and his party United Russia, were organised online. No wonder that the parliamentary and presidential elections and Putin’s inauguration were all marked by the hacking of independent media websites and LiveJournal, Russia’s most popular blogging platform, via DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. (more…)
Although only 10 per cent of India’s population is online, a divisive national debate over internet freedom has implications for the country’s economic and political growth.
In December 2011 journalist Vinay Rai filed a complaint under sections 200 and 156(3) of India’s Criminal Procedure Code against Google and Facebook (among others) for hosting “objectionable content”. The content, according to the complainant, “seeks to create enmity, hatred and communal Violence amongst various religious communities; is demeaning, degrading and obscene, and will corrupt minds and will seriously affect religious sentiments.” (more…)