19 Dec 2017 | Campaigns -- Featured, Digital Freedom, Digital Freedom Statements, Statements, United States
Last week the Federal Communications Commission of the United States voted to remove the current regulations on network neutrality. This means internet service providers (ISPs) would be permitted to limit, block or give preferential treatment to different kinds of internet traffic. This has huge implications for freedom of expression online.
“The decision means ISPs could now simply favour the sites whose political views they agree with, and put smaller players – without the money to buy better access – out of business. Internet users should be able to access the legal content they want – not have their choices dictated by the whim of major corporations,” said Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg.
It is vital that Americans lobby their members of Congress to press it to use the Congressional Review Act to undo the FCC’s decision and that the international community affirms its commitment to a fair and open internet.
2 Jul 2013 | Volume 42.02 Summer 2013
The current issue of Index on Censorship magazine features a special report on the shifting world power balance and the implications for freedom of expression.
“The multipolar world can be one where universal human rights and freedom of expression are kept firmly on the agenda, and increasingly respected, if these democracies hold themselves and each other to account — and are held to account — at home and internationally,” write Index CEO Kirsty Hughes and London School of Economics professor Saul Estrin.
The issue also looks at press freedom in Italy, Burma, Mexico, Columbia and India as well as violence against journalists and arrests of those who expose uncomfortable truths. “Worldwide, on average only one in ten cases of murders of journalists ends in a conviction,” says Guy Berger, author of an article on the threats and dangers journalists encounter around the world. Instead of being reassured that the rule of law will be upheld, “the take-away lesson for everyone is: journalists can be killed with impunity”.
From the current issue
Global view: Who has freedom of expression? | The multipolar challenge to free expression | Censorship: The problem child of Burma’s dictatorship | News in monochrome: Journalism in India
Also in this issue:
- John Lloyd on how party politics have skewed Italian journalism
- Yavuz Baydar says Turkey’s media moguls must defend free speech
- Htoo Lwin Myo tells what was it is like to work as a writer in Burma
- Bharat Bhushan on “paid-for” news and the absence of marginal voices in the Indian media
- Lawrence Freedman and Benedict Wilkinson on the opportunities — and limits — of online activism
- A new play from Turkmenistani writer-in-exile Farid Tukhbatullin, whose wit offers a glimpse of life inside one of the world’s most closed and repressive countries.
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18 Apr 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Human rights lawyers say the authorities on Friday (15 April) detained an activist participating in an online forum that called for free elections in the country. Abdullah al-Shehhy becomes the fourth activist who has been arrested since demonstrators began calling for political reforms in the country. The government had previously arrested the leader of the forum, Ahmed Mansour.
29 Mar 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The National Congress Party (NCP), which governs North Sudan, claims that its battalion of “cyber jihadists” are ready to “crush” all online dissidents. The warning came from the party’s vice-president in Khartoum State, Mandur Al-Mahdi, on Tuesday (March 22). He warned youth groups using social networks sites like Twitter and Facebook that they would be targeted by the NCP’s online defence operations.
