While the internet and social media facilitate democratic instant global discourse, they are also tools of control, says Kirsty Hughes
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A Kuwaiti man was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of endangering state security as a result of messages he sent on Twitter. The judge found Hamad al-Naqi guilty of insulting the prophet Muhammad and Islam, and insulting the rulers of neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Al-Naqi pleaded innocent at the start of the trial last month, saying his Twitter account had been hacked and he had not posted the messages.
Index on Censorship has learned that the Twitter account of protest group Space Hijackers has been suspended following a complaint by the organisers of the London Olympics.
The anti-capitalists, who have styled themselves as the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games, received notification from Twitter in an email this morning, which stated:
Hello,
We have received reports from the trademark holder, London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Ltd, that your account, @spacehijackers, is using a trademark in a way that could be confusing or misleading with regard to a brand affiliation. Your account has been temporarily suspended due to violation of our trademark policy.
(click image for full email)
The Space Hijackers had been using an altered version of the 2012 logo on their site and their Twitter page 
The Olympic organisers are notoriously prickly about branding, but also about protest, and laws introduced after London won the right to host this years games could potentially place restrictions on protest for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics.
It could be argued that the logo in itself was a justifiable reason for the suspension: but you have to seriously ask: is anyone actually going to confuse the Space Hijackers account for an official Olympic account? This should surely be the basis of a claim for trademark infringement.
It is doubtful that Space Hijackers are actually going to bring down the International Olympic Committee and capitalism along with it (not through Twitter at least). One can only conclude that this is an act of petty, vindictive censorship, hardly in the spirit of plurality and inclusiveness the Olympics is supposed to promote.
Pakistani authorities have restored access to micro-blogging platform Twitter, after temporarily blocking it because of messages deemed “offensive to Islam”. The ban, which came into force on Sunday (20 May) shortly after Interior Minister Rehman Malik said there were no plans to block Twitter, seemed to be the result of a competition on Facebook to submit images of the Prophet Muhammad. The ban was lifted about eight hours after it was imposed, and the chairman of The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) Twitter was blocked after it refused to remove inflammatory and blasphemous content.