Anivar's journal

Originally published at moving republic. Please leave any comments there.

Jace summarises the indian internet censorship issue in a wonderful article here

Originally published at moving republic. Please leave any comments there.

I came across this Great tool & campaign by Amnesty International against censorship on internet. Amnesties press release says

From Iran to the Maldives and Cuba to Vietnam, governments are both cracking down on those who use the internet to communicate their views and denying their citizens access to its wealth of information. Web users are locked up, internet cafes are shut down, chat rooms are policed and blogs deleted. Websites are blocked, foreign news banned, and search engines filter out sensitive results.

“The internet’s potential for change is being undermined — by governments unwilling to tolerate this free media outlet, and by companies willing to help them repress free speech”

Sun Microsystems, Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems, Yahoo! and Google are among those companies implicated in helping governments censor the internet or track down individual users. In 2004, Microsoft released information about nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu to the Israeli authorities without his knowledge or consent. The data was initially used to prosecute Vanunu for having contact with foreign media.

The most interesting thing is they have a great script to display the censored data into any blog that using the script. see the irrepressible badge on my button list. Thesre is a way to take the online pledge also. The pledge is very relevent in current indian context.

Originally published at moving republic. Please leave any comments there.

I am looking at the media coverage on the blog ban. it is covered by all national & International press & channels. Times of india Dedicated a large chunk of its front page & wrote an Editorial. Indian Express also posted a Front page news that analysing content of blocked sites. NDTV & CNN-IBN are projected it as a top story for last 2 days. NDTV even conducted a poll with sms votting. And the news is slashdotted. Bloggers suceeded in making it as an international issue. Guardian, BBC, New York Times, WSJ , Asian age, washington post, list is very big.

At the same time bloggers setup alternate access mechanisms like inblogs & tools.superhit.in . worked out campaignes to popularise tools like tor & privoxy.

While looking at the group of protest bloggers it is only less than 100 in number. The bloggers collective group only have around 360 members. Even though they can make this much voice.

It clearly shows the power of blog as an alternate media. The power with bloggers is the power of media. Then what will be the effect if we can use this power for marginalised communities. the other india ? . When main stream media fails to address the peoples’s movements & issues of existance & livelihood blogs & a collective work by the bloggers can do a lot of mediation. The formation like Bloggers collective can also think on that direction ( even if it is a very much vulnarable group).

I am ending up with the post with a brilliant poem by Renjini Narendranath on her blocked blog on Blogspot.

Yea, I will still blog.

Yea, I will still blog.
I still continue to blog.
Blog my random thoughts.
They can’t stop me from talking.

The other friend asked,
Who are these ANTique kings ?
They attacked our blogs. *

Yes, they attacked in some name.
“Terrorism” they call it.

I say, this is terrorism.
Taking away ones freedom.
Without a word.
Without a clue.
One fine day, take it away ?

I don’t know what their arguments are.
Did they put it on the desk to debate ?
No.
Where we asked ?
No.
They just attacked the blogs.

July 13th was a black day.
This blog is my black badge.
A statement.
A statement for them to exit !
Flush the ban !
Else I fear an aftershock.
It is on the hold.
Exit our domain.
Let us thrive here.
You usurpers !
Exit the ban.
Throw open the Gateways.
The bloody internet is
Fourth dimension of life.
We are the citizens here.

Why don’t you ban the bloody MNC’s
Usurping our young minds ?
Why can’t you ban the bloody Colas ?
Why not ban the advertisements ?
The collateral damage is more there.
Don’t you see this?
If you do, then batter them.
Not the bloody blogs !

Originally published at moving republic. Please leave any comments there.

This is the 2nd time Indian state is controlling the civil society spaces in
internet. (hope you all remember the yahoo groups story). it is the
time to make a protest against state terrorism that denies the rights
to free speach of the people.

We need to have a clarity on the following questions

1) Are we against all type of censorship on blogosphere?

2) are you ok with banning some blogs which is a threat to national security?

In the discussion thread on NDTV poll question these questions came up.

I strongly suggest we must take a position against all kind of censorship in Blogosphere.
we must take a position against banning any blog in the name of national security. Blogs primarily represent the people’s voces without geographic boundaries. Nation security is a very vulnerable term and a repressive state can portray any blog as threat to national security (or against public interest.. that is the another popular term for the state).
what is the problem if someone blogs in favour of terrorism? I think nothing will happen State govt have enough websites to “balance flow of information”.. They have very good communication mechanisms than blogs. It is the same as Defence ministry & Abdul kalam worries about Google earth. if needed terrorists can buy high quality satellite data.

The CERT-IN’s statement is like ” terrorists might be using blogs to transfer information and communicate”
Unless they use some kind of ciphering/ encryption to send messages its highly unlikely that any blogger can pass the info. I am not saying that shutting these websites will be able to stop spreading on these messages. Skype for example is encrypted, and if you’re a terrorist I guess you would use that. I feel The problem is the state finds is the growing civil society space on blogosphere.

I think we must learn from the vikalp & films for freedom, movements while censorship happened at mumbai interanational film festival (Documentary)( MIFF) . The films denied under censorship are the documentaries like Final solution by Rakesh sharma, which portrays the pogorm in Gujarat. so censorship always acts in order to prevent the voices they dont like. They made a platform named films for Freedom & started a pareller film festival named vikalp. So it is also the time for us to study something from this example.
It may be a suitable time to constitute an Electronic Frontier Fountation in India.

Does blogosphere have a national boundary? i feel no. There are 2 parts involved in it. Bloggers & blog readers. On the discussions happened here we are addressing the bloggers within a geographical boundary of indian state. For a sucess of campaign we must provide new machanisms to people inorder to access blogs & ned to popularise them i am coming to jace’s point. There is enough tools for us ( bloggers) to post & access the content. but for The blog readers we need to provide some solution . we need to think on that way also

(This post is written for the purpose of a discussion on Bloggers collective mailing list. I cant find the mensioned mailes now because of the flooded data on the list)
Updates: John Gilmore, Cofounder of EFF said that they Dont have a plan to open up an Indian chapter near future. Rishabh mensioned  about an organisation named FREE ( The Forum for Rights to Electronic Expression ), formed in 1995 with a nice name & a beautiful logo something like amnesty but with a modem instead of a candle. He also pointed the wired’s coverage. The Old mirrored content of FREE is available at http://www.free-in.org . This may be the time to Reactivate FREE

Originally published at moving republic. Please leave any comments there.

what do India, Pakistan, China and Ethiopia have in common?

It’s not a love of cricket. Or even clandestine nuclear programs.
They’re all - apparently - blocking blogspot.com.

India is the newcomer to this party, and it’s unclear just what blogs are being blocked, whether all ISPs are complying, and whether all blogspot blogs will be blocked or just a subset of sites.

India is again playing with censorship on web just after china. The Department of Telecommunications passed an order to ISPs Friday to block several websites. The list is confidential. ISPs have been slowly coming into compliance. blogs & sites hosted on Blogger , Typepad & Geocities are not accessible now. The List of ISP’s that Blocked Blogger is here. Bloggers collective initiated protest by Bloggers. A new wiki is setup against censorship
Shivam Vij managed to talk to Dr Gulshan Rai, director of CERT-IN, the only body authorised to issue a blocking directive. His response: “Somebody must have asked for some sites to be blocked. What is your problem?”.

Every ban Govt proposes is in the name of controlling terrorists. There are such unclarified reports this time too. It is very same as denying public water supply in the name of terrorists are used to drink it. This also shows that Govt of India & CERT-IN did’nt learn anything from the past experience of banning yahoo! Groups in the name of militant Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) of the Khasi tribe, started a mailinglist named kynhun. The popularity popularity and visibility went up by leaps and bounds instantaneously, despite it being blocked by all ISPs! Clearly, you can’t ban anything on the internet.

More than a censorship it violates Communication rights of the people. As blogs become more an more important as a platform for free speech, government seeking to restrict speech are finding it appealing to control speech on blogs. Blogs are the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression. I expect Reporters without Borders will come with a press Release soon.

Neha vishanathan, Global Voices editor for South Asia written a nice article explains the situation. Needless to say, most Indian bloggers are deeply upset about this apparent block. The fact that Pakistan has a similar block in place - put in place in the wake of the Danish cartoons, fiercely combatted by the Don’t Block the Blogs campaign - isn’t much consolation.

India is country with nearly 16,580,000 internet users & amoung them around 38 lakh of people are using blogs, reading or Writing, around 45,000 blogs from india is hosted at blogspot.com. We all knows the help done by Disaster response & relief blogs at the time of Tsunami. (it came to the eye of mainstream media at that time). The current blocks affect (in the name of security) affects even mumbaihelp blog.

Govt’s need to understand that any kind of censorship will not work on internet. The online community will overcome any ban with the help of social technologies. The most Interesting thing I’m seeing among indian bloggers is the way they are collectively documenting the issue using social Technologies. see the Bloggers against censorship wiki. The Techniques for bypassing the ban is also available here.