Murdoch tells Abu Dhabi to ride the creative wind

Rupert Murdoch's attention has now turned int seems to the Middle East as today he launched an attack on the unliberal attitudes of the media.

Speaking at the the inaugural Abu Dhabi Media Summit which opened today,the News International chairman told the conferenece that censorship is counterproductive and that the region's citizens should be free to unleash their creative talents.

the Arab world can adhere to traditions and values, while also investing in a thriving creative industry and avoiding over-regulation and hurdles that keep out foreign players.

and added

"As I speak, there is a powerful creative wind blowing through this region," he said, according to a copy of his speech. "Ride this wind and you will raise from these desert sands something extraordinary: a capital of creativity that is modern...that is global...and that is fully Arab."

The event will represents an opportunity to showcase its existing media infrastructure and outline its future plans and Murdoch's remarks make clear that the region must embrace the free market.

European privacy threatens American freedom of expression

An interesting take from the New York Times' Adam Liptak on the Italian google ruling earlier in the week.

He writes that whilst in

one sense, the ruling was a nice discussion starter about how much responsibility to place on services like Google for offensive content that they passively distribute.

in another,

it called attention to the profound European commitment to privacy, one that threatens the American conception of free expression and could restrict the flow of information on the Internet to everyone.

Italian ruling threatens Internet freedoms

Yesterday's ruling in Italy could be regarded as a threat to internet freedom or another step in trying to curb the power of Google.

Three Google executives were convicted of violating privacy laws by allowing disturbing footage of a disabled Italian boy being bullied to be posted on the internet.

The decision stems from back in September 2006 when footage was posted of an autistic teenager and who was being bullied by four other boys, at a Turin school.

It remained online for two months before being taken down but the event was prior to You Tube being taken over by Google in Italy.

Google's defence was that it was nigh on impossible for individual videos to be checked due to the sheer volumes being loaded on a daily basis.


America's ambassador to Italy, David Throne said of the ruling that

This founding principal of internet freedom is vital for democracies which recognise freedom of expression and is safeguarded by all who take this value to heart.

Google executives pledged to appeal, saying if the verdict was allowed to stand, "the Web as we know it will cease to exist."

They added that

"If intermediaries like Google or the person who hosts your Web site can be thrown in jail in any country for the acts of other people and suddenly have a legal obligation to prescreen everything anyone says on their Web site before putting it online, the tools for free speech that everyone uses on the Net would grind to a halt.

Iceland- a beacon of free expression and information

Iceland could become the journalistic equivalent of finance in Switzerland.

Nieman Lab reports that the Icelandic government

is expected to introduce a measure aimed at making the country an international center for investigative journalism publishing, by passing the strongest combination of source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the world

prompting the question

Could global news organizations with a home office in Reykjavík soon be as common as Delaware corporations or Cayman Islands assets?

Latest Chinese clampdown on the net

More evidence of China's crackdown on individuals using the internet.

This morning's FT reports that

From Monday, people registering a domain name in China would have to present a company seal and a business licence, the China Internet Network Information Center, a government-backed body, said in a statement.

According to the paper

Officials said the measure was part of a campaign to rein in pornographic content, but bloggers and internet activists interpreted it as a broader attempt to enforce internet censorship more heavily. "If they really enforce this, we will have to register our sites outside China," said one blogger.

Censorship kills

Thanks to Charlie Beckett who draws my attention to the defamation map.

It comes courtesy of Article 19,the global campaign for freedom of expression which

fights for all hostages of censorship, defends dissenting voices that have been muzzled, and campaigns against laws and practices that silence.

Oceans no barrier for the Iranian authorities

It seems that even Iranians living abroad who go online to critisise their country's regime are under attack.

As the Wall Street journal reports

Tehran's leadership faces its biggest crisis since it first came to power in 1979, as Iranians at home and abroad attack its legitimacy in the wake of June's allegedly rigged presidential vote. An opposition effort, the "Green Movement," is gaining a global following of regular Iranians who say they never previously considered themselves activists.

and consequently the heat is being turned up on those use the medium of the internet

Dozens of individuals in the U.S. and Europe who criticized Iran on Facebook or Twitter said their relatives back in Iran were questioned or temporarily detained because of their postings. About three dozen individuals interviewed said that, when traveling this summer back to Iran, they were questioned about whether they hold a foreign passport, whether they possess Facebook accounts and why they were visiting Iran. The questioning, they said, took place at passport control upon their arrival at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport.

Ht-Suw and Kevin Charman-Anderson

Is Vietnam blocking Facebook?

Vietnam's growing legions of Facebook users fear that the country's communist government might be blocking the popular social networking website, which has become difficult to access over the past few weeks.

reports the Independent

Although there has been no official government comment

A technician at Vietnam Data said government officials had ordered his firm to block access to Facebook and that VDC instituted a block on the site 11 November. He declined to give his name because he was not authorised to speak to the media

What would you ask the Chinese President?

If you had 10 questions to ask Chinese President Hu Jintao about freedom of expression what would you ask.

Well with Barack Obama about to meet him RSF pose their 10 and here they are

1.Why are the websites of the US companies Twitter and Facebook blocked by the Chinese authorities?

2.Why do the Chinese authorities jam the programmes that are broadcast in Mandarin, Tibetan and Uyghur by the US-funded stations Radio Free Asia and Voice of America?

3.Is he going to pardon the hundreds of imprisoned journalists, intellectuals and bloggers, including Liu Xiaobo, Hu Jia, Shi Tao and Qi Chonghuai, who did nothing but express their opinions peacefully?

4.Why are foreign journalists, including American journalists, unable to visit Tibet without a permit?

5.Why is the Tibetan filmmaker Dhondhup Wangchen being tried on a charge of subversion when all he did was film interviews with Tibetans?

6.Why are international news agencies, including US news agencies, unable to sell their services directly to Chinese news media?

7.Why does the Propaganda Department routinely censor international news reports, including some aspects of the growing dispute with Iran over its nuclear programme?

8.Why do the Chinese security forces prevent journalists from freely doing investigative reporting in the area along the border with North Korea?

9.Why have the communication services (including Internet and telephone services) of the inhabitants of Xinjiang been blocked or kept under close surveillance for nearly four months?

10.Why are investigative journalists, especially those trying to cover business and corruption cases, still being harassed by the police and Propaganda department, a problem that led to the recent joint resignation of many of the editors and reporters employed by the leading magazine Caijing?

Despite the repression,blogging flourishes in the Middle East

In the Middle East and North Africa, where political change occurs slowly, blogging has becomes a serious medium for social and political commentary as well as a target of government suppression.

writes Mohamed Abdel Dayem over at CPJ

We are all aware of the problems for freedom of speech in certain countries in the region but as he says

Blogging has flourished in the Middle East, propelled by the region’s unusually high growth rate in Internet use, and the exceedingly restrictive landscape for traditional media. This nexus of demography and repression has led activists, journalists, lawyers, and others online, where they express dissent and report information in previously unimaginable ways.

Baby P's killers unmasked under Article 10

The front pages are filled with the pictures of the people involved in the death of Baby P following a courts ruling that it was necessary to maintain public confidence in the judicial system.

Of course the fall out will be that the taxpayer will now have to pay for new identities for those involved.

Pictures have been available for some time having been leaked onto the internet last year and this no doubt contributed to the pressure on the courts yesterday.

As the Guardian reports

The decision by Mr Justice Coleridge to withdraw the protection of anonymity from Tracey Connelly and Baby Peter's stepfather, Steven Barker, followed pressure from several major media organisations, including the BBC, the Mirror Group, and the Times, who argued that this was important to ensure that those who caused the toddler's death were being properly held to account.

The courts stood behind article 10 of the Human Rights Act, the right to freedom of expression.

Not surprsingly there is massive coverage in the media this morning and no doubt the judge's decision will be poured over