Webb v. Jessamine County Fiscal Court, 2011 WL 3652751 (E.D. Ky. August 19, 2011) Plaintiff filed a civil rights lawsuit against the local jail and other governmnet officials after she gave birth while incarcerated. She claimed, among other things, that the jail’s failure to get her proper medical care before and during the delivery caused [...]
Just as quickly as one file-sharing solution bites the dust, another steps in to take its place. In the wake of LimeWire’s demise we take a look at Groovejaar, a downloading software client which takes the only real weakness of streaming music service Grooveshark and turns it into its strength – fully downloadable high-quality MP3s in an instant.
Source: Who Needs LimeWire? Open Source Groovejaar’s In Town
Far too often, government policies tend to be at odds with reality when it comes to women’s reproductive health by ignoring the services that women need most. Which is why guidelines recently issued by the Department of Human Services requiring insu…
One of the great American ideals is that everyone has an equal chance to succeed in life. A cornerstone of this ideal is our public education system. American public schools are meant to ensure that every child — regardless of race, religion, …
A 70-year-old retired widow from San Francisco who was accused of sharing a porn movie on BitTorrent has seen the case against her dropped. The woman, who went to the press after being threatened by a notorious anti-piracy law firm, was told that they targeted her by mistake. In what appears to be an attempt at diverting attention away from the damaging and embarrassing truth, the law firm claims it has now found the ‘real’ infringer.
Source: BitTorrent Grandma Was Wrongfully Accused, Lawyer Admits
Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s brazenness is again on display this week as he promotes his new book In My Time. His comments in a recent interview coupled with excerpts from the book have served as a jarring reminder of the lack of accountab…
In a recent New York Times editorial, the Times highlights the mounting trend of efforts at the state level to make access to abortion care as onerous as possible for women. At the heart of the Times’ argument is an ACLU case challenging a Kansas l…
EFF has joined Public Knowledge and other public interest groups in asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to clarify that the cell phone shutdown by the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) earlier this month was a violation of American te…
For years, Tunisians suffered in relative media silence as the Ben Ali regime curtailed digital rights, blocking websites and surveilling citizens. Then, thanks to the hard work of Tunisian free expression advocates who for many years worked to raise awareness of the country’s pervasive Internet controls, censorship fell along with the regime, with Ben Ali promising an end to filtering in his final speech on January 13 before fleeing to Saudi Arabia.
However, with Ben Ali gone, Tunisian courts have become the next critical battleground in the ongoing effort for a censorship-free Internet in Tunisia, with the Agence Tunisienne d’Internet (ATI) or Tunisian Internet Agency caught in the middle of implementing censorship orders and arguing in support of free expression.
By January 13, Tunisians finally had the free access for which they had fought so hard. But it was to be short-lived: In May, Al Jazeera reported that the interim government was attempting to retain elements of the old regime’s censorship; the ATI received an order from an investigating judge in the Permanent Military Tribunal in Tunis to block the Facebook account of democracy activist Jalel Brick. The ATI executed the orders, but published a list of the sites that had been ordered blocked, explaining that the bans were temporary due to the absence of laws regarding filtering of online content.
On May 27, Internet users received another blow to Internet freedom as a Tunisian court ordered the blocking of all pornographic sites in response to a petition from three local lawyers who argued the “negative psychological, physiological, social and educational effects” of pornographic websites. Though the ATI attempted to have the order blocked, the decision was upheld and the ATI agreed in June to comply by initiating the block, while continuing to appeal the court order. Free expression activist Slim Amamou, who had been appointed to the interim government ministry just months before, criticized the decision, resigning shortly afterward.
The ATI’s second appeal–which asserted, among other things, that the agency lacked the financial and technical resources to implement the ban–was also denied, in a ruling handed down August 15. The ATI intends to file another appeal with Tunisia’s Court of Cassation–the country’s highest court–but in the meantime must implement the order fully.
The goal of the ATI is to be declared as an official Internet exchange point (IXP) for Tunisia. As such, the agency supports the right of ISPs to offer voluntary opt-in parental control services and have offered assistance toward that end. Nonetheless, the ATI firmly opposes the role the courts are playing in attempting to censor online content.
On Facebook and, less so, on Twitter, Tunisian netizens have also expressed their anger and frustration about the decision to censor. Many see the block on Facebook pages in particular as an attempt to block criticism of the Army (an act which is banned by Article 91 of the Military Justice Act).
Although there is a community, motivated by religious concerns, that is happy about the decision to block pornography, the majority of Tunisia’s online community have expressed disagreement. While some have argued Internet freedom as a human rights principle, others have–like the ATI–pointed out the risk of implementing censorship of any kind, lest it lead Tunisia back to the censorship of the Ben Ali era.
Though Tunisian activists have taken to social media, changing their avatars to the anti-censorship logos of days past, media coverage of the court decision has been minimal.
Like both the ATI and Tunisian citizens, we have grave concerns about the implementation of any new filtering in Tunisia. While bans on pornography may be well-meaning, filtering almost always results in overblocking, or the unintended inclusion of sites unrelated to the ban. Take, for instance, the case of Australia, where a ban on “illegal content” was proposed; the blacklist of sites, revealed by Wikileaks, included the site of a Queensland-based dentist, as well as other unrelated content.
Filtering is also ineffective and expensive. After years of circumventing bans on YouTube, news sites, and other content, Tunisians have become savvy at using proxies and other tools to circumvent filtering. Furthermore, in addition to the financial cost of maintaining censorship, filtering can result in slowed bandwidth, a concern raised (video is in French) by the ATI’s president, Moez Chakchouk.
The EFF supports the ATI’s decision to appeal the order to block pornography at Tunisia’s highest court and urges the court to make the right decision in ensuring free expression for all Tunisian citizens.
A schoolboy sent to trial for sharing movies on two BitTorrent sites has been acquitted by a court. The 15-year-old, who said he only ever intended to download and not distribute, was cleared of all charges following a hearing. However, as is so often the case in copyright issues, the story won’t end here.