Blogging Is Not A Crime !

[jesse]

I found this arresting chart on Swivel. It plots the number of bloggers who have been incarcerated over the past few years, based on data collected by the World Information Access project. The number of incidents it tracks went from five arrests in 2003 to 35 last year. As blogging expands internationally, so do the risk of speaking one’s mind. (Something many of us take for granted).

Most of those arrests are in countries with oppressive regimes, such as Egypt, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. But bloggers have been arrested in Canada, France, Greece, and even the U.S. (with Josh Wolf being one of the most famous incidents—he spent the better part of a year in jail for refusing to turn over journalistic video footage to a grand jury).

A few involve cases of alleged terrorism or pedophilia, but the majority involve some form of political speech. Some typical examples:

Reza Valizadeh (Iran; November, 2007). “For revealing Iranian president’s overpriced dogs that his security team uses.”

Charles Leblanc (Canada; June, 2006): “For taking pictures at a conference for his blog.”

Josh Wolf (USA; August, 2006): “For videotaping a burning police car.”

Hu Jia (China; December, 2007): “For posting his vocal critiques of human rights abuses and environmental degradation in China and calling the Olympics a ‘human rights disaster.’”

Reza Valizadeh (Iran; November, 2007): “For revealing Iranian president’s overpriced dogs that his security team uses.”

Nay Phone Latt (Burma; January, 2008): “For posting pictures of monks and people demonstrating on the streets.”

I’ve uploaded a spreadsheet with the names of all 64 arrested bloggers tracked by the WIA that includes their country, date of arrest, and reason for arrest. These do not include people arrested for impersonating someone else on Facebook or unfortunate enough to be beaten to death during an arrest.

Source : : http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/12...s-not-a-crime/

[WhiteEagle]

Got this piece of news from Black the blogger and Nathaniel Tan. Uncle Zorro and Kickdefella has the story too. So does Mahaguru.

Blogger Bakar Haq who operates the ‘Penarik Beca’ blog has been taken to the Commercial Crime Unit in Bukit Aman, according to blogger Jiwo Kelate who is in touch with the family.

Penarik Baca usually promotes links to daily posts of several political blogs. This blog has been highligted by him, too. Wonder what is so seditious about that? But according to Rocky Bru, this guy is a pro-PAS blogger.

It seems he was arrested last night. According to his wife, four policemen came to his home and took him away, together with his laptop and mobile phone.

According to Nat, at 2pm today (confirmed), there will be a gathering infront of Bukit Aman (near Bank Negara) to support Penarik Beca. Please give him your support if possible. Tell everyone who’s interested.

Hanifah Maidin, his lawyer, contacted the police, and confirmed that Bakar was detained under the Sedition Act.

source

[Reegan]

The World Information Access Project at the University of Washington released a report that identified 64 bloggers, unaffiliated with news organizations, who had been arrested for the contents of their blogs between 2003 and 2008.
The growing number of such blogger arrests underscores the political importance of blogging around the world.

[absolute55]

"Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and a collective rival to traditional media." So are you surprised if Iran considers a law to murder bloggers? and the chines are following this

Iran’s parliament is set to debate a draft bill which could see the death penalty used for those deemed to promote corruption, prostitution and apostasy on the internet…

One of the things I find the most amusing about Iran is its tortured relationship with language, one which makes U.S. President Bush’s “Department of Naming Things the Opposite of What They Are”* seem almost reasonable. Here’s how the official news agency, ISNA, describes the “law.” It will “toughen punishment for harming mental security in society.” (Tzara was a journalist.)

Considering the nature of “debate” (not to mention “parliament”) in Iran, it seems unlikely that it will be “voted down.” So, look for the first publicly murdered bloggers to be coming to a news source near you in about a year.

[Dr. V]

The majority of arrested bloggers were male. Though ages were not reported in most stories, of those that were, we inferred the average blogger to be between 21 and 45-years-old.

[robodude]

the number of blogger arrests will rise in 2008. The popularity of online blogs continues to grow and inspire more media coverage of arrest incidents. Countries are enforcing greater Internet regulation, which will only increase with the elections in China, Pakistan, and Iran this year. Assuming a pattern similar to Egypt’s occurs, the number of political blogger arrests has nowhere to go but up. With already four incidents in January and February, we expect the number of arrests in 2008 will exceed that of 2007

[opaper]

The FBI on Wednesday arrested a Los Angeles-area blogger on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws after he allegedly streamed tracks of the unreleased Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy on his Web site.

Kevin Cogill, 27, caused quite a stir earlier this summer when he allegedly began streaming nine songs from the album, which has been 15 years in the making, on his blog Antiquiet. The traffic crashed his site almost immediately, and shortly afterward the songs were removed at the band's request. But users who recorded the streams quickly made the songs available on file-sharing sites. It's unknown how Cogill allegedly acquired the material.

The FBI began investigating the incident in late June, and earlier this week Cogill posted a plea for legal help on his blog, writing that, "more and more each day, it looks like I may be indicted."

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 makes the sharing of pre-release copyright material a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. According to his arrest affidavit, Cogill admitted to posting the songs, reports the Los Angeles Times.

[Humberto]

The US court system may still be trying to sort out how many of the legal protections offered to the press apply to bloggers, but many countries are leaving little doubt that their laws do indeed apply to bloggers. Unfortunately, these tend to be the countries with significant legal restrictions on the press. A couple of bloggers have found themselves faced with prison sentences recently, although the news wasn't entirely bleak, as a Moroccan writer had his sentence quashed on appeal.

Two of the cases took place in nations on the southern edge of Asia. Singapore, which is notorious for a collection of laws that strictly proscribe public behavior, has frequently seen its strict libel penalties used by the ruling government to stifle criticism. So it's no surprise to see the system deployed against a blogger. The blogger in question, Gopalan Nair, is actually a US citizen living in Singapore, where he writes a blog that's called Singapore Dissent, so it's no surprise he got in trouble with the government.

The post that got him into trouble, however, involved criticism of the judge that presided over a defamation suit filed by members of Singapore's ruling family. The Agence France-Presse quotes him as referring to the judge as "prostituting herself during the entire proceedings," which netted him a fine and a three-month sentence. This is Nair's most recent brush with the law, as another of his recent blog posts describes the fines he received for hurling abuse at police officers. Nair proudly calculated the time he has tied up the legal system and figured he was getting his money's worth for the fines, so it's no surprise that he intends to appeal.

Nearby, in Malaysia, another set of bloggers has come under legal assault. The nation has a history of one-party rule that's on the verge of ending, and is proceeding through a liberalization with fits and starts. In the past, social discipline was maintained through strict legal controls, and these continue to be brought into play as some try to stave off the end of a political era.

In the most recent case, Syed Azidi Syed Aziz, who blogs under the handle Kickdefella, organized a protest that involved showing the Malaysian flag upside down on various blogs. The result? He and at least three other bloggers have been arrested under security statutes. They are not alone in having been prosecuted under these laws recently, but they appear to be unique in that their blogging activity was used as an excuse to target their underlying political cause.

For the good news, you have to travel to northern Africa, where Morocco remains a relatively liberal outpost, despite being ruled by a monarch that is protected from disrespectful comments by law. The extent of the nation's liberal tendencies can be seen simply by visiting the website of Mohamed Erraji, the blogger in question. I do not read Arabic, but many of the images there wouldn't be out of place in an ad for a dating site or celebrity gossip magazine.

One of Erraji's past posts was apparently construed as insulting the Moroccan king, and a court had initially sentenced him to a two-year jail term. The AFP is reporting that an appeals court has found procedural irregularities with that decision and annulled the verdict.

If there's a theme to any of these cases, it's that the line between real-world actions and blogging is vanishingly small. The justification for these cases and their trajectories tend to have more to do with ongoing political events in these countries than the fact that the precipitating event occurred on a blog.

source : arstechnica