Blogs

After four months, the Saudi Arabian government has released popular Saudi blogger Fouad Ahmad Al-Farhan without charge. Authorities arrested Fouad in December after warning him about posts supporting an activist group on his blog at فؤاد أحمد الفرحان. From the time of his arrest, Interior Ministry officials were evasive about the reason for his detention, explaining only that it was not related to state security. Bloggers, journalists, and human rights groups around the world rallied around Fouad, denouncing his detention and calling for his release. Spearheading the effort, the Free Fouad site provided updates, collected press coverage, and offered "Free Fouad" badges for placement on supporters' blogs and websites. In February, protesters demonstrated against the arrest in front of the Saudi embassy in Washington, according to the Washington Post. It's great to hear that Fouad's been released, but chilling to consider the vulnerability of journalists and dissidents under the Saudi regime.

There's lots of coverage out there if you want further details:   read more »

I'll be quiet for a few days because I'm off to Los Angeles for a forum organized by Media Re:public, a Berkman Center project that examines the current and potential impact of participatory news media. The forum, which kicks off Thursday night and goes all day on Friday, will feature talks, panel discussions, and small group breakout sessions on a wide variety of topics and issues relating to participatory media, including "Parsing the Political Blogosphere," "Supporting the Emerging Media Ecology," "Finding Viable Models," and (the catchiest) "It's 2013: Do You Know Where Your News Is?" It should be great -- see the agenda for a full list of topics, speakers, and panelists. In conjunction with the forum, the CMLP will be holding its first in-person Board of Advisors meeting on Thursday afternoon. All in all, a busy but fascinating end to the week.

Registration for the Media Re:public forum is still open, so drop by if you're interested in media (new or traditional, commercial or public) and happen to be in L.A. All are welcome -- journalists, academics, business-types, activists, anybody.

(Note: I am a fellow at the Berkman Center, and the CMLP is housed there, along with Media Re:public.)

Ars Technica reports that the International Olympic Committee has lifted its ban on blogging. Athletes competing in Beijing 2008 will be allowed to blog about the Olympics, so long as they follow some, well, restrictive guidelines. Most notably, athletes will not be permitted to report on the overall competition or relay information from third parties; instead, the guidelines require that they focus on their own personal experiences. This is because, in the IOC's view, blogging is "a legitimate form of personal expression and not a form of journalism." Whew, I'm glad they resolved that tricky ontological question.

Additionally, athlete bloggers may not post any photographs of the sporting events (although they may post their own photos from inside and outside official Olympic areas), and their posts must be "dignified and in good taste." They also may not host any advertisements or create an affiliation with a specific company (fair enough). It's easy to make fun of all these restrictions, but it is a step forward, and it may make for some fascinating material, even within the guidelines.

Or will it? As if all these rules weren't enough, recall that the Chinese government also filters the Internet in a serious way. According to Ars,   read more »

Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit.com reports that a British blogger was recently threatened with arrest for inciting racial hatred. The blogger, who runs a controversial Christian blog and goes by the pseudonym Lionheart, stated on his blog that British police are threatening to arrest him for "stirring up racial hatred by displaying written material" contrary to sections 18(1) and 27(3) of the Public Order Act 1986.

Reynolds recommends that if you're interested in supporting free speech rights -- and you should be if you are reading this blog -- you can contact the British Embassy to let them know that people shouldn't be arrested merely for writing things that the powers-that-be find distasteful.

(Note: Glenn Reynolds is on the CMLP's Board of Advisors.)

The mainstream press (here, here) reports that the Saudi Arabian authorities have detained Fouad Ahmad Al-Farhan, a popular Saudi blogger whose blog has been a platform for criticism of government corruption and advocacy for political reform. Al-Farhan was arrested on December 10, but apparently it took a while for the story to break -- it was picked up last week by bloggers in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Bahrain. A statement from the Saudi Ministry of the Interior posted on Al-Farhan's blog states that Al-Farhan was detained "to investigate (with him) the violation of regulations not related to state security." Since his arrest, friends have continued posting entries on the blog and put up "Free Fouad" banners in Arabic and English. Also posted on the site is a letter that Al-Farhan put up days before his arrest (typos in the original):

I was told that there is an official order from a high-ranking official in the Ministry of the Interior to investigate me. They will pick me up anytime in the next 2 weeks.

The issue that caused all of this is because I wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia and they think I’m running a online campaign promoting their issue. All what I did is wrote some pieces and put side banners and asked other bloggers to do the same.
he asked me to comply with him and sign an apology. I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that. An apology for what? Apologizing because I said the government is liar when they accused those guys to be supporting terrorism?   read more »

Yesterday, Best Buy sent a cease-and-desist letter to Scott Beale of Laughing Squid for reporting on an "Improv Everywhere" prank and their sales of T-shirts mocking the Best Buy logo. Best Buy claimed the post infringed its trademarks and copyrights by "promoting" sales of a T-shirt that mocked the Best Buy logo. Laughing Squid promptly posted the C&D, where it was picked up by BoingBoing and Slashdot. But Best Buy seems to have learned from the hubub, and sent its apologies a day later:

We appreciate your clarification of the nature of your posting. We do object to sales of T-shirts or other products bearing a logo which violates our trademarks or copyrights or other misuse of our logo in commercial ventures. However, we do not object to fair and accurate reporting of facts, and respect the First Amendment rights of Laughing Squid and other bloggers to provide articles or commentary on current events. Now that we have a better understanding of your website, we regret sending you the demand letter.

It's good to see a company recognize the distinction between reporting and trademark infringement and drop its threats. We have to say, though, the T-shirts give "trade dress" claims a whole new meaning.

CyberJournalist.net is reporting that the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) is  accepting applications from bloggers interested in being part of the credentialed blogger pool at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado:

While the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston was the first to credential bloggers, the DNCC aims to significantly expand access for the blogger community in 2008. In line with the DNCC’s goal to engage more people in the 2008 Convention experience than ever before as well as Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean’s 50-State Strategy, the DNCC will both expand the size of the credentialed blogger pool and also offer for the first time a state blogger credentialing program in 2008.

Yesterday, the OpenNet Initiative released an excellent report on the recent Internet shutdown in Burma, entitled "Pulling the Plug: A Technical Review of the Internet Shutdown in Burma." Besides the eye-popping technical analysis ONI was able to carry out in a matter of weeks, the report contains a great overview of the dramatic events of late September and early October 2007, including the role that citizen journalists and bloggers played in getting information about the crackdown out to the international community. As for the government's response, the report explains that the government imposed a total Internet outage from September 29 to October 4, followed by a period of regulated outages all day except during the period between 22:00 and 4:00 (Burmese time) from October 4 through October 12. Wow.

The authors of the report put the Internet shutdown into historical/technological perspective and nicely capture the causal relationship between increased citizen journalist activity and this drastic move:   read more »

Mike Madison published a thoughtful and thought-provoking post the other day on his madisonian.net blog about the effect that a cease-and-desist letter can have on a collaborative blogging (or "co-blogging") relationship. Madison publishes on a number of blogs, one of which is Blog-Lebo, which covers matters of local interest in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Madison used to co-run the blog with two other bloggers, but when they got a cease-and-desist letter from a local lawyer, things went slightly pear-shaped. Here's a rough version of the story:

Several weeks ago, Madison posted about a neighborhood dispute that arose when a local homeowner re-landscaped his backyard and blocked (or threatened to block) a stone path that was popularly understood to be protected by a recorded easement. Many readers commented on the post. One commenter identified the homeowner by name and another (apparently one of Madison's co-bloggers) commented that the owner, who is a lawyer, should have known better than to buy real estate without checking the record for easements.

Days later, Madison and his co-bloggers received a letter from the lawyer/homeowner demanding that they remove the post or face a lawsuit for defamation. Madison, a lawyer and law professor experienced in Internet law, was understandably peeved but willing to stand up against what he saw as legally and factually baseless claims. His co-bloggers had a different reaction altogether -- one wanted to take the post down immediately, and the other withdrew from the blog. (It looks like the second co-blogger also withdrew at some point later.) Madison sums up the dilemma he faced as follows:   read more »

The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article today about Egyptian bloggers posting cell phone videos to document endemic police torture in their country (thanks to 3arabawy for the tip). The most recent iteration of this phenomenon is a clip of a thirteen-year-old boy from Mansoura who died from injuries inflicted in police custody after he was arrested for stealing a few bags of tea a week earlier:

The explicit 13-minute clip is the latest of some dozen amateur videos - mostly from cell phone cameras - that have surfaced on blogs within the past year, showing systematic torture in Egyptian police stations. The videos have thrust a once rarely mentioned subject onto the front pages of Cairo newspapers.

Some activists hope the incriminating videos will spur a wave of reforms within the justice system.

"Activists that have worked to end torture have told me: 'You've done more in a few days what we were not able to do in 10 years,'" said Wael Abbas, a 32-year-old Egyptian blogger, who recently received the 2007 Knight International Journalism Award by the International Center for Journalists in Washington for posting police torture videos on his Web site.

It's encouraging to see the continued influence of bloggers on the mainstream press in Egypt, but it's been rough couple of month for journalists and activists of every stripe. If you're interested, the Christian Science Monitor has some informative reports on the recent crackdown (here and here).   read more »