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The Balkanisation of the Internet

This month it was reported that Syria had once again blocked access to the internet. Both Google and Renesys, an internet monitoring service, reported the outage. The incident comes after a similar blackout in November of last year, when activists were attempting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Last year’s blackout was blamed on ‘terrorism,’ while this […]

Does WCIT-12 Represent a Real Threat to Internet Freedom?

With the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-2012) being held from 3-14th December, some people are raising concerns over how much control governments will have over Internet censorship. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a United Nations agency which is convening the conference in Dubai. The ITU implements the  International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs – available for download […]

Little “i” Internet: The “Innocence of Muslims” Video’s Impact on Free Speech

Over the past couple of years, Iran has not-so-secretly been building the foundations for an internal Iran-only version of the Internet, separated from the rest of the world.  Two weeks ago they took it out for a spin, shutting out Google properties such as Gmail and YouTube.  When many Iranians voiced their displeasure at losing […]

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