Global Voices has an interactive map showing bloggers who have been threatened, arrested, or killed for speaking out online. The United States has one — Elliot Madison was taken by the FBI for spreading word on Twitter on how to evade police arrest during the G20 protests in Pittsburgh on September 24th and released on bail shortly after. China has the most with 33 on record; Egypt is a close second with 29.
For months (years?) Rupert Murdoch has been waving his jowls around and shouting that Google is stealing from him by not paying to index his material. And all along, we've been saying, "Pffft, right. If you don't like it, just add a robots.txt file that tells Google not to index you. Until you do, s... More.
A copyeditor at the Toronto Star greeted the news that union copyeditor jobs were being eliminated in favor of freelancers by heavily editing the publisher's memo announcing same, pointing out all the ways in which the publisher could benefit from editorial aid. This is very funny stuff, but hav... More.
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Is this accurate in any way? Where are the data from? Numbers for China seem way low, as does Iran...
Check out this project, they may be good partners: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2008/Mapping_Irans_Online_Public
perhaps the numbers are accurate, and that you and other bloggers have simply over estimated your own importance in the scheme of things
How embarrassing is it that the USA has *any* people under arrest for blogging?
It's your country folks. It won't stay free if you do nothing; that's not the nature of things.
I'm sure the US case will either be tossed before trial or it'll never get a conviction, but THE guy in Finland seems like a real winner - "racist insults illustrated with pornographic images" on Google's Blogger, insuring it was crawled.
http://threatened.globalvoicesonline.org/blogger/seppo-lehto
He isn't under arrest for blogging. He's under arrest for aiding and abetting. The fact that he's a blogger is largely irrelevant.
That being said, most people misunderstand freedom of speech. You are free to say what you want. You are not free from the consequences of what you say. You cannot slander someone, nor can you incite lawlessness, without fear of repercussions.
Hi,
The numbers are not accurate. Two people has been arrested in Hungary for blogging. One of them is free now, the other is in jail.
Gill (from Hungary)
You're missing South Korea where a number of bloggers have been arrested for talking about the economy or being critical of the Lee Myung Bak administration.
This is about as useless as a "Map of threatened or arrested users of public transport around the world"
The German blogger, Jörg Reinholz, was jailed for his refusal to pay fines imposed by a court of law after repeatedly being found guilty of slander and libel.
This has nothing to do with freedom of speech, nothing to do with blogging and everything to do with breaking the law (irrespective of your opinion of lawyers representing internet rip-off merchants.)
And the Finnish blogger. Well, he is an extreme-right activist and was on probation and charged with nine counts of gross defamation, inciting ethnic hatred and religious blasphemy.
How embarrassing that the site lists people like the slandering racist Seppo Lehto from Finland side by side with people actually fighting for their freedom. That's not far off from listing a serial rapist on a list of consenting adults under arrest for having sex.
well, some of the commenters missed the fact that the map is based on crowdsourcing. It's a collaborative mapping project to build a database of "threatened Voices". As mentioned in the "About" page the "database is not exhaustive. There may be cases we are not aware of." ..."Sometimes well-known bloggers are arrested for reasons that have little to do with their online activities. When this is the case, we reflect it in their case profile information."
please read at least the "about" page before making any judgment.
best
In Mexico are any, because they don't get arrested, they get shot and killed. :(
"aiding and abetting" free speech, freedom of assembly, and attempting to seek redress of grievances......We have all the 'rights' in the world, as long as we don't try to use them effectively.