AN IRISH perspective on this month’s cancelled Paris match on a frozen Stade de France, barely three months after the French Bleus almost won the World Cup against the All Blacks. Pictured: Dimitri Yashvili and the tricolore:COWARD HAD IT RIGHT – FRENCH HOLD US IN CONTEMPTBy Sean DiffleyEighty years ago the French were thrown out [...]
NOT SO VEILED RACISMBy Graham DavisMOST countries have laws that prevent religious and racial vilification. Most responsible media outlets – including those on the internet – excise comments designed to inflame religious and racial hatred. But sadly not the most prominent of the websites set up to oppose the government of Fiji’s prime minister, Frank [...]
While attending a major Washington Internet policy conference last month, it became clear to me that both sides of the online piracy debate were talking past each other. I know that this was just before the bills SOPA / PIPA blew up, and that both sides were playing hard to keep their positions on the Hill [...]
PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW – the only media research journal in the South Pacific – has been publishing in the region for the past 17 years. It was launched originally at the University of Papua New Guinea and then had a life at the University of the South Pacific. But it is now published by AUT [...]
Free Press, and similar groups who want to put the 1st Amendment on its tail and let the government police private speech so that it’s “fair and balanced,” has been screaming of late about how PACs “corrupted” the SOPA debate. What this roughly translates into – legal resources used to promote points of view they don’t [...]
SO Reuters reports that US lawmakers stopped anti-piracy legislation in its tracks this week, “delivering a stunning win for internet companies that staged an unprecedented online protest”. Previously the fast-moving bills had appeared on target to become a draconian new curb on freedom of expression and information on the internet. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid [...]
Free Press' angry birds and their angry tweets The twitter-sphere is choked with Free Press’ latest panicked entreaty – one urging the defeat of Congress’ latest effort to curb online piracy through the House’s so-called SOPA bill. Says a couple of tweets: SOPA is everywhere on the Internet and nowhere on the nightly news. End [...]
As we move past the wreckage of last week’s SOPA / PIPA battle in Congress – one which defeated, for the time being, legislation designed to stop foreign, online “pirates” – it is important to note that, though the Internet “spoke” resoundingly against the bills, a plain fact remains: Piracy, aided by, yes, the Internet, [...]
The chart, “Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) SOPA List,” is by Terry Hart. It shows how the Internet’s elite have highly organized an amazing subterranean latticework of connections to oppose the anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA, among other pro-private property initiatives here in DC and elsewhere across the globe. According to Hart: …The chart includes [...]