internet

The 'grass-mud horses' battling internet censors

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:07:09 +0100

Chinese web users are demonstrating their ability to get around the automatic internet censorship of taboo words with a hilarious song about a battle between grass-mud horses ("fuck your mother") and river crabs (censors). The song has become so popular that grass-mud horse toys are being sold in shops and even intellectuals are using the fable as a metaphor for the subject.

The lyrics might appear crude and childish, but in fact they're very clever. The choice of creatures makes more sense if you speak the language. "Grass-mud horse" (Cao Ni Ma) sounds distinctly like "fuck your mother" in spoken Chinese, and "river crab" like "harmony", referring to the government's' "Harmonious Society" scheme which includes heavy censorship. It doesn't take much imagination to get who the "lively, intelligent and tenacious" grass-mud horses are and who the defeated river crabs are.

The song is not only entertaining but also demonstrates a method of getting around internet censorship. Search for an obscene or politically sensitive word on a computer in China, and it's likely that you'll get an "error" page in response. If you try to type in a swear word on Skype or messenger, hit return and it simply doesn't display. Web users have developed quite a depth of puns in getting around this, and Ca Ni Ma is a brilliant example.

The video emerged online at the beginning of this year. The images (which are of alpacas) come from a British advertisement from MasterCard and Oxfam.

Anti download law: 'the idea of disconnecting web users is unimaginable today'

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:43:04 +0100

French web users are calling for a blackout on their sites, blogs and profiles in response to the new law. This image was published on Flickr by "Bricefwi".

While it's considered "inappropriate" and "suppressive" by web users, a French internet piracy law is being hailed as a saviour for bruised CD producers. The proposed "creation and internet" law, which would allow the state to block web access to illegal downloaders, will be decided on by the French Assemblée today.

CD sales have halved in the past five years according to the music industry, which blames the drop almost entirely on illegal downloads. And so does French culture minister Christine Albanel, who proposed the law in order to defend authors' rights from online piracy. Almost the entire senate voted in agreement to the law last October.

A first offense wouldn't see your internet connection disappear, but for persistent offenders, that's the eventual punishment. The "gradual response" system will be carried out by administrative body HADOPI, set up especially for the job.

Web users are mobilising through various movements across the net, one of which, "La quadrature du Net", is calling for online action against the law, which they say is a infringing on liberties. For support in parliament, they're counting on socialist members, who say that the law would enforce the "general policing of web users". There are also some in the majority party who say that a fine would be more effective than cutting web access.

Swedish justice system attempts to topple The Pirate Bay

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:27:45 +0100

UPDATE (17.04.2009 - 12.30pm): A court in Stockholm has found the three founders of The Pirate Bay and one of its investors guilty of breaking copyright law, each receiving a one year jail sentence. They've also been ordered to pay 30m kroner (€2.7m) in damages to several companies in the music, cinema and videogame sectors.

It's the biggest ever legal case against a file-sharing website. The three founders of The Pirate Bay, the world's biggest BitTorrent tracker, this week find themselves in front of a judge for making intellectual property available to the public. Fredrik Neij (alias TiAMO), Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (Anakata), and Peter Sunde (Brokep), made it possible for their 22 million users to locate and download music, films and videogames shared by the online community.

The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), which deals with record industry law breaches across the world, is leading the trial with compensation demands of 117 million kroner [10.5 million euros]: the amount they say has been lost through illegal downloads on The Pirate Bay. File-sharers who use the site, however, have rallied against the charges. They've driven a press-informing bus around Sweden and set up various internet tools in order to be able to follow the trial minute by minute. They're transmitting press conferences live on Bambuser and commenting on developments as they surface on their blogs (here and here). The prosecutor in charge of the case had a bit of trouble explaining to the audience how technically peer to peer file-sharing works. On 17 February he got particularly tangled up in explaining the functions of The Pirate Bay tracker (especially the DHT), which led to half of the original charges being dropped.

Chinese web users give Sarkozy a roasting

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:52:49 +0100

After postponing his meeting with the Dalai Lama several times, Nicolas Sarkozy will finally meet the Tibetan spiritual leader on Saturday, Dec. 5, in Gdansk, Poland.

Relations between China and France have reached a new low as the controversial meeting with the Dalai Lama approaches. His rendezvous on Thursday with the European Parliament already stirred up trouble, with Beijing taking the event as an opportunity to warn the EU against jeopardising commercial relations with China.

For the Chinese blogosphere, the affront comes not so long after their outrage over the disruption of the Olympic torch relay in Paris. This time, bloggers are not only targeting French companies, but also enjoying poking fun at the country's president.

Mullahs clamp down on "immoral" internet sites

Julien — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:27:27 +0100

Posted on Flickr by Mostafa Saeednejad.

More than five million "immoral" websites have been banned by the Iranian government. Included in the censorship operation are popular social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube as well as many news sites of all political persuasions.

With 19 million internet users, Iran is ranked in the top 20 countries in the world for internet use. Abdolsamad Khoram Abadi, advisor to Tehran's chief prosecutor, told the local press: "The enemies seek to assault our religious identity by exploiting the Internet." We asked two of our Iranian observers how and why the censors are muscling in on the country's internet users.

Why was a major Russian ISP shut down?

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:05:10 +0200

One of our Observers for Russia alerted us to the closure of one of the country's oldest Internet service providers (ISPs), and the various rumours that have sprung up following the police intervention. Censorship of political opinion or censorship of child pornography?

UPDATE (2.10.08 - 09.30am): After we published this post, Mikhail Verbitskysent us this message about the affair: "The closure shouldn't be connected to the fact that Rinet hosts my websites, because my sites are online. Formerly, when the authorities attacked lenin.ru, my server had been disconnected. What's going on is called in Russia: 'a conflict of economic entities'. In plain words it means that some police officials are extorting a bribe from Rinet, and have probably already got one. It's possible, on the other side, that these are just the fisrt steps of what's known in Russia as "raiderstvo" - a criminal scheme aimed to take over somebody's business. In this case a bribe won't be enough. But I hope not."

The man who foresaw the Internet…in 1934

Team Observers — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:10:05 +0200

Sixty years before it revolutionized the world, Belgium's very own mad professor, Paul Otlet, envisioned a data exchange system that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Internet.

Extract from a documentary about Otlet's vision:

Obama’s 'Never Gonna Give You Up'

Julien — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:59:34 +0200

Barack Obama "rickrolled".

A video of Barack Obama singing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” isn’t just funny, it’s part of an Internet prank phenomenon that’s sweeping the online world.

If you don’t already know what "rickrolling" is, then you’ve obviously never fallen victim to it.

The prank is simple. You click on a link you think is something else, but instead you get the video clip of Astley’s 1987 hit. It’s called a “bait and switch” prank, the first of which led unsuspecting surfers to a picture of a duck with wheels.

Rickrolling began on the 4chan site, and it’s estimated that now over 18 million people have fallen victim to the prank.

Various spin-offs have emerged and a quick YouTube search will bring up videos like “I rickrolled my entire school,” “Nazis get rickrolled,” and “Church gets rickrolled.”

But the best yet emerged on Saturday, with a video of carefully edited Obama recordings in which the presidential candidate appears to be singing along to the song.

Five days later, it’s number one on the viral chart, with already 1,091,020 views.

"Paranoid of new media" authorities arrest Facebook users

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:44:23 +0200

Joining an online social network group is risky business in Egypt. Twenty-six people were rounded up and arrested at a gathering organised on Facebook on Wednesday. The internet activists were attending a peaceful meeting on a beach in Alexandria when they were detained unexpectantly.

The meeting was planned to take place on the touristic Sidi Bishr beach. Attendees had got together via the "6 April Youth Movement" Facebook group. The group was involved in the organisation of the 6 and 7 April riots, which were held in protest of deteriorating living conditions in Egypt. The response from the authorities was severe. Three people were killed and around 55 arrested.

Wednesday's participants met to demand the release of those arrested. But the police classed the gathering as a violation of the country's state of emergency, in place now for 27 years, which bans the public meeting of more than five people.

Was AFP fooled by a fake?

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:13:08 +0200

A photo taken from Karadzic's alleged perosnal site.

Agence France Presse this afternoon released a dispatch about what they say is the personal website of Rodovan Karadzic. According to the site, the former Serbian leader spent his travelling in the name of health, and is now an advocate for alternative forms of medicine. A blogger explains why it could be fake.

The dispatch, which was picked up by French daily Le Monde's website at 1pm, explained that "under the name of Dr. Dragen Dabic, Radovan Karadzic (...) put a fictional biography online in the hope of diverting potential leads from the authorities". The news agency also took quotes from the site, including Chinese proverbs supposedly posted online by the former Serbian politician (e.g. "Behind every able man, there are always other able men"). The information does seem credible, as Rodovan Karadzic, a trained psychologist, converted to alternative forms of medicine and worked in a clinic in Belgrade under the name of Dragan Dabic.

European bloggers Kosmopolit however, say that it is in fact a fake. They explain that a quick search of the domain names database (Who's) proves that the site was created on... 22 July this year. Which was after Karadzic's arrest. According to them, the site was made by someone having a laugh, and AFP just didn't get the joke. This is not set in stone of course, but it does raise serious suspicions that the agency might have been fooled.