CHANGE.ORG
Cecilia Hernandez | November 30, 2012

My name is Cecilia. I am an honest professional, hard-worker, justice defender and am faithful to my convictions. I am a clinical psychologist with a wide experience with teenagers. I have been working with youth in different social contexts: psychotherapies, educational orientation and in classrooms.

On November 30th, I was the victim of an injustice: I was unjustifiably and aggressively fired from the middle school Colegio Lomas Hill and treated like a delinquent by the school’s authorities. I was deprived of my freedom for two hours, watched over by security guards and humiliated in front of the institution’s staff and students’ families. I have been morally hurt.

Why was I fired? Because I showed the movie “Milk” to my middle school students. The film tells the story of a recognized fighter for gay rights. The prejudices of the school authorities toward the movie and their intolerance on the gender diversity theme were clear and evident, even if the official program requires approaching these subjects.

Read on…

GiGaOm
Rani Molla | November 13, 2012

Google released data today that shows requests for censorship and surveillance are on the rise worldwide. Google keeps track of government requests to remove its content (requests it sometimes abides) and releases data biannually. We mapped those numbers, which include July 2010 through June of this year, to show the main products each government is targeting and the reasons they gave for doing so.

What it shows is that censorship varies greatly across the world — some of which stretches the definition of what people usually define as censorship.

Read on…

POLITICO
Rep. Darrell Issa & Rep. Anna Eshoo | September 17, 2012

The Internet is essential to life in the 21st century. The way we do business, communicate and live our lives now largely depends on being able to get online. Ensuring the freedom to access and use the Internet has become a bipartisan priority.

For the first time, both the Republican and Democratic parties included a discussion of Internet freedom in their official platforms.

“The Internet,” says the GOP platform, “has unleashed innovation, enabled growth, and inspired freedom more rapidly and extensively than any other technological advance in human history. Its independence is its power.”

The Democratic platform states: “President [Barack] Obama is strongly committed to protecting an open Internet that fosters investment, innovation, creativity, consumer choice and free speech, unfettered by censorship or undue violations or privacy.”

These party platform documents are not without their differences. Open, inclusive and robust debate is a good thing. But when it comes to Internet freedom, there is far more that unites us than separates us.

That is the reason we have both signed the Declaration of Internet Freedom — a landmark document drafted by Internet advocates of all political persuasions who have come together in support of five principles that transcend partisan politics.

The declaration reads:

We stand for a free and open Internet.

We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles:

• Expression: Don’t censor the Internet.

• Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.

• Openness: Keep the Internet an open network in which everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.

• Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users’ actions.

• Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.

More than 50,000 people and some 2,000 organizations — representing millions of people around the world — have already signed this declaration. It has been translated into more than 70 languages, so that as many people as possible can read the text and participate in the debate.

The Internet may well prove to be our most fundamental technological achievement. Because of it, people around the world have instant access to vital information, can hold their governments accountable and create better lives for themselves and their families.

Democrats and Republicans, despite continuing political debate and differences, can join together to protect an open Internet that strengthens our economy and our democracy.

Will you join us in supporting the Declaration of Internet Freedom?

Visit www.internetdeclaration.org to view it.

GALLEY CAT
Maryann Yin | September 11, 2012

On November 5th, UK-based anti-domestic violence group Wearside Women in Need plans to burn copies of E.L. James‘ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.

According to Mail Online, director Clare Phillipson championed the bonfire after reading two-thirds of the novel. She explained: “we have libraries wasting and grossly misusing public money to buy a book which says: ‘domestic violence is sexy.’”

The New York Daily News reported that Ohio-based DJs Chad Zumock and Alan Cox also hosted a Fifty Shades burning back in July 2012. Cox argued that their event did not advocate censorship because all the participants joined in voluntarily.

According to to the Irish Independent, Random House responded with this statement: “The Fifty Shades trilogy is a work of romantic fiction which explores a consensual relationship between two willing adult participants. The books are being enjoyed by millions of readers — primarily women — around the world.”