home > by publication type > daily analysis > The Battle of the Blog
Email
| Prepared by: |
|---|
"Kareem Amer" is in prison for insulting Islam and sowing sectarian strife in his Internet writings. (AP)
When an Egyptian court sentenced twenty-two-year-old blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman to a four-year prison sentence for contempt of religion, insulting the president, and spreading false information, the decision, upheld in an appeals court in Alexandria, drew international attention. Known by his Internet nom de plume “Kareem Amer,” the college student has plenty of successors. Wael Abbas, another Egyptian blogger who posted videos of torture in an Egyptian prison, reportedly has a warrant pending for his arrest (NPR). Several bloggers were beaten and arrested during protests against constitutional amendments that critics say roll back personal freedoms (HRW).
Although scarce in totalitarian states with ultra-stringent controls on expression, bloggers have emerged in countries like Iran, China, and Egypt, where citizens have access to computers and free speech is somewhat protected (WorldChanging), according to Ethan Zuckerman of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Bloggers’ influence has grown across the Arab world (Poynter) and Iran, in which the BBC estimates there were between ten thousand and fifteen thousand bloggers in 2004.
But regimes are fighting back. Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists says “authoritarian states have made the Internet a major front.” A 2006 report on jailed journalists shows one in three is a blogger, online editor, or Web-based reporter. In additional to prosecuting journalists, governments block blogging sites, require licenses for internet service providers, and hold those providers accountable for the content they carry. Iranian authorities passed a law requiring bloggers to register with the government, which drew strong reactions (BBC) from the Iranian expatriate blogging community.
In some cases, regimes collude with private companies, such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! (PDF), who face the difficult choice of acquiescing or completely withdrawing from a country. A report from the OpenNet Initiative, a project to monitor state filtration and surveillance of the Internet, shows that Internet censorship is spreading, as filtering software gets smarter and regimes learn techniques from China (FT) —the king of web censorship.
China openly declares its commitment to “purifying the internet” (Reuters). Last year, Beijing silenced (NYT) one of the country’s most popular bloggers, but the sheer number of China’s ten million blogs poses a Sisyphean task for China’s thirty thousand internet police censors. Additionally, China won’t allow the opening of any additional Internet cafes in 2007, establishments on which many Chinese rely for Internet access (BusinessWeek). This Backgrounder offers a deeper look at media censorship in China.
But even as government censors find new ways to block content, bloggers find new ways to evade them. The free expression advocacy group Reporters Without Borders publishes a “handbook for cyber-dissidents” with technical information on starting a blog, publishing anonymously, sidestepping government controls, and establishing some measure of journalistic credibility. CFR Fellows Steven A. Cook and Michael A. Levi want the U.S. State Department to include a status report on Internet freedom in its annual human rights report.
Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.
In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.
Complete list of CFR Books.
This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.
This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.
About Independent Task Forces at CFR.
This report outlines the nature of the challenges in Pakistan's tribal areas, formulates strategies for addressing those challenges, and distills the strategies into realistic policy proposals worthy of consideration by the incoming administration.
This report analyzes the debate over U.S. use of assurances against torture, explaining the contexts in which they are used, how they can be conveyed, and what they can contain, and recommends a number of ways to respond to criticism so that the United States can continue using assurances.
Complete list of Council Special Reports.
“The Next President:” Richard Holbrooke says the next U.S. president will inherit a more difficult set of international challenges than any predecessor since World War II.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1-212-434-9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
To request permission to reuse Council materials, please email publications@cfr.org or fax +1.212.434.9859.
Please include the complete information of the requested work—author, title, sections/pages to be copied or reprinted, and number of copies to be made—along with a brief description of where and how you would like to reuse the work.
You may also request permission for Council material through Copyright Clearance Center. For more information, please click on the link below.
Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
