Peru convicts blogger of defamation. Jose Alejandro Godoy, was given a in a three-year suspended prison sentence, 120 days of community service, and a fine of over $100,000 for “defamation.”
Not a criminal offense in reality, but a civil case brought by former government minister and congressman Jorge Mufarech, the sentence was disproportionate. Godoy reported corruption allegations and “summarized information already publicly available.” An appeal is in the works but the “criminalization of libel” in many Latin American countries makes it easier to use it as a tool for silencing critics.
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Turkey unblocks, re-blocks YouTube. Well, that didn’t take long. After YouTube took down certain “offensive” videos that criticized modern Turkey’s founders, Turkey unblocked YouTube. Youtube then decided that the copyright claims that inspired the take down (or justified it) were bogus and allowed the videos to appear again. Turkey blocked YouTube again.
The latest block was “in response to a video purportedly showing former opposition leader Deniz Baykal in a hotel room with a woman who is not his wife.” Since its initial ban in 2007, the video sharing site has been free in Turkey for a grand total of two days.
China innovates new way to silence online citizens. You have to hand it to China. They are the Michael Jordan of censorship. We’ve spoken before in this column about their tripartite use of legal coercion, psychological coercion and social coercion. They’ve come up with a new silencing tool that combines the latter two in lieu of the former.
The “Expose Channel of Shanghai Internet Social Credit Investigation Web” is a public shaming site. It lists those criminally-minded Chinese who’ve committed infractions, however, many listed have not been arrested or convicted.
Among the information listed is the user names, IP address and location and site identity. One example Oiwan Lam lists is a good indicator that Kafka’s alive and well and living in China.
“User ‘yellow-cas’ stated online that he wanted to organize a model aircraft gathering for flying model planes together during the Shanghai EXPO.”
Godoy photo from GVO
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