Internet Freedom

TASHKENT

Uzbekistan Tries to Keep Culture from Going Pop

By EurasiaNet Correspondents
Mahfuza, a mother of three in a small town in the Ferghana Valley, has better things to do than spend her afternoons at crowded, smoke-filled Internet clubs. But as a high-school algebra teacher, she has an extracurricular assignment from her bosses: she must monitor the clubs’ clientele – many of them her students – while they play computer games, surf social networking websites, and watch music videos.

Internet Becomes Newest Victim of Repression in Kashmir

By Athar Parvaiz
Fayaz Ahmad’s Faim Internet Café in the Sopore township of Indian Kashmir was booming until a year ago, when police entered his premises without warning and seized all his computers.

Mexican Activists Defend Internet Freedom

By Emilio Godoy
Mexican advocates of internet freedom are mobilising to protest their government's decision to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a multilateral treaty whose stated aim is to protect intellectual property right through enhanced international cooperation and enforcement.

Harsh Internet Laws Silence Thai Netizens

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
When Thai police raided the headquarters of the popular alternative news portal ‘Prachatai’ and arrested its executive director, Chiranuch Premchaiporn, back in 2009, the 46-year-old media worker was completely in the dark about her crime.

Could Europe’s Anti-Counterfeiting Pact be a “Pandora’s Box” of Rights Violations?

By Bari Bates
Foggy details surrounding Europe’s anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) have divided pubic opinion, with activists on one end of the spectrum claiming it to be the end of Internet freedom and the generic drug market, while proponents continue to defend the act as a “modest” agreement to protect Europe’s intellectual property.