Thursday, January 7, 2010

Government cracks down: bloggers hit hardest

OK, maybe not hardest, but 2009 showed that governments find bloggers to be as annoying as journalists,

2009 was a bad year for freedom of speech across the world, with journalists and bloggers getting the worst of it.

According to a report (pdf) released last week by internationally respected organisation Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF), journalists bore the brunt of the crackdown – but there was also a sharp rise in action being taken against bloggers.

...

Meanwhile, the spotlight is increasingly falling on bloggers, as 2009 was the first year that more than 100 bloggers and cyber-dissidents were imprisoned.

In a number of countries online dissent is now a criminal offence: authorities have responded to the internet as pro-democracy tool with new laws and crackdowns.
Information - and people - wants to be free. Nobody ever said it would be easy.

Borepatch: a thorn of the side of the government since 2008.

2 comments:

  1. What were they imprisoned for... writting?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Must go have a look.

    The last time I was there, they'd raised the US ranking, apparently just because of who'd become president.

    on the subject of crackdowns:

    Get thee over to
    thehomegunsmith.com read what's there and follow all the links

    ReplyDelete

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