Amnesty International seems to think that individual freedom of expression has no limits and that countries have no right to censor any internet content. It has launched a campaign against internet repression and cites a number of technology companies for their complicity in human rights violations. In a press release, the organization says:

“… the internet’s potential for change is being undermined — by governments unwilling to tolerate this free media outlet, and by companies willing to help them repress free speech.”

Sun Microsystems, Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems, Yahoo! and Google are among those companies implicated in helping governments censor the internet or track down individual users.

The campaign, Irrepressible.info, calls on users to take action, including:

Undermine censorship by publishing irrepressible fragments of censored material on your own site. The more people take part, the more we can defeat unwarranted censorship and create an unstoppable network of protest.

That links to a page that invites users to:

Add irrepressible content to your site

If you have a website or blog, help us spread the word and undermine unwarranted censorship by publishing censored material from our database directly onto your site.

The more people take part the more we show that freedom of expression cannot be repressed.

The site provides html code that allows random snippets of censored material to be posted to a supporter’s website, with the thought that this will make it difficult for countries to detect and respond to the volume of sites with inappropriate content.

It is an interesting approach – in effect adopting hackers’ methodology to try to overwhelm the servers doing the censorship analysis.

Here is the problem. There is another global campaign underway to protect the rights of children being exploited. There are service providers in the UK and elsewhere that block sites with illegal images of child abuse. We strongly support such initiatives.

Amnesty International itself advocates that countries ratify the optional protocol on child pornography, that includes:

its conclusion calling for the worldwide criminalization of the production, distribution, exportation, transmission, importation, intentional possession and advertising of child pornography, and stressing the importance of closer cooperation and partnership between Governments and the Internet industry

So, on one hand, Amnesty International believes that there should be ‘closer cooperation and partnership between Governments and the Internet industry’ and on the other hand, today’s press release coincides with the release of a report about Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google as companies ‘particularly willing to cooperate with the Chinese government’.

Mike Urlocker is one of the few people who writes a blog that this site links to. I think Mike is a pretty clever guy.

These days, he is a consultant looking at disruptive effects on business. Recently, he wrote:

These are good lessons for more than just the newspaper business.

Scott Feschuk recently wrote in Macleans magazine about various discussions at the Banff Television Festival. Fred Fuchs, newly hired as a senior programming executive at the CBC, says that TV shows are subsets of a bigger content experience.

Simply adapting material to be ‘experienced’ on a new platform won’t make the content any better.

There has been a somewhat entertaining exchange of regulatory correspondence between Bell and the CRTC in respect of the Bell Digital Voice Lite product.

Back in December, among other things, the CRTC ordered Bell to provide local number portability (LNP) for (a) out-of-territory telephone numbers used as primary numbers, and (b) in-territory and out-of-territory telephone numbers used as secondary numbers. Bell was given 6 months to implement such solutions.

On June 2, Bell sent a letter to the CRTC asking for the December decision to be suspended, pending the outcome of the CRTC’s overall VoIP reconsideration proceeding.

But, the CRTC didn’t like the format of the June 2 Bell letter, and on June 22 the Commission asked Bell to resubmit the request in the form of an application for a Stay.

On July 4, Bell complied and submitted a formal Part VII application. But upon further reflection that weekend, Bell withdrew the application.

Hmmm.

On July 5, Bell announced its Optimax internet service, offering download speeds of 10-16 Mbps (see Jon Arnold’s comments). Now Videotron has raised the stakes even higher, giving subscribers to its Extreme Plus High-Speed Internet 20 Mbps service. As the Quebecor press release says: “Videotron still the fastest. Period.”

Through the weekend, Mark Evans wrote about HDTV: Hot or Not? I suspect that increased HDTV penetration is one of the strategic objectives of the cable industry.

Telco IP TV has limitations on the number of HD channels that can be carried over its broadband connections. The sooner that people buy multiple HD screens for their homes, the more difficult it will be for the phone companies to control a household bundle that includes traditional broadcast distribution.

There is a disruptive approach needed – we think the phone companies need to change the rules of the game. We’ll have some more thoughts on this over time. And later this week, we’ll look at a colleague who specializes in disruption.

Stay tuned!