(Nearly) Open Thread, January 18 2012

Today (January 18) a number of sites on the internet are "going black" in an effort to educate people as to the possible effects of pending American legislation. While we (TBAT) share those concerns we think it is also important to remember than many (perhaps most) people in the world are faced with other significant challenges (legal, economic and infrastructural) that prevent equal access to information and opportunities.

Consequently we throw this thread open to discuss any and all the things that stand in the way of equal access to the information and opportunities the internet can provide and to ways of changing those things.

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Comments

[Anonymous]

Well, we've all heard of the great firewall of China, but not so many people know that Belarus also has a very repressive internet law. Googling around for Belarus internet law will sate your curiosity, but I linked to a news article about it. Basically, any Belarusian citizens caught visiting websites hosted in other countries could be liable for fines of up to $125, which is over half the average monthly income of a Belarusian.

Belarus is having economic troubles and with the devaluation of the ruble, prices have gone up drastically, doubling in a year, but the daily news spouts propoganda about how much worse the situation is in other countries. A Belarussian will see that their wages and pensions have increased, but they may not be able to easily compare how much prices have increased for basic staples and understand that they're really being paid less, especially since internet access is so restricted and the media is controlled so firmly. It is hard to get a clear picture of the world outside your village in these situations.

Hungary has drastically cut the education budget, reducing the number of students that can go to university by only financing a limited number of students, much less than were previously financed by the government, and additionally tuition costs are rising. In Hungary, people are poor and cannot afford to pay tuition, so the number of state sponsored students is pretty much the number of students that will be able to go to university. For example, the number of students that can study business is reduced from 4489 to 250, law from 1376 to 300, and sports from 456 to 450 (not much change there).

Hungary, like many European countries*, used to have free higher education, but now only a small number will be able to study for free because the quotas have been set so low.

Hungary's access to free information has suffered under the new media law which went into effect a year ago. Many newspapers published a blank front page on that day in a protest and called it the end of freedom of the press. Since then, this has proven to not have been hyperbole.

All television and newspapers have to comply with the government controlled media council's guidelines and often the media council decides in the morning what the nightly news will be and there are heavy fines for go against the media council. Reporters of various newspapers have been banned from parliament and this has spread from the capital to other cities where reporters aren't allowed in city hall. Hungary's local newspapers have been talking a lot about nature and the environment. Reports of anti-government protests have been accompanied by reporters standing several streets away with a background showing hardly any people. Some newspapers are fighting back by running history stories like "The History of Dictators," in hopes that people will be smart enough to draw their own conclusions.

* Free: Austria, Bulgaria (within state quotas), Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Malta, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden.

Other eastern european countries: Bulgarian (outside of state quotas, €50-200 euro per year, Romania €375-€2000/year.

Western europe: €100 (Luxemburg) - maximum Ł3290 (UK)

[Anonymous]

Some more examples of restriction of free information, expression, and association around the globe:

In Zimbabwe, some journalists have been arrested for their work advocating freedom of expression. The charges are “distributing material that is likely to provoke a breach of peace.”

In Russia, thousands have been detained for protesting the manipulation of the votes in parliamentary elections

In Saudia Arabia, dissent is a terrorist crime

In Gambia, three people distributing t-shirts calling for an end to the dictatorship have been sentenced to three years in prison doing manual labour, and a fourth was sentenced to life in prison.

There's more news at Amnesty International and they have suggestions for how you can help, what letters to write and who to send them to.

[Froborr]

Tangentially off-topic: Every time there is a campaign like this, I get frustrated.

I live in D.C., you see. 14 blocks from the Capitol, actually--I could walk less than half an hour to visit my Congresswoman in her office and talk to her about this.

But it doesn't matter, because she can't vote on this or any other issue before Congress--she's not allowed.

Can't write my Senator, either--don't have one.

So... yeah. Frustrating.

[Nathaniel]

I live in Maryland, and discovered to my horror that one of my senators co-sponsered this slime.

To hell with him. While I could never vote Republican, I'll never vote for him.

[Froborr]

As far as information access goes, here's a non-legislative one: As near as I can tell, there is no such thing as a Parkinsons disease-friendly mouse or alternative pointer device. My mother belongs to a web community of people with Parkinsons, and none of them have been able to find anything. My own searches have not turned anything up, either.

It's possible that it's simply not a solvable problem. The issue is that, depending on where in her medication cycle she is, my mother may move normally, move slowly but otherwise normally, have reduced strength, shake, or move very jerkily. So depending on where she is in the cycle, she may need something very sensitive or something that will ignore small motions, something light enough that she can easily move it or heavy enough that it won't go flying if she's jerky... I can see how that would be a major challenge.

Anyway, point is: Disabilities can restrict access to the Internet, and it sucks.

[Sixwing]

Anon, thank you for the information. I now have lots to chew on!

My Sleazeball Congresscritter is, at least, opposing the acts. I'm sure ze is opposing them for different reasons than I am, but I pretty much don't care at this point - it is the one and only thing ze's done in office that I haven't wanted to send angry letters about, or actually sent angry letters about.

So far, that mostly seems to have gotten me on the Sleazeball Congresscritter's mailing list, in which ze takes lots of words to explain thanks very much, but I'm too sleazy to listen to my constituents. *sigh*

[Loquat]

@Froborr -

I'm not an engineer, but I think a Parkinson's-friendly pointer device should be possible. A trackball or joystick wouldn't need to move around on the desk, so it could be weighted or even bolted down to avoid being knocked off. Then it's just a matter of installing some kind of adjustable sensitivity, and maybe adjustable motion resistance. Obviously it'd take a lot of work to implement, but I think it's definitely a solvable problem.

[Mmy]

@Froborr: As near as I can tell, there is no such thing as a Parkinsons disease-friendly mouse or alternative pointer device.

Wow -- as soon as you wrote that I realized that I had even factored that into what I thought was a fairly long list of "access problems" (and didn't even begin to list them all in the post.)

Question: Is any type of voice activation useful under those circumstances? I know that a member of our community here uses voice input at times.

hmmmm thinking even more. My dad (in his 90s) finds fine hand movement increasingly difficult. He can golf, play cards, drive, do any number of things but sometimes has trouble printing information in forms. It frustrates him enormously. There is no way in the world that he could use a touch screen or mouse. But he isn't a computer-using person so I had never considered the impact of the reality of his life (and of the lives of many of his friends) on their ability to use modern technology.

[MercuryBlue]

I live in Maryland, and discovered to my horror that one of my senators co-sponsered this slime.

To hell with him. While I could never vote Republican, I'll never vote for him.

Not Maryland. Same deal, though. And I shall inform him of this. I just haven't worked out how yet, since my bloody social anxiety kicks in every time I look at a phone.

[Froborr]

I know she experimented briefly with voice activation, but it didn't work out. I don't know the details of why, I suspect it has to do with her difficult keeping her voice at an audible volume.

[hapax]

@Froborr -- my father-in-law has Parkinson's, and has had some luck with a trackball. He doesn't use the computer for much though.

This article is kind of old, so the particular models discussed are probably out of date; but there might have some useful ideas.

[Sixwing]

SOPA's backers are backing off according to BBC.

That's potentially a large piece of good news.

[MercuryBlue]

Potentially. I don't trust anyone who supports these bills farther than I can throw them, and my upper-body strength is teh suck. I suspect that, until bribery is made illegal in the US again (damn Citizens United anyway), these bills will simply refuse to die.

Know what I find the funniest part about this whole business? The State Department, I'm informed, sends money to people living under "oppressive regimes" and trying to find workarounds for exactly this sort of nonsense.

[Kit Whitfield]

Anyone who hasn't signed the anti-SOPA petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet_action_center_b/?fp

And thank you very much, SOPA, for turning copyright into such a weapon that lots of people are going to hate me and people like me for needing copyright to pay our bills. Really, thanks a lot.

[Mmy]

John Scalzi wrote up a good explanation of how SOPA/PIPA were not in any useful way designed to protect the rights of ordinary authors. These proposed laws are, he writes, the equivalent of dealing with burglars in someone’s home by carpetbombing every house on the street. You might stop the burglar, but the collateral damage makes it a hollow victory.

[Marc Mielke]

Froborr: my Dell Laser Mouse has a button right under the wheel which changes the mouse sensitivity level; would that be something that makes things more accessible? I've never seen this on any other mouse, and kind of thought it is a strange thing to have, but it kind of helps between browsing and gaming.

It's here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035N256Q/ref=oh_o03_s00_i00_details

[truth is life]

As near as I can tell, there is no such thing as a Parkinsons disease-friendly mouse or alternative pointer device.

Have you looked into devices for quadreplegics or people with similarly limited hand movement? Obviously, those don't require fine hand movement, but I don't know if there's something else that would make them unsuitable for your mother.

The State Department, I'm informed, sends money to people living under "oppressive regimes" and trying to find workarounds for exactly this sort of nonsense.

They don't care if the access limitations are the result of harmonizing with US IP law, though!

And thank you very much, SOPA, for turning copyright into such a weapon that lots of people are going to hate me and people like me for needing copyright to pay our bills.

Oh, Congress has been aiming to make people hate anyone who makes money from copyright for a long time (I think they're jealous!). They just hadn't quite found the right...spice, I suppose you could say, until now.

*brief rant*

I doubt, however, that you could find a more effective impediment to Internet usage than the wireless "access" system here at school, which apparently hates to simply work. For that matter, AT&T out in the suburbs is only better in degrees, in that it only decides that it won't work a few times a day rather than more or less so often that working is the unusual state of affairs.

/rant

[Froborr]

@Kit: That brings up something that really concerns me, and I have not seen anyone really discuss much. PIPA and SOPA are a symptom of a major shift in the business side of the arts: Physical copies of works (be they books, songs, stories, whatever) are private goods, but digital copies are public goods, and it is well-nigh impossible to make a profit providing a public good. There is going to be a lot of upheaval before this settles down; I am fairly confident that traditional media companies and publishers are doomed, but worried that the professional artist is going to go the same way.

[Lonespark]

I forgot you lived in DC, Froborr. Taxation without representation, plus being used as a political punching bag and petri dish by Congresscritters...Grrr, smash. And your Rep. is a great lady.

[Mmy]

@truth is life: I doubt, however, that you could find a more effective impediment to Internet usage than the wireless "access" system here at school, which apparently hates to simply work. For that matter, AT&T out in the suburbs is only better in degrees, in that it only decides that it won't work a few times a day rather than more or less so often that working is the unusual state of affairs.

Remember that piece in LB when Nicky of the Mountains expressed amazement at the glory of American technology?

One of the barriers to information access in the US is the comparatively (for an industrialized country) bad internet access infrastructure. There are areas that are almost internet deserts and areas where it is almost prohibitively expensive.

BTW, the US is not even in the top 10 in terms of penetration rate (percentage of population that has access to the internet) and is NOT number one in average number of hours online. Canada ranks #11 in number of unique users online monthly and yet we manage to average 43.5 hours a month online. Which is 8 hours more than number 2.

[storiteller]

I live in D.C., you see. 14 blocks from the Capitol, actually--I could walk less than half an hour to visit my Congresswoman in her office and talk to her about this.

Agreed on the obnoxiousness of that, even though I don't live in the city. I think the most humiliating thing though is the fact that your city services have to stop if Congress shuts down the federal government. That's especially adding insult to injury to fed employees who live in D.C.

I live in Maryland, and discovered to my horror that one of my senators co-sponsered this slime.

Blerg about Ben Cardin sponsoring this crap. I lobbied him earlier in the year about climate change and his lead staffer spent most of the time lecturing to the three of us there about what we should be doing differently.

Knowing that there are several DC/MD/VA Slacktivites, we should have a Mid-Atlantic meetup. Any ideas or interest?

John Scalzi wrote up a good explanation of how SOPA/PIPA were not in any useful way designed to protect the rights of ordinary authors. These proposed laws are, he writes, the equivalent of dealing with burglars in someone’s home by carpetbombing every house on the street.

I liked The Oatmeal's explanation that it's like going after an escaped tiger by flamethrowing innocent kittens. He's got a really funny animation to go with it too.

I blacked out my blog via Wordpress's blackout function and wrote about how as a writer, I have the responsibility to speak up when free speech is threatened. I didn't about copywrite because I don't currently get paid for my blog. (I get paid for writing at work, but that's not copywritten to me.)

In terms of the original subject of the post, The Newseum has a good exhibit about journalists being oppressed globally. They have a map showing the levels of freedom in different countries, but considering that they are listing Hungary as having a "free" press, they don't seem to be keeping it up to date particularly well.

[Silver Adept]

In the United States, there's another piece of legislation that requires denying access to information to minors from any public entity that accepts a discounted rate for Internet access or technology purchases. The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is ostensibly about making sure that minors are not exposed to age-restricted material, but in practice, because it requires "technology prevention measures", it has become a federal requirement that filters be installed on computers in schools and libraries that are already budget-crunched.

This restricts access to important factual information for teenagers and others (theoretically, filters can be over-ridden at adult requests, but it requires going to someone on staff and telling them if the computer system doesn't offer that.) in the name of protecting children from porn exposure. Which they could get anyway if they happened to look at the wrong time at an adult terminal.

It's not the Great Firewall, but a lot of kids end up getting information secondhand, even from the Internet, because the adults don't talk and the filters don't work.

[Froborr]

Thanks for the links, hapax and Marc, I just realized I forgot to say that. My mother has asked for help in finding a new computer, so I'm going to be looking into options shortly.

[MercuryBlue]

Companies that support SOPA and PIPA and therefore should be boycotted.

I am a very sad bear, y'all. CBS, Warner, and Viacom are on there. Stewart and Colbert are Viacom productions and CBS and Warner own Supernatural.

Also, has anyone else heard about ACTA? I gather from Wikipedia that it's the same thing as SOPA/PIPA, only worse because it's international.