8 October 2008

Stories from 8 October 2008

Japan: Web becoming Fifth Estate

  8 October 2008

Ikeda Nobuo at OpenSpectrum Japan reports on two news stories related to copyright law in Japan: the conditional access system B-CAS has been scrapped (and with it so-called “Dubbing Ten”), and on September 18 the plan to extend copyright from 50 to 70 years was also abandoned. Ikeda observes that...

Trinidad & Tobago: Eye on the Prize

  8 October 2008

Trinidadian blogger Nicholas Laughlin understands that “literary prizes play a hugely important role in what you might call the literary economy” – which is why he's agreed to be a regional judge for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

Bermuda: Hidden Agenda?

  8 October 2008

Vexed Bermoothes suspects that the reason Bermuda was involved in last year's World Tourism Summit “was that the event was just a ploy to make sure the Premier was distant and unavailable as the Privy Council met to debate Government’s failed gag order on the ‘Son of the Soil’ papers.”

Jamaica: Quick Picks

  8 October 2008

Jamaican Marlon James announces his picks for this year's Nobel Prize in Literature: “My money is on Adonis, largely because a poet is overdue.”

China: 40 Missing Children's Parents Petition Journey to Beijing

  8 October 2008

The news of 40 parents petitioning in Beijing for their missing children has been censored by the mainstream media and major internet news portals in China. Blogger Beifeng re-posts a first-person account from one of the petitioning parents in his blog, and urges readers to spread the news.

Georgia: Journalist's Blog

  8 October 2008

Following in the footsteps of Matthew Collin's This is Tbilisi Calling, another Western journalist resident in the country has set up a blog from Georgia. Dan Catchpole's Dateline Tbilisi is at http://datelinetbilisi.blogspot.com.

Guatemala: Ex-president Portillo extradited

  8 October 2008

After hiding from Justice for four years in Mexico, former President Alfonso Portillo was extradited to Guatemala, where he will face serious charges of corruption and other felonies. Bloggers comment on the possible outcomes, and show surprise at how quickly he was put released on bail.

Hong Kong: Who Decides What We Can See On The Internet?

  8 October 2008

The Hong Kong government suggests to filter the internet in order to “protect” youth from indecent and obscene article. The issue then comes to “Who decides what we can see on the Internet?” – ESWN has translated a local newspapers article on this.

Peru: blog cracking hints at censorship

  8 October 2008

Fernando from Pepitas.com posts the notice he received letting him know that strangers tried to crack his blog, targetting specifically 3 posts with complaints about two ministers. Luckily the attack was detected and although all the comments were erased by the crackers, the were able to recover most of them.

China: Great Depression?

  8 October 2008

Ruan Yifeng notices that back in 2004 an economist has predicted the economic situation in China as various figures showed that China was caught in a condition similar to the U.S in 1929, the eve before the great depression [zh].