Kathlyn Clore

A few days ago I read a Global Voices Advocacy post that has really been bothering me.

The post talks about users in Syria who have been indicating lately that their Linked In profiles are inaccessible in Syria.

One user got frustrated and wrote to Linked In. He was told that Linked In is “… ’subject to export and re-export control laws and regulations. This includes the Export Administration Regulations maintained by the United States Department of Commerce and sanctions programs maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Under the User Agreement, LinkedIn Users warrant that they are not prohibited from receiving U.S. origin products, including services or software. As such, and as a matter of corporate policy, we do not allow member accounts or access to our site from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria.’”

A snipped from Linked In’s user agreement verifies this:

On the one hand, I get it. The United States does not allow its citizens do business in certain places. That’s just part of being a business operating from the United States.

But obviously, that Linked In has not registered/based part of its business in another country in a way that would legally circumvent this policy is an endorsement of the idea that people in some nations should not, in fact, be linked in.

Isn’t a big part of this World Wide Web thing all about bringing people together to network and discuss ideas? And isn’t a big part of Linked In about making professional contacts? I don’t see why professionals working in Syria or Cuba are not worth contacting.

Even understanding that business can choose to do business in whatever way they see fit, this still does not sit with me. After all, we as consumers have just as much right to decide where to bring our business. So the big question is: Are Linked In users OK with being “linked out” of some places?

Another question: How does Linked In handle users who are not citizens of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria but happen to be traveling in those areas when trying to log in to Linked In?

UPDATE 23 April: Facebook has updated its terms of service and will also block countries the U.S. has embargoed. Obviously, they read questions and comments made during the ongoing period of Facebook community voting on the terms of service. Their response to quesitons about blocking certain countries was, “As we state in the Principles, our principles are constrained by limitations of applicable law.”

Here’s a clip from their “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities”:

Yesterday I edited a synopsis of a most disturbing bill working its way through the Italian legislature.

A center-right Italian senator from Sicily is backing a bill that would give the country’s Ministry

of the Interior the power to demand ISPs in Italy block sites which host content seen to incite or condone crime.

Facebook seems to be the primary target. The American social networking platform allows registered users to form fan groups around just about any idea. Among the most offending groups to these Italian lawmakers are groups honoring big-name Mafia bosses.

Unless Facebook would agree to take those groups down - and the Ministry of the Interior would indeed have to give sites like Facebook time to take down the offending content - the entire site would be blocked inside Italy.

Deleting entire websites because of a bit of offensive material seems an entirely arcane practice for 2009.

But the situation does for me beg the question: In today’s linked-up world, should multinational sites like Facebook (and, to be clear, while all websites have the potential to be multinational, few truly are) have to abide by the laws of countries other than the nation in which their servers sit? Which is to say,should a website based in the United States, like Facebook, have to regulate its content with Italian law in mind?

I’m reminded of a November, 2008, New York Times article about censorship at Google.

In the Republic of Turkey, a nation of 71 million people, it is illegal to insult Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He is the founder of modern Turkey.

Google, apparently, has dedicated the hours of many staffers to screening the contents of YouTube videos that are reported to violate Turkish law. The videos which Google decides are in clear violation of Turkish law are then blocked in Turkey.

The article chronicles similar cases in Europe. In France and Germany, for example, Google blocks Holocaust denial sites because it is illegal to deny the Shoah in those countries.

But is a California-based company like Google - or a Ministry of the Interior in Italy - the best body to decide what to censor?

Germany has a government agency whose responsibility it is to gather URLs of sites that host illegal content (content including hate speech, for example, would be illegal in Deutschland). Is this a better way to go? Why not get a judicial system involved? Or would that take too long, particularly when considering the warp speed that dominates the World Wide Web?

These questions become even more difficult - or perhaps just less relevant? - when considering the many initiatives to circumvent censorship. One of the best initiatives is the Tor project, which helps Internet users surf the web anonymously.

The Israel Defence Forces, which started its own YouTube channel on 29 December, is the most recent armed force to storm YouTube. But it isn’t the only military group representing itself on the ubiquitous video platform.

With its stab at social media, the IDF follows in the footsteps of British, Dutch and American militaries. These legions each reach thousands of YouTube subscribers, thus allowing military groups to present themselves to the public without a reporter filtering the information.

That seems to be just fine with journalists, who say these videos are no more valuable to them than other everyday source material, including individual blogs.

Joel Greenberg, Middle East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, says he has used the IDF YouTube channel as one of numerous information sources.

“I’m speaking about the aerial photos of bombing in Gaza,” he e-mails from Israel, referencing videos like the one titled Israeli Air Force Strikes Rockets in Transit 28 Dec., 2008, which depict actual bombing.

“They illustrate some assertions the army is making, particularly their claims of secondary explosions that they say prove that there were weapons inside a mosque or other building they hit. But it is only one source among many that I am using, and I am not referring to it regularly.”

The IDF channel does have regular viewers, though. It has been the most subscribed to station on YouTube for two straight weeks. It has 12,794 subscribers and 896,873 channel views as of 6 January.

Military VJs

When it comes to militaries doing their own video journalism, the British are at the fore: The Royal Air Force established its own YouTube channel in 2006. So did the US Navy. The US Marines joined up in 2007, as did the British Army and the Dutch Marines. The US Air Force started its channel in 2008.

Coalition military forces have joined the online video game: The Multi-National Force – Iraq started a YouTube station in 2007.

But YouTube isn’t the only way to do video on the web: at www.natochannel.tv, NATO posts videos about training exercises, its work in Afghanistan and Kosovo, press statements, roundtables and archives dating back to the inception of NATO in 1949.

The  26-country coalition has had a TV and Radio Unit, which operates a television studio and 10 radio studios at NATO headquarters in Brussels, for 25 years. But it started natochannel.tv just six months ago. This online channel presently operates out of Denmark. But it will move to Brussels in June, 2009, said Jean-Marc Lorgnier of the TV and Radio Unit.

“It will be the future support for information to deliver a message to the young people,” Lorgnier says.

Good for reporters?

Indeed, online videos do facilitate the widespread dissemination of branded messages – just like press releases.

That’s how some reporters and editors see these video channels.

“You don’t know if it’s propaganda or who is directing it,” says Titia Ketelaar, deputy editor for nrc•next, a Dutch morning paper. “So we treat it as such, with the same sceptical outlook we use for any press release we get.”

Ketelaar says NRC, which also publishes an evening paper, has its own correspondent based in Israel.

“He knows the situation and gets his own information, has his own contacts,” she says. “Like every reporter here, myself included, we’ve got our own blogs you check every morning to see what they’re doing. You look at YouTube and see if there’s something new. … But our reporters do their own interviews and rely on that information.”

Victor Kasparov, a producer for the international planning desk at the 24-hour English language television station Russia Today, says his correspondents operate in the same way. Russia Today also bases its Middle East correspondent, Paula Slier, in Israel.

“We have a reporter in Israel and we don’t really need to monitor lots of blogs,” he says. “Paula takes care of that. … She’s a reporter and she’s local. It’s much easier for her to get information.

But it is useful when we make coverage of events in countries where we don’t have a reporter.”

Questions

Kasparov’s comment raises important questions: In times when reporters are not allowed into an area, will branded YouTube channels be accepted by society as legitimate news portals? It is necessary to point out that YouTube makes clear it has the right to delete any content hosted on its site. To what extent should YouTube channel subscribers take this rule into account?

Furthermore, the IDF is not allowing foreign reporters into the Gaza Strip. So will news stations without on-the-ground access instead air footage provided by military channels? And if so, how can the news stations balance their coverage?

Kasparov said his station, which distributes its videos online via a YouTube channel in addition to its own website, also has Arabic language partners with studios in Gaza. So there is little need for footage from say, the IDF YouTube channel.

He does find the footage interesting, he says.

“One thing though, the quality is not really cool. I don’t think we could use it on air.”

Back in the Netherlands, Ketelaar adds that NRC is including in its coverage of the invasion of Gaza quotes from and links to individual bloggers’ pages. That way, she says, the paper can show multiple perspectives.

For that reason, of course, blogs have been a particularly popular information source for newsgathering outlets trying to cover Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Good reads

For a particularly good overview of bloggers writing from the area, visit Global Voices’ section on the Middle East and North Africa. Every day Global Voices editors monitor and translate blogs written in various languages from various points of view, making the site one of the best places to explore when searching for authentic blog sites.

On 2 January the section featured this article about a blog jointly written by one Israeli and one Palestinian man.

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Flickr image from users b., Weinaiko and Stompy