
The Free Internet Project - greenyoda
http://thefreeinternetproject.org/
======
lucb1e
Never knew that the Netherlands and Brazil are the only countries in the world
that have net neutrality as a law. Like with legal euthanasia, drugs, gay
marriage, etc., as a Dutchman I'm amazed at how non-liberal much of the world
is.

~~~
ehPReth
Chile as well:
[http://thefreeinternetproject.org/countries/chile](http://thefreeinternetproject.org/countries/chile)

~~~
lucb1e
Oh! Thin and light; missed that one. Thanks!

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gexcolo
The United Kingdom is colored Yellow, yet there is Internet censorship in the
UK:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom)

The description mentions the ISP-controlled, opt-in "filtering" plans, but not
the state-mandated no-opt-out censorship of an indeterminate number of
websites (the lists are not public)

~~~
shawabawa3
The state mandated no-opt-out censorship appears to still be the choice of the
ISP.

At home, using virginmedia I can't access the pirate bay. At work (unknown
ISP), I can

~~~
undefined0
In the UK, they have censored filestube, took down filecrop and others. Why I
mention this instead of TPB? Well, filestube, at the time of the censorship,
didn't encourage copyright infringement, it litterly was just a search engine
for file host links. The excuse they gave for censoring it was that they
couldn't keep up with the takedown notices. Imagine if they applied that logic
to Google.

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spindritf
Why does "left to market" seem to imply "less protected"? I have much more
trust in my connection with five competing ISPs than I would have with five
regulators. I also find communication with the customer retention department
smoother and more productive than trying to figure out which complaint form I
need to fill.

~~~
krapp
Perhaps because markets are meant to optimize for profit, and not necessarily
freedom?

~~~
spindritf
And government officials optimize for freedom? Has this been your experience?

~~~
krapp
Not always, obviously. But I think it's important to at least differentiate
between the purpose of law and the purpose of business. Assuming the best case
for the former but the worst case for the latter doesn't make a lot of sense.

Laws at the very least could act to limit the ability of corporations to limit
access and mine user privacy - but businesses in the best case are still going
to attempt to do what makes money, which will almost never mean the less
lucrative option of allowing their customers greater freedom and more privacy.

I think the general thesis here is that internet freedom is more secure in an
environment where it is considered a _right_ and not a term of service.

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curiousfab
I hope that it's just a honest mistake that they made a part of Latvia belong
to Russia (probably thinking it is Kaliningrad).

Such details are important and getting them wrong can make some people very
angry.

Edit: At least the Crimea still belongs to Ukraine on their map :-)

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jaredmcdonald
North Korea is colored red with no explanatory text... is that just to say
"come on, it's North Korea?"

~~~
Retr0spectrum
You can read about it here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea)

~~~
jaredmcdonald
Thanks. Led me to this... wonder if they've implemented ES6 yet? :P

> Red Star OS features a modified Mozilla Firefox browser titled Naenara used
> for browsing the Naenara web portal on the North Korean intranet network
> known as Kwangmyong. [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS)

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enlightenedfool
Tell me, what's the difference between government acting without a court order
and one acting with a secret court order based on questionable laws. the
result is the same. Also, when I know that there's government surveillance and
weak privacy, I am less willing to speak free, which is effectively no free
speech.

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coolgeek
"The Free Internet Project is a nonprofit whose mission is to provide the
public with information about the latest legal and technological efforts to
protect Internet freedoms around the world"

What am I missing here? What are these guys doing that EFF, EPIC or other
organizations isn't already doing?

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nojvek
Not sure why India is red. I mean its a pretty crazy country to be in, but no
one censors your shit like China.

~~~
adwf
Wasn't India one of the countries that demanded intercept capabilities from
Skype and Blackberry? ie. Break your product or you can't do business. That's
pretty hostile as far as internet freedom goes.

------
xnull
This is interesting. Allow me to provide some counterpoints to the bullet
points listed for a few (major) countries.

China:

* The Great Firewall of China blocks people's access to many websites, e.g., Facebook, Google.

* Government engages in extensive censorship especially related to political organizing or protests.

* Foreign social media apps are banned. Users must use real names on social media.

The Great Firewall and the blocking of media apps does also function as a
Firewall. It is not merely a censorship technology. The United States and
allies are known to target media in other countries to stir dissent. Radio
Free Europe, "Voice of Iraq" ( _cough_ American), the Lincoln Group
infiltrations and partnerships, etc.

The Snowden leaks and the history of (especially) Google but also other US
businesses in China (and export exceptions limiting the purchase of
infrastructure technologies) tell a tale of the US trying to export
compromised services to China. China does not want its citizens' informations
in America's XKeyScore nor it's citizens Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook,
etc data in America's PRISM. (There's a reason all of those programs get
permission through the FISA "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" Court).

Just this past year the CIA (under USAID) pretended to be a grassroots
movement on Twitter served 'news' critical of the Cuban regime that nearly
caused a Cuban uprising.

The DoD's MINERVA project specifically looks to understand the cultural
components of stability of various countries and mechanisms to encourage or
disrupt that stability. Among a great number of social studies you will find
DoD research on how to seed information inside of specific Asian countries,
including China, for the targeted introduction of instability. I will leave
speculations of possible connections to the Hong Kong protests to the reader.

[http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html](http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html)

It's a global issue right now. This year Egypt sentenced Al Jazeera
journalists that they believed were partnered with geopolitical interests of
other states.

As of this year Putin is now requiring bloggers to register if they have a
certain number of readers, so that his administration can curtail
international influence.

America, too, faces challenges. A number of journalists have called out that
the state has been extremely aggressive to dissenting opinions, even to go so
far as labeling current policy on the issue "War on Journalism". American
officials have exported a number of journalists with Middle Eastern descent
and journalists like Ayman Mohyeldin have been pulled from Gaza and other
conflicts when reporting has erred on the side of other state interests.

And of course there's the article "I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for
Two Days", which is definitely worth a read. The TL;DR is that below the thin
surface of social information bubbles enormous amounts of radicalizing
geopolitical and domestic political ads and campaigns.

[http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-
fac...](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-facebook-for-
two-days-heres-what-it-did-to-me/)

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>>> Just this past year the CIA (under USAID) pretended to be a grassroots
movement on Twitter served 'news' critical of the Cuban regime that nearly
caused a Cuban uprising.

Is this a bad thing?

This is just one of the double standards I see people touting. They want every
country to enjoy all the freedoms we have and none of the oppressive regimes
these people live under. Yet these same people are highly critical of American
efforts to help get those same people to start fighting against some of these
countries holding them down.

These ideas never made sense to me:

People living under dictators and oppressive regimes is bad. Developers
helping these people circumvent the technology that holds them down is good.

America government helping people start revolutions, spread information about
how bad their government is and fight back is a bad thing. People creating
technology to avoid the NSA and CIA snooping is good thing.

I guess it just depends on who's OX is being gored.

~~~
opendais
> Developers helping these people circumvent the technology that holds them
> down is good.

That isn't what they were doing. They were creating a tool to manipulate
public opinion among its users without their consent.

> I guess it just depends on who's OX is being gored.

No, it has to do with manipulating people through deception.

 _You don 't seem to understand the difference between:_

I offer you money/aid/etc and manipulate you into doing what I want.

vs.

You are doing what I want and therefore I provide aid to you.

USAID does both of these things. The first one is bad. The second one is fine.

> America government helping people start revolutions, spread information
> about how bad their government is and fight back is a bad thing. People
> creating technology to avoid the NSA and CIA snooping is good thing.

No. The US _creates_ the revolutionaries through manipulation. That is the
programs the OP and I are opposed to. "Hey kid, use this service. Oh, we won't
mention we plan to study the activities of you and everyone else to see what
kind of news we can release to increase revolutionary activity as part of the
process."

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biomechanica
I'm pretty sure Canada removed it's Hate Speech law.

[http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/27/hate-speech-no-
longe...](http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/27/hate-speech-no-longer-part-
of-canadas-human-rights-act/)

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bliker
I am quite sure whole EU has a net-neutrality law.
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26865869](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26865869)

~~~
icebraining
Nope, it still has to be voted by the Council.

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byandyphillips
Sorry if this is off topic, but I wonder how many people typically donate when
they see a "donate" button on a website. I imagine it's very small if any at
all. Am I wrong?

~~~
kaoD
I don't have a donate button, but I made some Bitcoin addresses specifically
for donations and spread them around forum signatures, link in my GitHub page,
etc.

One random day I was syncing my blockchain and noticed a ~$10 donation. Made
me really happy :)

Unfortunately I'm not even sure what triggered it, but I probably helped
someone on an internet forum and he wanted to give back. Thanks, random
stranger!

So, to sum it up, according to my experience the total amount of donations on
the internet is >= $10.

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pinpoll
greenyoda, what do you require to assign a colour to Austria? I could maybe
help you out here doing some research according to your criteria.

One of the last major "freedom initiatives" in Austria was our government's
decision to abolish the data retention law on Juli 1st to comply with EU law -
a small victory for data protection activists.

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tom_scrace
Do they say anywhere what exactly it means for a country to have 'net
neutrality', 'safe harbours' etc?

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lukasm
There is a lot freedom in Poland, only because our retarded government has
figure out yet how powerful internet is.

~~~
happyscrappy
Poland and others that suffered under Communism know first hand how bad it can
be and value their new life, Hong Kong is going in the other direction
unfortunately.

~~~
logicchains
Hong Kong doesn't really have a choice in the matter; it can't exactly just
decide "hey, I don't want to be ruled by mainland China any more" and become
independent, China would never allow that.

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sarciszewski
I look forward to the day the entire map is green. (Even if it never happens,
it's something to work towards.)

~~~
alphydan
for us colorblind, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan & Company aready are very
very close to it. :)

~~~
sarciszewski
Hah. Sorry to hear that.

