Words matter. These are the best Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
‘Intermediary liability’ means that the intermediary, a service that acts as ‘intermediate’ conduit for the transmission or publication of information, is held liable or legally responsible for everything its users do.
The Internet is empowering everybody. It’s empowering Democrats. It’s empowering dictators. It’s empowering criminals. It’s empowering people who are doing really wonderful and creative things.
Compliance with the Stop Online Piracy Act would require huge overhead spending by Internet companies for staff and technologies dedicated to monitoring users and censoring any infringing material from being posted or transmitted.
Negative views of Pakistan expressed by prominent members of the global business community are taken more seriously by government functionaries than are appeals by human rights groups.
In the future, ‘the networked’ will sometimes form alliances with the Silicon Valley companies against Congress, but sometimes we are going to want and need to target our campaigns for change at the companies themselves.
Seemingly small choices and small actions add up over time.
In China, the problem is that with the system of censorship that’s now in place, the user doesn’t know to what extent, why, and under what authority there’s been censorship. There’s no way of appealing. There’s no due process.
China’s censorship and propaganda systems may be complex and multilayered, but they are obviously not well coordinated.
We must all rise to the challenge to demonstrate that security and prosperity in the Internet age are not only compatible with liberty, they ultimately depend on it.
President Barack Obama’s administration sometimes finds itself at odds with members of Congress who oppose nearly everything the United Nations does on principle.
Defending a free and open global Internet requires a broad-based global movement with the stamina to engage in endless – and often highly technical – national and international policy battles.
During the 1980s, when Japan’s economy was roaring and people were writing books with titles like ‘Japan is Number One,’ most Japanese college students didn’t make the effort to become fluent in English.
Whether or not Americans supported George W. Bush, they could not avoid learning about Abu Ghraib.
There are many cases of activists having their Facebook pages and accounts deactivated at critical times, when they are right in the middle of a campaign or organising a demonstration.
QQ is not secure. You might as well be sharing your information with the Public Security Bureau.
There is a broad movement that has been holding companies accountable on human rights for a long time.
If I were a Chinese dissident, I’d be grateful that Cisco had helped bring the Internet to China, but I’d also be outraged that Cisco may have helped the cops keep me under surveillance and catch me trying to organize protest activities.
Clearly Google is searching for a way to do business in China that avoids them sending someone to jail over an e-mail.
Facebook is blocked in mainland China, but is used heavily by the rest of the Chinese-speaking world, including Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.
There is clearly a constituency that appreciates the message that Google is sending, that it finds the Chinese government’s attitude to the Internet and censorship unacceptable.
People in China have a range of strong views about how children should be protected when they go online and whether the responsibility should be with the government, with parents, or somebody else.
There has been a rising tide of criticism about China’s treatment of foreign companies.
The Internet is an empowering force for people who are protesting against the abuse of power.
Over the past several decades, a growing number of investors have been choosing to put their money in funds that screen companies for their environmental and labor records. Some socially responsible investors are starting to add free expression and privacy to their list of criteria.
The better-informed we are, the more we can do to make sure what’s happening is in our interests and is accountable to us.
The Olympics brought a lot of development to Beijing, but I don’t see that there have been any changes to human rights as a result of the Olympics.
The Internet is a politically contested space.
Shibuya is a trendy part of Tokyo where young people come to meet and have a good time.
Professional camera crews are rarely there when a bomb goes off or a rocket lands. They usually show up afterwards.
While the Internet can’t be controlled 100 percent, it’s possible for governments to filter content and discourage people from organizing.
As in Pakistan, Tunisian and Egyptian human rights activists are concerned that any censorship mechanisms, once put in place, will inevitably be abused for political purposes no matter what censorship proponents claim to the contrary.
Tactically, yelling at Google is unwise.
Each of us has a vital role to play in building a world in which the government and technology serve the world’s people and not the other way around.
The erosion of privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment, written to protect us against unreasonable search and seizure, began in earnest under President George W. Bush.
As a condition for entry into the Chinese market, Apple had to agree to the Chinese government’s censorship criteria in vetting the content of all iPhone apps available for download on devices sold in mainland China.
Only about 10 percent of India’s population uses the web, making it unlikely that Internet freedom will be a decisive ballot-box issue anytime soon.
What role did the Internet play in the Egyptian Revolution? People will be arguing about the answer to that question for decades if not centuries.
Ronald Reagan, when he was campaigning for President, said that he would break relations with Communist China and re-establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. But when he got into office, he pursued a very different policy of engagement with China and of increasing trade and business ties with China.
If they lose their legal basis for owning a .cn domain, google.cn would cease to exist, or if it continued to exist, it would be illegal, and doing anything blatantly illegal in China puts their employees at serious risk.
The user in China wants the same thing that any Internet user wants – privacy in conversations, maximum access to information, and the ability to speak their minds online.
Authoritarian systems evolve. Authoritarianism in the Internet Age is not your old Cold War authoritarianism.
Laws and mechanisms originally meant to enforce copyright, protect children and fight online crime are abused to silence or intimidate political critics.
There’s a real contradiction that’s difficult to explain to the West and the outside world about China and about the Internet.
Nobody is forcing anybody who is uncomfortable with the terms of service to use Facebook. Executives point out that Internet users have choices on the Web.
The critical question is: How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy?
Normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, combined with economic reforms and opening, transformed the Chinese people’s lives.
If China can’t even given LinkedIn enough breathing room to operate in China, that would be a very unfortunate signal for a government to send its professionals about its priorities.
Political activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan use Facebook as their primary tool to mobilize support for their causes and activities.
Whether or not the U.S. government funds circumvention tools, or who exactly it funds and with what amount, it is clear that Internet users in China and elsewhere are seeking out and creating their own ad hoc solutions to access the uncensored global Internet.
Public trust in both government and corporations is low, and deservedly so.
There isn’t much question that the person who obtained the WikiLeaks cables from a classified U.S. government network broke U.S. law and should expect to face the consequences. The legal rights of a website that publishes material acquired from that person, however, are much more controversial.
I first came to China as a child on a visit with my family in 1978.
In Russia, they do not generally block the Internet and directly censor websites.
China is building a model for how an authoritarian government can survive the Internet.
You don’t have to be a nerd or a programmer or a network engineer to make a difference.
In China, Vietnam, Russia and several former Soviet states, the dominant social networks are run by local companies whose relationship with the government actually constrains the empowering potential of social networks.
It’s time to take decisive action to stop American and other multinationals from aiding and abetting the wrong side in the global digital arms race.
One thing is very clear from the chatter I see on Chinese blogs, and also from just what people in China tell me, is that Google is much more popular among China’s Internet users than the United States.
