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INFOWAR: Internet Censorship strikes NGOs

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 98
INFOWAR. information.macht.krieg
Linz, Austria, september 07 - 12
http://www.aec.at/infowar
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Given some of the recent discussions in this forum, I thought the
following information may be useful and certainly timely. 

The organisations currently under fire are member networks of the
global Association for Progressive Communications. Their US member,
the Institute for Global Communications, was severly mailbombed 96/97
for hosting Euskadi Ta Askatasuna's (Basque political organisation)
website. APC's response to mailbombing is available via:

http://www.apc.org/statements/

Andrew

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Internet Censorship strikes NGOs
http://www.labournet.org.uk/1998/May/ngostat.html

The British company Biwater plc has recently threatened two non-profit
Internet Service Providers, GreenNet in the UK and SangoNet in South
Africa, with legal action to make them censor users' material. The
materials referred to old newspaper articles about the company's
involvement in links between British Government aid and UK arms sales.

In both cases, the ISPs were hosting material which contained
information which was already publicly accessible from a vast number
of sources outside the Internet. The material the company wanted to
censor was old, but Biwater's action has brought it back to life and
rekindled great interest for a world-wide audience.

The information threatened was part of a LabourNet campaign against
the privatisation of water resources in South Africa. Biwater has not
only threatened to sue the above mentioned Internet Providers, but
also the South African newspaper Mail and Guardian.

Because of the company's attempt to censor this information, some
members of the APC network have decided to make the pages available to
the Internet community. The pages are available from LabourNet special
Biwater sites in Denmark and The Netherlands.

LabourNet promotes computer communications as a medium for
strengthening and building organised labour. They are in the forefront
of using the resources of the internet to provide communications, news
and information for the labour movement.

The Association for Progressive Communication (APC) is a global
network which works to enable communication between organisations
working for social chance. APC, Association for Progressive
Communication, have users in over 100 countries and our mission is to
create space and tools for them to communicate, debate, exchange
information and in some areas in the world to have a voice at all.

APC has enabled communications between people during war, under
dictatorships, and in areas of poverty where the financial means makes
it hard to communicate at all. And to create a space for NGOs in the
industrial and democratical countries, where normal freedom of speech
is used to express various facts and opinions without problems.

We believe all people should have the right to use the Internet in
order to seek out the truth. It's by sharing of information the truth
can be reached.


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--
  Andrew Garton
  MA & PHD Research Program
  |
  Centre.for.Animation.&.Interactive Media
  Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
  |
  |---------> agarton@toysatellite.com.au
  |---------> http://www.toysatellite.com.au/agarton ---------|

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