Venezuela's Chavez To Limit Internet Freedom 452
terets1 writes "Reuters reports that Venezuela's leader, Hugo Chavez, issued a call on Saturday for 'internet controls' to prevent rumors and inaccurate reporting from spreading. He specifically cited a case in which a website incorrectly reported that a senior minister had been assassinated and kept the story up for two days. Many of Venezuela's opposition movements use social networking sites to communicate. It is not apparent at this time exactly what kind of controls Chavez has in mind or whether those controls will be similar to the controls in Iran that have been used to silence opposition movements. Chavez said, 'The Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done. Every country has to apply its own rules and norms.'"
Re:Way to go (Score:5, Informative)
You must be new... to Venezula.
They used to have private TV broadcasters you know...
Permanent Intarweb Bolivarian Revolution! (Score:2, Informative)
Hugo Chavez has promised to speed up "the construction of true socialism" in Venezuela now that he can stand for re-election indefinitely. "We have exploded the barriers to a permanent socialist revolution [newstechnica.com]."
Chavez has already taken control of the country's vast oil wealth, expropriated private landholdings and businesses and instituted a programme of deep social reforms. He has attacked the "distribution of wealth" problem by destroying as much of it as possible. After Chávez promised to nationalise the biggest power and phone companies, the Caracas Stock Exchange closed nearly 20% down, Electricidad de Caracas fell 25% and CA Nacional Telefonos was suspended from trading. The Venezuelan Bolivar has been replaced in common use with twigs and small rocks, which suddenly have much greater practical exchange value.
Chavez next wants to merge all his coalition partners into a single party, remove the opposition television channel, monitor the Internet "appropriately," nationalise key businesses and rule by decree for a year. However, construction of a one-hundred-metre tall gold statue of himself in the Caracas city square that turns to follow the sun will be delayed until next year, and renaming the days of the week and months of the year after himself and his mother can wait until the year after.
Chavez' good friend Fidel Castro expressed his confidence that Chavez was in no danger from the US. "This is the CIA we're talking about," said Castro. "They could fuck up a wet dream. Hey, maybe they'll try the exploding cigar trick again. That's a good one."
"The internet should not be a free thing" (Score:5, Informative)
The internet cannot be a free thing, each country has its rules. Regulation and laws. All these pages have an administrator. We must act. We're going to request support from the Attorney General.
This is not acceptable, that they broadcast whatever they want, poisoning the minds of many people
Noticiero Digital (listen, this is very grave): "Breaking news; Diosdado Cabello [wikipedia.org] murdered" [...] Someone has to be responsible here because these pages cannot be free for what you to want to say. There are laws here and they must be obeyed.
Link to original video: Dailymotion - Chávez pide actuar contra ND [dailymotion.com] (in Spanish).
Re:A Dictator Stifles The Press? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Way to go (Score:4, Informative)
Re:That's the plan (Score:1, Informative)
Welcome to Slashdot "chavista' friend... Apart from the regional channel Globovision what other channel openly criticize the government? Venevision made a pact with the government and RCTV was taken down and supplanted by a pseudo-cuban channel... Now they want to control Internet using a unique point of access controlled by CANTV.
Re:Way to go (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Misleading headline (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Another anti-Chavez ill-informed kneejerk react (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Way to go (Score:4, Informative)
If you had done 10 seconds research you'd have noticed that this wasn't about a news story posted on the website.
It was some random users posting a rumour on the forums.
Not the website owners.
Essentially he wants to kill open online forums.
From google translate:
On the evening of Saturday, the President of the Republic Hugo Chávez has asked the Attorney General's Office and the Minister Diosdado Cabello take legal action against this site by false rumors posted two new forumers in one of our forums and concerned the alleged murder of two ombudsmen linked to the Government.
Chavez wants to silence anyone who doesn't agree with him.
Can we just accept that he's evil yet?
he's been making the effort to convince us all for a while but some people don't seem to want to listen.
Re:Way to go (Score:2, Informative)
Something to be shown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mlcxcn86lg [youtube.com]
The first clip shows the government channel reporting the events. The second, shows the opposition one. Which one you choose is up to you, but denying it was a terrible event shows a lack of ethic.The people shot down by the snipers are shown on that video. You probably won't understand a word of the reporters, but the images should be an important clue. There are more videos around.
Re:Not according to Sean Penn (Score:3, Informative)
President Bush yesterday
You do realize that Bush isn't the President of the US anymore, right? We booted him out over a year ago.
Re:That's the plan (Score:2, Informative)
MM is not million. M (mega) is million. MM is not even million in roman numerals, God help us. MM in roman numerals is 2000. I know this usage is common in business related writing, but it exasperates the literate.
New York Times vs Sullivan [1964] (Score:4, Informative)
In free countries, it's recognized that you can't defame public officials.
The standard in the U.S. is based on malice. You were out to do damage.
You broadcast something you knew was a lie or demonstrated a reckless disregard for the truth.
Free societies do not remain free when their elected representatives can be slandered into political oblivion.
Defamation and the First Amendment [freedomforum.org]
Re:Way to go (Score:4, Informative)
No. Further investigation by a coalition of newspapers revealed that the only way Gore could have won would have been to cherry pick the districts to be recounted that were favorable to him while disallowing recounts in all the districts that weren't. The supreme court sniffed out the unfairness of this & rightly put a stop to it. This biased method of counting votes is no better than counting "Only whites" or "Only those with a communist party membership card".
Re:Way to go (Score:2, Informative)
Here is the source, and Chavez doesn't mention filters or firewalls, he says people should get prosecuted using the law and constitution:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xckilm_ch%E1vez-pide-actuar-contra-nd_news [dailymotion.com]
He then quotes the German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying she said "Internet cannot be something free" (an opinion) and says there should be regulations and laws, which each country should make. He then goes on and talks about a guy arrested in Colombia for saying Uribe's son was in danger of being killed, and in the United States to people threatening President Obama (on internet).
"It is not apparent at this time exactly what kind of controls Chavez has in mind or whether those controls will be similar to the controls in Iran that have been used to silence opposition movements." This is Reuters doing, or their journalist view, it is not mentioned in the speech and its pure bias attempting to lead the reader opinion on the matter.
What he did say was that this particular site has been repeatedly infringing the law (Venezuelan) and calls the General Attorney for action against the administrator and participants of this forum (IMO this will mean nothing if the guys/site reside outside the country).
If you know Spanish, or know someone you trust that knows spanish, watch the video. This is yet another example of why corporate media is criticized by Chavez which in turn criticizes him in a never ending duel.
Re:Way to go (Score:3, Informative)