Countries Ranked In Terms of Internet Freedom 98
msum sent in a report that ranks 37 nations around the would in terms of their internet freedom. Estonia takes gold, the US silver, and Bahrain comes in last.
You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
Re-post (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes... but THIS article is about Estonia being 1st, while THAT article was about Australia being 4th. Totally different, see?
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At that rate #1 next week should be Elbonia.
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Dragons. Which country has the best dragons? I hear that dragon slaying is a lucrative business, if you're any good at it.
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I much prefer training dragons to be flying mounts...
http://www.howtotrainyourdragon.com/ [howtotrainyourdragon.com]
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Nice :)
I will have to pick up those books, when I initially read the name, it made me think of DragonLance, but when I googled it, I came up with Anne McCaffery, and I have not read her work.
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Re:Re-post (Score:5, Insightful)
Robert Guerra: Well, this project is actually the second report.
Sounds like someone might have been nobbled. But in any case, describing countries such as the US or Australia as "free" - when citizens are free to view whatever content they want so long as they have no objection to so-called "Intelligence" services spying on them and taking whatever action they see fit - seems a bit hollow to me.
NSA (Score:1)
What intelligence service is spying on you? Google or Apple perhaps...
You're joking, right?
In the USA all Internet traffic that travels through major NOCs is monitored by the NSA. It's pretty well known.
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How about a citation on where that impairs freedom. Can you show any action the NSA has taken to restrict free speech?
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Or maybe a citation to substantiate the allegation itself?
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Slashdot is not, and does not pretend to be a peer-reviewed academic journal. If you really require a citation for such a trivial statement, Google should be more than sufficient if you have been living in a barrel for at least the last ten years.
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Perhaps your problem is in thinking that "In the USA all Internet traffic that travels through major NOCs is monitored by the NSA" is a trivial statement. Obviously you can post whatever you want...but it seems to me you'd want to support an assertion like that if you want people to believe it.
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2.) I wouldn't think ANY slashdotter would be naive enough to have an expectation of privacy for the unencrypted packets they blast around the internet. And while yes, it is probably true that most encrypted packets probably have weak enough encryption that the NSA can break it.... it is almost certainly not tru
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Talk about internet censorship : my country (Belgium) is not even mentioned in the report.
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Disturbing that you need laws to protect it (Score:2)
Censorship is always going to exist where ever you go, however, it can always be circumvented. If there are any laws needed, it's laws to protect the individual who chooses to go around the censorship.
As an American in Norway (Score:2)
For 12 years, I stood up each day in school forced to pledge my allegiance to a flag and the country it stands for under some god I don't even believe in. It's as if they were also trying to force their religion on me as well. The simple fact that we are forced every day to re-pledge our allegiance at risk of being penalized by the principle are taunted by some religious fr
FREEDOMHOUSE is a propaganda vehicle (Score:1)
Freedomhouse, the creators of this imaginary list are a propaganda front [wordpress.com] for the US Gov. As with most propaganda, their "list" is completely bogus - to any impartial observer there is just no way the US could make it to third place of world stage based on the facts. [dotweekly.com]. However propaganda is not effective unless you get everyone repeating it without thinking - which raises the question - how is this organization they gaming the slashdot story posting system ?? Are we to have this propaganda tripe plastered ac
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By the way I'm really glad that Slashdot is sticking it to the man. In the report Iran is actually the champion on freedom censorship not Bahrain (lower score, higher freedom). If you can't beat them, confuse them.
Source [freedomhouse.org]
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I find it funny that Hillary Clinton talks about internet freedom while they drag some old guy out and cuff him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My29YT1T4R4 [youtube.com]
I guess US citizens are now to restrict their protests to the Internet ;).
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So far we know that Australia is 4th, Estonia 1sr, US 2nd, the place of Bahrain is 37.
As nobody RTFA here, we need quite a few reposts to complete the list. I have full trust in CmdrTaco, he was very good in dupes so far, maybe he can do even better...
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And the list is incomplete too. Considering that there are 193 states in the world (or more if you are considering some that aren't fully recognized) then the list may even be incorrect.
fgdkshhflkhs (Score:1)
Around the would?
How about "around the won't" like in "I won't read this article" because subby is an idiot.
--
BMO
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One thing Daft punk left out was "proofread it"
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BMO
Bahrain? (Score:5, Informative)
You mean Iran? Did you even read TFA?
And not even a link to the original report? It's really not hard to find. [freedomhouse.org]
Re:Bahrain? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Original Report (Score:2)
Yep, we're off to a bad start. A dupe with a juicy spelling link for the Spelling Brigade in only two sentences of TFS.
Who did the voting on this? (Score:1)
And how is freedom on the net even measured without a subjective component?
Gold goes to... (Score:1)
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South of Finland... in the sea? Atlantis?
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Its on the east end of the Baltic sea, along with Latvia and Lithuania. It was part of the USSR for a while.
I know they dont teach world geography in US schools.
I have never met anyone from Estonia, but I did know an old lady from Latvia.
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Its on the east end of the Baltic sea, along with Latvia and Lithuania. It was part of the USSR for a while.
I know they dont teach world geography in US schools.
I have never met anyone from Estonia, but I did know an old lady from Latvia.
Well, they do teach geography very poorly - it's not covered as a separate subject - it's more of an aside in history classes ("this event happened here, for example ");.
Because nothing of major importance to world history happened in Estonia other than it being occupied by various other countries during WW2, most US students will have no idea where it is, or even know that it is an actual country.
Really, knowing about all the countries in the world is good thing, but other than trivia value it's
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Really, knowing about all the countries in the world is good thing, but other than trivia value it's not that useful in your day to day life.
It's not as if anyone is requiring you to name every country's capital, population, main cities, GDP per capita etc. Just knowing a country exists and approximately in what part of the world is a good thing, especially when you happen to meet somebody from that country or have to do business with it. It also comes in handy when planning a trip. More, it can help you avoid looking like complete arse. ("Oh, Estonia, I thought you just mispronounced Australia. Yes, Estonia... It's somewhere in Africa, between
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Because nothing of major importance to world history happened in Estonia
It was one of the two Nazi-occupied countries that were declared Judenfrei (completely free of Jews - usually achieved through eradication), along with Luxembourg.
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Which was an easy thing to do, unfortunately - both countries are tiny. But while larger than Luxemburg, Estonia is much less important. I should know - I was born there.
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So just because he's rich means he doesn't have the right to be treated fairly by the tax board?
Blogs ranked in terms of repetitiveness (Score:2)
...Taco doesn't do well [slashdot.org].
Sorry state of affairs (Score:2, Interesting)
When Germany places third in Internet Freedom, then the bar must be pretty low. Germany censors web sites. Germany recorded everyone's connection meta data about phone calls and internet connections. Germany makes people who provide open wireless LAN access take the fall for crimes which are committed by other people via that WLAN. In Germany, blog operators are liable for comments if they fail to perform a fair amount of editorial supervision. Germany requires every web site which is written for a public a
Just like in Independance Day (Score:3)
Canada is nowhere to be seen.
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Canada is nowhere to be seen.
Well, depending on the whims of the moment, you can lump it in with either the UK, France, or the USA. Sooner or later they should just pick one and give up the charade.
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lots of nations where no where to be seen.
Spain, Japan, France Sweden, Norway, Finland...
Just take a look at all the white on the map http://www.freedomhouse.org/images/File/FotN/Map.pdf [freedomhouse.org]
In other words this is just about useless because how free the internet is in large part comes down to opinion. In some nations "hate speech" is illegal, in some sexually explicit pictures of 16 year olds is perfectly legal. Which limitation or lack of them makes that nation more or less free?
It is pretty easy to say that Cu
What? (Score:1)
"the US silver"
This enough is proof how bogus this ranking is.
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"the US silver"
This enough is proof how bogus this ranking is.
I think they only look at government suppression, not government sanctioned corporate suppression, nor government surveillance.
Also keep in mind that this is a US company, who would be sawing off the branch they sat on if they said that their internet was suppressed.
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And why is that?
I haven't heard of other countries arbitrarily seizing domain names from web sites that the government doesn't like, without due process, without a way to appeal, and without even notification. But this is exactly what the US has been doing recently [1, 2]. This ranking is completely worthless.
[1] http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-seizes-bittorrent-search-engine-domain-and-more-101126/ [torrentfreak.com]
[2] http://torrentfreak.com/us-resume-file-sharing-domain-seizures-110201/ [torrentfreak.com]
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Well, they didn't include every country, and they certainly excluded some countries that would have ranked higher than the US (Canada, which is currently PATRIOT ACT free, is one that immediately comes to mind).
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so basically the US is the second most internet-free country, from a list of countries.
Hold the presses.
I'm the richest man in the world if we only take homeless people as my 'world'.
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But.. (Score:1)
.. where did Australia [slashdot.org] rank?
United States, seriously? (Score:1)
US officials can seize your domain without a court order while in Iran or China, they would just block you! Remember the massive domain seizure that ended up being wrong?
Freedom? That's strictly up for debate!
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Freedom? That's strictly up for debate!
Only if you've paid your Subversive Activities Registration Act fee [cbsnews.com] to South Carolina.
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thanks for the link, I'm submitting my form now, before the site is /.'ed.
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US officials can seize your domain without a court order while in Iran or China, they would just block you! Remember the massive domain seizure that ended up being wrong?
Freedom? That's strictly up for debate!
Well considering that the US can seize your domain regardless of what country is hosting your content, that ability probably shouldn't even be considered, as it is the same everywhere.
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Every domain name ultimately comes from ICANN, which is located in California, and therefore if the US government tells them that they can't sell (well, rent) a domain to someone, they can't. That is one of the limitations of any centralized service: it has to abide by the laws under whose jurisdiction it operates. However, domain names are luxuries: any properly-configured* website can be accessed by its IP address rather than its domain name, and if your server is located outside the US, they can't actual
what's the point of reading slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
if its own editors don't even read it. because just scanning the headlines for one minute a day and having a barely workable human memory would send off dupe alarm bells
so taco: please tell us what website you are reading so we can stop reading here and go there instead, since you obviously don't consider slashdot worth your time. you obviously think slashdot is beneath your interest level
its insulting to slashdot's readers, and it just leaves you with the feeling that if the powers that be around here don'
The editors DO read (Score:2)
They read the numbers on the cheque the advertisers cut them thanks to mindless drones who continue to post on the site creating content to sell ad impressions.
Mindless drone 593017, signing off.
What about France ? (Score:1)
with the HADOPI and LOPSI laws... isn't it woth of evaluating or the response would be scary at best?
or Canada, or Japan, or Spain, or NZ, or .... (Score:2)
It would be nice if the study was a little more inclusive.
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It depends. Wheelchair basketball, sled hockey... some of those guys are actually really good. Besides if you watch the real Olympics almost all the athletes are injured from over training.
The special Olympics are look how well this guy can do without a leg. The normal olimics is look how well this guy can do with a perfectly fine leg but every thing else bash bruised and broken. (my apologies to Douglas Adams)
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Yes, well that and the fact that they had to stop taking their steroids long enough to pass the drug test.
Countries Ranked in Terms of E-Peen Size (Score:1)
Fixed.
Not a single scandinavian country (Score:3, Interesting)
You hear about the zeal for progressive freedoms in the Scandinavian countries from time to time it seems to me. Things like the Pirate party in Sweden. And Iceland wanting to make a free press safehouse out of its country. And DVD Jon in Norway. I was kinda shocked that none of Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, or Finland was in this report. Kind of a stupid report IMO.
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Bad report ... pointless to me .. a Canadian! (Score:1)
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missed something (Score:2)
the table in the article shows Thailand being worse than Bahrain, or am I missing something?
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ooooops sorry, I missed the it was best to worst (100) which still leaves several countries Worse than Bahrain, so is it a crap article, or do they fudge their own figures?
China (Score:1)
Well, China can't be far up there, since the report is quite clearly hard-blocked (which means the connection is always reset when trying to access it). Interestingly enough, imdb is also blocked, which just seems stupid. I really need to get a vpn.