The Free Internet Project

October 2014

Mass Protests in Hungary Stops Government Plan to Tax Internet Use

10/31/2014

Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the government's plan to tax Internet use was not viable in present form.  The proposal was to charge Internet users 150 forint (£0.40) per gigabyte of data usage, which would be capped at 700 forint (£1.80) for individuals and 5,000 forint (£13) for businesses every month.  Orban's concession comes after dramatic protests in Budapest by tens of thousands of people who marched in the streets on Sunday and Tuesday of this week.  Orban said the government would hold public consultations on the Internet tax in 2015.

Kakao Talk CEO Lee apologizes for allowing South Korean law enforcement to access user information in crackdown against online rumors

10/14/2014

Sirgoo Lee, the co-CEO of Kakao Talk, the leading instant-messaging service in South Korea, held a press conference to apologize to Kakao's 35 million users, many of whom had reportedly began leaving the popular service due to privacy concerns.  This year, the South Korean law enforcement started cracking down on false and malicious online posts.  The government effort was, in part, a response to unflattering posts related to President Park Geun-Hye, who complained about insults and rumors made about her online, especially related to her handling of the tragic Sewol ferry capsizing.

 

China censors Weibo posts on Hong Kong protests

10/03/2014

As demonstrations for universal suffrage and democracy continue in Hong Kong, China is clamping down on social media service Weibo. According to Weiboscope, a project of the University of Hong Kong that tracks censorship, 15 of every 1,000 posts on Weibo were being censored, five times the usual amount.

Some terms that were being censored: "Hong Kong police" and "#HongKong."

In addition, China blocked Instagram, the photo sharing site owned by Facebook, as well as news articles related to the Hong Kong protests.  The major news outlets in China did not report the protests.  Searches on Baidu and other Chinese search engines yielded no results relevant to the ongoing protests.

Tim Berners-Lee calls for Magna Carta for Internet rights

10/03/2014

At the Web We Want festival in Londan, Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web continued his call for a Magna Carta for Internet rights, including free speech and privacy. He said his biggest fear is that the Web will be controlled either by corporations or governments.

“If a company can control your access to the internet, if they can control which websites they go to, then they have tremendous control over your life. If a government can block you going to, for example, the opposition’s political pages, then they can give you a blinkered view of reality to keep themselves in power. Suddenly the power to abuse the open internet has become so tempting both for government and big companies." 

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