Over time, if you want rights, you have to also show that you can use them responsibly and that you can build a positive world in the online space, and that's also very important.
— Rebecca MacKinnon
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.
If multi-stakeholder Internet governance is to survive an endless series of challenges, its champions must commit to serving the interests and protecting the rights of all Internet users around the world, particularly those in developing countries where Internet use is growing fastest.
President Barack Obama's administration sometimes finds itself at odds with members of Congress who oppose nearly everything the United Nations does on principle.
Facebook is not a physical country, but with 900 million users, its 'population' comes third after China and India. It may not be able to tax or jail its inhabitants, but its executives, programmers, and engineers do exercise a form of governance over people's online activities and identities.
While Google no longer has a search engine operation inside China, it has maintained a large presence in Beijing and Shanghai focused on research and development, advertising sales, and mobile platform development.
Citizens' rights cannot be protected if their digital activities are governed and policed by opaque and publicly unaccountable corporate mechanisms.
The Chinese government sometimes shuts down the Internet and mobile services in specific areas where unrest occurs.
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.
While sanctions against Iran and Syria are intended to constrain those countries' governments, they have had the unfortunate side effect of constraining activists' access to free online software and services used widely across the Middle East, including browsers, online chat applications, and online storage services.
China's censorship and propaganda systems may be complex and multilayered, but they are obviously not well coordinated.
The sovereigns of the Internet are acting like they have a divine right to govern.
The Internet is an empowering force for people who are protesting against the abuse of power.
Whether or not Americans supported George W. Bush, they could not avoid learning about Abu Ghraib.
One day, people in China may be able to see the records of conversations between multinational tech companies and the Chinese authorities.
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.
Pretty much anybody who does creative work in China navigates the gray zone. People aren't clear about where the line is any more, beyond which life gets really nasty and you become a dissident without having intended ever to be one.
I think one of the problems I think with a lot of people in high school is that people don't think of the Internet as a real place or a place that has physical consequences in the physical world. This happens with adults who ought to know better, too.
On Apple's special store for the Chinese market, apps related to the Dalai Lama are censored, as is one containing information about the exiled Uighur dissident leader Rebiya Kadeer. Apple similarly censors apps for iPads sold in China.
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.
Political activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan use Facebook as their primary tool to mobilize support for their causes and activities.
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.
For centuries, the Yangtze River - the longest in Asia - has played an important role in China's history, culture, and economy. The Yangtze is as quintessentially Chinese as the Nile is Egyptian or the Rhine is German. Many businesses use its name.
The Internet is a politically contested space.
After Secretary Clinton announced in January 2010 that Internet freedom would be a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy, the State Department decided to take what Clinton calls a 'venture capital' approach to the funding of tools, research, public information projects, and training.
The U.S. relationship with Bahrain is obviously more complicated than with Syria and Iran.
Thanks to the Internet in general and social media in particular, the Chinese people now have a mechanism to hold authorities accountable for wrongdoing - at least sometimes - without any actual political or legal reforms having taken place. Major political power struggles and scandals are no longer kept within elite circles.
Every news organization needs a social media strategy.
When controversial speech can be taken offline through pressures on private intermediaries without any kind of due process, that is something we need to be concerned about.
The critical question is: How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy?
If you want to have traction in China, you have to be in China.
There is no country on Earth where Internet and telecommunications companies do not face at least some pressure from governments to do things that would potentially infringe on users' rights to free expression and privacy.
Digital activism did not spring immaculately out of Twitter and Facebook. It's been going on ever since blogs existed.
Whatever Tencent can see, the Chinese government can see.
In January 2012, Google Plus started to roll out support for nicknames and pseudonyms, but those registering with a name other than their real-life one must be able to prove that they have been using that alternative name elsewhere, either on the Web or in real life.
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.
A number of countries, including Russia and China, have put forward proposals to regulate aspects of the Internet like 'crime' and 'security' that are currently unregulated at the global level due to lack of international consensus over what those terms actually mean or over how to balance enforcement with the protection of citizens' rights.
Facebook is blocked in mainland China, but is used heavily by the rest of the Chinese-speaking world, including Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.
Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship.
Clear limits should be set on how power is exercised in cyberspace by companies as well as governments through the democratic political process and enforced through law.
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.
The 'Shawshank Redemption' has nothing to do with China, but that hasn't kept social media censors from blocking the movie's title from searches on the country's most popular Twitter-like microblogging service, Weibo.
Like Syria, the government of Bahrain employs aggressive tactics to censor and monitor its people's online activity.
Almost every week, there are stories in the press or on Chinese social media about what even the official Chinese media call 'hot online topics:' stories about how people in a particular village or town used Weibo to expose malfeasance by local or regional authorities.
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 relationship between citizens and government is increasingly mediated through the Internet.
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.
Professional camera crews are rarely there when a bomb goes off or a rocket lands. They usually show up afterwards.
Yahoo! had a choice. It chose to provide an e-mail service hosted on servers based inside China, making itself subject to Chinese legal jurisdiction. It didn't have to do that. It could have provided a service hosted offshore only.
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.
