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February 22, 2007
The Real Thing
For those of you who still lack perspective on net censorship Egypt provides it in spades:
An Egyptian blogger found guilty of insulting both Islam and the country's president has been jailed for four years, Reuters reports.An Alexandria court sentenced former law student Abdel Karim Suleiman for eight articles he wrote in 2004. He had been in custody since November last year over the polemical outpourings which included one claiming that "al-Azhar in Cairo, one of the most prominent seats of Sunni Muslim learning, was promoting extreme ideas".
The purpose is to shut off the best source of public dissent in countries that don't tolerate it. This quote says it all:
One anonymous blogger told the news agency: "It's a dangerous precedent because it will impact the only free space available now, which is the internet. The charges were undefined and vague. Tell me. What does insulting the president mean? What is the difference between criticising (sic) religion and being in contempt of religion?"
This is bad stuff and will continue to get worse as blogs give regular people a louder voice.
Posted by Peter at February 22, 2007 11:20 AM