Time to say, "merci beaucoup!" to some awesome people who're taking a stand for free speech around the world.
PARIS, France (AP) -- A Paris-based media watchdog has released an ABC guide of tips for bloggers and dissidents to sneak past Internet censors in countries from China to Iran.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/09/22/blog.handbook.ap/index.html
Yeah, they're French, and they're protecting global liberty. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, O'Reilly.
Reporters Without Borders' "Handbook for Blogger and Cyber-Dissidents" is partly financed by the French government and includes technical advice on how to remain anonymous online. It was launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris on Thursday and can also be downloaded from RSF's Web site in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, English and French.
"Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure," Julien Pain, head of the watchdog's Internet Freedom desk, writes in the introduction.
In a bid to inspire budding Web diarists around the world, the 87-page booklet gives advice on setting up and running blogs, and on using pseudonyms and anonymous proxies, which can be used to replace easily traceable home computer addresses.
"With a bit of common sense, perseverance and especially by picking the right tools, any blogger should be able to overcome censorship," writes Pain.
This is a great piece of work, and the best part is whom Reporters Without Borders (www.rsf.org) gives writing credits to:
Many Internet experts helped produce this manual, including US journalist Dan Gillmor, Canadian specialist in Internet censorship Nart Villeneuve, US blogger Jay Rosen and other bloggers from all over the world.
Well, let's certainly give Jay Rosen
another well-deserved round of applause, but I really love that last bit. This is Reports from the Underground. This is a field manual written from the field, and it's great that there are now so many easily accessible versions of it.
This is global citizenship in action, and I'm really elated by the fact that people are taking proactive measures to support the worldwide freedom of speech and press. To everyone who had a hand in this, thanks for helping to make free speech a basic human right.