Law X.0

The Naked Conversation

Some thoughts on blogging as a viable publishing platform by UK blogger Nick Holmes on Binary Law.

International Arrests of Citizen Bloggers More Than Triple

The number of citizen bloggers jailed in 2007 has drastically risen from 2006, according to researchers at the University of Washington.  "Last year, 2007, was a record year for blogger arrests, with three times as many as in 2006. Egypt, Iran and China are the most dangerous places to blog about political life, accounting for more than half of all arrests since blogging became big," said Phil Howard, an assistant professor of communication. With his students, Howard prepared the World Information Access Report, which documents sources and consequences of social inequality in the information age.

• View Text Table Summarizing Global Blogger Arrests, 2003-2008

• View Color Graphic Summarizing Global Blogger Arrests, 2003-2008

• Download Full Dataset of Incidents

[RJ]

Trendspotting: Finding Signals in the Noise

What will your life be like in 2011? Richard Laermer identifies a number of trends and reveals the most functional forecasting secrets of professional trendspotters in his book, 2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade. Purchase the book from Amazon or grab the free download after viewing Mashable's Mark Hopkins video interview with the author. [JH]

Does Defamation Law Favor Bloggers?

Hat tip to Mitchell Rubinstein for calling attention to Julie Hilden's article Defamation and the Internet: How the Law Effectively Allows Bloggers to Take Risks Big Media Companies Can't, and How Companies Can Work to Level the Playing Field. Check out what Rubinstein has to say on Adjunct Law Prof Blog. [JH]

Facebook Under Phishing Attack

Steven Carrol is reporting that Facebook is under attack with numerous and increasingly sophisticated phishing scams originating from China. "It looks like the network effect is coming into full swing to allow the proliferation of these scammers to spread virally," he said in yesterday's blog post. [JH]

Social Networking Sites, No Longer Just for Fun 'n Games

The dangers of social networking sites as fertile grounds for online mischief are almost front page news now. The Washington Post's article, Hackers' Latest Target: Social Networking Sites, made the front page of one of the paper's inner section Saturday, and Mattathias Schwartz's Malwebolence - The Trolls Among Us was featured in last week's issue of New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Why? Because social networking sites "are all tripping over themselves to embed powerful features that most subscribers will never use, such as digital image or media files with the ability to download content from third-party Web sites" according to Agura Digital Security's Shawn Moyer in the Washington Post article.

See also our recent Law X.0 posts:

• First Malware Attack to Target Twitter Users Reported
• Are You Using Blogger?
• Google Locks Up Legitimate Blogger Blogs After Misidentifying Them as Splogs

[JH]