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ContactJanuary 02, 2012
Thank you, Gordon Hirabayashi
Gordon Hirabayashi, who, along with Fred Korematsu, Mitsuye Endo, and Min Yasui, challenged the unconstitutional and racist Internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, has passed away, according to a reliable report.
Lorraine K. Bannai, Professor of Legal Skills, Director, Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, and a member of the Korematsu coram nobis team, is helping to organize a conference in his honor:
Posted by Anupam Chander on January 2, 2012 at 05:05 PM in Dissent, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 06, 2011
My New Paper: Jasmine Revolutions
My new paper, Jasmine Revolutions, responds directly to Internet Democratization Skeptics. It's forthcoming from the Cornell Law Review. Download it here. Here's the abstract:
Will the Internet help topple tyrants, or will it help further cement their control? Prominent skeptics challenge the notion that the Internet will help rid the world of dictators. They suggest that the Internet will simply serve as a new opiate of the masses, or worse, will assist autocrats in manipulating popular opinion. I defend the liberalizing promise of cyberspace. Where others have set out the value of the Internet to dissidents, I answer the main critiques of that position - that Internet activism is futile, that the Internet is simply the new opiate of the masses, and that autocrats will benefit more from the Internet than dissidents. I argue that dictators have revealed their own appraisals of the Internet: when threatened, they shut it down. Tyrants today fear the Internet more than they benefit from it. This summer’s events again confirmed this truth: On the day when the rebels marched into Tripoli, they restored Libya to the Internet.
Posted by Anupam Chander on September 6, 2011 at 07:48 PM in Digitization, Dissent, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 12, 2010
Russia Deploys Intellectual Property Law to Harass Protestors
Clifford Levy of the New York Times reports on a startling misuse of strong intellectual property enforcement powers against protestors in Russia:
The group, Baikal Environmental Wave, was organizing protests against Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin's decision to reopen a paper factory that had polluted nearby Lake Baikal, a natural wonder that by some estimates holds 20 percent of the world’s fresh water.
Instead, the group fell victim to one of the authorities’ newest tactics for quelling dissent: confiscating computers under the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software.
Across Russia, the security services have carried out dozens of similar raids against outspoken advocacy groups or opposition newspapers in recent years. Security officials say the inquiries reflect their concern about software piracy, which is rampant in Russia. Yet they rarely if ever carry out raids against advocacy groups or news organizations that back the government.
As the ploy grows common, the authorities are receiving key assistance from an unexpected partner: Microsoft itself. In politically tinged inquiries across Russia, lawyers retained by Microsoft have staunchly backed the police.
UPDATE: Microsoft has reversed course, ordering its Russian subsidiary to resist politically-based intellectual property claims:
Sunlight is often the best disinfectant. The credit belongs to the New York Times and Clifford Levy for causing the change.The company essentially prohibited its Russian division from taking part in piracy cases against government opponents and declared that it would thwart any attempt by the authorities, in this country and elsewhere, to use such inquiries to exert political pressure.
Posted by Anupam Chander on September 12, 2010 at 05:10 AM in Digitization, Dissent | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 04, 2010
Sudan Flogs Cross-dressers
A group of young Muslim men have been publicly flogged in Sudan after they were convicted of wearing women's clothes and make-up.
The court said the 19 men had broken Sudan's strict public morality codes.
Police arrested them at a party where they were found dancing "in a womanly fashion", the judge said.
The men were not represented in court and said nothing in their defence, some hid their faces from the hundreds of people who watched as they were lashed.
... Northern Sudan is governed by Sharia law, under which homosexuality is illegal.Laws governing "indecent clothing" were highlighted by a case last year in which a female journalist was sentenced to be flogged for wearing trousers.
The sentence was commuted to a fine.
Homosexuality is not tolerated in Southern Sudan either, where most people are Christian or follow traditional beliefs, the BBC's James Copnall says.
South Sudan President Salva Kiir recently told a radio station that homosexuality was an "imported" idea.
Source: BBC.
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 4, 2010 at 05:02 PM in Dissent, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 27, 2010
My new paper: Googling Freedom
I have posted to SSRN my new paper, Googling Freedom, forthcoming in the California Law Review. Here is the abstract:
While GM and GE are rushing in to China, why are so many Americans cheering the possibility of Google pulling out? The answer to this puzzle lies in Google’s special role as new media. Television once moved the free speech paradigm from the local street corner to the national platform of CBS; the Internet has shifted it further to the global stage offered by Google and its peers. Free speech theory – and Western media corporations – must now grapple with the reach of this media into unfree societies. While a growing chorus has denounced Western new media enterprises for betraying their obligations to the people of China and other authoritarian regimes, no one has yet explained what those obligations are or why these companies might have them. Corporate social responsibility theory has focused largely on the risks of a global supply chain in goods, neglecting the questions raised by the rise of global information services. The notion of corporate obligations to people around the world seems especially perplexing in juxtaposition with the familiar mandate to maximize shareholder wealth at home. Drawing from theories of Foucault and Habermas and the history of the underground press, I argue that information service providers bear a special responsibility to unfree people. What might have been mutually beneficial transactions in a free society can become, in an unfree society, predicate offenses leading to years of hard labor. New media can either help give voice to dissidents or help perfect totalitarianism.
Posted by Anupam Chander on May 27, 2010 at 01:00 PM in Digitization, Dissent, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
