Kashgari was apprehended at the Kuala Lumpur airport Wednesday by the Malaysian authorities, at the request of Saudi Arabia, with whom Malaysia has no extradition treaty. Sunday morning, Saudi officials took custody of him at the airport and flew him back to Saudi Arabia in a private plane, according to a source close to the situation.

Kashgari's tweets were identified as blasphemous by members of the country's Wahhabist clerical establishment, including the "weeping cleric," Nasser Al-Omar. Their supporters piled on, racking up 30,000 tweets of their own in the next 24 hours, most calling for his prosecution and execution.

Malaysian newspaper, The Star, reported that a High Court judge "granted an interim order to lawyers representing (Kashgari), to bar his deportation by Malaysian authorities." It is uncertain whether the order was granted before or after Kashgari had left Malaysia. If after, it may have been a way to both assuage Saudi demands and public sentiment.

However Monday morning, Kashgari's lawyers "have filed a habeas corpus application against the Home Minister, Inspector-General of Police and two others to get a declaration that his arrest and deportation were unlawful."

Kashgari's crimes have been defined by Wahhabi religious courts as "apostasy," or rejection of Islam, which, in Saudi Arabia's religiously conservative courts, is punishable by death.

Both defenders of Kashgari and Saudi watchers believe the event was stage-managed by the Wahhabi establishment as a way to regain political ground lost when the head of the Saudi religious police was replaced by a moderate.

Malaysian Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein denied there was any court order delaying Kashgari's deportation. He also called the notion that the Saudi writer would be executed "ridiculous," the minister told a group of reporters on Saturday.

"This is a credible country that they are talking about, and allegations that 'blood is in my hand' and such for sending him back - were baseless," Hussein said.

Given that Saudi religious law is clear about the punishment for apostasy - it is death - and given the country's proven and persistent willingness to execute religious offenders, the fear seems far from ridiculous.

Justifying the return of the 23-year-old to Saudi hands, Hussein said, "The ministry will never let Malaysia to be perceived as a haven for terrorists, criminals and wanted person, who want to seek hiding."

Given his return to his home country, one of Kashgari's friends told us, "expect a very slow update since Saudi is an expert in media blackouts."

Kuala Lumpur and Riyadh photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

Today, news surfaced that the country is blocking access to websites that use HTTPS. That means that a number of popular, secure websites like Google, Gmail, Yahoo and even online banking sites are inaccessible. Anything based outside the country that uses a secure connection via HTTPS is blocked, according to news reports and a thread on Hacker News. Secure sites based within Iran are reportedly still accessible.

Meanwhile, developers and members of the Hacker News community are brainstorming ways to help Iranians get around the limitations. Some have suggested setting up Tor bridges for Web users in Iran, although that presents its own logistical issues.

These measures come just as the Iranian government begins to roll out longer-term plans to effectively strangle the Internet to death and create a new, state-sponsored Web for citizens of that country to use. The government is even requiring Internet cafe owners to videotape all patrons so that Web surfers can be more easily identified by authorities.

If news reports are accurate, Iranians could be facing a level of Web censorship that approaches that which exists in North Korea, where public access to the Internet we all know and love is barely existent. Whether or not Iranians, who have already had a taste of what the Web can do, will tolerate such restrictions without a struggle, remains to be seen.

That the Iranian government is clamping down on Internet access is hardly a surprise. In 2009, they saw firsthand the kind of unrest that emerge amidst a well-connected and dissatisfied citizenry. Since then, governments in nearby countries have been overthrown or otherwise challenged in the so-called Arab Spring.

On Saturday, the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, Kashgari tweeted three times, expressing his religious beliefs about the founder of Islam. Within hours, he was inundated with violent threats. Despite a full renunciation, a warrant was issued by Kingdom authorities for his arrest and the Kingdom's religious Fatwa Council condemned him as an apostate and an infidel, crimes which are punishable by death.

According to one of Kashgari's friends, who wishes to remain anonymous, these are the three tweets which were the basis for the Saudi arrest warrant.

• On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you've always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.
• On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.
• On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.

Kashgari's Twitter account, @Hmzmz, has been shut down.

Kashgari's friend points out that these actions have come after a number of reversals for religious conservatives in the Wahhabi-influenced state. These include a law allowing women to work as salespeople in public lingerie stores, the replacement of the head of the religious police with a moderate, who ordered restrictions on how the religious police operate. It also happened within the context of the unrest of the Arab Spring.

Hashtags of Shame

Kashgari's harassment is not out of the blue, nor, apparently, based on these tweets alone. He has been the target of religious twitter users for months. "Public shaming through hashtags is now a common Saudi pressure tactic, especially against public officials and government scandals," said his friend.

A hardcore Saudi cleric used YouTube to post his condemnation of the young man. The cleric, Nasser al-Omar, known as the "weeping cleric" for his tendency to burst into tears at the blasphemy done to the Prophet, called for Kashgari to be hauled before a Sharia court, according to long-time Saudi blogger, Ahmad al-Omran (Saudi Jeans).

"These people [like Kashgari] should be put to trial in Sharia courts. It is known that cursing God and his Prophet is apostasy. And the fact that he has repented with cold words will not probably save him in the court."

Al-Omram's translation

The punishment for apostasy is death.

Saudi Arabia's information minister, has commanded that no one publish any of Kashgari's writings. Prior to this incident, he was a columnist with al-Bilad, a newspaper based in the eastern city of Jeddah.

"I have instructed all newspapers and magazines in the Kingdom not to allow him to write any thing and we will take legal measures against him."

Kashgari was trying to make a connecting flight to New Zealand when he was apprehended and arrested yesterday in Malaysia at the Kuala Lumpur airport. It has been reported that Malaysia, an officially Islamic state, will forcibly repatriate Kashgar to Saudi Arabia.

Building photos courtesy of Shutterstock

Part of the relative silence has to do with the fact that Assange is currently under house arrest in the U.K. and WikiLeaks still faces a financial blockade and an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. The future of the organization is anything but clear, but when it comes to the site's ability to continue operating, they're not taking any chances.

The idea is to relocate WikiLeaks' servers to somewhere that falls outside the jurisdiction of any country, such as the Principality of Sealand, a former World War II sea port located off the coast of England. The structure has been ruled to be outside of the U.K.'s jurisdiction and its self-proclaimed ruler has declared it an independent mini-state, even if no other nation recognizes it as such. The facility was once used to broadcast pirate radio signals and is currently used as a safe haven for Internet hosting.

A Pivotal Moment For the Web and the Rule of Law

The idea emerges at a pivotal time both in WikiLeaks' history and in the historical intersection of the Internet and the law. Two weeks ago, U.S. authorities succeeded in coordinating a cross-continent sting operation to arrest key executives behind Megaupload and shut its website down. Just today, the Swedish Supreme Court rejected the appeal of three Pirate Bay cofounders, who were convicted of copyright infringement-related crimes in 2009. Shortly thereafter, the Pirate Bay website started redirecting to a Swedish top level domain to avoid seizure by U.S. authorities.

Of course, piracy and alleged espionage are two very different things, but in the last several weeks, we've seen the extent to which countries will go to prosecute those who once considered themselves immune due to geography. Assange and the WikiLeaks associates have little reason to not take the U.S. government's pursuit of them seriously.

Whether or not moving WikiLeaks' severs to international waters would make a difference is up for debate. Some have argued that as long as the people behind the organization are not also living in on some rusty old abandoned aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean, they could be fair game for prosecutors. There are also logistical and technical challenges that come into play.

The plans haven't been officially confirmed by WikiLeaks or any of its representatives.

That triggered a series of denial-of-service attacks against Mexican government Web sites, probably because Sen. Döring and President Felipe Calderón belong to the same political party (the center-right-wing National Action Party, or PAN). But taking responsibility for these attacks is "Anonymous," the same group that just a few months earlier announced they were suspending online activities in Mexico after one of its members was kidnapped, allegedly by the Los Zetas drug cartel. That cartel later claimed responsibility for hanging two people from a bridge, identifying them as bloggers reporting on cartel activities from social media Web sites.

It is the latest fuel for the cauldron of Russia Today, the bilingual news service that has carefully been portraying the Anonymous group as a modern gang of Robin Hoods, the heroes of the oppressed, downtrodden and media-forlorn. RT had already built up a theme around Anonymous' global activities, the latest episode centering around an evidently successful hack of Texas-based private intelligence firm Stratfor.

A cache of private e-mails, RT reports, showed state law enforcement authorities having consulted with Stratfor in probable surveillance operations against individuals connected with the Occupy protest movement.

From RT's perspective, last November 5 was the date when Americans everywhere transferred their savings out of major banks and into small, private lending institutions (which assumes we located some small, private lending institutions). This apparently in a nationwide show of support against a global conspiracy which, RT implies, links together the common interests of the Los Zetas cartel, prominent U.S. banks and Fox News. Add to that illustrious list the oil companies with which Stratfor does business, the movie industry, and now the Mexican Senate and the resulting plot as reported by RT looks like a reunion of CHAOS for the next "Get Smart" movie.

The Döring bill (Ley Döring) along with SOPA, ACTA (which is actually a treaty, not a bill) and other measures would, in RT's words, "cripple the Internet, effectively killing all Web sites allowing user-uploaded content, endangering potential whistleblowers and severely damaging online freedom of speech."

Mexico

Meanwhile, the Earth-based news service El Economista quotes Sen. Döring as placing himself firmly in the anti-SOPA camp. He sees his bill as a response to measures worldwide, especially in the U.S., that would appear to support censorship as a means of combatting piracy. (The Google translation from Spanish inaccurately states the Döring bill was passed; in fact, it was merely introduced.)

The bill would amend existing Mexican law to establish a method for notifying individuals when it appears they've pirated content. There's no indication yet as to how that evidence would be collected, though conceivably ISPs might be involved in the collection of that evidence. Worldwide, including in the U.S. and Europe, ISPs have signaled their disapproval of any law that would compel them to police their own users.

But in a provision of the bill that Sen. Döring characterized as "friendly," abusers would not be criminalized or jailed. Instead, the law would institute a garnishing of their wages, which would be capped at the minimum wage per hour, and spread out between 30 and 20,000 hours (about ten years) of work.

Spain

The blog digest All About Internet (Todo sobre Internet, English-language translation here) quotes Sen. Döring in a radio interview saying the notification service he proposes would not involve the collection of personal information, even going so far as to say it would not retain the e-mail address of the suspect. The implication is that the ISP would enable the notification to be sent to the IP address, which would then be seen by whoever used the computer.

That doesn't exactly explain how the holder of the ISP address would get his wages garnished.

The post by Geraldine Juárez goes on to cite a curious "piracy" incident involving Döring himself, in which he was publicly accused of having used a copyrighted photograph of a polar bear as his own Twitter avatar. The senator was then apparently called out for the inadvertent photo swipe by the original photographer. Under the intellectual property regime Döring would put in place, Juárez suggests, he himself would be notified of violations and be subject to getting his wages garnished.

One clear suggestion there is that almost anyone could find themselves owing levies to the government for inadvertent "piracy" compensation. Another is that such levies would affect certain people less than others.

Colombia

One side-effect of Anonymous' attacks on government Web sites is the public perception worldwide that it is Anonymous which has had an impact on anti-piracy legislation, including the indefinite tabling of SOPA in the U.S., instead of public protests. That is why, when I was asked by Colombia's NTN24 news this morning whether Anonymous could have the same impact in Mexico, Poland, and elsewhere as it did in the U.S., I felt the need to set the record straight.

Anonymous, I said, has been relatively successful in garnering public support, as the champion of the oppressed. At some point, I added, all terrorist organizations find themselves seeking a media relations specialist, in order to tie themselves to a populist cause. Anonymous may be doing this, I said, on a very low level. Having found itself in very hot water going up against the Mexican drug cartels, it may have decided to pull back somewhat, speaking up instead on behalf of causes with a broad base of public support (like anti-censorship) but that won't get its members killed.

Nairobitech reported:

"The Google Mocality saga has drawn its first casualties. Kenya country lead for Google, Olga Arara-Kimani formerly of Safaricom has been let go by the company. Also axed is a technical guy in Zurich... It is not clear how Olga was picked for the fall but as one observer noted, sometimes a sacrificial lamb has to be found for the brand name to weather the storm."

Update after the jump.

"We've concluded our investigation into the serious allegations about our use of data from Mocality's website in Kenya. We're very sorry this happened. We've taken appropriate action with the people involved and made changes in our operations to ensure this doesn't occur again."

A Google global PR representative, who insisted on talking to ReadWriteWeb after our first post on the subject, assured us that we would be given a full rundown of the investigation after it was complete. Last night, we were told Mattos's post was Google's only "on-the-record" statement. Not sure, if the comments on Mattos's Google+ page are representative, that this was the right tack to take.

We'll let you know if they reverse course and make a further statement, as some African tech blogs are reporting.

Update: Kenyan newspaper The Nation reports Ms. Arara-Kimani has claimed to have left of her own accord.

"'I confirm I have left Google Kenya. As the leader of the Kenya office, I felt that the buck stopped with me and I decided to leave,' she wrote in a phone message to the Nation on Monday."

Other sources: TechMTAA

Two and a half years later, Twitter remains blocked in China, though many people find ways to make use of it none the less. China isn't the only country that's related to Twitter's announcement last week that the social network will now selectively censor messages country-by-country when it receives "a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity." Debate went on throughout the last week about the policy, but I think there are at least three big questions that remain unanswered.

"I understand why people are angry, but this does not, in my view, represent a sea change in Twitter's policies," blogs Jillian C. York, Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Twitter has previously taken down content-for DMCA requests, at least-and will no doubt continue to face requests in the future. I believe that the company is doing its best in a tough situation...and I'll be the first to raise hell if they screw up."

It's interesting to see York say she'll raise hell if the policy is misapplied and Ai Weiwei to say he'll go silent on the network if the policy is applied at all.

Three questions in particular remain in my mind.

How Will This Censorship Be Used?

What kinds of content will be censored with this new capability? What will governments around the world demand be removed from the site? Will it be things like the identities of people involved in court cases, as the UK's controversial Super Injunctions looked to ban on Twitter this Spring? That's information that has long been banned from newspapers. Would Twitter have co-operated with that kind of legal move if it was instructed to today?

Or will Tweet-zapping be called for in places like Syria, where users rallied under the hashtag #RamadanMassacre in August, to bring global awareness to the brutality of the Syrian government they protested? If told to do so by a government massacring its citizens in the streets, will Twitter render all people in that country unable to see messages of protest on its network? Will shouting into such an eerie silence change the way such Tweeting campaigns also engage with the outside world? I would think so.

At what point would such demands no longer be interpreted by Twitter as being "a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity?" When the US State Department ruled a foreign government invalid, perhaps?

How Will Twitter Censorship Impact People Arrested for Their Tweets?

It is not unheard of for people around the world to be arrested for their Tweets. As Curt Hopkins reported on ReadWriteWeb in November, 2010:

Cheng Jianping has wound up in a Chinese 're-education camp' with a record-breaking five words on Twitter. Mocking nationalistic vandalism that flared up around a Chinese-Japanese dispute over the ownership of uninhabited islands, she retweeted another's message and added the ironic admonition, 'Charge, angry youth!'

Middle Eastern Tweeters have been arrested for quips mocking their ruling royal families.

Will the governments in question issue a take-down order to Twitter on their way to knock down the doors of the Tweeters in question? Or will they not bother?

Will people be arrested for messages that no one else in their country can even see anymore? How Orwellian.

Will This Reduce Conspiracy Theories About Twitter Censorship? Should It?

What's unique about Twitter's position, some people say, is not the censorship but the transparency about it. One might hope that if every instance of censorship is openly and loudly announced by Twitter, that critics who have long suspected Twitter was censoring conversation about topics of great importance to them might be less inclined to be suspicious.

In recent months some have worried that Twitter was systematically de-emphasizing discussion about the Occupy protests. In 2010, some of the first wide-spread concerns about Twitter censorship arose when the Israeli army clashed with a flotilla seeking to deliver aid to Palestinians despite an embargo.

Charles Arthur of the Guardian told the story as follows:

The attack by Israel on a flotilla of ships approaching Gaza has, as you'd expect, generated a huge response on social media - and of course Twitter, with its real-time content, was quick to react.

Many users began the morning by tagging their comments about it with "#flotilla" - a "hashtag" which gives a structure to a discussion or emerging event, as you can filter searches in applications such as Tweetdeck so that you only see those with that tag.

But at around 11am, as #flotilla began "trending" - rising to the topmost-used hashtags on the service - it seemed to vanish.

Was this censorship by Twitter?

Twitter Headquarters investigated why that happened and found that there was another event, elsewhere in the world, that was using the hashtag #flotilla as well, at the same time. Twitter's automated spam fighting software saw unrelated uses of the hashtag and zapped it from the Trending Topics list. Conspiracy resolved.

In all likelihood, critics will still suspect in many cases that Twitter is engaged in censorship even if the company doesn't take the steps for transparency that they have pledged to take. No one but perhaps some of the very deep pockets who have invested in Twitter is really evil, though, (not the employees) and so now under the new policy, the simplest explanation of why some communication is less visible on the network than expected will likely never be covert censorship.

It's a complicated situation, though. Much remains to be seen with regard to how the new "feature" will be used and what it will mean for people facing repression around the world. Twitter will no doubt face ongoing scrutiny for its practices, as all communication network infrastructure companies deserve.

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." - Immanuel Kant

Ours is an imperfect society. The nature of our reality, our desires and our need to possess, while maintaining a façade of moral righteousness, puts us at odds with the reality that exists within the systems we have created.

In recent days, the character of our era of consumerism has been put in question. We want what is new, shiny, fashionable. We want it now. With this desire we turn our heads from the consequences it takes to produce our toys, our symbols of status. When The New York Times reports that our gadgets are made in Chinese factories where working conditions can be horrendous, we express outrage and tweet the article from our iPads. The culture we have created comes with the cost of doing business.

The conditions at Chinese factories that make our gadgets can be deplorable. Workers often live in crowded dorms, work more than 60 hours a week, are punished with physical labor and withholding of wages, according to The New York Times report on conditions at Foxconn, which makes Apple's iPhones, iPad and iPods. In a response to the article, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an email to Apple employees and the company released a "Supplier Responsibility Report." This is not a discussion solely about Apple though. Apple is the most valuable company in the world, so it naturally faces the most scrutiny. Other device makers, such as Dell, Nokia, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, are clients of Foxconn as well.

Apple and Foxconn are just two examples in a larger system. Companies have to weigh the cost and benefits of the manufacturing process. This is not a new dilemma but is a matter of fact within the economy created by the Industrial Revolution. Nor is this quandary solely a matter of high tech devices. Companies like Nike have been cited in the past for the conditions at their manufacturing plants in Asia. How much do you really want to know about the synthetic polymer that is the backbone of much of the world's textile industry? What about the bread you eat, the TV you watch, the socks you wear?

Framing the Utilitarian vs. Deontological Conversation

"The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed in the heart, and seeing it done." - Mark Twain

Image: Samsung Galaxy Tab

The dilemma created by the source of our products can be explained in a utilitarian framework. Utilitarianism, "is generally held to be the view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good." Another word for this is consequentialism. In philosophy, consequentialism is the determination of the moral good of an act based on its consequences.

A utilitarian worldview can be beneficial. The most good for the most people is the highest degree of morality that can be strived for, many believe. The detriments to a utilitarian view are that it does not factor in the needs of the individual. "One must die so a thousand can live." Is it fair to that one person that must be sacrificed to the greater good?

On the other side of utilitarianism is the concept of deontologicalism. It is the opposite of consequentialism: "no matter how morally good their consequences, some choices are morally forbidden." Deontological ethics suppose that humans have a duty (the Greek word deon) to support the moral rights of the individual. The boundaries are thus drawn between the concepts of utility and duty.

How do we then rationalize these concepts into our modern era of consumerism? When we hear that four people died and 77 were injured at explosion and subsequent fire at Foxconn, where do we place our own morality on the spectrum between utility and duty? While many of these types of accidents are avoidable on a case-by-case basis, the nature of industrial manufacturing has always lead itself to these types of catastrophes. In a perfect world, everybody would be happy and well fed and the conditions at such factories would never cause harm to those employed. It is something to strive for but a reality that is not easily attained. We have to reconcile our idealism where all parties' interests are satisfied against the reality of the systems we have created.

This is not a perfect world; we create systems that are fundamentally unfair. The more money is spent and made, the harder it is to change these systems. The two largest device makers in the world, Apple and Samsung, announced this week a sum total of nearly a hundred billion dollars in revenue ($46 billion for Apple, $42 billion for Samsung) in their most recent quarters. The two companies make devices that make people's lives easier and happier and enable them to perform acts that are a benefit to the greater good. There is little question about the utility that is being produced from an individual perspective and in the dynamics of a worldwide information system. It can also be argued that the existence of companies like Apple and Samsung make the lives of the people that work in their factories better.

There is no doubt that the companies that are customers of factories like Foxconn (and Foxconn itself) can do a better job in maintaining safe, happy, healthy work environments. Yet, implementing changes that are beneficial to those workers may also lead to an imbalance in the system. Can the diverse nature of technological consumerism be monetarily supported if the efficiency that is demanded by companies like Apple and Samsung from factories like Foxconn is diluted?

For The Good Of Whom?

When we speak of the most good for the greatest number of people in this scenario, who are we talking about? The good of the consumer, the good of Apple's shareholders, the good of the plant owners or the good of the workers? The different stakeholders will give you an array of answers.

Consumers want high tech devices can make their lives simpler, more efficient and arm them to do their jobs and make the world a better place. Shareholders want profits. Similarly, there is profit motivation for those who own the factories. The good of the plant owners theoretically could mean the good of the factory workers as the factory owners can open more factories, employ more people and create a higher standard of living for their employees.

The good of the factory worker... well, that is what is missing from the conversation. From a utilitarian perspective, what is morally right for the factory worker may not be of the greatest good to the other parties. From a deontological perspective, the other parties have a moral duty to uphold the rights of the factory worker. This is the dilemma that must be reconciled.

We are stuck at a crossroads. How to balance the utilitarian systems that provide the world with the devices that make peoples' lives better versus the deontological morality of those systems. This is not a new dilemma but a scenario that has been played out thousands of times throughout the course of humanity, from the feudal systems of agrarian Europe to the factory towns of New England in the 19th century to the manufacturing plants in Chengdu that make our computers today.

While we all hope that humanity can rise to create a more perfect world where the balance of human moral values is no longer a question, it is not the world in which we live.

That is the cost of business.

The hacker, who goes by "Hannibal," posted the credentials to Pastebin on Saturday, and also made all details available through 14 sharing sites, including mediafire.com, sendspace.com, wupload.com and zshare.net.

"Jewish people named me as the general of Israel's hackers," writes Hannibal on the Pastebin site. "I have about 30 million email accounts, 10 million bank accounts, 4 million cerdit cards of Arabs from all over the world."

Facebook believes that it was not hacked, and that most of the login credentials are invalid. Last week Facebook officials said that on one of the releases, a third of the credentials were valid and half were not even associated with Facebook accounts. We still suggest checking Hannibal's Pastebin list to make sure and changing your password.

This is just the latest engagement in the recent Arab-Israeli cyber wars. Earlier this month, a Saudi hacker named 0xOmar broke into a popular Israeli sports site, stealing personal information including credit card numbers. He released 26,000 credit card numbers, and threatens to release another one million. Israel vowed to retaliate, and Naked Security discovered that the number of credit cards compromised was closer to 6,000. The hack continued with an Israeli hack of Saudi credit cards.

To pretend it's a revelation that Megaupload trafficked in illicit material is like Claude Rains being "shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" That said, its "front parlor," if you will, had many legitimate customers who had posted non-infringing files. So the big question that Colombia's NTN24 news anchor Mónica Fonseca* asked me was essentially, "What has happened to everyone's files?"

Earlier today, I appeared on NTN24's "CST" program (Health, Science, Technology) to discuss the ramifications of the Justice Dept.'s seizure of Megaupload's assets and domain names. In response to Fonseca's question, I said that folks who had uploaded legitimate files to their "cyberlockers" won't be able to access them today, and will probably find them gone anyway if and when some form of Megaupload comes back online from outside U.S. borders. My ReadWriteWeb colleague John Paul Titlow shares the same sentiments.

Has the United States started a war in cyberspace, I was asked? Certainly there's no doubt of there being a war on, I responded, although there's some doubt as to who really started it. In any event, it's clear that the Justice Dept. has fired a huge salvo, and the battle is now raging.

What lessons should consumers take away from this turn of events? I told Fonseca that it doesn't take very much due diligence for a conscientious consumer to spot the difference between a legitimate cloud storage service with the consumer's interests at heart (I cited Dropbox, SkyDrive, and Box.com as examples) compared with one whose interests lie in goading him to partake in illicit file sharing. There's a reason there are no independently-managed search services pointing to files on a site like Dropbox. It's not out to make files popular; it's out to provide customer service. When a service promotes itself as free, but continues to offer services behind a gilded, camouflaged door marked "premium" or "subscribers only," consumers should get the hint.

New Zealand

Commenters believing yesterday's indictment had been timed to coincide with recent White House events on anti-piracy, such as the Administration's backing away from SOPA/PIPA, were proven wrong in an early Saturday, New Zealand time, report from the ONE News agency. It quotes a detective inspector with New Zealand's counterpart to the FBI as saying it had conducted a joint investigation with the FBI since early 2011, which led eventually to yesterday's arrests.

New Zealand-based political blogger David Farrar made this interesting observation: "Whether or not [Megaupload founder Kim] Dotcom and others have broken the law, will of course be a matter for the courts. It is worth noting that the NZ courts will not extradite unless the charges are for something that is also an offence under NZ law."

Brazil

Some perspective: A report released today from broadband services provider Sandvine estimated Megaupload's share of all traffic for file storage and backup purposes (which would include cloud storage providers) was less than 1% in the U.S., but 11.4% in Brazil. Its share of all traffic among fixed access networks (i.e., non-mobile) is about 1%, which is somewhat less than the 4% the site claimed in its own music video, but is still a substantial chunk.

A search of Megaupload-related traffic among Brazilian domain names (*.br) today turned up a greater-than-average number of Megaupload search sites - the independently-run, volunteer-maintained indexes referenced in the Justice Dept.'s indictment - plus quite a few Brazilian resellers of Megaupload premium plans. Although basic file sharing is among the features Megaupload typically provides for free, so-called "unlimited" plans, according to the DOJ indictment, enable customers to post suspiciously long media files and enter into rewards programs, giving them rebates when those files become popular. E-mails uncovered through DOJ raids, mentioned in the indictment, indicate that Megaupload's proprietors were particularly interested in the popularity list, giving users advice as to how to rank more highly.

The nature of such advice would make Megaupload no longer eligible for the safe harbor protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, should the allegations prove true in court.

United Kingdom

At this time last year, U.K.-based search monitoring services provider Envisional made an estimate of the amount of total Internet traffic devoted to obviously (or, put another way, "shockingly") infringing content. Envisional limited its analysis to non-pornographic content, for understandable reasons (its people probably couldn't stomach the idea of wading through all that, and I don't blame them). Non-pornographic infringing content was estimated to consume 23.76% of all fixed access traffic.

Some 5.12% of all fixed access traffic was devoted, by the firm's estimate, to infringing traffic directed to cyberlocker sites, the biggest of which was Megaupload.

In a debate article published earlier today by the U.K.'s Guardian, the political leader of that country's Pirate Party, music teacher Loz Kaye (who is not an MP) debated IFPI Chief Executive Frances Moore.

Kaye argued that it's not really viable to estimate the damage Megaupload may have caused to the movie, recording, and publishing industries based on lost revenue (the DOJ indictment estimated a half-billion dollars) since the business model of these industries are, in his opinion, antiquated and failing. He stated he believes Megaupload could essentially represent the new music industry that should supplant the old one, saying, "We all - pirates and artists - have an interest in a properly functioning and free Internet. Last year 70% of the total volume of British music sales were digital. The [British recording industry group] BPI would do well to remember that its future income is dependent on the very people it is currently antagonizing."

To which Moore responded that the new music industry is represented more by iTunes and digital music stores, not glorified file sharing sites. "We're licensing music widely to sites like iTunes, Spotify and Deezer," Moore writes. "This growing digital music business is fantastic for artists and for consumers. Yet it can't survive in a market rigged by illegal piracy. Events such as the U.S. Justice Department charging Megaupload are important developments - not just for the music industry, but for the whole creative economy."

* Wait, wait a minute, did he say "Mónica Fonseca?" As in, the fashion model, the spokesmodel, the judge on the Latin American version of "Project Runway?" The girl on several relationship-ending posters and calendars all over South America? Yep. The same.

Now, perhaps it's NTN24 policy and perhaps my wife called in to make a special request. But because I don't speak Spanish, when I'm being interviewed by Mónica via Skype, I hear her questions via a translator. Today it was Andrew. And I don't see Mónica asking the questions until after NTN24 makes the replay available online.

Still, if you're wondering, she's a very good interviewer and speaks well to her subject matter. Perhaps through the marvel that is technology, my wife and I will have the opportunity one day to speak more directly with Mónica and her husband, Colombian screen sensation, actor Juan Pablo Raba. (My wife has policies too.)

"Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide," he said, "and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache."

According to Want China Time:

"(He added) that he wants to learn from Chin Shih-chien, director of Taipei Zoo, regarding how animals should be managed. Gou not only invited Chin to take part in his company's annual review meeting but also asked all general managers in the group to listen to Chin's lecture... on how to manage different animals according to their individual temperaments."

Said another executive, "It's a tough job to manage a workforce of over one million, young people's hearts in China are hard to get hold of."

Especially when your aspiration is to eventually learn how to treat them as well as animals.

Gou photo by Dilma Roussef

Dealing with the statistical bureaus of the world's second-largest economy is even less pleasant than it sounds. So the Journal has created this well-organized, graphically effective and easy-to-use site. It organizes data by month-to-month and year-over-year presentations and users can switch from one to the other.

China Econtracker offers outlays of data based on gross domestic product, industrial value added, fixed asset investment, exports, imports, trade balance, foreign exchange reserves, consumer price index and bank credit.

It provides a source for each set of data and allows users to post the results to their Twitter account or Facebook page.

Whether your are among those likely to wind up "fighting it out with journalists at the State Council Information Office or getting lost for hours in the maze of Beijing's Internet" as Tom Orlik writes on China Real Time's post on the Econtracker, or just someone who wishes to be more informed about one of the most important economies on earth, the site looks to provide a real utility.

One commenter on the post, however, said:

"Chinese export statistics originate in individual customs declarations. These declarations include an ever expanding and now very likely statistically material amount of trade 'roundtripped' through Bonded Logistics Parks in China in order to realize export VAT refunds. One of the many reasons that this statistic, like any other in China, is simply not reliable."

Now, if you understand that enough to agree or disagree, you may not need this tool. For the rest of us, though, I still think it will prove useful, however reductive and unreliable statistical collections may be.

Government office photo by Daniel Gao | other sources: China Digital Times

Access to Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are all currently banned by the Chinese government. Google may be renewing expansion efforts in China, but a recent crackdown on popular Chinese microblogging sites designed to mimic Twitter suggest that if any of the big three get the permission to operate in China, the nod will go to Facebook.

"On the one hand, microblogs can reflect the social situation and public opinion, and broadcast a positive public voice," Wang Chen, the minister in charge of the State Council Information Office, told Reuters "At the same time, microblogs... can make it easy to disseminate a few irrational voices, negative public opinion and harmful information."

The Chinese pilot programs require new weibo users to register their real names before they can post, and would eventually require existing users to register their real names as well. The sites have frequently been a source of information about government wrongdoing within China.

China has given no time frame of when it or even if it will open up to U.S.-based social networks, but the pilot program seems to favor a social network that already requires users to register with their real names. Twitter famously allows people to sign up anonymously, and Google+ was banned in China one day after it was launched last summer. But Facebook has tight rules on users registering its real name, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly planning another trip to China.

Despite the tight rules on free speech, which palso prohibit Internet users from saying anything negative about the ruling party, China remains the world's second biggest economy and a largely-untapped market for major U.S. tech companies. Last year, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told Time "it's impossible to think about connecting the whole world right now without also connecting China."

But Saturday's statement from the Obama Administration awakened many broadcast organizations to a strange and, for some, unexplored new question: Is the U.S. truly planning to implement legislation that could shut parts of the Internet off? That's how the Saturday statement truly appeared for some who had not been following the goings-on (such as they are) in the U.S. Congress.

My response may have been a bit surprising, but I tried to be honest: Piracy legislation, particularly with regards to offshore sites, has been a continual focus of debate in Congress since well before Pres. Obama was inaugurated in 2009. The President has always been a supporter of the anti-piracy process, though perhaps not an outspoken one. Saturday's statement had the virtue of not being penned by him, so it enabled the President to continue to stand his ground, while at the same time siding with the rising tide of popular opinion against government measures for disconnecting domain names.

Over on NPR affiliate KPCC Los Angeles, Washington correspondent Kitty Felde was just making herself acquainted with the anti-piracy legislative schedule, only to discover there's now a minimal likelihood that any such legislation will pass both houses in this term. As Southern California Public Radio found itself asking, has the media only now caught up with a runaway freight train of an issue only to find itself in that train's dust?

Web users are likely to see explanations tomorrow, I explained during my appearance on "AirTime with Larry Mantle," from major Web sites that wish to continue their anti-censorship demonstrations. Wikipedia may be the most prominent site to demonstrate how a censored Internet may appear, were the Internet to become subject to American censorship.

However, I explained to Larry's listeners, legal analysis concludes that censorship is not what any of the current anti-piracy legislation is about. Assuming the court order provisions has been left in the current drafts of SOPA and PIPA, they seek to give the Justice Dept. the means to seek a court order to shut off access to sites that apparently violate existing anti-counterfeiting and piracy laws - not violations of "fair use." Prior to the withdrawal of these provisions, the danger as explained to me by technicians, I explained, was that the changes that would be required to the Domain Name System in order to comply with court orders could become exploitable by others, including possibly even foreign governments, with the end effect being perhaps worse than censorship.

KPCC's producers found two listeners for the 20-minute segment, one who stood up as a SOPA opponent, and another who was in favor of some sort of anti-piracy legislation protecting individual artists. The opponent took issue with my statement that we should eventually come to discover that responsibility for the upkeep of the Internet as a market, as well as a delivery service for information, should be distributed among content providers, service providers, and users as well. The listener, calling from West Hollywood, remarked that users should not be expected to foot the bill for more technological anti-piracy measures, since they pay enough for the Internet as it is. It should be up to content producers such as studios and recording companies, he argued, to safeguard they produce effectively, and that the public shouldn't suffer for the industry's technological shortcomings.

My response was to cite Gen. Patton's famous quote about fixed fortifications (artificial constructs to slow down advancing armies on battlefields) as "monuments to the stupidity of man." Any cryptographic or biometric or other technological measure created by the recording or publishing industries, I said, would be at least as permanent as any of the security measures created for Blu-ray Disc - lasting about 18 hours at best, I said, before falling victim to a crack. There is no purely technological solution to the anti-piracy problem in America or the world, I said, just as there is no purely legislative one.

A top level domain is a core part of how the Internet organizes and parses the names of websites. The most common, of course, is .com, but other TLDs are .net, .org and country domains like .CO or .UK. ICANN's new gTLDs will allow companies, governments and other organizations to register unique strings. For instance, are we about to enter the era of .pepsi? See below for everything you need to know about the new domain name system.

ICANN believes that the new gTLD system will be a boon for the Internet economy. Startups, business, entrepreneurs and governments will all be allowed to own and manage their own little portion of the Internet, if they so choose.

Here is ICANN's reasoning:

"One of ICANN's key commitments is to promote competition in the domain name market while ensuring Internet security and stability. New generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) help achieve that commitment by paving the way for increased consumer choice by facilitating competition among registry service providers. Soon entrepreneurs, businesses, governments and communities around the world will be able to apply to operate a Top-Level Domain registry of their own choosing."

Many people think that the new gTLD system will start a gold rush for new domains. To a certain extent this is true. A lot of companies will be bidding big money to retain their trademarks as a gTLD. ICANN will not hold a trademarked name for a specific gTLD just because that company owns the trademark. On the other hand, owning a gTLD is a big organizational and financial responsibility that will be prohibitive for many brands and enterprises.

For example, the base financial commitment for entry for a gTLD is $185,000. If you thought you would waltz in and grab your last name as a TLD, you are probably not going to be able to. It is unlikely that we are going to start seeing individuals with personal URLs like "joe.smith." In this case, Mr. Smith would need to pay for the gTLD and prove to ICANN that he and his organization can support the strict requirements of owning a gTLD.

"Please note that applying for a new gTLD is not the same as buying a domain name. An applicant for a new gTLD is, in fact, applying to create and operate a registry business supporting the Internet's domain name system. This involves a number of significant responsibilities, as the operator of a new gTLD is running a piece of visible Internet infrastructure."

The financial commitment is more than just $185,000 that serves as an evaluation fee. A deposit of $5,000 is required with the application. As a gTLD owner, an entity is required to be the keeper of that domain. That means the company will, in one way or another, be responsible for every other URL that pops up using the new name. In the Smith scenario, whoever owns the Smith gTLD would be responsible for the organization, security and infrastructure of the domain name. After a domain is approved, there is a $6,250 monthly fee and a $0.25 per transaction fee after the first 50,000 transactions in a calendar year.

ICANN does not know how many applications it will receive in this first round of new gTLDs. Entities can apply for domains from today (Jan. 12) until April 12, 2012. This round will contain a maximum of 500 new gTLDs applications and subsequent batches will be limited to 400.

The application and review process is extensive. We are not going to see new gTLDs crop up tomorrow or even next week or next month. The review process for each application can take anywhere between nine and 20 months.

"There are several stages that an application may pass through prior to a final determination being rendered. Those stages are Administrative Check, Initial Evaluation, Extended Evaluation, String Contention, Dispute Resolution and Pre-delegation. The shortest path for a successful application is to pass Administrative Check (lasting 2 months), Initial Evaluation (lasting 5 months) and then move to Pre-delegation (lasting approximately 2 months) without any Objections filed or String Contention concerns. In this case the evaluation process could take as little as 9 months to complete. On the other hand if an application does not pass Initial Evaluation and elects Extended Evaluation and/or is in the Dispute Resolution or String Contention stages then the evaluation process could take up to 20 months to complete (or longer in the event that unforeseen circumstances arise)."

New applications will be assessed by independent third-party expert panels.

Next Page: What gTLDs will look like and other issues and concerns . . .

What Will New gTLDs Look Like?

New domains will be required to be at least three characters in length and contain only alphabetic characters from A to Z. Hence, no domains will be issued that have numbers, like .c0m or .1234.

Country codes are not included in this sale of gTLDs and are a completely separate part of ICANN's TLD standards. Part of the three letter requirement is to protect current and future country level domains like .CO (Colombia) or .UK (United Kingdom).

Not included in ICANN's gTLDs are second and third string domain names. Consider maps.google.com. In this case, the TLD is .com while the second string is .google and the third .maps. Operators of new gTLDs will be the ones to validate any second and third string domain names.

Multiple languages will be supported in the new gTLD system, and non-Latin writing systems, such as the Arabic alphabet and Chinese characters. When an applicant applies for a gTLD, it will not own the translation of the domain. Hence, if you are applying for .thing, you will not also receive the Spanish .cosa or the equivalent in Arabic letters or Chinese characters.

There are two options for new owners of gTLDs to operate them: open or closed. One will be that a company or a brand owns its own name, Coca Cola for instance, and keeps its second and third string URLs within the company. Like, news.coke or offers.coke. Coca Cola would not sell URLs to outside entities and maintain the entire gTLD in the corporate environment. This would be a closed example.

An open example would be if some entity purchases the aforementioned .smith gTLD. The organization could then start selling DNS registrations to individuals, like joe.smith or betty.smith. This is where the true money will be made in the new ICANN infrastructure.

Owners of new gTLDs will likely not be able to turn around and sell the domain. The extensive application and review process contains many layers of objections, comments and evaluation on how well an organization can conduct the domain. So, buying .sex and thinking that it can be flipped for millions of dollars later would not be a feasible model. Buying .sex and selling registrations to the domain would function much more effectively in the new system.

There are two types of applications: standard and community. A community could function as a group of like-minded people working towards a common goal with a reasonable shared infrastructure. A community could be, say, a large group of Silicon Valley startups that all want to use the gTLD .startup. The companies could create a partnership with a central body that would support the gTLD. A standard application would be to a company or an organization that merits consideration.

An organization cannot, however, apply for a gTLD on anothers behalf. If you buy a gTLD, it is yours. You cannot turn around and flip it to GoDaddy or Namecheap for management. On the other hand, there is nothing stopping the domain registrars from applying for gTLDs on their own.

"ICANN will only enter into an agreement with the applicant. There's no provision for Party X to enter a registry agreement with ICANN designating Party Y as the registry operator.

Other Issues

ICANN makes it a point to say that "no, gTLDs are not going to break the Internet."

"The increase in number of gTLDs into the root is not expected to affect the way the Internet operates, but it will, for example, potentially change the way people find information on the Internet or how businesses plan and structure their online presence."

The application and review process, not to mention the cost of supporting a gTLD, is prohibitive to cybersquatters. Some companies may buy their .brand as a defensive strategy but the fact of the matter is that it will be extremely difficult for squatters to get through the process without a plan of action and support. Some companies that can support might just buy the name so it will not have to deal with headaches later.

Forrester's Jeff Ernst has this to say on companies making decisions of whether or not to apply for a gTLD:

"Keep in mind that this is much bigger than just moving your brand from the left to the right of the dot. I'm not a big fan of submitting a defensive registration. Get some of your smartest people from marketing, finance, legal, distribution, service, and strategy together. Examine some of the biggest challenges you have today in any of those areas. Think about your company's strategy and priorities over the next 4 years. See if you can find a strategic application of a registry that can differentiate your company, contribute to growth plans, or help with one or more of your biggest challenges. And if so, go forward with a strategic application. If not, read my latest reports and understand the risks and actions you should take when you stay on the sidelines."

So we, for example, are not worried in the slightest about some organization buy the .writeweb gTLD and blackmailing us to sign up for read.writeweb. There are bigger fish in the sea.

From a security perspective, it is not likely that spammers will buy their own domains and use them as a launching point for spam attacks. As Blue Coat's Chris Larsen pointed out to me recently, it is fairly easy to block spam and malware once you know where it is coming from. So, if spam is coming primarily from a gTLD owned by a botnet operator, it would be simple to just block that gTLD. Again, given the cost and review process, that is not an efficient use of funds for malware makers.

For additional information, see ICANN's FAQ and the Application Guidebook.

What are the concerns regarding the new ICANN gTLD ecosystem? It will definitely dilute the TLD infrastructure and fragment how the Web is organized. Is that a bad thing though? ICANN is a not-for-profit organization so it is not motivated by making money hand over fist. How excess money from the application process will be used will be put to a vote. Overall, is this a positive or negative move for the Web? Let us know in the comments.