Burma unblocks websites. The Burmese government unblocked international media sites as well as websites run by Burmese exiles.

Hong Kong bans online sharing of election information. Facebook, Twitter and other social media is now considered "political advertising" in Hong Kong, and therefore limited.

Syria blocks WordPress. In the midst of the protests in Syria, the government has blocked the blog host.

Cuban blogger arrested after Twittering. Luis Felipe Rojas was arrested in the town of Duaba after announcing his intent to take part in a protest for dead hunger strike activists.

Pakistan plans to block Google and YouTube. Pakistan has threatened Google and YouTube with blocking if they do not "help" the government with its alleged terrorism concerns.

Morocco arrests online activists. Blogger Mohamed Douas and others have been arrested in the midst of that country's pro-democracy protests.

International Code of Conduct for Information Security presented to the U.N. by cohort of anti-freedom governments. In a move of operatic Andy Kaufmanesque absurdity, China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan created and submitted a hilarious "code" for information security. (It's an anti-free speech, pro-tyranny document.)

Another lèse-majesté arrest in Thailand. Surapak Phuchaisaeng was arrested for posting pictures that were allegedly insulting to the monarchy. In reality, they were probably insulting to the ruling party.

South Korea censors Internet secretly. In Korea, even the censors are being censored.

Google re-licenses in China. So much for Google's brave stand against Chinese interference.

China fights cyberwar against exiled Tibetans. China's cyberwarfare soldiers are directing a constant stream of attacks against exiled Tibetans to keep them from speaking to each others, the public and coreligionists in Tibet.

Facebook to work with German government on code of conduct. Facebook has agreed to work with Germany on a "voluntary code of conduct" to protect the privacy of social network users.

Hourglass photo by William Andrus, Malaysia photo by Eric Teoh,

But the lawsuits continued. Now, however, a Berlin court has ruled definitively that, however odious the service may be to many, it is, in fact legal in Germany.

The woman who filed the suit maintained that the Google Street View cars, whose cameras are mounted at a height of almost nine feet, were high enough to see over the hedge in front of her family's house.

The court countered that the photos were taken from the street, not sidewalk, and that Germany has an opt-out rule for Street View that would mean her family's home would not appear online. (This does not address the apparent fact that some who had opted-out still saw their houses on Street View from certain angles.)

Due to the Berlin court being a terminal decision, there should be no more appeals, at least not for this case. The ruling is now a part of German legal precedent.

In related news, French courts have assessed a fine of 100,000 Euros (about $141,000) for Google's Street View activities in that country.

The controversy around Street View kept many Germans from allowing images of their houses to be shown on the service, the mayor of Markt Overstaufen - the first town to appear on Street View - told the Germany's c't magazine that he did not receive a single complaint about the service from his constituents. Overall, though, the reaction to today's expansion is anything but positive.

Resistance Grows

Google is clearly hoping for a positive reaction to this expansion, but looking at the current online discussions around this topic, it quickly becomes clear that there is still a lot of resistance - even among Germany's most Internet-savvy users. Just like in the early days of Street View in the U.S., users are concerned that thieves could use the service to scoop out new targets or that government bureaucrats could use it to snoop on citizens.

From the American perspective, it seems somewhat odd that people would want to hide images of their houses from the Internet and that this could stir up such strong emotions, but it also doesn't help that, as Spiegel Online reports, some of the houses that were supposed to be blurred are still visible from some perspectives.

Search Engine Land reports that the small town of Oberstaufen is the first to appear in Street View, with - as promised - many residences blurred out.

While the estimated 244,000 households that opted out represent only a fraction of the German population, the country has still been very critical of what it sees as an invasion of privacy by the Google Street View mapping process.

Now that the deadline has passed for Germans to opt out, Google plans to roll out Street View - blurs included to more cities by the end of the year.

Agreement in France, Court Case in German

One of the countries where YouTube has not been able to reach an agreement yet is Germany. There, according to Bloomberg, the music rights collection agency GEMA is about to challenge Google in the Regional Court of Hamburg after talks between the two organizations broke down earlier this year. The Germany collection agency wants to prevent YouTube from displaying 75 compositions on its site.

Over the years, the relationship between GEMA and YouTube has been rather tumultuous and it doesn't look like Google will be able to reach an agreement there anytime soon. Earlier this year, for example, negotiations between the two organizations broke down when GEMA asked YouTube to remove 600 videos from its service. Last year, YouTube blocked access to all GEMA-licensed music on its German site for a while after the two organizations couldn't agree on a new fee structure and just a few weeks ago, a German court also ruled that YouTube has to pay damages to classical crossover soprano Sarah Brightman.

Germany's politicians have also seized upon this public opposition and held a high-level meeting in Berlin today to discuss potential regulations for geo-location services. The result of this discussion is that the German government will take a hands-off approach until the end of the year and allow the geo-location industry to self-regulate for now.

The complaint against YouTube was originally filed in October 2009. At that time, Google argued that it "works closely with many thousands of copyright holders worldwide to make sure that they can manage their rights on our video platform. Our state-of-the-art Content ID tools go beyond what the law recommends by empowering rights holders to block, authorize or monetize their videos on YouTube in a way that is simple and straightforward."

In this case, though, it seems as if Google's Content ID tools failed. In their complaint, the plaintiffs argued that they repeatedly asked YouTube to take the videos in question down but never received a reply from YouTube.

In an interview with German news agency dpa, a spokesperson for the court today noted that "the court concluded that YouTube was treating content uploaded by its users as its own. That leads to a more strenuous duty to check out the content. The court came to the conclusion YouTube did not fulfill this."

The magazine, hitting newsstands this Friday, features several AR experiences littered throughout its pages that can be activated using metaio's junaio iPhone and Android apps. The cover of the magazine features a popular German TV personality who comes to life in an interactive video unlocked by holding a smartphone up to the magazine. Other augmented features in the magazine include an illustration that becomes 3D, an interview with additional exclusive quotes and a crossword puzzle whose answers appear when viewed through the smartphone.

The example I find the most compelling, however, is a photo essay about German farmers that are worried their country's bid to host the Olympics could spell trouble for their coveted farmland. In one photo, a farmer is shown standing before a large empty field. When a smartphone is held to this picture, a new image featuring a large parking lot superimposed onto the man's land is swapped into its place.

Augmented reality can not only add fun and interactivity to a print publication, but, as shown here, it can also vastly improve a journalist's ability to tell a story in a compelling way. This falls directly in line with metaio co-founder and CTO Peter Meier's vision for the future of AR, where kids will view interactive content on the side of their cereal boxes each morning.

The crux of this vision is that smartphones now allow publishers to build this type of interactive experience right into their existing print content. No special markers, no desktop computer, no webcams: All a user needs to interact with augmented magazines, newspapers or cereal boxes is a smartphone.

Holding a smartphone up to a magazine is a far cry from the flashy interactive newspaper seen in Minority Report, but it is perhaps a hint at how augmented reality can help the dwindling print publishing industry.

German news magazine Der Spiegel quotes German Federal Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger as saying Apple should "immediately disclose" what information they gather, how long it is kept and what it is used for.

The Germany concern is in response to Apple's updated privacy policy, which outlines what the company feels is the need to harvest data to provide location-based services.

"To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device...For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."

Given the company's tenacity regarding Google, Apple would do well to take the Minister's suggestion seriously.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/germany_insists_apple_divulge_location_information.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/germany_insists_apple_divulge_location_information.php Apple Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:00:00 -0800 Curt Hopkins According to German law, Germany's ISPs and phone services had to retain data about every citizen's phone calls and emails for six months. Today, however, Germany's Federal Constitution Court suspended this law and ordered that all the data stored to date must be deleted immediately. According to German news magazine Der Spiegel, the court said that it wasn't sufficiently clear that the data storage was secure enough and what exactly the data would be used for.

]]> Suspended, But Not Dead

It's important to note that this isn't necessarily the end of this law and that the court hasn't ruled the law unconstitutional - the court only ruled that the implementation of the law was severely flawed. The German constitution, according to the judges, doesn't disallow saving this information. The European Union issued guidelines for data retention in 2006 that requires all E.U. member states to implement national data retention laws. According to the guidelines, all ISPs and phone carriers have to keep a record of all their customers' phone calls and emails on a rolling six-month basis. The actual implementation of these guidelines remains up to the E.U. members, however.

For now, the court has suspended the law until it has been amended and its scope has been limited by the German government. The court recommends that the data will be stored by the ISPs and phone companies, but argues that there shouldn't be a central, government-controlled repository for this data. In addition, the court also recommends that the data should be encrypted.

For ISPs, keeping all these records is a significant burden and many ISPs and phone companies had hoped that the court would rule the law unconstitutional so that they wouldn't have to store this data anymore.

The next stop for the opponents of this law is the E.U., though it remains to be seen if there is enough support among E.U. countries to fight these guidelines.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/germanys_supreme_court_suspends_data_retention_law.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/germanys_supreme_court_suspends_data_retention_law.php News Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:17:19 -0800 Frederic Lardinois While Twitter's growth has slowed down in recent months, new data shows that the popular microblogging service has found a lot of new users outside of the United States. According to new data from social media analytics and monitoring firm Sysomos, the U.S. now accounts for about 50% of all active Twitter users. This is down sharply from 62% in June 2009. The share of Twitter users from Brazil, Indonesia and Germany, however, has grown significantly over the last six months.

]]> Brazil, Indonesia and Germany

Brazil now accounts for 8.8% of all Twitter users - up from just 2% in June. Indonesia's Twitter users now account for 2.5% of all users (up from 0.5%). The percentage of German users among all Twitter users is now 2.5%, up from 1.5% in the middle of last year.

Users from Brazil now represent Twitter's second most active population, followed by the U.K. (7.2%), Canada (4.35%) and Germany (2.49%).

Interestingly, the U.K. still leads Brazil when it comes to the number of total tweets contributed. Here the U.S. leads with 56.59% (down from 50.9% last year), followed by the U.K. (8.09%). Twitter's Brazilian population contributed 6.73% of all tweets.

Twitter's most active users can be found in New York City, London and Los Angeles. Twitter's hometown of San Francisco is home to the company's 10th most active group of users.

These numbers clearly indicate that Twitter saw significant growth outside the U.S. over the last six months. You can find Sysomos' full report here.

Nobody is Using Geotagging

Sysomos got this this data by analyzing the profiles of over 13 million unique Twitter users who were active between Oct. 16, 2009 and Dec. 16, 2009.

Given the recent interest in geotagging and geolocation services, we also asked Sysomos to look at the percentage of tweets that are currently being tagged trough Twitter's Geotagging API. While we didn't expect that large numbers of users were currently attaching location data to their tweets, we were surprised by how low this number currently is. Sysomos scanned 10 million tweets from Monday and Tuesday this week. Only 0.23% of these had been tagged using the Geotagging API.

Given that the API has only been available for a few month and that only a small number of Twitter clients currently supports this service, it doesn't come us a surprise that only a few users are currently using this service. This small number, however, also indicates that users aren't clamoring to tag their location to their tweets.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_international_growth_stats_for_brazil_germany_indonesia.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_international_growth_stats_for_brazil_germany_indonesia.php News Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:20:20 -0800 Frederic Lardinois On Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel used her weekly video podcast to attack Google and the Google Book Settlement. According to Merkel, the Google Book Settlement disregards international copyright laws. Merkel, who mostly focuses on the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair in her rather anemic video, also stressed that Germany will do its best to protect German authors against what the government considers to be blatant copyright infringement. Both Germany and France filed complaints against the Google Book settlement last month.

]]> "The Internet Should Not Be Exempt From Copyright Laws"

According to Merkel, the German government wants to protect its authors. Google, according to Merkel, is "just scanning books without any regard to copyright law," and "the Internet should not be exempt from copyright laws," she also adds.

In this context, it is important to note that Germany has always been extremely protective of books as a cultural product. Book retailers, for example, have to sell all new books at a set price and can only discount older or damaged books under a limited set of circumstances. It's currently not clear if these price-fixing rules also apply to eBooks.

"eBooks Won't Replace Traditional Books"

Merkel also stressed that she doesn't believe that eBooks will ever replace traditional books  - though she does mention that 'new' technologies like audio books have changed the book market over the last few years.

Google Books and the Google Book Settlement have obviously been mired in controversy from the beginning. Just last week, Google's Sergey Brin defended the project in an op-ed piece in the New York Times. The Google Book Settlement is currently on hold, and Google has until November to present a revised version of its plan.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/german_chancellor_tells_google_you_cant_just_go_ar.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/german_chancellor_tells_google_you_cant_just_go_ar.php News Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:10:00 -0800 Frederic Lardinois A few days ago, we got a chance to talk about the state of blogging and social media in Germany with Marcel Weiß, the editor of Netzwertig.com - one of Germany's most popular blogs. In the interview, Weiß told us that Germany is at least five years behind the U.S. when it comes to social media and its adoption by a larger part of society. Blogs are still considered to be suspect by a large part of the German public and have very little influence, and social news sites and aggregators attract very little attention. With regards to Germany's Internet startup scene, Weiß argues that, with very few exceptions, most companies are also years behind the U.S. and just aren't innovative enough to compete.

]]> Blogging in Germany: Five Years Behind

Weiß argues that blogging and social media adoption in Germany is far behind similar trends in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Blogs are still considered suspect and have almost no influence over local or national politics. The mainstream media still likes to describe the Internet as a dangerous place, full of malware, porn, and scammers. While regular newspapers in Germany have also started to feel the pressure from the Internet (and every major German paper has a web site), the absence of a successful Craigslist-type site in the country has given the newspapers a longer lease on life than in America.

Unlike the U.S., no political blog has the influence of American sites like DailyKos or Talking Points Memo, though a recent (and misguided) move by German politicians to censor the Internet in Germany in order to combat child pornography led over 130,000 German Internet users to sign a petition against this plan and galvanized the German Internet community in an unprecedented way. It remains to be seen, though, if this sudden rise in Internet activism in Germany will have legs, or if it will just fizzle out quickly.

While political blogs in the U.S. also got a push during the Bush years when mainstream media outlets were generally seen as too close to the administration, German news outlets did not suffer from a similar pushback and most Germans still generally trust the mainstream media's reporting and equate blogging with excessive over-sharers who write Internet diaries about their German Shepherds.

In a post that created quite a stir in the German blogosphere (with a focus on blogging about economics), Felix Salmon argued that Germany's culture was basically the antithesis of what blogging is all about. If this is true, then maybe there is really little hope for blogging in Germany in the near future, but at the same time, there are also a number of news blogs that are doing quite well (Netzwertig is one of them), and there are a lot of passionate German bloggers who are trying to change the current negative perception of blogs.

The Absence of Social News

Unlike in the U.S., the German blogosphere also doesn't have large social news sites like Digg or Reddit to bring readers to blogs. With Yigg.de Germany has its own Digg clone, but it's not only hampered by a rather unpleasant design, but even the top stories there hardly get more than 20 votes. In addition, a headline on Yigg or similar services like Webnews.de barely drives any traffic to a site.

With regards, to blog monetization, things obviously also look equally bleak. Weiß told us that most companies still don't quite get that they could find a very targeted audience on blogs - but of course, the fact that blogs are still struggling to find a large enough readership doesn't exactly help matters here.

Startups

To some degree, the same is also true for the German startup scene, where, as Weiß argued, too many companies simply try to copy popular concepts that were developed elsewhere. The prime example for this is obviously StudiVZ, a blatant Facebook clone. Yet, while StudiVZ was able to quickly grow in Germany while Facebook was still ignoring most of the market outside of America, development of the site has now mostly come to a standstill and while Facebook is turning itself into a platform, the team behind StudiVZ has no interest in making any platform play whatsoever. Indeed, as Weiß told us, very few German startups are actually interested in the platform business and providing APIs for developers is still seen as unnecessary.

That doesn't mean that there aren't some interesting and successful German startups, of course. Xing is a good example for a service that gets things right, and SoundCloud, a very cool music service based in Berlin is another one (though the founders are actually from Sweden). It's important to note, though, that Germany never really had much of a startup scene and that there are a lot of cultural and bureaucratic barriers that would hold even some of the most determined founders from starting their own businesses.

Outlook: Bleak - But With a Silver Lining

There are multiple reasons why blogging in Germany just isn't taking off, but there is a chance that things might turn around this year. The upcoming election in Germany, for example, will give political blogs a chance to shine, especially if they manage to capitalize on the current discussion around Internet censorship. And while Twitter isn't quite a mainstream phenomenon yet, the discussion around its use in Iran during the current controversy around the elections there, also brought Twitter into the spotlight in Germany.

A number of Germany newspapers have also started to run blogs on their own sites, and with Rivva.de, the German blogosphere also has a very interesting meme-tracker that looks and feels similar to Techmeme and Memeorandum, and which provides a central focal point for the German blogosphere.

Of course, in a piece like this, we can only touch upon a small number of examples and have to rely on some sweeping generalizations. Feel free to take issue with our (and Marcel's) assessment of the German Internet scene and leave a comment.

CC-Licensed image used courtesy of Flickr user Will Palmer.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_media_in_germany_5_years_behind_-_still_lot_to_learn.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_media_in_germany_5_years_behind_-_still_lot_to_learn.php Trends Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:45:02 -0800 Frederic Lardinois