ReadWriteWeb

I am not in the habit of issuing challenges to developers. (This is, in fact, the first time I've done so.) But this is one of those instances in which a day's, or a week's, effort by a good dev or two could save lives.

Here's the situation: I have an acquaintance who has asked me to check in via email every now and then to make sure he has not been taken by the security forces of his country. He lives in one of the countries of the Arab Spring where the official resistance is very strong to the innovations coursing through society. This is not the first time I've been asked to do this and every time I do so I am honored by the request.

YouTube is becoming an increasingly powerful weapon for people living in oppressive regimes to broadcast injustice. But it can be extremely dangerous to have your face broadcast in connection with a riot or protest in a place like Iran.

Naturally, YouTube doesn't want to get people killed. But it doesn't want to censor such videos either - not an easy place to be. The site is soliciting ideas about this delicate issue to stimulate discussion about the role of online video in human rights.

Eventually I'll test my thesis that says, "The bigger the product launch, the more social media users get banged in the tanty." (Pardon my French.) In the meantime, let's see how much ill was done by whom to people like you.

Facebook account removals criticized. Jillian York wrote an extensive examination of Facebook users around the world who have had their accounts closed out. "Facebook has not spoken publicly about how this process works, but my suspicion is that when a number of users report the same user, their profile is automatically disabled." If this is true, it's disturbing. Because it's mob rule.

During this, the Week of the iPad, governments across the globe found just enough time in between loading apps to squeak in some good old-fashioned evil. This evil included, but was not limited to, arrests and censorious legislation. Let's take a look at this Week in Online Tyranny, from the top.

Tunisia blocks another video site. The Tunisian government blocked YouTube and DailyMotion. What was left to block? Why, WAT.TV, of course. This one seems to have been blocked for hosting opposition videos.

Have you become the Mayor of Buttita Plaza Pawn on Foursquare? Or the Archbishop of Myung Dong Tofu Cabin, or the...Deputy Sheriff of the Twilight Bowl? Yay for you! Meanwhile, bloggers in Morocco and Vietnam have become the Governor of Prison and the Water Commissioner of the Interrogation Room.

Feel bad? I'm not going to tell you you shouldn't. All this technology we use and write about and enthuse on has higher stakes than we think. Here are some of them.

France's highest court, the Constitutional Council, ruled that access to the internet is a "fundamental human right" this week in striking down a controversial "three strikes" anti-piracy law called Loi Hadopi, according to a report today from the UK Daily Mail. Were such an opinion agreed upon by other governments around the world, the implications would be striking.

The Supreme Court of India has denied legal protection to a 19 year old computer science student facing a lawsuit for comments left on a group page he created on the Google owned social network Orkut, according to The Times of India. Local press has identified the young man by the name Ajith D (a common name) and report that his alleged offense was creating a group page where other visitors left "libelous" comments critical of militant right-wing political party Shiv Sena.

Indians around the internet are condemning the ruling as a blow against freedom of speech and democracy. It certainly appears to be a dangerous misunderstanding of the nature of the internet on the part of the court and a bad precedent in the most populous democracy in the world.

We've long been critical of concessions that the big web companies make to authoritarian governments around the world, but today Google, Yahoo and others announced that they're going to do something about it. Some time tomorrow a new website will launch at www.globalnetworkinitiative.org where we'll be able to see the fruits of two years of labor preparing a strategy for supporting human rights and operating in troubled markets, at the same time.

Will this be of any consequence? We like former CNN journalist turned human rights campaigning blogger Rebecca MacKinnon's take on it: maybe.