Let's not kid ourselves, dear readers. P2P's best use cases all revolve around the liberation of data, software, music, movies, and other copyrighted and rather expensive content. You may direct your angry emails to Rep. Edolphus Towns (NY-Dem.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

At the outset, the bill proposes the banning of P2P software use for government employees and contractors "and for other purposes." The bill mandates the long-term examination of "each open-network peer-to-peer file sharing software program" that might currently be in use by government and law enforcement personnel.

Towns cited the exposure of sensitive information via such networks as the reason for the bill. He cited the following leaks as proof of the need for stricter P2P regulations:

• Schematics for the President's helicopter, Marine One.
• Financial data on Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
• Location of a U.S. Secret Service safe house for the First Family.
• Specifics of a House Ethics Committee document containing a list of ongoing investigations

But let us be realistic: Copyright claims, Creative Commons concerns, and IP violations are the molten core at the center of any legislation on P2P networks. And based on recent internationally agreed-upon efforts to uphold the claims and wishes of copyright holders, the U.S. government seems to be introducing yet more legislation to restrict piracy.

Are P2P networks truly responsible for such serious security breaches? Or are these claims merely politically motivated scapegoats for government to crack down on user behaviors - behaviors that may need more examination than legal discipline?

Most importantly, if this bill is made law, will it act as a precedent for stricter policing and eventual shutdown of P2P networks altogether? Or are we reactionary skeptics who need to calm down and quietly resume our download of our Hello, Dolly torrent files? Choose your own adventure in the comments.

Obviously, we can't really know if the fact that somebody follows somebody else actually means that they are reading all the updates and the political Twittersphere is arguably a bit larger than the sample that Sysomos looked at here. For this study, Sysomos only looked at accounts that had over 5,000 followers and the team acknowledges that it had to make some editorial choices to keep the study manageable. The fact that the map of all the connections between the 168 accounts weighs in at 16 MB shows the complexity of this study, so some editorial control was obviously necessary.

Here are some of the highlights from the report:

The President

With over 2.33 million followers, President Barack Obama is the most followed politician on Twitter, though he is only being followed by 56 members of the 168-member political Twittersphere. Among Obama's followers are Al Gore, Portland's Mayor Sam Adams, London's Mayor Boris Johnson and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Newt Gingrich also follows Obama's updates, as does blogger Marc Parent (@mparent77772)

There is probably a reason why relatively few political influencers follow Obama. After all, if you want updates from the president, his Twitter account is probably one of the worst ways of following him and most of the updates on Obama's account aren't very interesting. Other politicians like Schwarzenegger and John Boehner also update their accounts far more regularly.

Politicians and Political Reporters

Among politicians and reporters, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos follows 105 members of the 168-member political Twittersphere Sysomos analyzed, followed by the Newshour (104), followed by John Boehner (98), the Huffington Post (98), and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (92).

Within the political Twittersphere, Schwarzenegger is also the most followed politician and Stephanopoulos is the most followed media personality.

Daryl Cagle, the cartoonist for MSNBC.com, is the #1 media personality that other reporters follow on Twitter.

News Organizations

Besides looking at individual reporters, Sysomos also examined the larger news organizations in the US. CNN's Breaking News account (@cnnbrk) has over 2.75 million followers, followed by NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) with 1.51 million and Good Morning America (@gma) with 1.37 million. CNN doesn't really follow anybody back, though, while the NPR Politics account follows close to 117,000 Twitter users and Newsweek (@newsweek) follows 97,000.

The members of the political Twittersphere as identified by Sysomos that are most likely to be followed are the PBS Newshour account, the Huffington Post and the LA Times.

According to Daly, an Apple representative spoke to him by phone to inform him that the rejection of the app was due to its "politically charged" nature. Well that, and the fact that Apple doesn't allow political apps from single developers.

Apple may understandably want to distance their company from any hot-button political issue such as health care for fear that accepting political applications would damage their image (at least among those with opposing viewpoints). However, in this case it's a matter of them arbitrarily deciding that one political app can't make the cut when many others already did. For example, during Obama's campaign, there was an "official" Obama application which included news, event listings, media, and details on where the candidate stood on various issues. Was that not politically charged? McCain supporters probably thought so.

Daly also notes that Apple currently carries "Drudge Reader," an app that allows for mobile reading of the "The Drudge Report" website. While this is a news-based application, the site is generally regarded as being conservative in tone. So again, this could be considered a politically charged application, especially among those who disagree with Matt Drudge's opinions and views.

So where is Apple drawing the line? Daly says that the app's rejection is, in part, due to the fact that it's a product of a single developer. At least, that's what he claims Apple told him. Apparently, political candidates are allowed to release apps expressing their views, but single developers are not.

Why Not Allow Political Apps?

The real question here is why not? Let's say that Apple approved the application, what would the fallout be? Would those against the views expressed in the app actually refuse to purchase an iPhone or iPod Touch? Would they dump their Apple devices for a politically-neutral Pre, Blackberry, or Google Android smartphone? All but the most excitable zealots would not. In fact, the result would probably be the release of another application from a different developer expressing an opposing viewpoint. Would that be such a bad thing?

Considering how the rejected application's design tapped into the phone's GPS to deliver personalized, localized political information, it could have really set the stage for a slew of grassroots apps that used the mobile platform to rally the public to various causes or issues. Tap to call your congressperson, tap to customize and send an email to your senator, for example. In time, it's likely that both sides of every issue would be properly represented, keeping Apple out of the spotlight as supporting any particular political opinion themselves.

To date, it's been Apple's MO to distance themselves and reject anything remotely controversial, whether that's mature apps, apps from their competition, and obviously now, politics too. Ironically, by doing so, they actually invite the scrutiny and ill will they were trying to avoid. At the end of the day, though, Apple's iTunes Store is not the Internet where anyone and everyone can have their say - it's a closed, tightly regulated platform where developers have to play by Apple's rules or not play at all.

A far more interesting statistic is that 15% of all Internet users have left comments on websites about political or social issues, or posted images or written blog posts related to politics or social issues. What is even more interesting, though not surprising, is that young adults between 18 and 29 are far more likely to use social networks as a venue for political and civic engagement than older users. These younger users who engage in political activity online are also far more likely to participate in politics offline.

Social Media Might Level the Playing Field

Social media is mostly the domain of younger Internet users and while young adults (18-24) are, as a group, less interested in political activities online, they are far more likely than any other group to use blogs and social networking sites to engage in political discussions. About 34% of young adults make political use of social networking sites and 34% post political material on the Internet.

Users under 35 represent 72% of those users who make political use of social networks. In addition, the income and education gap for those who engage in political activities on social networks is far less pronounced when compared to those who use other forums.

Will These Trends Continue?

What will be interesting to watch, the Pew study points out, is how these younger users will use these existing networks as they get older. It will also be interesting to see if these developments will mean that socio-economic status will become less of an indicator of civic engagement, or if these new technologies will create new barriers of entry for those with a lower income and education level.

Given that the US just experienced a highly contested election cycle and is in the middle of a heated debate about health care right now, we have to wonder, though, if these numbers will continue to hold true over the next few years or if they were just a blip on the radar.

About the Photo

The posters that popped up across the country were based on Alkhateeb's photo, but had the TIME magazine logo and branding removed and had added the word "socialism" at the bottom. Alkhateeb wasn't responsible for these changes - a yet-to-be-identified person is behind the posters' creation.

In fact, you may be surprised to hear that the Obama/Joker image wasn't even meant to be political commentary, according to Alkhateeb. That's quite ironic given that it has now embroiled him in this intense political debate. Instead, says the college student, he was just messing around after discovering an online tutorial that explained how to "Jokerize" photographs using Adobe Photoshop. It seems that Alkhateeb doesn't particularly care about politics himself, having chosen to abstain from voting in November since he felt his state (Illinois) was already sewn up and decided before the polls opened. His views on Obama aren't particularly one-sided either. Alkhateeb favors the democratic viewpoint on foreign relations but tends to side with Republicans on domestic issues.

In a recent L.A. Times profile on Alkhateeb, it's reported that the photo generated over 20,000 page views during the time it was hosted on the photo-sharing website Flickr.com. However, as of last Friday, Flickr removed the photo from their site. Why? Alkhateeb says he received an email from the company stating it had to be taken down due to "copyright infringement concerns." (Apparently, TIME magazine wasn't too happy seeing their brand associated with this sort of political commentary.)

What About Free Speech?

But isn't this sort of political commentary, political parody in fact, protected as a form of free speech? Noted photographer and blogger Thomas Hawk thinks it is, citing a precedent for fair use (Folsom v Marsh) which states "if you produce something that is transformative, and not derivative, then it's fair use." Although Hawk isn't a lawyer, he may be right on this one. Says Corynne McSherry, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit that defends digital rights, Alkhateeb has a strong fair use defense if he was ever sued. "You really want to think twice about going after a political commenter," she noted.

This wouldn't be the first time Flickr got involved with political censorship. Hawk also blogged about how the site deleted the account of a user named Shepherd Johnson after he made critical comments about Obama in the Official White House Photostream back in June.

So is this yet another case of Flickr engaging in censorship? Or are they legitimately protecting themselves from these "copyright infringement" claims? (Flickr won't comment on this since a company policy prohibits them from discussing issues surrounding one particular user.)

What do you think about this issue? Share your thoughts in the comments.

SMS service, which political dissidents had used to spread messages and organize protests, has been restricted since June 11, causing many Iranians to use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites to broadcast and communicate.

Iran's broken digital communication infrastructure caused many Iranians to turn to services such as Twitter, using proxies to work around government restrictions for web use. Twitter became so integral to Iranians' communication, particularly with the wider global community, that the U.S. State Department asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance which would have occurred in the immediate aftermath of the election and resultant protests. Other services rushed to add Persian translation features.

Hopefully, the unblocking of text messaging in Iran is a sign that communication channels are returning to normal. So, does this mean that everyone's new favorite color, "Solidarity Green," will begin to fade away from social web avatars sometime soon? Once the country and its government emerge from crisis mode, what news will come from Iran, and what will the Internet have to say about it?

Upon the appearance of a tenuously connected web of blogs, sites, wikis, and forums, many were excited about the refreshing availability of public channels for dialogue between ordinary Americans and policy makers when it comes to deciding what the 21st century American government will look like. On the other hand, the participation in these initiatives has been dwarfed by what one might see on ICanHasCheezburger. In spite of what could be seen as lackluster citizen response, The Open Government initiative's final drafting phase, which was to have closed already, has been extended until July 3.

Phase One: "Thousands" Participated

The first phase of this program was a public online brainstorming session, which began May 21 and ended June 2. According to an Office of Science and Technology Policy blog post:

Some suggested creating a government-wide intranet and social networking tool to share contact information, resources, and otherwise facilitate collaboration. Others looked to flexible, third-party Web 2.0 tools, such as Wordpress, Wikimedia, Ning, and Drupal to strengthen collaboration. Still others recommended the use of Strategy Markup Language (StratML) to enable potential partners to more easily discover each other based upon common missions, visions, values, goals, objectives, and stakeholders.

While the site stated that mere thousands of participants were logged, it also contained language indicating that the most enthusiastic and engaged users were federal employees already working within government agencies.

Phase Two: Around Four Thousand Mini-Posts

An Open Government Dialogue page was then created - and largely ignored by users - as a second phase for discussion in this initiative toward openness.

What started off as a good idea apparently devolved into typically polarized flame threads and partisan insults. Serious suggestions about healthcare reform received comments numbering in the single digits, while politically weighted one-liners about Sarah Palin prompted hundreds of responses. Moderation of inappropriate or irrelevant topics and comments seemed as absent from the discussion as the deep thoughts of policy wonks who could have helped elevate the conversation. The Open Dialogue was closed, according to the site, on June 26.

Phase Three: Extended With Fewer Than 1,000 Participants So Far

An Open Government Directive page for a drafting phase has now been extended until July 3. Although the OSTP blog states that "well over 100 drafts of open government recommendations" were submitted by users, contributors number just 201 users, and fewer than 1,000 ratings have been registered by the site.

For example, what should have been a hot topic (enabling citizens' participation in government using new media) on the wiki-like MixedInk site only had 18 contributors.

Making Sense of the Numbers

Although measuring engagement isn't necessarily always a numbers game, when online debate, collaboration, and conversation is a stated goal of a project, it would seem that a higher percentage of the target audience (Internet-using Americans) should have been involved, if only through comments and ratings.

Millions of Americans have Internet access - around 75 percent of the population, according to a Nielsen report - and around 70 percent of those users are also using social media, according to a study from MarketTools. Even if we generously estimate the number of Open Government Dialogue participants at 10,000, the results are disappointing:

As the Open Government project's third phase draws to a speedy close, we are left wondering whether the initiative ran too silent and too deep for the average American to know or care about it, let alone feel that he or she could contribute to a meaningful, measurable dialog.

Do you think the U.S. government did an adequate job of publicizing its Open Government efforts? Do you think political and technology bloggers with a critical mass of traffic should have done more to spread the word and encourage user participation, much in the way that music television channels consistently harass youngsters to "rock the vote"?

Do you think that trends of citizen apathy have finally peaked to a point that - even when tools for participation are free and available via a simple Internet connection - no one cares enough to weigh in?

Or do you think that engagement measurement for this project is skewed, that meaningful and representative conversation actually has occurred through the Open Government websites? We look forward to reading your thoughts and encourage U.S. citizens to drop by the drafting phase website, as well.

"...[A]bsent from the new instruction is a requirement to make raw data public," Sunlight's co-founder and Executive Director, Ellen Miller, wrote this morning. "By not including raw data at Recovery.gov, transparency is dramatically reduced. Sunlight has argued strongly for raw data in machine readable formats as the starting point for Recovery.gov. This is a significant failure by the Administration to live up to its promise for full and complete disclosure. Significant failure."

Why would the Obama Administration not offer raw bulk data as part of its much celebrated transparency? One arguement against raw data came out of the woodwork during the successful push to get the US Senate to offer mashup-friendly XML (extensible markup language) feeds for Senate voting history. "The secretary of the Senate has cited a general standing policy," John Wonderlich, policy director at Sunlight, told Politico's Victoria McGrane, "that they're not supposed to present votes in a comparative format, that senators have the right to present their votes however they want to."

The Recovery.gov website is beautifully designed, but when the data being collected from federal recovery fund recipients is made available this October it will be hard to call it transparent if presentation of that data is done entirely by the hand of the government program being scrutinized. Raw data, freely available to the public, would allow for open-ended analysis by the community at large.

Sunlight's critique of the lack of raw data forthcoming from Recovery.gov follows questions about the effectiveness of the Administration's new Data.gov site, a would-be repository for government data that anyone can extract and analyze. We called that site disappointing when it launched in May and subsequent updates to the data offerings there have been uninspiring.

Meanwhile, the UK government has taken the question of raw data so seriously that it has employed Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web and one of the world's most prominent advocates for releasing raw data to the public.

While public discussion of these kinds of moves often focuses on "making information available online" - that's old news, folks. It's an increasingly data-centric world and we need that information as open as possible for a growing corps of citizen and non-governmental analysts, computer assisted reporters and others to work their magic on. The difference between the government reporting its own data on its own websites on one hand, or opening up access to the bulk data for other people to analyze on the other hand, is like the difference between watching a puppet show and being able to shine a light behind the stage to check yourself for injustices, improprieties and other insights we can't foresee before getting a chance to look. So far the October reporting on Recovery.gov appears set to be a puppet show.

In the aftermath of the election, during which a (some say statistically improbable landslide) victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced, the social media buzz grew into a roar as a meme began to circulate: Where Is My Vote. A website, several Facebook pages, and now thousands of tweets have ensured few social web users have not yet heard of the controversy and the Iranian government's response of censorship.

"In coordination with Twitter," Stone wrote, "our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran... Our partners are taking a huge risk, not just for Twitter, but also the other services they support worldwide--we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective."

Citizens Had Taken to Twitter to Report and Find News

Although, as noted above, sources cannot be verified at this time, the vast majority of tweets we have seen tell stories of violent military reactions to protesters:

Many more tweets are linking to news coverage and photo or video evidence of what is happening on the ground during these protests.

Iranian Censorship of the Social Web

The Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon that many inside the country have resorted to overseas proxies to continue to use the websites. However, as proxies appeared on the web, they were gradually blocked. Many are now calling for users to stop publicly announcing proxies and use private channels such as email instead.

Blocked Hashtags, Changed Locations, & Other Misinformation

Still more non-Iranian users are changing their Twitter profile locations and time zones to reflect that they are in Iran. These users are often also posting green-tinted versions of their avatars. Some say this is a show of solidarity; other users insist this action will somehow "screw with the government's head."

As one Twitter user said and as several others would likely agree, "Most of the people on Twitter are [expletive deleted] retarded."

Changing one's avatar and location would likely do little to affect the Iranian government; these actions are simply a sign to a user's followers that he or she has at least a cursory interest in Iran current events.

As the conflict continues, Twitter users are reminded that the best, most useful information to share is that which is most verifiable and hence most likely to be accurate. Retweeting biased or exaggerated accounts damages any cause by feeding a hype cycle and drawing attention away from the heart of the matter. At the very least, users should attempt to search for and verify information before passing it on.

Internet access in a time of democratized online publishing may be understood as a contemporary form of the right to self-expression. It could also be understood as part of basic access to public services in an increasingly online world. We do wonder what such a designation would mean for pricing policies and the internet economy.

Legal theory trailblazer Corey Doctorow wrote the following bold prediction in an article about homeless people and internet access last week:

Here's a prediction: in five years, a UN convention will enshrine network access as a human right (preemptive strike against naysayers: "Human rights" aren't only water, food and shelter, they include such "nonessentials" as free speech, education, and privacy). In ten years, we won't understand how anyone thought it wasn't a human right.

What do you think? Do you think internet access should be understood as a fundamental human right? Do you think that it's a frivolous distraction at a time when millions of people still don't have access to food, clean water and shelter?

France is a nation that decided earlier this year to give its citizens free one year subscriptions to a newspaper of choice on their 18th birthdays. Ostensibly to bail out the newspaper industry but also to foster a life-long habit of learning. That's pretty neat.

If you're interested in more details about this particular French ruling and can read French, check out our partner blog ReadWriteWeb France. If English is a requirement, Techdirt will no doubt have solid coverage of this and related issues.

Image: "PC bang", Seoul. By Flickr user tawalker

New federal CIO Vivek Kundra is in charge of the site, which will act as a central repository for government data, including XML, CSV, KML files and more. At launch a mere 47 data sets are included and they appear to lean towards the least controversial matters. None the less, it's exciting to see the effort happening. Hopefully some awesome mashups are on the way!

There are many, many sets of data available from the federal government but the Data.gov site says it was selective about quality and standards when choosing what to include. It's hard not to compare other sources of government data and feel disappointed, though. The privately built USGovXML.com contains far more data and was built by one independent developer over four months. That site lists ten Department of Interior XML feeds, for example, none of which appear on Data.gov. You can find a feed of food recalls there, but not on Data.gov.

Twenty six government agencies are represented in the catalog, though not all are offering raw data. The FBI is listed as a source but only offers a widget that can be placed on websites, not access to raw data.

New York Times data wonk Derek Willis pointed out that the initial offerings are non-controversial. "Most are from USGS, EPA and National Weather Service," Willis observed this morning. "No [data from] Department of Homeland Security, State or DOJ."

Likewise, a search of the data sets for keywords like food, prisons and drug all bring up zero results. Those are examples of particularly important topics because they are matters of justice and injustice - shedding light into dark corners where injustices are being perpetrated is one of the most important things that government data and the subsequent computer assisted reporting can accomplish.

There are no RSS feeds available for the whole catalog or search queries, something that would be very useful for tracking additions of new data. We expect that will change soon.

People will no doubt argue that some data is much better than no data, and while that's true: for a new federal office to engage with such an important topic with the weight of history and the whole administration behind it and then come up with something this limited is disappointing.

API and mashup watcher John Musser of ProgrammableWeb was more generous than we are about the initial offerings:

"They're off to an excellent start. It's a big step in accessibility of government data. As we've been seeing with other v1 gov-data efforts, like the recently available data on senate votes: step one is give people structured data like xml, step two (or later) is to make it available via an API. They have a healthy amount of metadata. The number of data sets is not that large, but of course it's just the beginning."

It is just the beginning and we applaud the launch of this effort. We hope that the initial launch will pale in comparison to the long term value of this collection of data.

The folks at Sunlight Labs, Google, O'Reilly/TechWeb and Craig Newmark just launched a new part of their Apps for America contest to build the best mashups and data visualization tools for data in the new Data.gov site. Check it out!

See also the newly launched Whitehouse.gov/open - launches today just keep popping up.

On May 1st South Carolina's Senator, Jim DeMint, officially asked the Senate Rules Committee to make the data available and just four days later the feed is here. Not everyone is happy about about the information being made publicly available like this, however.

John Wonderlich, policy director for the Sunlight Foundation, told Politico that the reason he's been given for the lack of XML feeds is this: "the secretary of the Senate has cited a general standing policy ... that they're not supposed to present votes in a comparative format, that senators have the right to present their votes however they want to...it's pretty bad."

Dave Lundy, acting executive director of the Chicago-based Better Government Association, told Politico again that: "It's a strategy to make information hard to find and hard to digest and hard to analyze...Call me a cynic, but I don't ... think [government entities] deserve the benefit of the doubt. We have ample experience to know that people try to hide information, even in plain sight."

Apparently, those problems were washed away this week by the tides of open technology. The Washington Post has offered something similar to what's now available for some time, but there's something to be said for what we hope will be a big, fat, official pipe of data.

We learned of the news this morning when New York Times technologist, Derek Willis, celebrated mention of the news by Rob Pierson, who yesterday began a new job leading new media initiatives for the House Democratic Caucus. The Sunlight Foundation said last week that neither the House nor the senate "maintain any reasonable database of lawmaker votes." The House of Representatives does release their votes in structured format, though.

Willis points out that the new Senate data feeds aren't perfect; the absence of Bioguide ID information linking Senators' names to their online profiles creates an unnecessary additional step for developers, for example.

It's exciting news none-the-less. "It's good to see high profile senators from both parties behind this," says John Musser, founder of the web's leading mashup and API directory, Programmable Web. "Those first steps are often the hardest. That is, just getting understanding of the value, getting buy-in and then having the data accessible in a developer friendly format. The next logical step is to wrap it in an API; having the XML is closer to having an RSS feed, there's not a lot of developer control of what data to retrieve. An API typically gives much more control over what data gets retrieved. Like 'give me all roll call votes for January 2009', versus 'here's the last 20 roll call votes.' Or all roll call votes by a specific senator, etc."

Musser says that he's seeing a broad movement towards increased access to government data. That work is being done by both official sources like this new Senate feed and the data-centric Recovery.org and by outside organizations like the Sunlight Foundation and the New York Times, work Musser is tracking closely.

What's left to open up? Check out, for example, this list of the 8 most desirable but unavailable government data sets, per Willis from the NYT. As of today, one of those can be checked off the list.

Twitter was among a number of web technology companies that visited Iraq as part of the US State Department delegation. Other participants included representatives from AT&T, Google, Twitter, Howcast, Meetup, YouTube, Automatic/Wordpress, and Blue State Digital.

State Department spokesperson Robert Wood explained the intent of the visit:

During their visit to Iraq, they will provide conceptual input as well as ideas on how new technologies can be used to build local capacity, foster greater transparency and accountability, build upon anti-corruption efforts, promote critical thinking in the classroom, scale-up civil society, and further empower local entities and individuals by providing the tools for network building.

Jack Dorsey is the third co-founder of Twitter, but our understanding is that he is uninvolved in day to day operations. Instead, he travels the world talking to people about Twitter. You can follow his updates at twitter.com/jack.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner.

No cause of death is yet known, but the Committee says torture of bloggers is common in Iran and they are usually placed in close proximity to the most dangerous criminals in any facility. Misayafi was sentenced in December to 30 months in prison "for insulting Islamic Republic Leaders." The man said he was a cultural blogger, not a political one, and only wrote a few satirical articles that got him into trouble.

We've reported here on a number of bloggers imprisoned in Iran and in Egypt for documenting government abuses or just writing critical words about governments that demand total compliance. In the middle of last year we wrote about Iran's parliament debating legislation that would add the death penalty to the list of possible punishments for using blogs to challenge government authority.

It is a timeless battle all around the world between freedom, art and self expression on one side and authority, expediency and abuse on the other. The rise of the web has made that battle different, though. Blogs give a voice to the previously voiceless, and the historical and moral importance of efforts to save those new voices from arrest, torture and death cannot be overstated.

We would love to see the Obama administration, which has made extensive use of online social media, publicly and explicitly condemn this death at the Iranian government's hands. We'd be surprised if that happened.

Social media is powerful and changing the world; we don't expect that this will be the last person to lose their life over it. Omid Reza Misayafi, brave Iranian blogger, may you rest in peace. May all those imprisoned for blogging in Iran, and around the world, be set free.

For ongoing coverage of this and all-too similar situations around the world, see The Committee to Protect Bloggers and associated organizations linked to on their site.

Crowdsourcing

Maybe the most interesting aspect of ShovelWatch, however, is that it plans to engage citizen reporters to track how the stimulus money will be spent in their local communities. Essentially, the site plans to crowdsource the coverage of the stimulus plan.

Besides its focus on content from The Takeaway, ProPublica, and WNYC, ShovelWatch also tracks stories about the Stimulus Bill on other news sites and features a nice list of resources in its sidebar.

With Recovery.gov, the government has obviously created its own site for tracking the stimulus bill, but Recovery.gov doesn't currently feature as much in-depth information as ShovelWatch (the 'announcements on the site haven't been updated since the middle of last week) and its focus is more on providing a high-level overview and not on tracking local developments.