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.

Oktogo.ru: The Russian Version of Kayak and Travelocity

ZeptoLab Is Russia's Answer To The Super Popular Game Angry Birds

BigLion Is Russia's Answer To Groupon, And A Total Rip-Off

SurfingBird Is Russia's StumbleUpon

Vkontakte.ru: The Russian Answer to Facebook

Social Networking in China, Where Facebook is Banned

Facebook has been blocked in China since 2009, yet users in the country number 530,520, according to data from SocialBakers. The number of users were expected to exceed 700,000 after Zuckerberg visited the country in December 2010.

October 2011 marked the seventh annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month. China vowed to its control over social media and instant messaging. Of course, there have been talks between Facebook and China, but China still employs strict, national-level censorship. Even if Facebook did enter the Chinese market, things would be tricky, reports Vator.tv.

"While embarking in the Chineses market would be an instant boost in the reach and usership numbers of Facebook, it could also result in negative publicity since entering the market would require censorship and other adjustments to the platform."

Currently, the top three social networks in China are Qzone, Renren and Pengyou. The Chinese social network, QZone, registered 505 million active users as of July 2011. RenRen claims 117 million registered users, but of that only 31 million are active, says BusinessInsider. Pengyou, which launched in December 2010, is China's third largest social network, with users numbering 101 million.

Where Russians Social Network: Odnoklassniki.ru and Vkontakte.ru

Russia's two biggest social networks, Odnoklassniki.ru and Vkontakte.ru account for the yellow dots on this map. Vkontakte.ru is the leading social network in Russia, and roughly translates as "In Contact" according to a post by RussianMarketer.com. As of June 2011, it claimed over 118 million user accounts and 99 million activated accounts. Odnoklassniki.ru, which is more like Classmates.com or FriendsReunited.co.uk, broke 100 million users this past June.

If The Japanese Have Gree, Mobage-Town, Mixi and Yahoo Mobage, Why Would They Bother With Facebook?

In Japan, Gree, Mobage-Town, Mixi and Yahoo Mobage are the biggest contending social networks.

Japanese social networks usually have a strong gaming element that attracts and connects its users. Facebook and Twitter are more about exchanging content and organizing information. In a study from 2010, researchers found that 75.4% of Japanese only accessed social networking sites from their mobile phone.

In March 2011, Facebook became the number six social network after Yahoo! Mobage, Gree, Mobage-Town, Mixi and Twitter. Mobage, which was launched October 1, 2010, passed the 3 million users in five months mark. Gree, Mobage-Town, Mixi and Twitter ranked high as well. This could be because of Facebook's emphasis on using real names, suggests SearchBlog.Asia.

"Japan has traditionally had a unique online culture where people tend to keep their privacy and feel insecure disclosing their personal information online. That is one reason why Facebook first struggled in the market as their rule is to have your real name posted. Mixi however allows users to use their nick name instead. Mixi also has a functionality whereby people can check who has visited their profile as people tend to like to know who has visited their page."

Interestingly, Mixi's features are similar to Facebook. Mixi Check is like Facebook's Share feature, and Mixi Check-In works like Facebook check-ins or Foursquare, tagging a user's physical location on the site. Still, Mixi encourages users to use nicknames on the site, yet on June 29, it changed the view of My Mixi (friends on Mixi) to include friends' full names in parenthesis under their nick names.

The full name is not necessarily a user's real name, like on Facebook. Anyone could use a pseudo name, if they felt so inclined. Still, this update made Mixi more similar to Facebook. Then, on September 1, Mixi launched Mixi Page, which are semi-public web pages for companies, shops and individuals who feel they need their own semi-public web pages. This is a lot like Facebook Pages, actually. On October 11, Mixi released an iPad app and Windows phone versions.

As of February 4, 2011, Mixi had 22.39 million users. In Japan, Facebook has only 2 million users.

Gree, a site that focuses primarily on mobile games, had 23.83 million users, snatching the top spot from Mixi in July 2010.

Mobage Town technically has 24.48 million users, but that's only if you sum up the original, mobile-only network Mobage Town and Yahoo Mobage, which recently launched a PC-based new network with Yahoo Japan.

Where Do South Korean Social Networks Stand?

South Korea is one of those countries that calls itself "democratic."

In South Korea, SK Communications runs the popular social networks Nate and Cyworld, which hold 35 million users total. Accounts on both those sites were compromised in July 2011, after an attack by Chinese hackers.

In December 2010, the newspaper Korea JoonGang Daily reported that the government would be cracking down on pro-North Korea Facebook entries.

"Spreading North Korean propaganda through social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter will be blocked starting next year, according to yesterday's Ministry of Justice briefing to President Lee Myung-bak on its 2011 policies."

In September 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sent an open letter to the Korean Communications Standards Commission "condemning attempts to shut the public out of their work and urging them to embrace online freedom of expression." Here is a copy of that letter.

Social media users, both inside Tunisia and outside, reported news of protests, riots, arrests, government actions and deaths via Twitter and YouTube. The hastag #sidibouzid was omnipresent on the social web.

At about 3:00 p.m. (PST), news arrived - via Twitter, of course - that one of the detainees, and a writer for ReadWriteWeb France, Slim Amamou, had been released, along with another detainee, Azyz Ammami.

A number of concessions are said to have come from these electronically-amplified protests. Few to none can be considered to be confirmed.

• The firing of the Tunisian interior minister, Minister Rafik Belhaj Kacem, for allowing the police to use "excessive force." (Cute phrase for the deaths of dozens of civilians.)
• The end of web censorship.
• The promise by prime minster Mohamed Ghannouchi not to run for election again.
• The promise the police would not allowed to use live ammunition except in self-defense. (At the time of this writing, reports of live firing on civilians were still coming in.)

Li Hong has become second online writer to die in detention. Li Hong's death in Ningbo, China, was the second, after Omid Reza Mir Sayafi's death in Iran on March 18, 2009, involving a blogger in prison. Like Omid, Hong's death was a direct result of untreated medical conditions. Hong had spent three years in prison where treatment for a degenerative disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was withheld.

Like Omid, Hong was tortured to death over a period of years.

Shame, China, SHAME!

U.S. government to create "verified ID" for the internet. A largely undefined program to create an "identity ecosystem" for verified online identities has been turned over to the Commerce Department. While some find it vaguely unsettling, others believe it to be a safe and useful idea.

Court subpoenas Twitter for user info in Wikileaks case. The document demanded data for half a dozen people associated with Wikileaks and its release of war and diplomatic documents. Twitter pushed back at the subpoena, requesting, and receiving, permission to inform the targets of the inquiry what had been asked of them.

Russia moves toward national internet. Former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently signed an executive order requiring all Russian governmental organizations and departments to go open source by 2015. Proprietary software - from Microsoft, Google and so on - puts Russia in a state of dependence on a sector that is overwhelmingly American. Russia joins Iran, China and Turkey as nations that have been exploring the possibility of walling off their national internet from the world.

Under the banner of security, the U.S. has announced the creation of a "verified" ID program that looks for all the world like a walled, or at least fenced, section of the Internet. Russia has moved to open source not out of a philosophical belief in free software, but out of fear of American software hegemony.

Putin recently signed an executive order requiring all Russian governmental organizations and departments to go open source by 2015 and establishing the creation of a Russian open source software repository. Although this will save billions for the government, the reason behind a similar move among U.S. municipalities, the move seems more closely related to national security. Proprietary software - from Microsoft, Google and so on - puts Russia in a state of dependence on a sector that is overwhelmingly American.

There is also the issue of "back doors" in U.S. software. Are there any such points of access built into software at the behest of the American government? It seems doubtful. If there's evidence to that effect, it's in short supply. But the fear of it is a powerful motivator.

As the Internet and the web see more action as geopolitical battlefields, the willingness of countries to run their governments on software designed, built and sold by other countries decreases. Already, Iran has announced a move to open source and China is investigating the practicality of doing so. Turkey is examining the possibility of creating a national search engine and a national email system.

The Politics of Information

The politics of information seems to have always swung back and forth. For a while, any new way of sharing information seems like a liberation, with governments ignoring what they perceive as a fad or fringe-concern. Eventually, though, they catch on and it swings in the other other direction, with repressive laws and arrests and efforts to silo information.

Governments know that high-tech communications tools create wealth. But they are also aware they carry dissent. It is no exaggeration to say the effort to free information tech to create wealth, while simultaneously limiting its capacity to carry anti-government speech, occupies most governments today.

Will the creation of controllable, national information systems be successful? You underestimate government efforts at your peril, but you can likewise underestimate the (metaphorical) desire of information to move. We may well be witnessing the beginning of the end for the pretty fiction of the web as a liberating technology. But if that proves to be so, it would be surprising indeed if another technology did not come along eventually and knock the counterweight back.

Putin photo from World Economic Forum | Kremlin photo by Andrew Bossi | Checkpoint photo by Tony Cassidy

We were told by a public relations representative, Simon Axten, that "(t)he assumptions made in the blog post are false." (We weren't really assuming, but OK.) "We don't take any action on a user report until it has been investigated by our professional reviewers, and they have positively identified a violation of our policies." This is contradicted by the facts as we know them.

A group of Islamists have been targeting persons they find offensive and using this method to silence them. Fabrice has been a target a couple of times. See the latest below, where he was blocked automatically. He wrote to Axten after this happen and Facebook acknowledged that, "(i)t's possible there was a mistake." Well, that's one way to put it. If it's a mistake it has a long history now of being consistently made. It may well be that it is a negative effect of Facebook's crowd-sourced block policy. More on the background from ReadWriteWeb and ReadWriteWeb France (in translation from the French).

The Facebook page devoted to targeting people for blocking

Turkey sentences student to year in jail for Facebook. "The 4th Magistrate Criminal Court in Eskişehir in north-western Turkey sentenced 22-year-old Erdem Büyük to imprisonment of 11 months because the university student posted a caricature of Büyükşehir Mayor Yilmaz Büyükerşen on the social networking website Facebook." The U.S. notion of the offended party in a libel suite needing to prove malice, and guilt, is rare globally. The court deferred the sentence for five years. If the student commits a similar crime, the sentence will begin. A pretty clever way to ensure cooperation.

Facebook users in Columbia use the social networking site for violence. Antanas Mockus, a candidate for president in Columbia, and Jerome Uribe, the son of the current president, have both been issued death threats via Facebook. A Facebook page called "I promise to kill Antanas Mockus before the 30th of May" has been shut down and Colombian anti-terror police are investigating.

China to force all internet users to register names before posting. "A report in yesterday's issue of China Daily quotes Wang Chen, the minister of the State Council Information Office, as saying the authorities were 'exploring an identity authentication system' for users of online forums. Internet users are currently required to register before posting comments on these site but they can use a pseudonym to post. Wang said that, after preventing anonymous posting on major news portals and commercial websites, the aim now was to extend the system to online forums and chat websites.

Thailand interrogates U.S. citizen, and the U.S. government allows it. "Anthony Chai, an American citizen from California, was interrogated by Thai officials in Thailand and again later in the U.S. for allegedly insulting the monarchy in 2006. Originally from Thailand, Chai was granted US citizenship in the late 1970s. He faces possible arrest if he returns to Thailand...In 2006, Thai officials also contacted the company who hosted the website where comments about the Thai king were traced to Chai's business computer. It is believed that Chai's IP address was provided by the web hosting company without his knowledge. In response, the U.S.-based hosting company shut down the website." Thailand uses lese majeste laws to harass opponents.

U.S. state of Washington okays library censorship. "A Washington state supreme court issued a decision...supporting a public library's decision to fully filter Internet content, stating that such filtering could be considered 'collection development.'" This could provide a precedent for a library developing a collection that excluded, say, a political party or historical material on slavery.

Chávez's Twitter reaches almost 350,000. After calling it "terrorism," the Venezuelan president's three week-old Twitter account now has just shy of 350K followers. Number one with a bullet in Venezuela. Chávez has never been known as a big fan of conversation - more of making pronunciamientos- so Twitter doesn't seem like it will loosen him up much, especially given he follows only five accounts: a pro-Chávez newspaper, two political allies, his own party and of course Fidel Castro.

Russia arrests Islamic convert blogger. "Ethnic Russian convert to Islam Alexei Dudko was arrested around May 5 and has been kept locked, away from lawyers and relatives. His blog was mainly focusing on the events in Ingushetia in the North Caucasus, but also general events in Russia attracted his attention. He kept his real name in strict secret and, according to some sources, his arrest came days after his name somehow surfaced in the internet. Needless to say, that the person was very critical of the Russian authorities."

Britain finds Twitter bomb joker guilty. "Paul Chambers, who Monday was found guilty of tweeting 'a message by means of a public electronic message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character contrary to the Communications Act 2003.'" He was fined 1,000 pounds and now has a criminal record, for Tweeting he would bomb his local airport if it didn't get its act together and clean up the runway in a week so he could visit his girlfriend. Stupid, but deemed non-threatening by the security personnel of the airport in question.

Yemen sentences online editor to year in jail. "The former editor of the Sanaa Press website and owner of the newspaper Al-Tajdid, Al-Leswas was convicted by Judge Mansur Al-Sha'e of the Sanaa special court for press and publication offenses on 2 May for articles about alleged corruption within the Al-Bayda province power company...On 3 May, the day after the trial, the Mukhabarat (intelligence services) arrested Abdelsalam Mutabaq, the editor of the Al-Bayda Press website, for calling for Al-Leswas' release. After being held in a Mukhabarat detention centre, he was transferred to Al-Bayda's main prison. " Al-Leswas has fought harassment for years. He's a brave guy. Anyone who works in journalism in Yemen can be nothing less.

Uzbekistand tries to erase the Andijan massacre. Five years ago President Islam Karimov ordered Uzbeki government troops to murder hundreds of protesters in the city of Andijan. They subsequently ejected all foreign journalists for writing about it, purged domestic journalists - even sending the president's nephew, journalist Dzhamshid Karimov to a mental hospital - and blocked websites, which are still unavailable.

Cuba reduces blogger's sentence. Diana Virgen García was arrested and sentenced, in one day, to almost two years in prison for blogging. Her sentence was reduced to a fine of $12.

Egypt bans Skype. There has been a "government ban, announced in March but mostly unnoticed until this week, on using Skype, the popular Internet phone program." Egypt's mobile phone carriers are prohibited from hosting Skype.

Gizmodo warrant unsealed. The media suite to unseal the warrant used to seize computers and paperwork in the iPhone case has been successful.

Kuwait arrests blogger/journalist. "Muhammad 'Abd al-Qader al-Jasem voluntarily turned himself in to State Security officials on Monday, after being informed that a warrant for his arrest had been prepared." Kuwait's Prime Minister Al Sabah has filed five defamation complaints against him in court and another person close to the PM filed another 10. Smacks of harassment. Al-Jasem was on bail on appeal for a six month sentence for defamation. He said he would not stop posting his articles.

Indian blogger arrested. K.V. Shine was arrested in Kerala state for "denigrating the Nair community especially the Nair women." Sounds like a tool, for sure. But arrests of this nature make arrests for outright political goals much, much easier.

Facebook screen shot from Fabrice Epelboin
Mockus photo from Smoreno2007
Arabic script all that is left from Sanaa Press

DST, of course, is also famous for making a major investment in Facebook last year and earlier this month, the Russian telecom giant also invested in Internet coupon site Groupon. DST also holds a stake in Zynga.

According to DST's CEO Yuri Millner, "the acquisition of ICQ is a strategic enhancement of our business in Russia and Eastern Europe. ICQ's long-standing brand name and its sizeable loyal customer base together represent a very attractive opportunity to further strengthen our position in the region."

Given ICQ's popularity in Russia, DST was probably the best buyer for the instant messaging service. It's unlikely, however, that DST will try to make ICQ a worldwide player in the instant messaging market again.

In an open video address to Prime Minister Vladmir Putin, Alexei Dymovsky says, "Maybe you don't know about us, about simple cops, who live and work and love their work. I'm ready to tell you everything. I'm not scared of my own death." How much does Dymovsky have to fear? The answer might surprise those of us who are accustomed to the relative freedoms of self-expression.

Dymovsky served in the Russian army from 1996 until 1998. After that, he worked as a district commissioner of the city police in the Amur region. In 2004, he was transferred to the city of Novorossiysk police department, where he eventually advanced to the post of senior security officer and oversaw crimes related to drug trafficking.

"We are working as hard as we can with all our souls," Dymovsky says. After referencing losing two wives, who refused to put up with his work, and problems with "relationships with the bosses," Dymovsky says, "I want to talk about it now." He speaks of being denied leave of absence or medical treatment for illness, about police taking bribes and about pervasive corruption. "I am not afraid," he says, "I am telling my name... But I cannot stand detecting the nonexistent crimes, imprisoning people who are not guilty. I can't stand it anymore."

Take a look at one of the videos Dymovsky has posted so far:

These videos bear significant political impact, but they also speak to the importance of the Internet in acting as our generation's soapbox. Any wronged person has an almost infinite capacity to express, persuade and convince. Currently, a source at the Russian Interior Ministry's internal security department has confirmed to at least one publication that representatives of several human rights organization actively support Dymovsky.

The officers mentioned in Dymovsky's reports have filed libel suits against him, and the Russian interior minister has said his office is investigating the former police officer's claims.

They were all victims of a denial of service attack that was, depending on who you believe, either the work of Russian nationalist hackers targeting a Georgian economist, a clever ploy by the United Economists of Georgia to garner sympathy by feigning an attack by Russian nationalist hackers, or an attempt by Paramount Pictures to divert attention from reviews of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

Yet we all made it (including countless girl's-name-plus-random-four-digits Twitter spam accounts... oh, how I missed you lot these past few days). I'll let you know where to get your "I Survived the Twitter DoS Attack of 2009" t-shirts shortly.

After all, did you know who Cyxymu was when you woke up yesterday? Speaking to the Guardian earlier today, Cyxymu argued that the Russian government was directly responsible for these attacks against him, though while this makes for a good headline, chances are that the reality is far more prosaic.

Cyxymu on the Net: A Digital Refugee

These attacks, which affected some of the Internet's most popular sites, seem oddly out of proportion. On Twitter, Cyxymu had only about 600 friends earlier today - though that number is now up over 800 and growing as his name becomes more widely known. His main LiveJournal account only got between 1000 and 1500 unique visitors per day over the last few months (though Cyxymu moved from service to service, so it's hard to pinpoint exact numbers).

Evgeny Morozov currently offers the best discussion of who Cyxymu is and why he might have been the target of this attack. You can find his post on the Foreign Policy magazine's Net Effect blog (it's a long read, but worth it). Morozov describes Cyxymu as the first "digital refugee," who had already faced DDOS attacks on his LiveJournal and Wordpress.com blog last year. Morozov discounts the idea that Cyxymu will mostly profit from these attacks thanks to the Streisand effect and that his message will now be heard by far more people than before the attacks. We are not quite sure about that, however, especially given that Cyxymu has started to give media interviews now.

Was the Kremlin Behind these Attacks?

Given that Cyxymu already faced similar attacks in the past, it only makes sense to assume that these new attacks were also meant to silence or intimidate him (though clearly this never worked before). We do wonder, however, if this was really an attack launched by the Russian government. While the results of the attack were far-reaching, DDOS attacks are sadly nothing unusual on the net - and sometimes they are even used as a way to extort money from online businesses. It doesn't take a government to start a DDOS attack, and lots of spammers and hackers probably have the ability to launch an attack of this scale.

In his Guardian interview, Cyxymu says that the attack may have been "carried out by ordinary hackers but I'm certain the order came from the Russian government." Indeed, this is a possibility and it's still too early to really know. For the time being, though, we are not fully convinced yet that a government organization was really behind this attack.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The shares were bought by internet investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, which now controls 50.6% of Mail.ru. You can see a clumsily Google-translated version of the site's "blogs" section here.

Context

Traffic analysts Quantcast estimate the site sees almost one million visitors each month from the US. For context, Facebook says it sees 100 million unique visitors per month from around the world.

Another 32% of Mail.ru is owned by South African conglomerate Naspers, the same company that we reported acquired African social media aggregator Afrigator earlier this month. Naspers says that Mail.ru generated $56 million in revenue last year, meaning presumably that it's either growing revenues quickly and/or is now drastically over-valued. 40X annual revenue is the kind of valuation that people make fun of Silicon Valley for.

The moral of the story here is that there is huge internet activity all around the world and not just in Silicon Valley. Many of our international readers are fully aware of that but even we need occasional comments or multi-billion dollar valuations in order to remember.

Freedom of speech advocates in Russia call the extremism laws too vague and sweeping, arguing that they are open for abuse by government officials. Last year, Russian news site www.gazeta.ru was warned for extremism after writing about political cartoons that satirized the prophet Mohammed.

Suprisingly, surveys show that many Russians actually favor government control of the media. A 2005 study found that 82% of Russians were in favor of censorship on television, though generally that referred to the removal of "ethically questionable" material (such as sex or violence) rather than the supression of free political thought. It should be noted that Article 29 of the Russian Constitution guarantees freedom of the press.

"It is a worry whenever the government tries to change any law," Oleg Panfilov, director of the Centre of Journalism in Extreme Situations, told the AFP. "It is difficult to find anyone who is not against extremism but it depends on how the law is used. The government uses (it) selectively."

A 2007 report on press freedom from Freedom House (PDF) rated Russia as "not free" and noted that specifically the atmosphere of press freedom had decline under President Vladimir Putin. That's a trend that seems to have continued in 2008 and begun to spread toward the realm of government Internet censorship. A couple of months ago, it was reported that Russian ISPs were "testing" filters and blocking a few major opposition party news web sites.