Global Network Initiative

Journalists and bloggers in authoritarian countries have their work cut out thwarting governments that try to restrict their writing and reporting. The last thing they need to worry about is the provider of their publication platform helping authorities with censorship or surveillance. Cue the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a voluntary grouping of Internet companies, freedom of expression groups, progressive investors, and academics. 

When they're creating new features, software designers talk in terms of "use cases." A use case describes steps that future customers might perform with a website. "Starting a group with friends," would be a use case for Facebook. "Buying a book" would be case for Amazon's designers. 

China's Internet censors have blinked. In the face of opposition ranging from PC makers abroad to bloggers at home, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has backed away, at least for now, from a hastily conceived directive that all new PCs sold from July 1 should carry filtering software. 

Journalism conferences discussing global trends often
inflate the real but intermittent risks faced by foreign correspondents from
wealthier nations who travel to and report from less stable regions of the
world. They do so at the expense of downplaying if not plain ignoring the much
greater risks faced by local journalists who live in such areas with their
families and report daily for homegrown, regional media. The Deutsche Welle
annual Global Media Forum in Bonn is not one of them.

New York, March 25, 2009--The Chinese government should disclose the legal basis for the sudden, widespread inaccessibility of the video-sharing Web site YouTube, or it should restore access to the site immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 

The blocking of YouTube in China is "inconsistent with the rule of law and the right to freedom of expression," the Global Network Initiative said in a statement today. CPJ is a member of the Initiative, a coalition of information and communications companies, human rights organizations, academics, and investors that resists government censorship worldwide.

One of the reasons the 60^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has spawned so many events this month may have something to do with the venue. The declaration was signed in Paris--who wouldn't want to commemorate the cornerstone of international freedoms in the City of Lights?

New York, October 28, 2008--After two years of intense negotiations, a diverse coalition of Internet companies, academics, socially responsible investors, and human rights groups, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, is launching the Global Network Initiative, an important first step in establishing guidelines for the communications and information industries to protect freedom of expression and privacy.