Irrepressible

May 28, 2006 10:20 AM

Irrepressible.info is a new campaign by Amnesty International and The Observer to fight internet censorship. One way to help is by publishing censored material from other websites onto your own.
posted by homunculus (15 comments total)

The example from the Burma Campaign reminded me that Burma has just extended Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest again.
posted by homunculus at 10:26 AM on May 28, 2006

i added their banner to my site. i like the concept.
INFO WANTS FREE~!
posted by zenzizi at 10:33 AM on May 28, 2006

All websites running that javascript will be blocked too.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 10:37 AM on May 28, 2006

I've joined the Irrepressibles, because Freedom Wants to Be Informed (or something).
posted by wendell at 10:39 AM on May 28, 2006

All websites running that javascript will be blocked too.

Seems likely. Also, there's not much useful dissident information you could fit into one of those banners.

I think the point is less about getting supressed information to those who can't access it, and more about bringing awareness of the suppression to the general public.
posted by justkevin at 10:44 AM on May 28, 2006

Report 2006: The state of the world's human rights
posted by homunculus at 11:44 AM on May 28, 2006

I think the point is less about getting supressed information to those who can't access it, and more about bringing awareness of the suppression to the general public.

I agree.
posted by homunculus at 11:44 AM on May 28, 2006

I don't much care for this new let's-campaign-about-stupid-crap Amnesty. Let's get back to getting political prisoners released. The general human rights stuff is all well and good, but it's getting silly.
posted by reklaw at 11:50 AM on May 28, 2006

Let's get back to getting political prisoners released.

I wasn't aware that we had stopped.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:12 PM on May 28, 2006

Not stopped, but certainly shifted the focus strongly away from it, no?
posted by reklaw at 12:47 PM on May 28, 2006

No. I believe it's all part of the same effort. I don't speak for Amnesty, so I'll use the third person: their methods have always emphasised exposure; making it clear that prisoners are not forgotten and that the actions of oppressive regimes occur in the view of the whole world. Anything that allows them to hide, allows them to continue to oppress. The free flow of information is a very important tool in helping to limit the harm that they do. And this campaign appears to me to involve a very small investment of resources in proportion to what stands to be gained in terms of value very relevant to the cause.

Out of curiosity, what is your preferred form of action?
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:04 PM on May 28, 2006

The trouble is that 'human rights' is such a general thing to campaign about that it could conceivably include all known charitable work: after all, which charity is not ultimately concerned with something that could ultimately be called human rights? Well, OK, maybe animal charities, but that's about it.

I think that organisations like Amnesty work best when they pick one issue and concentrate on it, instead of trying to stick their fingers into whichever pie happens to be trendy today -- a problem that seems to increasingly affect every large charity out there. Let some new charity campaign against internet censorship.
posted by reklaw at 1:14 PM on May 28, 2006

Let's get back to getting political prisoners released.... Let some new charity campaign against internet censorship.

A functional part of campaigning for the release of political prisoners is letting the world in general know who they are, and that they're being held illegally or unjustly. That information is precisely the sort of thing that these governments censor, especially if the ones posting it online are in their jurisdiction.

That said, I'm not convinced those small javascripts are an effective method of getting out information, though at least the clickthrough gives you a link to the supressed site; which presumably is still going to be censored to the people who need to read it most, i.e. those nationals of the censoring givernment.

Perhaps something along the lines of archive.org, with censored news and sites hosted centrally then mirrored out to entire pages on willing hosts would be more effective? Sort of the host-a-chinese-blogger setup I saw a while back, but more general.
posted by ArkhanJG at 4:04 PM on May 28, 2006

Not stopped, but certainly shifted the focus strongly away from it, no?

Nah, going by the Amnesty literature that drops through my letterbox every month, the focus is still firmly on political prisoners and the other traditional Amnesty concerns (which, of course, always included campaigning against censorship).

The recent news that Amnesty UK were considering taking an explicit pro-choice stance is much more of a departure than this campaign, though - it'll be interesting to see how that pans out. (Personally, I reckon that reproductive rights fall within Amnesty's remit, but hope they don't start a pro-choice campaign - potentially damaging to the organisation to such a degree that its other work will suffer...)
posted by jack_mo at 4:54 AM on May 29, 2006

Bloggers Held Under Egypt's Emergency Laws
posted by homunculus at 9:42 PM on May 30, 2006