以網誌傳遞虛擬聖火

作者：Duke aka 公園仔 来源：mto.age.com.hk

打開報紙，扭開電視，有關奧運聖火的新聞不絕於耳。《聞.見.思.錄》的ALEX說西藏問題不好說，我就更是不懂也不敢亂說。撇開敏感又富爭議性的示威活動，火炬傳送的活動依然令我感到納悶。火炬還未傳到香港，新聞傳出來的火炬手名字盡是達官貴人，先有曾特首，然後又有振英急著出來承認有份，之後還有中間分界，今天更說四叔的大公子也要跑一段。

一方面說奧運是全球人類的活動，不要把它政治化，同時見到那些香港的火炬手代表，盡是高官巨賈，跟平民百姓和甚至運動員都距離甚遠。

今天在TWITTER發這些牢騷時，得到些博客文友和應，大家就蘊釀了以網絡作空間、以網誌作平台，用一人一篇博客文章，傳遞不為達官貴人所壟斷，任何人都可以參與的虛擬聖火傳遞活動。任何人，都可以點起屬於自己的聖火，都可以當火炬手。

聖火會借More Than One（MTO）這個已空置了一段時間的多人合寫網誌作為起點，以這篇文章點起網絡聖火，然後參加傳遞的火炬手會接力在自已的網誌以〈聖火〉為題，書寫自己心中的聖火。我們會有幾位管理義工，把在此結集這些文章的連結，方便大家閱讀。

為了有個開始，頭幾棒會由幾位率先支持的博客先寫，下一棒將會PIGAZINE，之後順序為五師兄、PCHEUNG、陳電鋸、ANGEL、STANNUM、CLUBEDDY、鷹頭獅巢的FELIX、大雄、SIUYING、NIKITA、MAD DOG、EDMOND、影．腦．者。每人有一至兩天撰寫吧，寫好下一個隨時可繼續了。如果文章與文章之間可以打打招呼，有些互應一下當然更好，否則各寫各的也無妨。我相信，同一個世界，可以有不同的夢想，各人心中的火也不同，各自表述好了。

之後的傳遞，大家都可以隨時加入了，如果想順序一棒接一棒，可在此留言先登記排隊，如果覺得太麻煩，自己寫完留言通報一聲也可以，我們之後再整理這些分流吧。反正我們的聖火，是不怕被搶，搶了也仍燃燒著，不會熄滅的。

為了這個活動，一班博友今天想了很多口號，我把它們一一列出，大家比下意見那句好，也可留言提出自已的口號，稍後才決定吧，大家留意MTO發佈的最新動向。

行船爭解纜，聖火我運先
聖火民間性，解放接力
聖火高揚、民間火炬（簡稱：性文、陽具）
blog 壇聖火，你我傳送
火坑救急大咸濕
你出 Blog 、我出火
聖火任我送
網絡聖火撲不滅，任傳任搶最自由
火燭焗束任你郁
網絡聖火任傳送
隨〈時〉傳隨搶，聖火遍送全世界
燒你老味
聖火齊齊blog 旺佢
Blog 不熄的聖火
網絡傳遞自由聖火
Blog 濕佢／Blog 七佢
噴火吞刀慈善 Show
聖在任你搶
鎖不住的聖火
聖火亂擊 Megamix
火是網中紅

好明顯以上標語在口味上是有所傾斜的，你們覺得不對胃口便反建議吧。

稍後好像會有朋友做個活動BANNER的，大家貼文是也貼貼BANNER以示記認。連結就連MTO吧。

好，讓公園仔先寫自家的〈聖火〉。

* * *

正如今天PCHEUNG在TWITTER所提及，談到「聖火」，我先想到的不是奧運的聖火，而是鄭少秋飾演的張無忌所唱的《熊熊聖火》。想到現在紛亂的世界，秋官唱的「熊熊聖火，憐我苦痛多。」很合用。人就有太多執迷而不能自拔。

此歌顧家輝作曲，霑叔填詞。靈感自然是來自《倚天屠龍記》小說中明教教眾唱的經文：

焚我殘軀，熊熊聖火，生亦何歡，死亦何苦。為善除惡，惟光明故，喜樂悲愁，皆歸塵土。憐我世人，憂患實多，憐我世人，憂患實多。

無巧不成話，雖說西藏事件不好說，但《倚天屠龍記》中的明教，跟西藏都屬來自西邊的外族，都是跟中原的漢人起了衝突。網友又提醒我，《倚天屠龍記》中的聖火是聖火令，而聖火令，是要被搶的，跟今天的奧運聖火命運一樣，江湖從此多事了。

看著那些達官貴人急不及待的要當火炬手，我真的感到「憐我世人，憂患實多。」如果香港要有火炬手，應該找些不是垃圾的運動員，應該找些平民百姓甚至弱勢社群，而不是給那些政治人物或富貴人家來曝光。

我是這樣的想法，你也可以有你的想法。我還是覺得，同一個世界，最好有更多不同的夢想。

* * *有甚麼問題或意見，歡迎提出。

對了，差點忘記了，為方便串連文章，寫好文章後不妨加入「blogtorch08」這個TAG（用technorati或delicious或黑米這類工具）來標記你的文章，好讓人們能找到。當然，最簡單的方法是在些留言自投羅網。

真的忘了。PIG說她可以為聖火的傳送路線做個GOOGLE MAP的，大家寫完文，提一下你們是那個城市吧，虛擬得真實些嘛。

* * *虛擬聖火主路線：

1. 聖火 － 公園仔（香港，大埔）
2. 聖火隨手傳 － PCheung（香港，元朗）
3. 聖火2.0 － 五師兄（香港，金鐘）
4. 只有怒火 － 電鋸（香港，油麻地窩打老道 25 號）
5. 卡加利的奧運聖火 － 豬欄（加拿大，卡加利）
6. 聖火任你搶 － Nikita（香港，鰂魚涌）
7. 用內褲燃點火炬 － Stannum（澳洲，雪梨）
8. 網上傳聖火 － ClubEddy（香港，中環）
9. 「聖火」不聖 － TinTin（香港，杏花村）
10. 聖火隨你blog － 薯麥（香港，鑽石山）
11. 我又嚟接TORCH － mad dog（香港，港島）
12. 有關聖火的聯想 － 鷹頭獅巢（香港，耀東村）
13. 擔當火炬手的資格 － angeL（香港，九龍灣）
14. 聖火．研究 － 大雄（美國，紐約）
15. 我替胡佳接一棒 － 曾金燕／胡佳（中華人民共和國，北京BOBO自由城／北京市看守所）
16. 亂世聖火 － Kevin（香港，九龍城）

主路線火炬手登記名單（排名不一定絕對分先後喇）：

• siuying
• Edmong
• 影．腦．者
• Guzz（香港，鰂魚涌）

中途插隊搶聖火：

• 搶食世界：網絡上的普羅米修斯 － Read and Eat （美國，紐約）
• 搶火炬 － San Wen Ji （香港？）
• 聖火呢又是甚麼？（虛擬網絡火炬傳送版） － 星屑醫生（香港，北角）
• 誰的世界？哪一種夢想？ － Pakkin（香港，沙田）
• 拔劍劫聖火去燒雞翼 － katana（香港，中環半山麥當奴道）
• BLOG虚拟圣火传递：消费与被消费 － heretic（香港，柴灣）
• 如果我是火炬手 － leekf（香港，西環）
• 搶聖火 － Uncle Ray（香港，太古）
• 搶聖火 － 木子日曰（香港？）
• 神聖的慾火（香港？） － K.
• 你我也搶聖火 － Nic（香港，香港仔）

（最後更新：08年4月10日，09:30）

最新消息

感謝NIKITA創作BANNER，火炬小圖是MAD DOG找到的。此外，亦感謝大雄製作小BANNER： （08年4月9日）

Google Map 路線圖已經開始每日不定時更新 （08年4月9日）
Facebook Group：Facebook.com/group.php?gid=11148829610
del.icio.us：del.icio.us/tag/blogtorch08

Campaign: Free YemenPortal.net

作者：Mary Joyce 来源：DigiActive

Description of Campaign: In January of 2008, the Yemeni Ministry of Communications blocked the news aggregation site YemenPortal.net. Today, the creator of the site, Walid Al-Saqaf, along with the progressive organization Mideast Youth, launched FreeYemenPortal.org, the official site of the campaign the end the campaign on YemenPortal.net.

Digital Activism Tools: blog banners, petition

How These Tools Are Being Used: The site is asking bloggers to post Free YemenPortal.net banners on their sites. In addition, Mideast youth has posted a Free YemenPortal.net petition on their site.

Update after the jump…

Update (April 4): This week, the government�s Minister of Information threatened to file lawsuits against news websites on the justification of �inciting hatred� or �harming national interests� and the other usual excused they often use to prosecute journalists. The threat is even more severe for websites because the government would use the penal code instead of the press law. This means that website owners could get up to death penalties.

The World Trade Law of Internet Filtering

作者：Tim Wu

下载：http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=882459

摘要：

In 1994, when most of the world's trading nations agreed to create the WTO, they also agreed to begin to liberalize trade in services. What no one fully realized at the time (and not all realize now) is that those decisions placed the WTO in the midst of internet regulation. Much internet content can be reached from anywhere, making nearly everyone on the internet a potential importer or exporter of services (and sometimes goods). Hence, almost by accident, the WTO has put itself in an oversight position for most of the national laws and practices that regulate the internet.

Over the last five years, national governments have begun to impose more controls over the internet - in particular, filters that keep certain forms of applications or content out. The inevitable effect is to create barriers to trade in services. Countries have filtered or blocked internet imports without seeming to think twice about the consistency of such actions under WTO law. More such practices will fall under WTO scrutiny in the years ahead. For the most part, WTO oversight will be invisible. Yet in other areas the influence of the WTO will no doubt help shape the future of international internet transactions - and the internet itself.

In its introduction to problems of trade in internet-based services, this paper focuses on two cases: one a country and one a product. The national study is of China, among the world's more comprehensive internet regulators. China makes for an interesting case because as a condition to accession to the WTO, it agreed to what has been called “radical” reform of its service practices. Yet at the same time China is among the world's more active filterers of internet services. As we shall see, these two positions are in tension, and while WTO law leaves much room for exceptions, some of China's restrictions may not be easily justifiable under the GATS.

The second study is of the company Skype, a provider of voice over Internet services. Skype offers free voice telephone services to anyone with an internet connection. As a consequences, incumbent telephony carriers, often state-owned, have a strong competitive interest in preventing Skype from reaching their customers. The instances of Skype blocking in several countries raise interesting trade in services issues.

This paper is meant for two audiences. For those within the world of trade law it clarifies how internet services have leapt beyond what was contemplated in GATS or subsequent telecommunications agreements. The universalization of a network that is a platform for any type of service requires new thinking about how barriers may come about, and how sectoral commitments are interpreted. For those within the world of telecommunications or internet law, this paper introduces the relevance of WTO law to national regulation of internet services. One of the most interesting consequences may be a tempering of what we might call the "Yahoo! Presumption"; that is, the presumption that the burden lies with internet companies to adapt to national legal systems. While still generally true, the tendency in WTO jurisprudence is to put the burden on national governments to justify internet blocking.

About the Uncensor China campaign

来源：Uncensor

There are people in China who need your support. In their country saying what you think, confronting authority, standing up for basic rights or just sharing information can leave you imprisoned, tortured or dead.

In its bid for the 2008 Olympics China promised that it would make life better for its 1.3 billion citizens.

Liu Jingmin, Vice-President of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee, even said: "By allowing Beijing to host the Games you will help in the development of human rights."

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has also repeatedly said it expects human rights in China to get better, as a result of Beijing’s selection as host of the 2008 Games.

Time to deliver

China has yet to deliver on its words and the Olympics are fast approaching. We are demanding the Government live up to that promise and make China a free, fair and open place to live.

We need your help to do it. A lone voice is not enough, but hundreds, thousands, and hopefully millions of people speaking up together can bring change.

Campaigning for change

We are mobilising people from all over the world – from Mongolia to Denmark, from Chile to Australia – and calling on China to change.

Our campaign focuses on four areas, where we believe reform will have the most impact:

• Unwarranted Internet and media censorship
• The death penalty
• Repression of human rights defenders
• Torture and detention without trial

China’s legacy

Right now, our supporters are organising demonstrations and vigils, lobbying, writing letters to governments and radio stations, building alliances, exerting influence on companies and intergovernmental groups, and raising public awareness.

The aim of every word and action is to bring about change in China. We need your help.

We want the legacy of the 2008 Olympics to be more than medals and records. We want the legacy to be a China where human rights are respected and protected.

Campaign launched to protest the blocking of YemenPortal.net

来源: Mideast Youth, YemenPortal.net

Initiated by Mideast Youth and YemenPortal.net
Press Release by YemenPortal

The anti-website censorship website freeyemenportal.org was officially launched today by Mideast Youth and YemenPortal.net as part of an ongoing campaign to free yemenportal.net from a two-month long ban imposed by the Yemeni government. Furthermore, yemenportal.info was also activated as a mirror site to circumvent the blockage of the earlier blocked domains.

The launch of the website coincides with an unprecedented wave of bans by the Yemeni regime targeting news and opinion websites including blogs and discussion forums. The blocking of Yemenportal.net and its alternative domain was protested by many local and international advocacy organizations including Reporters sans Frontiers, Committee to Protect Journalists, Article 19, the World Association of Newspapers plus many others.

The Director of MidEast Youth, Esra’a Al-Shafei said she committed to assisting the website’s founder and administrator Walid Al-Saqaf in bringing more pressure on the authorities to unblock the website. “It is imperative that we defend free speech and free access to information. The Yemeni authorities have failed to provide adequate grounds upon which the website has been banned within the country,” said Al-Shafei.

Al-Saqaf said he is campaigning on many levels to unblock the website, which is a search engine fetching and indexing news and opinion content on Yemen from about 1,500 sources. He hoped the new website launched today will include news updates, information about alternative domains, circumventing techniques, information on how to help the campaign, media coverage about the ban plus other relevant information.

How it started:

YemenPortal.net started as part of Al-Saqaf’s master program in Sweden to analyze the Yemeni cyber sphere and examine the impact of news websites on democracy. But with more than 300,000 items today, the website became one of the most content-rich Yemeni online resources.

Between the day it was established in the end of May 2007 and until the day it was banned, YemenPortal.net maintained an impressive rate of growth to become one of the most prominent Yemeni websites and simultaneously, became one of the unique academic-driven projects that brought pride to the Örebro University’s Global Journalism Department. However, the website’s growth in terms of visitors and accessibility in Yemen was halted by governmental intervention when the ministry of communication in Yemen blocked it from being accessed inside Yemen on January 19, 2008.

Given his mission to study Yemen’s online media, YemenPortal.net’s founder hoped the authorities would encourage the project and facilitate his research. “But what happened shocked me and disappointed my website’s regular visitors. What is even more ironic is that for some time, the authorities kept on denying that they blocked the website despite clear evidence to the contrary. It is frustrating to see your own government fighting a project that could have enabled millions of Yemenis the chance to be well-informed.” Al-Saqaf said.

Al-Shafei of Mideast Youth supported this view by saying that the website should have been appreciated instead of being targeted because it presented a wide spectrum of news and opinions from diverse sources. “Yemen Portal is a vital source of information and should be rewarded for its exceptional contribution. Instead, the Yemeni authorities have made it inaccessible. We are here to change that.” She added that unblocking the website is necessary to prevent the government from manipulating public opinion by restricting specific views or news on the Internet from reaching the people.

The fight goes on:

The ban of Al-Saqaf’s website triggered a resistance movement led by YemenPortal.net against the ban of all Yemeni websites. With the integrated technology of the search engine, Al-Saqaf established a special proxy to allow Internet users in Yemen to access the banned websites and also to read contents from more than a dozen banned sources on one page.

The resistance movement consequences as the authorities went ahead in banning its website as well. However, a new alternative website was activated in a record time and its web address was sent out to thousands of subscribers and readers. About a day after the alternative website was announced, the personal car of Al-Saqaf in Sana’a was vandalized by unknown men, prompting Al-Saqaf to close down the Sana’a office out of fear of other physical attacks that may materialize.

“If the attack was meant to be a warning message, then it only emboldened our determination to strengthen our resistance of website censorship.” Al-Saqaf said. “It also proves that the resistance efforts are actually working and causing some to take such desperate measures.”

Al-Saqaf vowed to continue the campaign despite hate emails and online messages targeting his person and calling for his prosecution allegedly for republishing material and giving a platform for banned websites that harm ‘national security and unity’. “I will not allow my website to become a tool in the hands of the government.” Al-Saqaf said. “This is why it is important to fight against this unjust ban, particularly as it contradicts with the freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by the Yemeni constitution.”

About our resistance to the government’s ban

来源: freeyemenportal.org

As many of you may know, after the ban of yemenportal.net, the website initiated a nation-wide resistance movement online. It is an effort to neutralize the advantage of the Yemeni government in restricting access to specific websites due to news or opinion content that it may dislike.

This resistance is starting to yield results with more people becoming familiar with it.

The idea was to basically set up a robot on the website blocked.arabiaportal.net to retrieve the content of all blocked websites and list them according to their sources and category. There are articles belonging to forums, news websites, and opinion websites. All of those stories can be viewed in full at: http://blocked.arabiaportal.net/yemen/

However, this resistance movement must have offended the regime so the website (blocked.arabiaportal.net/yemen) itself was banned. Hence, we established yet another domain yemenportal.org and put the blocked content of all those websites at yemenportal.org/blocked.

This is what the resistance is all about: never give up. It will be like this, i.e., they ban a website and we establish another, until they give up on this chase and let the people in Yemen browse banned websites freely.

Thus far, we have been able to get close to a thousand emails of people who subscribed to our service at http://yemenportal.org/?signup=1 and other websites that have already been in touch with us before.

Every time the government blocks our alternative website, we will open another. The attack on the car of yemenportal.net, which took place after we set up the second alternative domain, had only proven to us that there are elements unhappy with our acts and are willing to go to extreme lengths to deter us. However, this has not achieved their objective and we decided to close down the office and have no representative in Yemen to avoid any clashes by those people.

In brief, our resistance now is fully 100% online. But this resistance cannot grow and be more effective unless you help out and participate.

Therefore, the best you could do to help this resistance grow is to put up the below graph in a convenient location on your blog or website and have it point to the following link: http://yemenportal.org/blocked.

You can also add one of the below campaign’s logo pointing to this website: http://freeyemenportal.org:

You can make a difference. Please help our movement grow and free yemenportal.net and all other Yemeni websites.

Walid Al-Saqaf
Admin, founder
YemenPortal.net

“Access Yemen Portal” circumventing software launched!

来源: freeyemenportal.org

Finally, the blockage of YemenPortal.net in Yemen will come to an end for thousands who have been struggling to keep up with the most recent alternative domain.

Inspired by Hamed Saber’s “Access Flickr!”, Walid Al-Saqaf devised a similar program that will only be used to access yemenportal.net from within Yemen. A successful experiment had demonstrated its functionality and its web-based proxy allows it to become a channel to access many more blocked websites.

I am finally breathing a sigh of relief after tense days and weeks following the ban of yemenportal.net… But now with this software, it is possible to bypass the government’s filtering and allow users open access to information, which is one of their fundamental human rights.

Let’s hope that as many people get to know about this new program. It’s currently being checked by Firefox people and experts to allow it to go into the public area of the Add-ons. In the meantime, you can download and use it and send it to your friends and colleagues in Yemen and they are the ones who really need it.

The working links are:
http://mideastyouth.com/accessyp.xpi &
https://yemenportal.net/accessyp.xpi

—

Walid Al-Saqaf
Admin
YemenPortal.net

来源: Firefox Add-ons

Access YemenPortal.net! 0.1

by wsaqaf

Circumvents government website censorship of yemenportal.net allowing users in Yemen to access the search engine seamlessly

Add to Firefox

Log in to install this add-on

Long Description

Allows users to bypass government filtering of yemenportal.net. The website also has a built-in web-based proxy, and hence accessing the website allows access to tens of other banned websites.

Tor-Proxy.NET Toolbar 0.3

来源: Firefox Add-ons

Get Safety and Anonymity by using TOR-Proxy.NET for surfing! Tor-Proxy.NET is a CGI-Web-Proxy, which tunnels your traffic through different anonymization-networks. That way you get high anonymity.

Currently supportet networks:

- TOR (tor.eff.org)
- JonDos/Jap (jondos.de)

Add to Firefox

More Images

• 

Long Description

With this toolbar you can access TOR-Proxy.NET directly. Hide your IP and surf anonymously. This Addon creates a new toolbar, where you can enter the address you want to take a look at.

You have the choice between different anonymization-networks. Currently there are:

- TOR ( https://www.torproject.org/ )
- JonDos/JAP ( https://www.jondos.de )

It is easy to stay anonymous!

With version 0.3 it is now possible to use new server-side features as there are:
- Encryptet URL for bypassing censorship and content filters
- Cookies, javacript and referrer are now already blocked on the server, to improve anonymity! If you need it, it can be activated by hand after you have opened the site.

All in all there are great speed-improvements, especially if you are using JonDos for surfing, which es the default.
Last but not least this Add-on now comes with support for Firefox 3 Beta 2.

If you have questions about Tor-Proxy.NET, take a look at the FAQ at: http://tor-proxy.net/?q=en/node/1

Please be aware: There is NO possibility to offer 100 percent anonymity! Neither this add-on nor Tor-Proxy.NET nor any other service in the world can offer that! So please do NOT only use this plugin and forget about everything. Keep informed about known attacks on your anonymity! For example, you should disable JavaScript and Flash, which are a known risk and can unhide your real identity!