The Iranian Green Movement or Green Wave of Iran, also referred to as Persian Awakening or Persian Spring by the western media, refers to a political movement that arose after the 2009 Iranian presidential election, in which protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office. Green was initially used as the symbol of Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign, but after the election it became the symbol of unity and hope for those asking for annulment of what they regarded as a fraudulent election. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi are recognized as political leaders of the Green Movement. Hossein-Ali Montazeri was also mentioned as spiritual leader of the movement.
In Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism, is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hacker culture and hacker ethics, its ends are often related to free speech, human rights, or freedom of information movements.
Internet activism, also known as web activism, online activism, digital campaigning, digital activism, online organizing, electronic advocacy, e-campaigning, and e-activism, is the use of electronic communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences as well as coordination. Internet technologies are used for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing. A digital activism campaign is "an organized public effort, making collective claims on a target authority, in which civic initiators or supporters use digital media." Research has started to address specifically how activist/advocacy groups in the U.S. and Canada are using social media to achieve digital activism objectives.
Slacktivism is the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterized as involving very little effort or commitment. The action may have little effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfied that they have contributed. Underlying assumptions promoted by the term are that these low-cost efforts are ineffective, and substitute for more substantive actions rather than supplementing them. Empirical investigation has found these assumptions are incorrect. The belief that slacktivism is effective varies across different groups, and support for slacktivism is contingent upon what people consider as successful activism.
Media activism is a broad category of activism that utilizes media and communication technologies for social and political movements. Methods of media activism include publishing news on websites, creating video and audio investigations, spreading information about protests, or organizing campaigns relating to media and communications policies.
In 2020, Reporters Without Borders ranked Iran 173 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. This index lists countries from 1 to 180 based on the level of freedom journalists have to do their job.
Balatarin is a Persian language social and political link-sharing website aimed primarily at Iranian audiences. Balatarin does not generate news in-house but provides a hub where users can post links to webpages of their choice, vote on their relevance or significance, and post comments. New links initially go to the "recently posted" page; as they collect positive votes, they gain a higher rank and move to the front page, which increases their visibility. Combining the technical attributes of reddit, digg, newsvine, and del.icio.us, Balatarin is a mission-oriented platform dedicated to enabling and fostering freedom of expression and information for the benefit of Iranian society.
Internet censorship is the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet enacted by regulators, or on their own initiative. Internet censorship puts restrictions on what information can be put on the internet or not. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship for moral, religious, or business reasons, to conform to societal norms, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or other consequences.
Iran is one of the countries most strongly identified with internet censorship. As of 2012, an average of 27% of Internet sites were blocked at any given time. As of 2013, almost 50% of the top 500 visited websites worldwide were blocked. The Iranian government and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Sepah also blocked social media such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Netflix, Hulu, Telegram, Snapchat, and Medium. Other blocked sites cover a wide range of topics including health, science, sports, news, pornography, and shopping.
The Copyright Amendment Act 2008 was an act passed by the New Zealand Parliament amending the Copyright Act 1994. It received Royal Assent on 11 April 2008.
The copyright law of New Zealand is covered by the Copyright Act 1994 and subsequent amendments. It is administered by Business Law Policy Unit of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). In June 2017, a review of the existing legislation was announced.
The New Zealand Internet Blackout was an online protest spearheaded by the Creative Freedom Foundation NZ against changes to copyright law in New Zealand, most notably Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment Act.
The term Twitter Revolution refers to different revolutions and protests, most of which featured the use of the social networking site Twitter by protestors and demonstrators in order to communicate:
Following the 2009 Iranian presidential election, protests against alleged electoral fraud and in support of opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi occurred in Tehran and other major cities in Iran and around the world starting after the disputed presidential election on 2009 June 12 and continued even after the inauguration of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as President of Iran on 5 August 2009. This is a timeline of the events which occurred during those protests.
Internet activism and, specifically, social networking has been instrumental in organizing many of the 2009 Iranian election protests. Online sites have been uploading amateur pictures and video, and Twitter, Facebook, and blogs have been places for protesters to gather and exchange information. Although some scholars in the West stress that Twitter has been used to organize protests, Iranian scholars argue that Twitter was hardly used by Iranian citizens in the midst of the 2009 protests.
Since the launch of Twitter on July 15, 2006, there have been many notable uses for the service, in a variety of environments.
Music piracy is the copying and distributing of recordings of a piece of music for which the rights owners did not give consent. In the contemporary legal environment, it is a form of copyright infringement, which may be either a civil wrong or a crime depending on jurisdiction. The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw much controversy over the ethics of redistributing media content, how much production and distribution companies in the media were losing, and the very scope of what ought to be considered piracy – and cases involving the piracy of music were among the most frequently discussed in the debate.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was a controversial United States bill introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to combat online copyright infringement and online trafficking in counterfeit goods. Provisions included the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, and web search engines from linking to the websites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the websites. The proposed law would have expanded existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
On January 18, 2012, a series of coordinated protests occurred against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). These followed smaller protests in late 2011. Protests were based on concerns that the bills, intended to provide more robust responses to copyright infringement arising outside the United States, contained measures that could possibly infringe online freedom of speech, websites, and Internet communities. Protesters also argued that there were insufficient safeguards in place to protect sites based upon user-generated content.
