(A version of this item - with live links - is also available at
<http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/_archives/2005/9/27/1263304.html>.)



Dear DDN Colleagues,

This morning I participated in a live online chat about the "Handbook
for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents" that has been released by Reporters
Without Borders / Reporters sans frontières.

The chat was hosted by Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon of Global
Voices Online, and, along with Julien Pain of the  Internet Desk at
Reporters Without Borders, the chat participants included folks from
any number of nations and cultures.

The issues that emerged from this live (and lively) conversation
surprised me.  Here are a few from my notes:

-     Bloggers, cyber-dissidents, and journalists are not necessarily
overlapping categories.

-     "Cyber-dissident" is a problematic term at best, and people who
are under surveilance or  threatened by sanctions  for expressing
their opinions do not wish to label themselves in that way by
downloading a handbook with that word in that title.

-     The strategies suggested by the Handbook for Bloggers and
Cyber-Dissidents can easily be exploited by terrorists, which also
makes the handbook's distribution ethically problematic.

A full transcript of the online chat is now available through the
Global Voices Online web site.

Best regards from Deborah

P.S.  I note with interest that the "Cyber-dissident" article that I
began on Wikipedia has been nominated for deletion.  A discussion on
Wikipedia about the deletion is now in progress.

Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog
http://public.xdi.org/=deborah.elizabeth.finn

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