The Information Crimes Law, also being called "Beingolea Law" after Congressman Alberto Beingolea or "Frankenstein anti internet law" by some of its opponents, was approved almost by unanimity on Peru's Congress on Sep. 12 amid concerns over its possible effects on online privacy and freedom of expression.
The Grenada Parliament has passed a law to sanction offensive online content, which could punish defamation through the Internet with up to one year in prison, the International Press Institute (IPI) informed.
Journalist Antônio Fabiano Portilho Coene, the owner of news Portal i9 was kidnapped on Monday Sept. 9 by armed men in the city of Campo Grande in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, website Diario do Estado informed.
Investigative news agency A Pública launched on August 8 its first collective fundraising project for independent reporting projects. Using website Catarse, the goal will be to raise enough money for 10 grants of 6,000 Brazilian reais ($2,640 USD) for Brazilian journalists to conduct their own investigations, which will be selected by the project's donors.
Mariano Blejman is a recipient of the Knight International Fellowship, and as part of his work to promote media innovation in the region, he recently created Media Factory, the first accelerator for news organizations in the world.
Cellular phone cameras have become a powerful tool for journalists and citizens in reporting requests for bribes and other excessive uses of power.
"Lucy," the mysterious author of Blog del Narco, posted a letter in which she details the loneliness and economic problems she confronts during her self-exile in Spain.
José Cristian Góes, a reporter from the Brazilian state of Sergipe, was sentenced on July 4 to seven months and a week in jail for writing and posting a fictional short story on local political cronyism in May 2012 for his blog Infonet, reported the daily Conjur.
Created in 2009 by acclaimed Colombian journalist Juanita León, news site La Silla Vacía ("The Empty Chair" in Spanish) was born with the mission of demystifying, one story at a time, the way that power works.
Journalist Simone Ronzani created Recontando, a website that adapts the biggest stories from social media sites into educational cartoons for kids.
Brazil has a big lead as the country with the most government requests to remove online content by judicial order in the latest Google Transparency Report, released on Thursday, April 25. In the period between July and December 2012, the search giant received 1,461 court-ordered requests from governments around the world to remove content, including YouTube videos and search results, with nearly 43 percent of them coming from Brazilian authorities.
Around 70 journalists from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal participated in the sixth Ibero-American Colloquium on Online Journalism, an addition to the International Symposium on Online Journalism with a regional focus.