Coinciding with a call by international organizations for increased freedom of expression on the Internet, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report urges governments to support internet use as a human right, GigaOm reports.
Representatives from the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization of American States, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights signed the "Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet", a document that urges governments not to limit freedom of expression online, reported EFE.
Brazilian senator Delcídio do Amaral, elected by the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, is suing the news website Terra and reporter Italo Milhomem Santos for roughly $63,000 for publishing supposedly untrue information, according to Portal Imprensa.
In September 2010, Folha de S. Paulo (The São Paulo Journal) used the courts to shut down the Falha de S. Paulo (The São Paulo Failure) parody site for infringing on Folha’s copyright in its name, website address, and graphics. Eight months later, lawyers for the newspaper have said the site can return in its original form if it does not use the visual aspects of the paper’s brand, explains the parody site’s blog, "Sorry for our Failure."
After recently announcing that it was going to hire 800 journalists and reduce its reliance on freelancers, now AOL's Patch.com is saying it wants to bring on 8,000 bloggers in the next week, reported Forbes blogger Jeff Bercovici.
In another case of court-ordered censorship in Brazil, journalist Esmael Morais’ blog was taken down at the request of the governor of Paraná state, Beto Richa, Folha de São Paulo reports. The politician’s suit against the blog began during the 2010 electoral campaign season, when Morais posted a video comparing Richa to Adolf Hitler.
The Brazilian online site Journalists on the Web has published a virtual interactive map with information about urban massacres -- particularly in schools -- from around the world. The map was launched one day after the April 7 school shooting in Río de Janeiro, in which 12 people died.
Reforma, one of Mexico’s biggest newspapers and a pioneer in charging for online content, is studying ways to charge for its mobile content, a top executive revealed.
A total of 45 journalists and media executives from Latin America, Spain and Portugal gathered April 3 in Austin for the Fourth Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism, where they discussed experiences and exchanged ideas about online journalism in the region.
The 12th International Symposium on Online Journalism began today at the University of Texas at Austin. More than 200 journalists, media executives, and academics are registered for the event taking place April 1-2.
A new digital portal in Bolivia is aimed at discussing rights to information and communication, according to a website about democratic governance supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Monday, primetime in Cuba. While state television broadcast a new episode of a series of allegations against the opposition, "The Reasons of Cuba,” this time about independent bloggers, the movement's leader, Yoani Sánchez, broadcast her own talk program with dissident journalists, in which she defended the right to access and use Internet on the island, Radio Martí reports.