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Tanzania Orders All Unregistered Bloggers To Take Down Their Sites (reuters.com)
The state-run Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) ordered all unregistered bloggers and online forums on Monday to suspend their websites immediately or face criminal prosecution. Several sites, including popular online discussion platform Jamiiforums, have reportedly shut down to avoid prosecution. Reuters reports: Regulations passed in March made it compulsory for bloggers and owners of other online forums such as YouTube channels to register with the government and pay up to $900 for a license. Per capita income in Tanzania is slightly below $900 a year. Digital activists say the law is part of a crackdown on dissent and free speech by the government of President John Magufuli, who was elected in 2015. Government officials argue the new rules are aimed at tackling hate speech and other online crimes, including cyberbullying and pornography.
"All unregistered online content providers must be licensed before June 15. Starting from today June 11 until June 15, they are prohibited from posting any new content on their blogs, forums or online radios and televisions," the regulator said in a statement on Monday. The statement said legal action would be taken against any unregistered websites posting new content. Anyone convicted of defying the new regulations faces a fine of at least 5 million shillings ($2,200), imprisonment for a minimum 12 months, or both.
"All unregistered online content providers must be licensed before June 15. Starting from today June 11 until June 15, they are prohibited from posting any new content on their blogs, forums or online radios and televisions," the regulator said in a statement on Monday. The statement said legal action would be taken against any unregistered websites posting new content. Anyone convicted of defying the new regulations faces a fine of at least 5 million shillings ($2,200), imprisonment for a minimum 12 months, or both.
These days there's little difference between Third World shitholes and Britain.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I for one welcome our orwellian ov+++NO_CARRIER
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
These days there's little difference between Third World shitholes and Britain.
Tanzania wasn't always a SH. It has always been poor but did well on other measures of human welfare, like life expectancy, childhood mortality, and political rights (at least by African standards). But they have been backsliding into repression and dictatorship. It is a beautiful country, with warm and friendly people. It is sad to see the direction they are heading.
It's not clear what kind of government it is. Like Russia, on paper it looks like a democracy, or close to one, but it's hard to tell what really goes on in terms of freedom of the press, voter intimidation, fake or jailed opposition, etc.
Table-ized A.I.
That makes perfect sense to me. They still have free speech. Just a little registration form and a small fee.
Very similar to how the Constitutionally protected right to bear arms is handled in some US states. Registration and fees don't count as "shall not be infringed", right? That's what Hillary said, anyway.
If it was a small fee then it wouldn't be news. A year's income is not a small fee.
How long do you suppose it will be before someone gets the idea to require first world bloggers and podcasters to obtain a license, at prohibitive cost?
Finding God in a Dog
How do they identify and prosecute blogs that are hosted on overseas servers?
How can we blame this on Trump?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This can't happen in the US without amending the constitution to nullify the first amendment, same reason why even though the UK banned firearms 20 years ago, the US won't be doing that any time soon, if ever. Rather, the EU beat the UK to it, and now the UK is following after the EU. Here's Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, verbatim:
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
Sounds well and good, right? Until you get to section 2:
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
If you read between the lines and interpret it based on existing laws and recent (and ongoing) events in the EU, it reads more like this:
EU member states have to at least pretend to respect freedom of speech, but in reality it's optional. Here are a list of tools you (as in EU member state governments) can use to abridge any form of speech, and some examples of how they have already been used, and how they might be used in the future:
- Even though using the "interests of territorial integrity" tool being used to justify censorship and quelling of dissent is technically a crime against humanity under international (UN) law, it's never really enforced so it's ok to do so anyways under the EU because we say so. Hence, Spain was perfectly allowed to exert strong censorship on Catalan's internet, and beat and then arrest Catalan demonstrators just for being there, even if there is no evidence that they committed any crime. If the UN asks, use one of the "catch all" tools.
- For another example of how to use the above tool, France stamps out co-cultures that it doesn't like and/or speaks a language that is different enough from French that they can ban it, such as Basque, in addition to making it illegal to use words that aren't part of their official definition of the language. They also use this to craftily prevent certain garments from being worn for religious purposes, specifically to protect christianity from islam.
- We've provided a few catch all tools that you can use, just don't use any one of them excessively or else it might draw suspicion. Health and Morality are both powerful yet vague tools that can be used to justify any crackdown. For example, Germany uses the health tool to justify censoring artistic expression in video games so they can force developers to replace all people with all robots, then come up with a cheesy plotline to explain why. It can be argued that if they don't, then Germans will be psychologically harmed if any pixels resemble blood, schwaztikas, or Randy Marsh getting a probed by an alien.
- While you must endorse and actively speak in favor of diversity, we don't require you to do the same for diversity of opinion in any meaningful way, and you are allowed to be as hypocritical on this as you want just so long as you keep it a secret. We've modeled this after observing multiple univerities in California and in some others across the USA, where this policy enjoys great success using mob violence as a means of enforcement while the university pretends to intervene. We've improved on this idea by allowing you to subtly codify it into your laws, which is whe