Hello everybody
Some of you may know SXSW ("South-By-Southwest"), an annual tech/music/film festival in Austin, TX. For next year's event, held in March 2018, we have submitted a proposal for a panel that will discuss a worrying trend: countries increasingly enforce their national laws globally to take down content from the internet.
We believe that this trend causes harm to the internet and access to knowledge. (See our blog posts about this problem in the context of a case in Canada https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/07/20/google-v-equustek/ and another one in France https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/07/31/global-search-engine-delistings-petition/.) The panel will address how countries that enforce their national laws globally online threaten to break the internet into pieces and hurt fundamental rights. We're very happy to have secured the participation of three fantastic speakers:
- Nani Jansen Reventlow (a Dutch freedom of expression litigator) - Malavika Jayaram (a privacy researcher and the Executive Director of the Digital Asia Hub) - Carlos Affonso Souza (Director of the Institute for Technology and Society, Rio)
Now, before the proposal is considered for the official program, it has to go through a voting process. Everybody can vote (after creating an account on the SXSW website): http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/70062
We need your help to get as many votes as possible. Please vote for our panel, help spread the word, https://twitter.com/Wikimedia/status/897847012082806788 share with your friends and networks.
THANK YOU!
Best, Jan
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Jan Gerlach Public Policy Manager Wikimedia Foundation 149 New Montgomery Street, 6th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 jgerlach@wikimedia.org