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
==
Jan Gerlach
Public Policy Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street, 6th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
jgerlach(a)wikimedia.org