Global Voices Summit: Toward a Global Anti-Censorship Network

The first panel of the summit included presentations by activists in Belarus, Japan, Egypt and Pakistan.

Some of the main points I took away from the panel discussion:

Censorship is not good for business;
The key in anti-censorship tools is simplicity, ease of use;
Blogs not frequently blocked in Egypt, but torture used to induce self-censorship;
The stakes for governments are too high to allow for a free Internet in Egypt;
Digital activism cannot be separated from the main struggle for democracy;
Are bloggers above the law? Should we always support them?
Mobile phone content (lifestyle, religion, political issues) is already being filtered in Japan;
Bill passed into law in Japan to oblige pre-installaltion national standard-based filtering software;
Companies in Japan pushing against censorship since some games being blocked;
Some argue Japan will be left behind if censorship spreads;
Japanese not concerned about government, but rather other citizens who engage in troubling activities on the net;
Pkblogs.com is a site that allows you to access blogs on blogspot if they are blocked by India, Pakistan, Iran and China;
Vid.pk is a local alternative to YouTube in Pakistan;
SMS activism and Twitter used in Pakistan; but what they really needed was an SMS forwarding and broadcasting service;
In Pakistan, Blog via Frontline SMS, but Frontline was complicated to set up; international SMS migth be more expensive but would be easier;
pkLongMarch.blogspot.com is an event based live SMS / Email blogging site;
In Pakistan, to really reach the people one must tap mobile content and SMS.