NEWSINTERNET

I was homeless last winter and my gold Starbucks card kept me warm, safe and dry. It also helped me utilize social media to, in very small ways, help the lives other homeless people. I am @From_Nothing on Twitter, and I now have several thousand followers. Being able to access the Internet and tweet with my smart phone, which was paid for by a wonderful friend, while enjoying a warm cup of coffee at Starbucks, was crucial for my survival and eventually helped me end my homelessness.

I imagine that the homeless are a very daunting and sad situation for Starbucks employees and patrons to have to deal with, but in many ways having a safe place to stay helped change my life and the lives of others. I am hoping my story might help you and and others find positive ways to help the homeless.

If you're my age or older you may know her from her Academy Award winning performance in Children of a Lesser God? Maybe you know her from her feisty character in the West Wing, Joey Lucas?  Or for the younger ones out there for her roles in Desperate Housewives or the L-Word?

Marlee Matlin deserves some thanks from the Change.org human rights community.   Last week, Marlee wrote on her twitter account:

Dear Netflix. Nevermind about the price hike. When are you going to start captioning your streaming content? Fail, big time.

That's what we're saying!  Netflix , the internet's biggest provider of streaming online television and movies provides subtitling for only 30 percent of its online content.  Worse, while it is possible to see a list of all of the subtitled content on the site, but users cannot search within that content.

We need a few reliable people for special new team of activists to help win some of the human rights campaigns here at Change.

Here’s the deal: sometimes a petition asking for a simple change is sometimes not enough to win a campaign, but with a little bit more encouragement the petition target might be convinced to do the right thing.

So we’re looking to put together a pack of people – Human Rights Heroes – who can help take things to the next level when a campaign gets stuck. The things we’ll be asking you to do range from posting on a company’s Facebook wall or tweeting at a politician to making a phone call in support of petition.

If you’re interested, then please sign on up (and make sure to check your email to confirm joining).

There's this thing called the Internet.

It's a global system of interconnected computers of critical importance to infrastructure, trade and the exchange of information. As it grows, governments are increasingly trying to get a handle on it.

Some autocratic regimes try to censor the kind of information passed through the online tubes to their citizens. But in more democratic countries, governments see it as their role try try protect the open, unabated flow of free information... Right?

Wrong.

Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, has been under a state of emergency for 43 years and run by a dictator for 30.

The government censors the media, bans all demonstrations, forbids the formation of any political parties or organizations and detain citizens indefinitely without charge. Corruption is rife, the judiciary is weak and police brutality is so common it is barely reported anymore.

Six days ago, Egyptians said 'enough', and millions took to the streets all over the country. We've been compiling photos of women in the Egyptian protests from across the net. Click here to view the slideshow.

Twitter: the social network that has launched mini-revolutions, exposed corruption and brought down hundreds of politicians.

A bastion of democratic, online communication in 140 characters, Twitter is used by activists, organizers and dissidents everywhere from Britian, Canada and the US to Iran, Sudan and North Korea.  The microblogging site has played a major role in revolts, riots and resistance over the past two years, from the green revolution in Iran to the riots in Tunisia over the weekend.

But after a Chinese woman was arrested for a sarcastic tweet about anti-Japanese protests in China, for more than six weeks Twitter Inc. has not 140, not 130, not even 10 words to say about it.

Nothing.

Common sense tells us if it ain't broke don't fix. Unfortunately the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information, MOCI, seems to be lacking in the common sense department.

Since last September, the MOCI's spokesperson, Mr. Abdulrahman al-Hazzaa has been talking about how the ministry will soon unveil a system that will organize the internet. Yes, somehow this Saudi ministry believes that it can do the impossible. Despite a lot of objections to the proposal, on the first day of 2011, the ministry announced this groundbreaking new system. An English translation and commentary are available here. What's funny is that two years earlier the Saudi Interior Ministry had already set a very strict and thorough system of laws that oversees any online violations.

The claimed purpose of this new set of laws according to the ministry is to support people online. However every single bylaw seems to convey the exact opposite.

Mandatory registration at the MOCI, commencing from the first of February is required for; Electronic journalism, websites of traditional media websites such as those run by TV channels and paper newspapers, advertisement websites, audio and visual media websites, cell phone broadcasting (messages, news, ads, pictures, etc), Broadcasting via other messages (messages, news, ads, pictures, etc). And then there is "voluntary" registration for; forums, blogs. personal websites, mail lists, Electronic archives and chat rooms.

Basically the definitions and bylaws are vague enough to prosecute anyone for anything. For example audio and visual websites are undefined and yet mandatorily required to register, so what if you have a weblog or a Youtube channel, will you be punished for not registering? A third of the country's population are expatriates and yet they have been excluded from being able to register any form of online journalism or advertising and are restricted to only forums, blogs, mailing lists and chat rooms. So does that have any implications for international classified ads websites that have Saudi pages such as this? Bottom line is that the whole concept of organizing the internet according to physical location and nationality of people online is preposterous and impossible.

Navid Mohebbi, the youngest blogger ever arrested, was released by Iran over the weekend.

According to the Iranian Human Rights group RAHANA, the 18-year-old amateur blogger and women's rights advocate was released from Sari prison on Christmas.

The release, first announced on local radio and picked up by the Human Rights Activists News Agency over the weekend, came after Navid was sentenced to three years of suspended imprisonment in a closed door court session in which he did not have access to his lawyer, likely a face-saving tactic by Iranian authorities.

While governments and mainstream media have paid little attention to Navid's case, Iran has been under heavy pressure from domestic opposition leaders and international human and women's rights activists to release him.

A Safe World for Women, a global women's rights and advocacy organization, was among the first group to reveal Navid's imprisonment and has led efforts on Change.org to pressure senior UN human rights officials to advocate for Navid's release. Over 600 Change.org members took action to demand UN help in getting Navid released, and we have covered Navid's case a number of times.

"It's wonderful to have some good news isn't it!" Christine Crowstaff, Founder of A Safe World for Women, told Change.org this morning. "Our Iran correspondent sends you many thanks for all you have done for Navid! And so do we all!"

You open your laptop. All the websites you like to browse are either blocked or incredibly slow. "Sorry, your subscription only allows for slow access to our premium content providers," a pop-up tells you.

Frustrated, you head over to one of the few sites approved by your Internet service provider, the only way for you to get the local news and weather. There, in the fast lane, the Internet starts working like a charm.

The United States of America has not yet gotten to this point yet, but decisions over the last few months have certainly been heading in that direction.

Tomorrow the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is likely to rubber stamp the controversial acquisition of NBC Universal, owners of a major TV Network, several cable channels and a movie studio, by Comcast, the nation’s largest provider of cable TV and residential broadband Internet service. The "megadeal" merger will create a media content and distribution behemoth easily capable of discriminating against rival content providers or distributors.

Dozens of national activist and net neutrality groups have been trying to stop the merger, or at least impose strict regulations on the new company's future behavior.

A Change.org petition by the Consumers Union of United States, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, calls on the FCC to block the merger.

"The combination of NBC's content with Comcast's distribution power would create a media giant of unmatched size and scope which, if approved, will have unprecedented control over what Americans watch," says the group, which is campaigning hard ahead of tomorrow's FCC meeting. "Take action and tell the FCC that the proposed marriage of these two media behemoths will result in less competition, higher costs, and fewer content choices."

Buying a satellite isn't usually on the top of the list of potential actions for activists working around global poverty issues. But that's exactly what one campaign wants you to do.

If you’re reading this online, this means you have a computer and access to the Internet. But 5 billion people around the world do not, and the vast majority of them live in the developing world.

The Terrestar-1 satellite and some good ole' ingenuity from a team of movers and shakers over at buythissatellite.org might begin to change that. These folks hope to use the satellite to bring Internet access to at least one part of the world that needs it.

How? Terrestar-1, a bus-sized satellite that connects to a tiny handset called the Genus, is a bit of a rebel without a cause at the moment. Launched in 2009 to provide mobile communications to North America, the satellite is owned by the soon-to-be-bankrupt TerreStar Corporation, making it up for grabs.

That’s where the "Buy This Satellite" campaign comes in, courtesy of ahumanright.org. They want to buy the satellite and move it over to a country where Internet bandwidth is low. They list Papua New Guinea as a possible contender, namely because it has an orbital parking spot available. The move would provide Internet access to six million people who didn’t have it before. Throw Indonesia in and you can add 243 million to that. That’s nothing to scoff at.