This bill, currently pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, would essentially hold U.S. companies accountable for working with the governments of “Internet-restricting countries” to violate citizens’ Internet freedoms.

The megacorporations are not happy. The Interactive Advertising Bureau - which counts AOL, AT&T, Fox News, Google, Reuters, Time Inc., and Yahoo! Inc. among its members - posted a letter to House Speaker Pelosi (PDF) signed by the IAB and about two dozen other business organizations. The letter claims that H.R. 275 would interfere with legitimate U.S. business operations overseas.

No doubt they are correct. But in 2004, Yahoo! Inc., an American corporation, aided the Chinese government in arresting the peaceful activist Shi Tao, who was attempting to spread his message through e-mail. This is an outrage. The United States should not turn a blind eye to such things; if it does, it will become yet another party to the suppression of free speech online. Conversely, if the bill becomes law, foreign governments will have a much harder time pressuring businesses to block Internet content, turn over private user information, and so forth.

Overall, I believe H.R. 275 will do more good than harm. Please contact your representatives and encourage them to support this bill.

Links

• Press release about H.R. 275 from Chris Smith (R-NJ), sponsor of the bill
• H.R. 275 at OpenCongress - track the progress of the bill; find out which representatives are sponsoring it, and which committees are considering it.

Tags: Uncategorized by Sarah Brand
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Last night’s Democratic primary in Pennsylvania failed to resolve anything. The horse race will continue, and the media will cover every second of it.

I won’t be watching. My state’s primary took place on Super Tuesday; I’ve cast my vote. And now the campaign has degenerated into pettiness and sniping. So much hate is coming from supporters of two candidates who are far more alike than not. I don’t wish to encourage the mainstream media giving more coverage to what Obama ate for breakfast than to global warming or Darfur. Also, I have my sanity to consider.

Democrats: it’s one thing to be passionate about your candidate, but if we all combine that passion with a desire for peace - not just, you know, peace somewhere out there in the world, but wherever we can practice it - I think the next few months will go much better for us, and we’ll come out stronger at the end.

The candidates might even start talking about actual issues again.

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The captioned version of the Project Blackout pic is apparently catching on.  Practically speaking, I don’t expect the presence of a caption to affect how many mosquito nets get over to Africa.  Still, it’s a small illustration of the beauty of internet-driven campaigns: anyone can participate at any level.  Anyone can put a good idea out there and watch it become reality.  And the more people are generating ideas, the more they have a stake in the process.  They’ll do way more than they would if someone just said, “Do this and this and this and you’ll help the cause, kthnx.”

Also, someone needs to let the Nothing But Nets people know that games are supposed to be fun.  I understand that they want the content to be relevant to their mission (although it really doesn’t have to be), but repeated gameplay should unlock rocket boosters on the motorcycle, and then later the power of flight.  You know it would be awesome.

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Every year, as many as three million people, most of whom are in Africa, die of malaria. Most of these deaths are preventable. Bed nets, if a family is lucky enough to have them, can protect against infectious mosquito bites. Antimalarial drugs can combat the disease itself, if one lives in an area where they are readily available.

As Jeffrey Sachs explains in The End of Poverty, the root causes of malaria in Africa are mainly ecological. The most common species of mosquito in Africa bites humans almost exclusively. A mosquito must bite two humans in a row to transmit malaria from one to the other. Other species of mosquito, which feed on cattle and other animals as well as humans, won’t spread malaria as efficiently (for lack of a better word). Also, the warm climate speeds up malaria’s life cycle, which in turn quickens the spread of the disease.

As a result, 1-3 million people die of malaria every year. Hundreds of millions more become severely ill. Economies that are already struggling slow down even more, trapping millions in poverty.

If the percentages were the same in the United States, 100 million Americans would become severely ill over the course of a year, and 600,000 people would die. (Very rough estimates, but you get the idea.) I would say “per year,” but it wouldn’t happen more than once. After the first outbreak, the vast majority of the country would have the bed nets and medicines necessary to safeguard against malaria, and logistical obstacles be damned.

This has not happened in Africa. As of 2004, only about 2% of African children under the age of 5 were sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets. Given that a net protecting two people for two years costs $10 (or even $5, depending on who you ask), I think we can do better.

What you can do

• Every time you play the interactive game “Deliver the Net” at the Nothing But Nets website, a sponsor will send a bed net to Africa.
• Or you could just buy a net yourself, either through Nothing But Nets ($10/net) or Against Malaria ($5/net).
• April 25 is World Malaria Day. If you’re on Facebook, sign up to “attend” and invite your friends. The event is purely online - fear not, you won’t have to leave your computer chair - but if enough invitations circulate, it’ll at least increase awareness, and maybe some people who wouldn’t have bought a net otherwise will be moved to do so.
• The founder of the World Malaria Day Facebook event is also promoting Project Blackout - make your profile picture solid black for a day on April 25, raise awareness about malaria. I’m not sure how effective this will be (I think the black profile pics should at least have a caption or something), but I’ll be participating, so you should, too.

Sources

• The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs (Penguin Books, 2005). He discusses malaria in Chapter 10; the whole book is well worth reading.
• World Health Organization fact sheet on malaria
• “Conquering the Intolerable Burden of Malaria” by J. G. Bremen et al. in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, August 2004.

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