Over at Global Voices Advocacy, since the beginning of the year a great team of volunteers has been compiling and writing regular editions of The Netizen Report. If you want to follow news about how power is being exercised by governments and companies over people’s digital lives, and how the world’s netizens are pushing back, the Netizen Report is required reading. Last week we published the Resistance Edition. It begins with an update on the situation in Pakistan:

Pakistan’s anti-censorship activists recently proved how coordinated, global and local action can make a real difference.

Last month, Pakistan’s government publicly solicited proposals from companies around the world to create an automatic URL filtering system to block “objectionable” content. The request triggered a wave of protests which began with the local group Bolo Bhi and spread quickly to international groups like Access Now who wrote letters to tech companies’ CEOs urging them not to bid on the project, and launched online petitions which gathered tens of thousands of signatures. The Global Network Initiative (GNI), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Bytes for All, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, all issued statements urging technology companies to consider the impact of the tender on the human rights of citizens in Pakistan.

Their message was received and absorbed at least by some. Five of the eight companies petitioned, including Websense, Cisco, Verizon, Sandvine and McAfee, have declined join the Pakistan government’s censorship attempt. On the other hand, Huawei, Blue Coat, Netsweeper, and ZTE did not respond to calls from the advocacy groups before the deadline of the proposal on March 16. Now the Express Tribune has reported that as a result of the protests, the Pakistani government may step back from its censorship plans.

More broadly, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has voiced its concern over challenges to freedom of expression and the Pakistani government’s plans to censor the media and the Internet. It “demands the media, civil society and the people in general must be consulted before any changes are considered in the law. The media should do more to counter radicalisation and intolerance. It regrets that the misuse of blasphemy laws and the official apathy and appeasement of extremists have continued.”

Click here to read the rest of the report, rounding up global developments on censorship, surveillance, activism, Internet governance, new technical developments, and more.

Photo by Yogesh Mhatre

Netizens around the world took collective action with a mass Internet black out on January 18th to protest the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect-IP Act. But that was not the only news in the global struggle for freedom and control on the Internet. In the latest twice-monthly report on Global Voices Advocacy, we take a look at developments concerning netizen rights all over the world – from Argentina to South Korea to China and Iran. Click here to read the whole thing.

Late last week Global Voices Advocacy published yet another edition of the bi-weekly Netizen Report: an overview of the latest global developments related to the dynamics of power between citizens, companies and governments on the Internet.

In our first edition of 2012, authors Weiping Li, Mera Szendro Bok and I examined the mounting challenges from all directions to online free expression, but also celebrated the many ways in which netizens around the world are fighting back. Read the whole thing here.